Earth Prepares - preparation

 Mark planned on running a game at the Conference of Wargamers (COW) this year based on following up a session at COW 25 last year. The latter explored likely options for an alien invasion of earth using our current level of technology, and potential responses to repel it. This game notionally generated a report which was filed by the UN/MOD, but roll on a few years and several hundred sinister objects have been detected flying through the Oort Cloud in the direction of Earth.....

This was essentially a game development session to help Mark flesh out his ideas, stress test some of the concepts and come up with a workable session for several players in a two hour slot. Doing it remotely over Zoom obviously isn't ideal for collaborative development, but given our geographical locations scattered from one end of the country to the other, there wasn't any other option.

Nonetheless we put on a fine show of hats! Jerry and Jim went for in tin foil and a colander respectively. Tim had a rather fine Stetson with 'Space' on the front (Space Cowboys?), John rocked his very futuristic painting headset which even has a spotlight and targetting reticle. I took my cue from all the RAF adverts on TV which stress that space defence is the job of the  RAF, so wore my RAF Officers side cap.

We were cast as various blocs - authoritarian regimes, liberal democracies, old industries, future tech etc. I ended up as Future Tech and played "Elon Bezos Altman", mainly because I've read all three volumes of The Three Body Problem AND sat through all 30 episodes of the Chinese TV adaptation of the first book. In my past life I was also head of research computing at a large University, so do know something about technology. Should have bought shares in Nvidia 20 years ago... 

The original game had postulated insterstaller travel using Orion Project type ships. Unlike liquid fuelled rocket ships (essentially mass ejection propulsion), the Orion Project in the 1960s suggested using nuclear detonations to propel ships as it is a far more compact form of energy. Various prototype designs for nuclear powered ships above.  

An artists impression of one in operation. The design was canned after the ban on atmospheric nuclear testing was agreed. While it is a very efficient means of propulsion, it has the unfortunate side effect of generating an awful lot of radiation (!). The supposition being that the alien ships were using this form of propulsion, which achieves enough of a fraction of light speed for viable interstellar travel.

As you might imagine, the game rather fell apart at this point as we all had questions as to why we should be assuming what was presumably an approaching alien fleet was using this rather dubious technology. A discussion ensued.... 

Linked to the mode of propulsion was the mode of transport. In the absence of workable cryogenic suspension, we have the aliens arriving as genetically modified seeds, which can survive for centuries and if distributed on earth, will grow into plants and then into actual aliens. See example method of distribution above. As you might imagine, another discussion ensued at this point....

We suggested that all this stuff needed to be presented, but succinctly as just a hypotheses rather than a detailed explanation as there was a real risk you'd just end up running the previous game again. The players at the original session had come up with various defensive suggestions, the main one being a sort of earth based weeding project. A minority report suggested that if the aliens ever landed, we'd lost, and their ship needed to be destroyed in space. All duly noted...

Anyway, what we actually faced was 500 or so unknown contacts, around 100,000 Astronomical Units (AU) away at the very outer extremity of the solar system and with an estimated arrival time 1400 years into the future! Essentially this was a planning game, hampered by the extremely long timescales involved and competing views of the various factions.

Unfortunately as it was largely a discussion thereafter, there isn't really anything to show photo wise. The general game framework was a simplified representation of the solar system with ten significant sectors going right out to the edge of the system, but due to the mind boggling distances involved, the scale was logarithmic so eg the distance from the Sun to Earth was 1 sector and 1AU, whereas the distance to the Kyper belt was four spaces represented about 70 AU, and the Oort cloud which started around sector eight was 100,000+ AU.

As our technology improved we were able to put probes to into space, build bases on the Moon etc and eventually garrison the asteroid belt with railguns etc. There was of course the 'Forever Wars' problem that tech launched into space was completely outclassed by the time it arrived at its destination.

Unsurprisingly the Aliens technology also advanced and a second fleet appeared travelling rather faster than the first with an estimated arrival time of a few hundred years, and suddenly time was running short. 

Towards the latter stages of the game this rather scary looking yellow Star Destroyer appeared, it still hadn't achieved FTL travel, but was due to arrive in 30 years or less. At that point we wrapped it up having built Earths defences as best we could based on a range of Sci Fi novels and films!

That was a very brave session and made a real change from our usual fare of finished games. Well done to Mark for bringing it along and bearing the arrows and slingshots of constructive criticism. There are some very clever ideas in there, and lots of interesting information based on hard science rather than Star Trek. It reminded me in some ways of Mark and Ians game on contemporary satellite warfare which also risks being mind bogglingly complicated and suitable only for rocket scientists, but they managed to make into something quite playable. 

I think we came up with a more tightly structure framework to run the game in, particularly to avoid excessive discussion of the overall premise at start, and also to ramp up the pressure as time starts to drop by orders of magnitude. Unfortunately I was unable to attend COW this year but I'll look forward to seeing a writeup of how it went.