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Souper

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What does Kerbal warfare look like? Is it similar to Human warfare, or does their uniqueness warrant a radically different approach to bloodshed?

 

Also, how well do you think they would hold up against Human forces?

Edited by Souper
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Despite the big scary trefoil painted onto the side of this engine, its radioactive exhaust, and tendency to overheat, the LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor is harmless. Mostly. Note that the LV-N is the only LV series engine to run solely on Liquid Fuel - the future is glowing bright!

Seems peaceful enough.

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6 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Seems peaceful enough.

Oh.... I meant the R&D research node description. Sorry.

38 minutes ago, Spacetraindriver said:

The humans would be annihilated if they tried to interact with Kerbal craft in anyway. Plus they're pretty tough, being able to withstand anything that wouldn't kill them, without getting injured. They can also survive without any food or life support so...

How would they be annihilated?

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Kerbals have no weak points on the surface of Kerbin, save for the KSC. They have invested the entirety of their industrial base towards space travel. Their vessels can go endlessly without wear. With a good rock and an LV-N, they can cover the entire system. Certain of them have mastered the laws of physics, creating reactionless drives.

Humans have covered Earth's surface in cities of varying size and density. Space travel represents a minimal portion of the industrial base. We can't even keep the coffeemaker going without regular maintenance. We don't know the secrets of ISRU. Our exploits outside of Earth's immediate vicinity are exclusively robotic. We know reactionless drives to be impossible.

We don't stand a chance. Kerbals have relativistic weapons (kraken drive), giant rocks, and an infinite pool of skilled volunteers. We have rubbish chemical rockets (and piddly ion ones), chemical guns, and a very limited set of astronaut candidates who need massy food and life support.

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19 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

Kerbals have no weak points on the surface of Kerbin, save for the KSC. They have invested the entirety of their industrial base towards space travel. Their vessels can go endlessly without wear. With a good rock and an LV-N, they can cover the entire system. Certain of them have mastered the laws of physics, creating reactionless drives.

Humans have covered Earth's surface in cities of varying size and density. Space travel represents a minimal portion of the industrial base. We can't even keep the coffeemaker going without regular maintenance. We don't know the secrets of ISRU. Our exploits outside of Earth's immediate vicinity are exclusively robotic. We know reactionless drives to be impossible.

We don't stand a chance. Kerbals have relativistic weapons (kraken drive), giant rocks, and an infinite pool of skilled volunteers. We have rubbish chemical rockets (and piddly ion ones), chemical guns, and a very limited set of astronaut candidates who need massy food and life support.

That means squat when a single Satan-2 could send Kerbin into a nuclear ice age. I also bet there are more human soldiers than living Kerbals.

Edited by Souper
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1 hour ago, Souper said:

That means squat when a single Satan-2 could send Kerbin into a nuclear ice age. I also bet there are more human soldiers than living Kerbals.

Nuclear ICBMs mean squat when you have R-bombs. See the Atomic Rockets page on relativistic weapons. At .9c, kinetic energy ~= rest mass. In other words, the kinetic energy is as much as if the projectile was made of antimatter. Your Russian ICBM has a yield of about two kilograms at .9c. 10kg only needs to get to .58c, while 100kg matches the ICBM at .21c. Considering that kerbals throw much bigger things around, perhaps an estimate of 100T (100000kg) would be more reasonable. That needs .007c in velocity. And, since we're hitting a planet, we know all the energy will be delivered to the target. With the kraken drives of 0.23, you can get that velocity in 13374 seconds, or about four hours. And, since those drives are a) dirt cheap and b) produce acceleration, not force, they can throw limitless asteroids of 3800T (class E), which match the ICBM at only .001c (300000m/s).

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2 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

Nuclear ICBMs mean squat when you have R-bombs. See the Atomic Rockets page on relativistic weapons. At .9c, kinetic energy ~= rest mass. In other words, the kinetic energy is as much as if the projectile was made of antimatter. Your Russian ICBM has a yield of about two kilograms at .9c. 10kg only needs to get to .58c, while 100kg matches the ICBM at .21c. Considering that kerbals throw much bigger things around, perhaps an estimate of 100T (100000kg) would be more reasonable. That needs .007c in velocity. And, since we're hitting a planet, we know all the energy will be delivered to the target. With the kraken drives of 0.23, you can get that velocity in 13374 seconds, or about four hours. And, since those drives are a) dirt cheap and b) produce acceleration, not force, they can throw limitless asteroids of 3800T (class E), which match the ICBM at only .001c (300000m/s).

Which is why finding out the Human's universe's physical laws make pretty much everything that makes them better than us useless is going to be a real bummer for them.

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Kerbal can into relativistic weapons only if they have access to cfg files or have KSPI-E mod installed.

Even their chemical engines are much worse than the humans',

So, do not tell them about KSPI-E and restrict their privileges on cfg files editing.

Edited by kerbiloid
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Well, if you restrict them to our physics... They still throw multiple hundreds of tons into orbit. And their population might be distributed among multiple planets, with ISRU and possibly launch sites on each. Strategically, they have the advantage. Logistically, even more so. They don't have the chokepoint of a single, centralised planet. Once seeded, nearly any body is transformed into a fully operational colony.

And, if you restrict us to their physics... We'd lose the tides and the seasons. Ecological disaster would ensue. Boats would become far slower and go sploosh a lot more. Certain dodgy things with fluid dynamics would fail. Armor would become irrelevant for explosives, and hypervelocity kinetics would phase through their targets. Wheels would become... difficult. Constraining the one to the other's physics is not a fair fight. 

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3 hours ago, Souper said:

Humans would start winning very quickly if we focused on getting a space industry up.

Kerbals will just switch into Sandbox mode, with infinite all.

Also, Kerbal have already colonized other planets (and many times), while humans still never can't into beyond the Moon.

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3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Kerbals will just switch into Sandbox mode, with infinite all.

Also, Kerbal have already colonized other planets (and many times), while humans still never can't into beyond the Moon.

I'm pretty sure we'd have to make the assumption that neither are in sandbox mode.

And they haven't gone beyond the Mun in my playthrough (thus the issue with this matchup).

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I suppose it matters who you ask. Some timelines are populated with kerbals capable of attaining the furthest reaches of the system in a single stage. Others produce aircraft or ground vehicles far exceeding our own. Others still bend physics to their will. It's a diverse multiverse, and humanity must pick its fights wisely.

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This scenario assumes that Humans somehow invaded Kerbin, and having the Kerbals militarize due to the Human invasion, Humans would have modern technology, Kerbals would have the entire stock tech tree technology. (Why? I don't know)

This is also using the theory mentioned on the KSP Discord, where Kerbals, instead of bones, they have a large amount of liquid bladders inside them, which explains how resistant Kerbals are to falls in-game, I can't remember who made it, I will edit this if I find out.

As this scenario is set at a time when the stock tech tree is completed, Kerbals have the advantage of various bases in space.

This scenario does not have instant construction, as that would mean Kerbals could just fire a rocket a minute at the humans.

This scenario would have KerbinSide.

This would be Career mode, so there would be funding, in this case it's reasonable to guess that Kerbals would have massive amounts of funding, as Kerbalkind would probably not like being invaded by Humanity.

For Kerbal militarization, they could design basic (but powerful) weaponry with stock KSP technology, such as, firing entire SRBs as rockets, and dropping fuel tanks out of planes as bombers, from the start they would have highly powerful anti-tank weaponry, in the form of modified SRBs designed to fit in a shoulder-mounted tube.

Humans have the advantage of being militarized throughout their entire history, therefore having advanced weapons, nuclear, chemical, etc.

Now, onto the scenario.

At first Humanity would have the advantage, having more advanced military technology, they would rapidly occupy land, after a while, Kerbals would start building rockets just to launch at the Human military bases, and then they would start launching planes to drop fuel tanks onto the Human forces.

After a while, presumably from reverse-engineering Human technology, Kerbals would develop Human-like guns and cannons, Kerbals, having the ability to build massive stuff, would likely make massive artillery cannons, using those instead of rockets to fire at the Humans would be quicker, due to only needing to make chunks of metal filled with explodey stuff.

Both sides would likely do bombing raids against the opponent, the Humans would have interception and AA technology from the start, Kerbals would develop those eventually.

Kerbals could modify NERVs to work as basic Nuclear bombs, although, due to the smaller size of Kerbin, nukes could cause serious(er than on Earth) issues, so they probably wouldn't be used much, if at all.

Kerbals would use space stations to bombard the Human-occupied surface with Kinetic WMDs.

There would likely be a stalemate between the 2 sides, with the Humans losing large amounts of resources and troops, with Kerbals not being able to produce enough weapons to repel the Humans completely.

At the end, either there would likely be a ceasefire, and agreements to end the war, or eventually the Humans would run out of soldiers, resulting in a Kerbal victory.

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5 minutes ago, CAKE99 said:

This scenario assumes that Humans somehow invaded Kerbin, and having the Kerbals militarize due to the Human invasion, Humans would have modern technology, Kerbals would have the entire stock tech tree technology. (Why? I don't know)

This is also using the theory mentioned on the KSP Discord, where Kerbals, instead of bones, they have a large amount of liquid bladders inside them, which explains how resistant Kerbals are to falls in-game, I can't remember who made it, I will edit this if I find out.

As this scenario is set at a time when the stock tech tree is completed, Kerbals have the advantage of various bases in space.

This scenario does not have instant construction, as that would mean Kerbals could just fire a rocket a minute at the humans.

This scenario would have KerbinSide.

This would be Career mode, so there would be funding, in this case it's reasonable to guess that Kerbals would have massive amounts of funding, as Kerbalkind would probably not like being invaded by Humanity.

For Kerbal militarization, they could design basic (but powerful) weaponry with stock KSP technology, such as, firing entire SRBs as rockets, and dropping fuel tanks out of planes as bombers, from the start they would have highly powerful anti-tank weaponry, in the form of modified SRBs designed to fit in a shoulder-mounted tube.

Humans have the advantage of being militarized throughout their entire history, therefore having advanced weapons, nuclear, chemical, etc.

Now, onto the scenario.

At first Humanity would have the advantage, having more advanced military technology, they would rapidly occupy land, after a while, Kerbals would start building rockets just to launch at the Human military bases, and then they would start launching planes to drop fuel tanks onto the Human forces.

After a while, presumably from reverse-engineering Human technology, Kerbals would develop Human-like guns and cannons, Kerbals, having the ability to build massive stuff, would likely make massive artillery cannons, using those instead of rockets to fire at the Humans would be quicker, due to only needing to make chunks of metal filled with explodey stuff.

Both sides would likely do bombing raids against the opponent, the Humans would have interception and AA technology from the start, Kerbals would develop those eventually.

Kerbals could modify NERVs to work as basic Nuclear bombs, although, due to the smaller size of Kerbin, nukes could cause serious(er than on Earth) issues, so they probably wouldn't be used much, if at all.

Kerbals would use space stations to bombard the Human-occupied surface with Kinetic WMDs.

There would likely be a stalemate between the 2 sides, with the Humans losing large amounts of resources and troops, with Kerbals not being able to produce enough weapons to repel the Humans completely.

At the end, either there would likely be a ceasefire, and agreements to end the war, or eventually the Humans would run out of soldiers, resulting in a Kerbal victory.

What about a war of extermination?

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