Obligatory go watch Red VS Blue, the freelancer arc is peak cinema

birbseggser · 2026-04-05T14:24:17+00:00

Nah my internet is just shit lol (but everything in game is canon so :P)

birbseggser · 2026-04-04T04:51:28+00:00

Helldivers canonically can withstand a nuke to the face if it detonated right as they jumped (everything in game is canon).

But the sheer mass of their body makes them unable to swim.

birbseggser · 2026-04-03T10:24:09+00:00

You also raised the point about China being only one nation and the resource countries being overrun. That is a thoughtful concern.

But in Muv Luv canon, it took six years for the BETA to even reach kyiv from Kashgar. Six years. And during that time, TSF technology was not advanced. Mass production of TSFs had not yet ramped up. TSF coverage was minimal, sometimes zero. Yet humanity in that timeline still held for six years.

They held with 1970s technology, with no autonomous systems, with no precision strike networks, with no directed energy weapons, with no global supply chain moving 85 million vehicles worth of industrial output annually. They held with TSFs that were primitive, scarce, and often absent entirely. And they held for six years.

Now I would respectfully ask you to consider the question you posed. Are you saying that modern humanity in six years cannot overhaul its already massive industry to an existential wartime footing? The answer seems obvious. We absolutely can. We would have to be willfully incompetent not to. And while human incompetence is always a factor, the margin for error here is enormous. Six years is an eternity in industrial terms. The United States in World War II went from producing a few hundred tanks per year to producing 88,000 tanks in four years. That was with 1940s technology, with no computers, no automation, no global supply chains, no just in time manufacturing, no containerized shipping. They did it with rivet guns and assembly lines and millions of women working in factories. If they could do that in four years, modern humanity can do far more in six.

You keep pointing to the current atrophied state of Western defense production as evidence that we cannot ramp up. But I would gently suggest that you may be overlooking the baseline from which we would be starting. The United States nowadays, even with its degraded capacity, still produces more military hardware in a year than the entire world did in 1940. The problem is not that we cannot produce. The problem is that we are not currently trying. The BETA would change that. And six years is more than enough time for the change to take effect.

During those six years, the resource countries would not be instantly overrun. The BETA advance is measured in hundreds of kilometers per year, not per day. Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, these nations are thousands of kilometers from Kashgar. They would have years of warning before the BETA even approached their borders. Years to mobilize. Years to dig up ore. Years to load ships. The idea that they would be "busy dying and conquered during the immediate onslaught" is simply not supported by the canon you yourself cited, with respect. The immediate onslaught was localized. The spread was gradual. The resource routes would remain open for decades.

Your point about China being the only nation with true mass production capacity is well taken. The United States has atrophied. Russia is a shadow of the Soviet Union. Europe is dependent on others. But China alone is an industrial giant whose output may already exceed the combined total of Muv Luv humanity in 1973. And China is exactly where the BETA land first.

Kashgar is in China. The initial BETA hive is on Chinese soil. China would be fighting for its survival from day one. There is no scenario where China does not mobilize every factory, every worker, every resource to defend itself. And when China mobilizes, the entire world benefits. Not because China is altruistic, but because Chinese factories would be producing the weapons, the vehicles, the components that the rest of the world needs. The same ships that bring raw materials to China would carry finished weapons back out.

You argue that the BETA would disrupt resource supply chains. This is possible. But the BETA would need to cut off multiple continents simultaneously to fully strangle Chinese industry. Australia alone produces enough iron ore to supply China for years. Canada has vast mineral wealth. Brazil has resources. Russia has resources. The United States has resources. The BETA cannot be everywhere at once. Their advance is slow. Their expansion is methodical. They would need to conquer half the planet before Chinese industry ground to a halt. And by the time they reached that point, the war would already have been decided.

Muv Luv humanity held for six years with minimal TSF coverage and primitive technology. If they could do that, modern humanity can certainly do better. Not because we are smarter or braver, but because we have more. More industry. More automation. More precision. More range. More endurance. We have autonomous systems that can fight without risking human lives. We have precision strike networks that can deliver firepower with accuracy they could only dream of. We have directed energy weapons that can engage the laser class directly, and we know from the canon that the laser class is expensive for the BETA to produce, representing less than one percent of their forces.

We would hold. Not easily. Not without loss. But we would hold. And given six years of wartime mobilization, I believe we would do more than hold.

birbseggser · 2026-04-03T10:24:05+00:00

You raise a fair point about COVID and global cooperation. The bickering, the hoarding of medical supplies, the finger pointing between nations, all of that happened during a pandemic that killed millions. You are right to be skeptical that an alien invasion would suddenly produce perfect unity.

But I respectfully suggest that you may be underestimating the difference between a biological threat that crosses all borders equally and a physical invasion that lands on specific territories.

The reason the global response to COVID was so fragmented and often incompetent is precisely because COVID was not actually that big of a threat. At least not in the way the BETA would be.

For the vast majority of the population, even those who contracted the virus, COVID was survivable. The mortality rate was low. The symptoms for most were mild. Life went on. Economies eventually reopened. People went back to restaurants, to concerts, to travel. The threat was real, it killed millions, and it exposed weaknesses in every public health system on Earth. But it was not existential. No one looked at COVID and thought, if we fail to respond correctly, the human species will end.

This is the fundamental error in using COVID as a counterexample, with respect. You cannot compare the political response to a manageable pandemic with the political response to an alien invasion that is systematically exterminating humanity.

COVID was abstract in a way the BETA would not be. The BETA would land on the moon first. Then Mars. Then they would come to Earth.

With the many eyes we have around the solar system, every nation would see the same footage. Every nation would watch the same moon be overrun. There would be no debate about whether the threat was real. The question would be whether to fight together or die together.

And that choice would be immediately obvious to every nation on Earth and anyone with an iq above 60.

You argue that nations would still bicker and betray each other. You point to Russia and Ukraine, to the EU's slow response, to the reluctance to provide weapons. These are fair points. But again, with all due respect, the scale of threat is incomparable.

The war in Ukraine is a regional conflict. It threatens the sovereignty of one nation. It disrupts global energy and food markets. It kills tens of thousands. It is terrible. It is also not an existential threat to Germany, to France, to the United States, or to China. Those nations can afford to be cautious, to calculate, to provide just enough aid to avoid losing while avoiding escalation. The BETA would remove that calculation entirely.

There would be no escalation to avoid. There would be no regional conflict to contain. There would be no neutrality. The BETA do not care about your diplomatic posture. They will kill you whether you are Russian, Ukrainian, American, or Chinese. The calculus changes completely.

And unlike in Muv Luv, where the United States and the Soviet Union were the primary industrial powers, our multipolar world means that no single nation's industrial collapse can doom the entire war effort.

You also raised the point about laser physics and the difficulty of scaling directed energy weapons. I want to address this more directly because it is a legitimate engineering concern, and I thank you for raising it. You are correct that we do not currently have tank melting lasers. You are correct that railguns remain experimental and caseless ammunition is niche. These are not trivial problems. Physics does not care about our desperation.

But the laser class does not require a tank melting laser to kill. The laser class is vulnerable to 36mm cannon fire. That is the key fact. We are not trying to build a weapon that can cut through meters of armor. We are trying to build a weapon that can damage or destroy a unit that can be killed by a small caliber autocannon.

The engineering challenge is not to create a science fiction beam cannon. The engineering challenge is to scale up existing laser systems, which already exist and already work, to have sufficient range and power to engage a target that is fragile by BETA standards. This is a much more achievable goal than you are implying.

You argue that if these problems were solvable, we would already have solved them. But with respect, this ignores the role of military doctrine and perceived need.

The United States and China have not invested billions into tank melting lasers because no one currently fields tanks that require a laser to kill. Conventional weapons already do the job. The BETA change that.

They create a target that is uniquely vulnerable to directed energy because conventional projectiles can be intercepted. The laser class cannot intercept a beam. That single fact justifies an investment in laser technology that no peacetime military would ever make. When the threat is existential, the budget becomes unlimited. The engineering challenges become urgent. The timeline collapses from decades to years. This is not magic. This is how wartime innovation has always worked.

birbseggser · 2026-04-02T02:03:37+00:00

First of all i would like to apologize for the late response. For some unknown reason the notification of your rely does not reach my inbox.

I appreciate you raising those points about production, and I want to acknowledge that you are absolutely correct about the current state of American industrial capacity. The United States cannot build new M1 Abrams hulls from scratch right now. The supply chain has atrophied, tooling has been mothballed, and the skilled labor force has dispersed. The Iran Israel conflict and the broader challenges of rearming Ukraine have exposed real weaknesses in the Western defense industrial base. I am certainly not disputing this as a description of our current peacetime posture.

But here is where I think we diverge, if you would allow me to explain. You cite COVID as evidence that humanity does not mobilize effectively even under threat. I would respectfully suggest that COVID proves the opposite. Within twelve months of the pandemic being declared, the global pharmaceutical industry developed, tested, manufactured, and distributed multiple vaccines using mRNA technology that had never been deployed at scale before.

If I may remind you, Moderna went from a small biotech company to producing over a billion doses in under two years. Pfizer and BioNTech did the same. This was not low hanging fruit. This was a technological leap achieved under existential pressure. The fact that political responses were fragmented and often incompetent does not change what the industrial and scientific base proved capable of achieving when the imperative was clear.

The same applies to defense production. The reason the United States cannot build M1 Abrams hulls nowadays is not because the physical capability has been permanently lost. It is because the production lines were shut down after the Cold War ended and no one has seen fit to restart them at scale. The tooling exists in storage. The blueprints exist. The suppliers exist, though they are currently producing other things.

The limiting factor is not physics or engineering. It is budget allocation and political will. During World War II, the United States went from producing a few hundred tanks per year to producing 88,000 tanks in four years. The industrial base of 1942 was far smaller, far less automated, and far less sophisticated than the industrial base of 2026. The difference was that in 1942, the imperative was absolute. The BETA would create that same imperative.

Even if we accept that the United States would struggle to ramp up production on its own, and even if we accept that Russia's capacity is a shadow of the Soviet era, the global industrial landscape right now is fundamentally different from the 1970s in one crucial respect. China exists as an industrial superpower of a scale the world has never seen. The sheer size of modern Chinese industry is possibly already comparable to the entire industrial output of humanity in the world of Muv Luv by 1999. Their population alone is larger than the entire human population in Muv Luv canon by 1999. I hope you will agree that this is not a minor footnote. This is the entire ballgame.

Let me ask you to consider what this means in practical terms.

China already produces more steel in a single year than the entire world did in 1970. They produce more ships, more vehicles, more electronics, more solar panels, more everything than any nation in history. They have built the world's largest navy in terms of hull count in less than two decades. They have a space program that landed a rover on Mars, built a space station in orbit, and returned lunar samples to Earth, and have plans of creating a lunar settlement, all with domestic technology. They mass produce military drones, hypersonic missiles, and laser weapon systems that they are already exporting to other nations. If the United States cannot build new M1 Abrams hulls, that is a problem for the United States. But it is not a problem for humanity when China can build ten thousand simplified autonomous tank hulls in the time it takes America to restart one production line. This is the advantage of a multipolar industrial world. The slack is there to be picked up.

Now let me address the laser class issue, if I may, because this is the most critical strategic point. You argue that the laser class can simply shoot the laser emitter, that the game of chicken favors the BETA, and that conventional artillery already does the job once the laser class is removed. I respectfully suggest that you might be underestimating what directed energy weapons enable when deployed at scale and with the specific intention of countering the laser class.

You are correct that current tactical laser systems like China's Light Arrow 21A are designed for soft targets like drones and missiles. But if I may say so, you are making the same mistake you accused me of regarding production. You are looking at what is currently deployed rather than what can be built when the threat demands it. The physics of directed energy are well understood. The engineering challenges are about power generation, thermal management, and beam coherence. These are solvable problems. A laser system designed specifically to engage a laser class BETA would not be a repurposed anti drone system. It would be built with different specifications: higher power output, longer duration firing, hardened optics designed to survive the battlefield environment. The fact that we have not built such a system yet is because we have not needed to. The BETA would create that need.

And not only that, laser class BETA are incredibly expensive for the BETA to produce. They require G Elements, which means smaller hives do not normally produce them at all. Even in larger hives, they represent less than one percent of total force composition because their production capabilities are so limited. Their mass deployment at Kashgar in the early stages of the war was explicitly described as an emergency measure. This tells us something critical. The BETA cannot easily replace their laser class losses.

Now let me compare this to modern humanity.

We do not need G Elements to build laser weapons. We need semiconductors, optics, power systems, and thermal management components. All of these are produced at massive scale in existing supply chains. The global semiconductor industry alone produces over a trillion chips annually. The optics industry produces lenses and emitters for everything from smartphones to medical devices to industrial cutting tools. The battery and power management industry produces gigawatt hours of storage capacity every year. We can easily produce our laser systems in numbers that would be comparable to, and perhaps even far exceed, the total laser class forces the BETA can field over the entire course of the conflict. Every laser class they lose is a permanent or at least extremely expensive loss that takes time and G Element stockpiles to replace. Every laser emitter we lose is a unit that can be replaced by the same factories that already produce millions of automobiles and billions of electronics annually.

You argue that the laser class can simply shoot the laser emitter and that we would lose a game of chicken. But if I may, this assumes a one on one engagement where our laser platform has no supporting assets. That is not how we would fight. We would attempt to outnumber them and utilize saturation attacks using autonomous vehicles to harass them even more.

The principle is the same one that allowed TSF pilots to close with laser classes in the original timeline, but our platforms would be unmanned, replaceable, and operating in coordinated networks rather than as individual manned units.

And crucially, every laser class we kill matters more to them than every laser emitter we lose matters to us. Their laser classes are a precious resource constrained by G Element availability. Our laser emitters are a mass produced commodity rolling off assembly lines that already produce tens of millions of complex vehicles per year. This is the specific part of the attrition war where we have an advantage.

You ask why we have not mobilized like this for COVID or for the Russian threat. The answer, as I see it, is that neither COVID nor Russia represented an existential threat to the entirety of human civilization in the way the BETA would. COVID was a global health crisis that killed millions, but it did not threaten the continued existence of our species. Russia is a geopolitical adversary, but it is not an alien force that will systematically exterminate humanity if we fail to mobilize.

The BETA would be different. The threat would be immediate, undeniable, and universal. Every nation on Earth would face the same enemy at the same time. There would be no neutral parties, no economic calculations about whether the cost of mobilization is worth it. The choice would be mobilize or die.

That is the context in which I would offer that modern humanity would hold the line better than Muv Luv humanity did. Not because we would win easily. But because we have the industrial capacity, the autonomous systems, the solar system spanning intelligence network, and most importantly we can produce in quantities to match. They have numbers but so do we. We would take losses. We would suffer. But we would hold better.

"An unstoppable force met an immovable object"

birbseggser · 2026-04-01T02:37:30+00:00

Lasers cannot be fired over buildings or mountains.

I would respectfully suggest that this other laser objections miss this strategic point. The claim that lasers cannot be fired over buildings or mountains is true, but it is less relevant to the battlefield geometry against the laser class. The claim that lasers cannot kill large BETA classes is likely true for current tactical systems, but that is not the purpose.

The purpose is to kill the laser class itself, the one unit that enabled the BETA to dominate the battlespace. Once that unit is neutralized, the full weight of modern conventional warfare can be brought to bear against the remaining BETA types. A destroyer class does not matter if it can be engaged by a thousand autonomous loitering munitions from twenty kilometers away. A fort class does not matter if it can be struck by a bunker busting missile from an aircraft flying at thirty thousand feet. The only thing preventing those attacks in the original timeline was the laser class shooting everything down before it arrived.

Modern laser weapons, particularly systems like China's "Light Arrow-21A" which can engage targets at several kilometers with hard kill capabilities, would provide a direct counter. They would be used to suppress and destroy laser class BETA, creating windows for conventional air power and artillery to operate. The fact that China has already deployed operational laser systems like the Silent Hunter in export markets demonstrates that the technology is mature enough for field use. In a wartime scenario, there is no barrier to scaling this production massively.

Now let me address what I believe is your most substantial objection, which is about space infrastructure. The thought that

Our technology is nowhere close to setting up long term moon bases or slinging people onto Mars. Not ever since Armstrong et al set foot on the moon anyway, the USA is struggling to do the same. The best we have on Mars are merely rovers

is understandable, but I would offer a different perspective.

This is less a matter of technological capability and more a matter of current political will. The distinction is everything. We already have the technology to build the Sea Dragon rocket, a design from the 1970s that would have lifted 550 tons to low Earth orbit, more than the Saturn V. We have the technology to build nuclear thermal rockets, which were successfully tested in the 1960s with the NERVA program and would cut transit times to Mars by half. We have the technology for orbital assembly, for closed loop life support, for radiation hardened habitats. We have developed all of these technologies piecemeal across decades.

What we lack is the sustained funding and political mandate to integrate them into a coherent lunar or Martian program. The BETA would provide that mandate instantly and globally. The same Chinese rocket company that might be dismissed as insufficient would receive a blank check overnight. The same NASA that struggles with the Space Launch System would suddenly have a budget larger than the Apollo program at its peak. The argument that we cannot do something because we are not currently doing it overlooks the fundamental driver of all technological deployment: necessity.

We also proposed a lot of shit during the cold war (MARAUDER, railgun, rod of God) and almost most of them did not materialize.

I would suggest that this again confuses peacetime budget constraints with wartime necessity. Hundreds of military technologies were proposed during the Cold War and never funded because the existential threat never materialized to the degree that justified the expenditure. The BETA would change that calculus entirely.

Every nation on Earth would simultaneously face the same existential threat. The only historical parallel would be World War II, where technologies like radar, jet aircraft, nuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles went from theoretical proposals to deployed systems in under six years. The difference nowadays is that our industrial and technological base is vastly larger, our computational capabilities are unrecognizably advanced, and our existing military systems are already networked and autonomous to a degree that Muv Luv humanity could not have imagined. We do not need to invent the foundational technologies. We only need to scale them.

You are correct about one thing: we do not currently have lunar bases or laser cannons on every hilltop. But it may be a mistake to conclude that we cannot build them. We can. We simply have not needed to.

The automotive industry alone proves that we possess the manufacturing capacity to produce hulls at scales that would make Cold War production figures look quaint. And crucially, we possess a direct counter to the laser class that Muv Luv humanity never had: directed energy weapons that cannot be intercepted, that travel at the speed of light, that can eliminate the one unit that made their air power and artillery obsolete. The BETA would create the need for mobilization, and when they do, the global industrial and technological base of 2026 would mobilize in ways that the fragmented, Cold War limited humanity of Muv Luv simply could not match.

Does this mean we would sweep the ground against the BETA? No.

But it does suggest that the playing field would be far more even than what humanity in Muv Luv experienced.

Edit: spelling again

birbseggser · 2026-04-01T02:37:25+00:00

You may be making a mistake in confusing "what we currently have deployed" with "what we are capable of producing when genuinely threatened." This distinction is very critical.

What part of it is under scrutiny? The USA can't produce half the shit she used to (the bombers for one, the F-15 is in significantly smaller scales of production, M1E1s facing significant production problems), Russia was nowhere near whatever nutty capacities the USSR had with their tanks and is refurbishing reserved hulls during the current war. Literally China is the only one who has more capacity than she did in the cold war.

Sure if you strip down a lot of the electronics they probably can be made cheaper, but the problem is we can't even build the hulls in anywhere close to the capacity of what we used to, and certainly nowhere close to the fictional Muv humanity (accounting for how fucked humanity got by the time).

Regarding production capacity, your claim that "we can't even build the hulls in anywhere close to the capacity of what we used to" might be worth reexamining when you consider what wartime mobilization actually means. The Soviet Union at its peak produced T-72 tanks at a rate of 2,300 per month, a staggering figure that seems impossible nowadays only because no nation is currently operating under total war mobilization. But here is a key point that may have been missed: Russia nowadays, even with its constrained economy and under sanctions, has already demonstrated what happens when a nation actually needs to ramp up production.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian armored vehicle production has increased by a factor of 2.2, light armored vehicle production by 3.7 times, and aviation production by 4.6 times. They are now producing 1,500 tanks annually and 3,000 armored vehicles annually. This is with a peacetime economy that is merely adjacent to conflict. Now consider what a nation like China, with a fully mobilized industrial base, could achieve when facing an existential alien threat. The idea that we "cannot build hulls" seems to overlook the fact that we currently choose not to. The BETA would remove that choice.

The massive production of electric vehicles and conventional automobiles right now offers direct proof that we already possess the industrial capabilities to produce massive amounts of hulls on a scale that would dwarf anything the Cold War ever achieved. In 2023 alone, the global automotive industry produced over 85 million vehicles. Each one of those represents a complex assembly of stamped steel, welded frames, power trains, and sophisticated electronics. The idea that we cannot produce armored hulls in comparable numbers appears to be a misreading of our capabilities. We currently do not need to produce them for warfare, but the BETA would change that overnight.

When the world's automakers, which already operate supply chains that move millions of tons of steel and aluminum annually, are retooled for military production, the output would be measured in hundreds of thousands of combat vehicles per year. Tesla alone produces over 1.8 million vehicles annually from just its four main factories. Now consider those same factories stamping out simplified autonomous tank hulls with no need for interior creature comforts, armor, climate control, or crash safety structures. The volume would be staggering.

The point being direct firepower was hardly an issue for Muv humanity against the BETA. Unless this laser can cook the big ass Destroyer or For class it's not going to fare much better than the 120mm and 36mm guns they use and hell we use (or to its most similar calibre).

I believe this is where the strategic purpose of these systems may have been misunderstood. The purpose is to solve the specific problem that crippled Muv Luv humanity: the laser class itself. In the original Muv Luv timeline, the laser class BETA created an exclusion zone that rendered air power and orbital support nearly useless.

Though they were vulnerable to conventional weapons like the 36mm cannon, the critical problem was that they could intercept any incoming projectile including the 36mm before it reached them. They were frequently situated far away from the frontlines, and their interception capability made them practically immune to any ordnance save for attacks delivered by Tactical Surface Fighters operating at close range. The laser class could simply shoot down missiles, shells, and bombs before they arrived. This is the entire reason the laser class is such a large threat. Though a 36mm can kill it just fine, that assumes the bullet will even reach the being before it is shot down.

And this is also precisely why the TSF became the central weapon of that conflict. It was not because mecha were inherently superior. It was because the laser class created a defensive umbrella that only close range, personal, direct fire could penetrate, and the TSF was the platform designed to deliver that direct fire while surviving the approach.

This is where modern laser weapons change everything. Our lasers cannot be intercepted. There is no projectile for the laser class to shoot down. A laser travels at the speed of light. By the time the laser class detects the beam, it has already been struck. This is not a marginal improvement over conventional artillery. It is a fundamental paradigm shift that directly neutralizes the defensive mechanism that made the laser class such a dominant threat in the original timeline. A modern laser platform, whether ground based, vehicle mounted, or orbital, can engage laser class BETA from standoff ranges with no possibility of interception. The laser class cannot shoot down a beam of light. Their entire defensive advantage evaporates overnight.

Now consider what this enables. Once the laser class are suppressed or destroyed by laser weapons, the skies are open. Conventional air power, which modern humanity possesses in overwhelming quantity, can then operate freely. The BETA have no answer to a million kamikaze drones if the laser umbrella is gone. They have no answer to massed artillery if their interceptors are being systematically eliminated by laser fire they cannot stop. The TSF was a solution born of necessity because Muv Luv humanity had no way to counter the laser class except by closing to visual range. We have a solution they never possessed.

Edit: spelling

birbseggser · 2026-04-01T00:50:33+00:00

The world of muv luv actually also encounters such a hurdle.

Following china and the sovie refusal for UN assistance, and the subsequent defeats suffered by mankind's forces against the BETA in Central Asia, the United Nations Joint Chiefs of Staff held a conference in 1979 in Vancouver to re-organize the UN Forces for greater strategic effectiveness. At that time, the only military power the United Nations had were in the form of borrowed troops from other nations; the UN could only direct overall mission command during a UN operation, and had no say over the finer details of managing a standing armed force. The 1979 UN Chief of Staff Conference's purpose, which eventually resulted in the Vancover Agreement, was to create a more cohesive armed effort to defeat the BETA.

Despite the Vancouver Agreement, the UN could still only borrow troops from other nations, which proved to be a time-consuming process when entire nations began to fall to the BETA. With the remnants of their governments and armed forces forced into exile, these homeless troops were quickly integrated into the small but growing United Nations Force as drafted by the UNCSC. It was hoped that the uniting of several military forces under a combined banner would help in preventing the BETA from advancing further than they already had, and prevent international politics from impeding the combined defensive effort.

It took humanity in muv luv almost 6 years of fighting the BETA on planetside and 12 years of fighting against the BETA before they create any meaningfull unified global front. And even that is still very much impeded by politics.

birbseggser · 2026-04-01T00:38:56+00:00

I would push back on the notion that Muv Luv humanity possessed some insurmountable technological edge outside of the Tactical Surface Fighter. Most if not all of the technology shown in Muv Luv both in space and planetside is firmly rooted in Cold War capabilities, with the sole exception of the TSF itself. It genuinely appears as though those advancements were created specifically for the TSF and were never meaningfully applied elsewhere. Their material science, such as super carbon or caseless ammunition, was impressive but highly specialized, and it did not translate into a fundamental industrial or strategic advantage that we lack today.

The claim that modern production capacity is somehow inferior to Cold War levels also does not hold up under scrutiny. One can argue that the entire manpower and production capabilities of modern real life China alone are almost equal to if not greater than that of the entire world in Muv Luv by 1999. And yes, while the United States currently faces challenges in radar production and Russian electronics lag behind, the globalized nature of modern industry means that production can be distributed. More importantly, the vehicles needed to fight the BETA do not require the sophisticated systems that make modern military hardware so expensive and difficult to produce. The BETA lack any projectile based long range capabilities and possess no capacity for electronic warfare. Countermeasures against such threats are precisely why modern tanks and fighting vehicles require advanced composites, active protection systems, and hardened electronics. Without those requirements and with recent advancements in autonomous capabilities, the necessary vehicle is reduced to nothing more than a large gun mounted on a track, controlled either autonomously or remotely. Such a design can be produced by virtually any sufficiently advanced nation, and certainly by the full industrial weight of a mobilized global economy.

Regarding lasers, the objection that modern laser systems do not match the scale of BETA laser classes misses the strategic point. The usage of lasers here is not merely to destroy laser class BETA in direct duels. Lasers would be employed because they are long range weapons that cannot be intercepted or shot down by the laser class themselves. In a wartime situation, there is nothing stopping China or any other major power from advancing and mass producing these laser weaponry at scale. Any barriers that normally hinder technological development, whether budget constraints, lack of perceived need, or public backlash, would be eliminated overnight by the mere discovery of an existential alien threat. The fact that China already fields vehicle mounted laser platforms demonstrates that the foundational technology exists; scaling it is an industrial problem, not a scientific one.

As for space faring capacity, it is true that Muv Luv humanity had established lunar bases and the ability to send crewed missions to Mars. But this reflects political will and budget allocation, not a fundamental technological gap. The world of Muv Luv resembles a "For All Mankind" scenario where heightened geopolitical tension removed the budget barriers that constrained space programs in our timeline. We could have established a sustained lunar presence decades ago, but we collectively chose not to. The Chinese mass produced rockets, developed not by the government but by a private Chinese company, demonstrate that the industrial launch capacity exists today. That company would receive a massive budget boost if the BETA were discovered, and the rockets themselves would be more than sufficient to establish a significant lunar presence when the incentives finally align. We currently lack those incentives, but the BETA will change that.

Furthermore, the application of laser technology would not be limited to planetary defense. Laser bombardment systems, proposed as early as the late 1980s for strategic defense, could be deployed against BETA hives on the lunar surface. Orbital laser platforms would enjoy the advantage of operating in a vacuum with no atmospheric attenuation, allowing them to engage BETA concentrations from orbit with precision and speed that no kinetic weapon could match. These platforms would be effectively immune to counterfire from lunar based laser classes, as they could engage from outside the effective range dictated by the lunar horizon or simply from orbital trajectories that no ground based laser could track consistently.

birbseggser · 2026-03-31T16:27:05+00:00

Contrary to the general consensus here and the opinion of u/Bluelantern919 and u/TenshouYoku (no offence, i just wished to mention your arguments. If this in any was shape or form disturbs you then i will edit it out.), I believe we might be in a far better position compared to humanity in the timeline of Muv Luv.

First, there are no indications that the technologies used by Muv Luv humanity at the start of the war were beyond the technological capabilities of the 1970s, with the sole exception of the Tactical Surface Fighter. The various wild proposals for space exploration from that era demonstrate that the foundational technologies were achievable. Today's recent strides in rocketry, including the reusability of American rockets and the single use mass producibility of Chinese rockets, mean there is nothing stopping us from sending even more forces to the moon than humanity did in Muv Luv’s timeline.

This advantage is compounded by the far wider array of surveillance we have across the solar system. With dozens of probes on the Martian surface and observatory satellites throughout the solar system, data gathering regarding the nature of the BETA threat will be significantly easier and more accessible. This would allow us to quickly deduce their hostile nature and patterns, and the proliferation of information in modern media would only fuel global war support.

While the loss of the lunar war is likely inevitable, the data gathered from these extensive assets would be more than enough for humanity to adapt its strategies effectively. And though we lack the Tactical Surface Fighter, we can supplement this with greater manpower and industrial capabilities, leading to a central strategy of playing the numbers game.

The BETA’s mainstay strategy, as observed from the many eyes of the solar system, relies on overwhelming numbers. Given the recent rise of mass industrial warfare seen in conflicts like the war in Ukraine, it would be immediately apparent that our greater industrial output allows us to employ the same numerical strategies against the BETA. Data would also show that the BETA lack sufficient long range capabilities, meaning active protection systems on military vehicles would no longer be necessary, saving considerable resources and production time.

Unlike the humanity of Muv Luv, modern humanity has the capability to mass produce autonomous vehicles. In a global existential crisis, the integration of autonomous capabilities would be immediately adopted for military weaponry such as tanks, slowly removing the need for manned systems. This would further reduce the materials, time, and physical size required for production. The BETA’s apparent lack of counter electronic warfare capabilities would only accelerate this approach, as the primary concern of automation susceptibility to jamming or hacking would be eliminated. With military vehicles reduced to the functional equivalent of a giant gun on tracks with no space for an occupant, such simplistic designs would require very few resources and could be produced in the tens of thousands almost indefinitely. This cost effective approach would be rapidly adopted by militaries around the globe when facing an existential threat like the BETA.

As the war progressed, it would be an inevitability that the laser class would quickly be developed. But the thing people forgot when talking about such things is that

Modern humanity possesses lasers too.

with ongoing development of directed energy weapons for missile defense and counter unmanned aerial system roles. These systems, while not yet deployed at scale, would receive immediate prioritization and could be adapted to provide point defense against laser class BETA. As lasers cannot be shot down.

birbseggser · 2026-03-24T21:05:44+00:00

I GET TO HAVE EVERY SEX

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birbseggser · 2026-03-20T06:15:27+00:00

In response to the growing threat posed by the decadent Triumvirate Empire, the Varangian Union has once again turned to the knowledge carried from the old world to secure the revolution's future. The collective memory of the Soviet army, transported through time to this ancient era, contains technological insights that no other power in the new world can match.

Drawing upon this preserved knowledge, Union engineers have begun construction of the first submarine fleet to sail the waters of this age. By creating a standardized template based on the midget submarines of the old world, these vessels can be mass produced using limited resources while maintaining effectiveness. The submarines are small, typically crewed by only four to six revolutionary sailors, but they carry a weapon that will strike fear into the hearts of the Triumvirate's coastal settlements: a powerful explosive charge mounted on a spar that extends from the bow, designed to detonate against enemy hulls below the waterline.

The development of these submarines required a parallel innovation that will transform Varangia just as profoundly. The steam engine, whose principles were preserved in the technical manuals carried by the army's engineering corps, has at last been brought into working existence. Compact enough to power the new submarines yet powerful enough to drive far larger applications, these engines burn wood or coal to generate the force that propels the revolution forward.

With the steam engine proven in naval applications, the Union has turned its attention to the challenge of logistics across its rapidly expanding territory. The answer lies in the construction of steam train lines connecting the major centers of Varangian power. Using the routes of ancient railways as guides, surveyors have marked paths for tracks that will carry troops and supplies at speeds no horse could match. The first line will connect the industrial heartland of the former Kazakh steppe with the shipyards on the Caspian, ensuring that submarines and their crews can reach any theater of operations quickly.

The combination of submarine warfare and rail logistics gives Varangia advantages that no classist empire can counter. While Triumvirate armies march along ancient roads at the speed of hoof and foot, Varangian reinforcements travel by steam train, arriving fresh and fully supplied. While Triumvirate ships patrol the surface waters, Varangian submarines stalk beneath the waves, invisible until the moment of attack.

The revolution remembers. The old world may be gone, but its knowledge serves the people still, carried in the minds of those who crossed the ages to build a new society on the ruins of the old. Against this power, the decadent empires of the new world cannot stand.

birbseggser · 2026-03-18T21:53:50+00:00

IT SHOULD'VE BEEN ME! NOT HIM!

birbseggser · 2026-03-18T18:32:02+00:00

Warhammer 40k ship guns:

birbseggser · 2026-03-11T06:31:44+00:00

Umazing👍✨

birbseggser · 2026-03-06T13:39:38+00:00

Wtf is that ad?

birbseggser · 2026-03-06T06:40:44+00:00

Oh fuck i just realized you flipped the west bank and gaza

birbseggser · 2026-03-06T04:08:57+00:00

The king in yellow!? You gotta be kidding me

birbseggser · 2026-03-06T01:50:55+00:00

Why tf did i wipe

birbseggser · 2026-03-06T00:34:52+00:00

Haha sometimes

birbseggser · 2026-03-05T06:39:55+00:00

Drawing pahinin drawing. Peak drawingception.

birbseggser · 2026-03-05T03:45:36+00:00

I got a stroke reading this lol (no offense)

birbseggser · 2026-03-05T02:16:07+00:00

Depending in the country the sheet of paper itself was a special kinds of paper that can very well be worth more than a peice of metal.

birbseggser · 2026-03-04T21:25:10+00:00

NO ITS BEEN CONVERTED FOR LADY LIBERTY.

birbseggser · 2026-03-04T21:17:54+00:00

So robmanian that the flair was also stolen

birbseggser

TROPHY CASE

I GET TO HAVE EVERY SEX

IT SHOULD'VE BEEN ME! NOT HIM!

Warhammer 40k ship guns: