Interstellar Warfare

[zarpaulus]

The large-scale multi-ship battles seen occasionally in interplanetary warfare are almost unheard of when the combatants are located in entirely different star systems. The main reason is simply the orders of magnitude difference in travel time and cost. Starships using reaction drives require many cubic kilometers of reaction mass just to get up to the speeds where ramscoops are effective, while gravity and warp drives require unfathomable amounts of energy and matter just to build.

Therefore, would-be interstellar invaders tend to adopt one of two strategies: The WMD approach is usually only effective against technologically inferior opponents, but if they pull it off a single starship can conquer a star. A G-Drive ship can dance around a fleet of reaction ships, slicing them to ribbons without even taking a hit, while even the least r-drive starship is a colossus compared to system ships. The power of their drives, combined with the purpose-built weapons that civilizations capable of building starships can design, means that almost any starship can lay waste to a defenseless star system in a matter of weeks.

Of course, if the invaders want to capture the biosphere intact (which most do, as it tends to be the most valuable part of a star system), they can’t simply throw nukes and c-bombs everywhere. Which means that the ship’s crew has to negotiate the tricky task of persuading the local governments to surrender with minimal devastation. Even if they succeed in this task, the resulting political arrangements tend not to last long. The elites and masses of such worlds tend to resent “quisling” leaders and efforts to depose them are soon to follow.
 

As such, worlds conquered by WMD use tend to acquire a growing number of radioactive craters as their overlords periodically reassert their rule, assuming the natives don’t somehow get hold of the technology required to shoot them down. This is less of an issue for nomadic “pirate” lords who only care about collecting their tribute and moving on, but for would-be emperors this is a bit of a hassle.

Hence the second approach: Subversion. This can also be accomplished by a single ship, but they tend to be more subtle in their methods. Using (comparatively) stealthy craft, agents are delivered to the system’s habitats where they infiltrate the population. These agents then make contact with the local discontents (there always are some) and attempt to recruit them.

To assist in this mission, agents are trained in a variety of disciplines ranging from hand-to-hand combat to megastructure engineering and meme hacking. They also tend to be equipped with the best nanofabricators that can fit in their ships, which can be large enough to build other spaceships or warmechs, in order to supply their fifth column with weapons, armor, and augmentations. These “gifts”, naturally, come with backdoors the agent can use to retain control. Remote-triggered explosives, gene-locks, even integral AI controls hardwired to obey direct orders from the agents.

Once the “revolution” seizes control they establish a government that passes outwardly as independent, but is in truth a puppet of their new “allies” from another star system. Their taxes are disguised as “trade” or “investments”, even “foreign aid.” Eventually the populace of such states figures out they’ve been conquered, but by then a substantial fraction of said populace has decided that they prefer living under their overlord’s thumb and the usual result is a civil war rather than complete secession.

House Ronkall’s paladins are particularly insidious. Their blood-bourne assemblers construct bionic augmentations in the infectee’s body, including an AI controller in their own brain that compels them to use their augs to fight criminal activity in their home polity. Helping endear themselves to the population, until the order to take over comes out. A single paladin can arrive on a planet butt-naked and infect a critical mass within just a couple short years.

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