What if there was a way to conceal your RKV or invasion fleet, like some kind of cloaking device or camouflage technique?
And what about spamming an overwhelming number of RKVs or invasion fleets? In theory, you might be able to saturate defences and win a war of attrition if you have a significantly stronger industrial base? If one civilization is already a billion years ahead of another, wouldn’t that one be likely to have such an insurmountable lead in control of energy resources that they could simply use sheer numbers?
Also, it’s a big assumption to make that there’s no wormholes/FTL/time travel shenanigans possible.
With wormholes, it would be possible to, for instance, send an invasion probe with one end of a wormhole, and when it arrives, send forces through from the other end of the wormhole. However, defenders could also have a vast network of wormholes that would allow near instant transfer of forces. If the defenders have good sensor networks, they could also destroy the incoming wormhole probes. Still, if even one wormhole probe gets into the galaxy, the supply lines suddenly don’t look so one-sided, and you could, again, spam lots of these probes in the hopes that one makes it there, and then you flood into the galaxy through the wormhole bridgehead.
With FTL, in theory, you could send an RKV with it that their sensors might not be able to detect in time, unless there are FTL sensors, which would negate this. But, if FTL is possible, it’s probably equivalent to time travel...
A civilization with time travel is likely to at least know in advance when an attack is coming. This would benefit defence by making the element of surprise even more impossible. And taken to its logical extreme, time travel would likely be used to ensure that no other threatening civilizations come into existence in our lightcone in the first place. This would, in practice, create a universe where every civilization exists in its own otherwise empty bubble, not unlike your predicted universe, but for different reasons than defence dominance.
At least, those are my initial thoughts.
Edit: Also, being able to see the acceleration and deceleration plumes assumes we never develop something more efficient, like say, a light sail, or some kind of beam thruster with almost no beam divergence. These, I imagine, would be harder to detect?
When powered flight was first being developed, it was assumed planes would be “boats in the sky” i.e. stable platforms. They applied the earlier understanding to later technology and then were surprised when planes turned out to be dynamically unstable and required constant, skilled piloting to stay aloft.
This reminds me of that. It assumes a Kardeshav III civ has not made any major advancements since the 2020′s, and its only weapons are ships, lasers, and bullets, and its only propulsion is rockets.
Interesting.
What if there was a way to conceal your RKV or invasion fleet, like some kind of cloaking device or camouflage technique?
And what about spamming an overwhelming number of RKVs or invasion fleets? In theory, you might be able to saturate defences and win a war of attrition if you have a significantly stronger industrial base? If one civilization is already a billion years ahead of another, wouldn’t that one be likely to have such an insurmountable lead in control of energy resources that they could simply use sheer numbers?
Also, it’s a big assumption to make that there’s no wormholes/FTL/time travel shenanigans possible.
With wormholes, it would be possible to, for instance, send an invasion probe with one end of a wormhole, and when it arrives, send forces through from the other end of the wormhole. However, defenders could also have a vast network of wormholes that would allow near instant transfer of forces. If the defenders have good sensor networks, they could also destroy the incoming wormhole probes. Still, if even one wormhole probe gets into the galaxy, the supply lines suddenly don’t look so one-sided, and you could, again, spam lots of these probes in the hopes that one makes it there, and then you flood into the galaxy through the wormhole bridgehead.
With FTL, in theory, you could send an RKV with it that their sensors might not be able to detect in time, unless there are FTL sensors, which would negate this. But, if FTL is possible, it’s probably equivalent to time travel...
A civilization with time travel is likely to at least know in advance when an attack is coming. This would benefit defence by making the element of surprise even more impossible. And taken to its logical extreme, time travel would likely be used to ensure that no other threatening civilizations come into existence in our lightcone in the first place. This would, in practice, create a universe where every civilization exists in its own otherwise empty bubble, not unlike your predicted universe, but for different reasons than defence dominance.
At least, those are my initial thoughts.
Edit: Also, being able to see the acceleration and deceleration plumes assumes we never develop something more efficient, like say, a light sail, or some kind of beam thruster with almost no beam divergence. These, I imagine, would be harder to detect?
When powered flight was first being developed, it was assumed planes would be “boats in the sky” i.e. stable platforms. They applied the earlier understanding to later technology and then were surprised when planes turned out to be dynamically unstable and required constant, skilled piloting to stay aloft.
This reminds me of that. It assumes a Kardeshav III civ has not made any major advancements since the 2020′s, and its only weapons are ships, lasers, and bullets, and its only propulsion is rockets.