Independance Day aliens vs Loki and Avengers

[Lost Soal]

And then we get into this thorny little question: Which Tony Stark is the MCU Stark? Because the closest match is the Earth 616 Stark, who is the owner of Area 51. So yes, he'd know about the crashed alien scoutship. And knowing his character, he'd know about it intimately by the time of the events of The Avengers.

MOVIE VERSE STARK
Movie verse is its own verse. He does NOT own Area 51. There are NO COMIC VERSIONS to consider.

[Axton]

Then why, upthread, were we asked to consider a novelization version of the ID4 faction? What are we considering to be canonical, and on what basis?

[Axton]

Problem is that, yes, in the MCU, the ID4 scoutship would absolutely have come under the purview of S.H.I.E.L.D. It's their raison d'etre.

Sorry, but unless you're deliberately stacking the deck for the ID4 faction, the Avengers would absolutely know they're coming, and they would absolutely know what to expect, and they would absolutely know, in advance, just what it would take to slap them into stew.

The very best bet is to put the Avengers into the ID4 universe, instead, where there is no such agency as S.H.I.E.L.D. And even then, all the Avengers have to do is the same thing the original team did, only they'd do it faster, and better.

Y'all like to get all rigid over economies of scale, but in this case, economies of scale didn't even win in the original ficton, and you're wholesale ignoring economies of capability. You can't. You can't ignore skill. You can't ignore innovation and improvisation. Because innovation and improvisation won in the original ficton, the source ficton. You can't ignore that, and if you do, you're cheating.

We're still talking about observed tactics and tools here, but you seem eager to exclude tools that include brainpower in favor of metric tonnage. You can't. Because even in the source material, for both contesting parties, in both fictons, metric tonnage did not prevail.

[Crazedwraith]

In what way is giving The Avengers advanced notice of the threat and knowledge even the original protagonists didn't have not stacking the deck in their favour?

[Axton]

Because it's a necessary result of the ID4 faction arriving conventionally -- as they did in the film. The MCU is rife with alien contact, even before the arrival of the Chitauri -- Thor, for example, and Loki, both technically extraterrestrials, and both known prior to the Chitauri invasion.

In fact, their existence and arrival is the exact reason given for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s experimentation with the Tesseract -- they were building the "Phase 2" arsenal specifically to defeat extraterrestrials like Loki (and, more grimly, Thor).

So, yes, an MCU Earth is going to be looking. They're going to spot the ID4 faction's approach sooner. You're putting an extraterrestrial invasion into a setting where it's trying a sneak on a planet that, by its pre-existing nature at that point, is already looking for extraterrestrial approach.

ID4 Earth never saw them coming. MCU Earth is watching for them. They have no element of surprise in this scenario. And there's an agency long established on this Earth whose standing order, since its inception, has been to get ready for them.

The ID4 aliens are nothing but a rat walking into the cat's paw.

[Axton]

I'd say "sorry" -- but I'm not. MCU Earth is a radically different target from ID4 Earth, and it is not going to play remotely in the ID4 faction's favor. At all.

And yes, we do need to address the Doctrine of Competing Powers. 4+4=<1. So Avengers < Original ID4 team. We know what the original ID4 team can do, we know the Avengers outclass them, so yes, it is a perfectly logically sound conclusion that

Original ID4 team > ID4 aliens
Avengers > Original ID4 team, therefore
Avengers > ID4 aliens.

There is not one logical error in that, whatsoever.

[Crazedwraith]

If the MCU Earth gets that warning. It's only fair that the ID4 Aliens get warning as well. By the same logic After all in the MCU Earth is the tesseract and that tell's the aliens that 'the Earth is ready for a higher former of warfare.' That's straight from The Avengers. Even in the 40s and 50s they were more advanced the ID4 Earth with Hydra Weapons and Flying cars and other Stark Tech.

So the ID4 aliens aren't going to swan in thinking they're easy pickings like ID4 Earth so they're tactics will change and they won't give MCU Earth the same lead time that led to ID4 Earth beating them.

OR we could go with the actual vs scenario as presented. Instead of yours which is "Avengers with forewarning and inside knowledge vs ID4 aliens who are clueless" And you accuse the rest of us of stacking the scenario...

[Axton]

If the MCU Earth gets that warning. It's only fair that the ID4 Aliens get warning as well.

We're not dealing in fair, we are dealing in plausible.

The Avengers see the ID4 faction coming because in the MCU they are looking for them, and because the ID4 aliens lack FTL, the Avengers would see them coming.

There is no "fair" in this. The ID4 aliens get their shit fed to them by a planet that's prepared for alien incursions (thanks to prior alien incursions) and which possesses enhanced humans well suited to do the shit feeding.

[Axton]

Bah. Typos, some posts up. Grrr.

[Crazedwraith]

If the MCU Earth gets that warning. It's only fair that the ID4 Aliens get warning as well.

We're not dealing in fair, we are dealing in plausible.

The Avengers see the ID4 faction coming because in the MCU they are looking for them, and because the ID4 aliens lack FTL, the Avengers would see them coming.

There is no "fair" in this. The ID4 aliens get their shit fed to them by a planet that's prepared for alien incursions (thanks to prior alien incursions) and which possesses enhanced humans well suited to do the shit feeding.

How about you respond to the arguments in the rest of the post, rather than nitpicking one expression? Also you blathering about it doesn't have to be fair is complete bollocks given your whinging that the deck was being stacked against the Avengers. It's only acceptably unfair if it's in the direction you want it to be?

If you want talk about it's plausible that MCU Earth is more prepared. It's also logical that the ID4 aliens will pick up on that. Especially as it's explicitly stated in the Avengers that aliens know about the Tesseract and know the Earth is ready for a higher form of warfare.

That's by your own 'logic'.

[Axton]

So the ID4 aliens aren't going to swan in thinking they're easy pickings like ID4 Earth so they're tactics will change and they won't give MCU Earth the same lead time that led to ID4 Earth beating them.

OR we could go with the actual vs scenario as presented. Instead of yours which is "Avengers with forewarning and inside knowledge vs ID4 aliens who are clueless" And you accuse the rest of us of stacking the scenario...

Good thinking; just one problem with it. The only way the ID4 aliens know any of that is thanks to their scoutship. A scoutship that crashed. Did it transmit complete data on the host planet? Or only just enough to relay that the prospective new host planet was environmentally suitable?

Based on the outcome of the original source conflict, the latter seems more probable. How do I come to that conclusion? Because in the original ficton, the ID4 aliens lost. Why did they lose? Because they had no cybersecurity and no comms security.

What's the most reasonable explanation for that technological deficit? They underestimated human technology. They didn't expect humans to have computers. That's the only rational explanation for their total lack of cybersecurity -- they didn't expect humans to have computers. And why would they? In the 1940s, when the scout crashed, we didn't.

So take the 1996 ID4 aliens -- as the OP preposes -- and pit them against an MCU Earth that is wired for broadband. That has J.A.R.V.I.S., a borderline sentient AI, monitoring the entire solar system from Manhattan to Saturn via the Goldstone Radar Telescope.

Have them show up -- fucking let them get their licks in in New York and L.A., the Avengers don't live in either city. The Avengers will have been watching these guys crawl toward Earth, and with streamed data from Goldstone will have been tracking them and, moreover, analyzing them in more detail the closer they get.

They spring out 36 smaller ships that enter the atmosphere over hinge cities, it's not like it takes a genius to figure out what they're doing that for -- and the Avengers have more than their share of geniuses even if it did. They'll bail from those cities and yell for god and country to evacuate everyone who will go. Most will, some won't; but if they can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure they'll avenge it.

This whole thing is a fight between a dozen guys with pistols and one guy with a big ass cannon. The big ass cannon does not win. It's massively destructive, but it's cumbersome and it's slow.

[Axton]

Also you blathering about it doesn't have to be fair is complete bollocks given your whinging that the deck was being stacked against the Avengers.

Not remotely. It has to be plausible. The ID4 aliens lack FTL. Without FTL, they lose the element of surprise, but they should not plausibly have the element of surprise. They did on ID4 Earth because ID4 Earth had not already had extraterrestrial incursions; MCU Earth has. That world would be watching for them.

MCU Earth, natively and logically, has a pre-existing defense against the ID4 faction. They'll see that force coming because they've already been hit and they're watching out for it to happen again.

The ID4 faction is also bound by parsimony; They came to MCU Earth because MCU Earth offers what they need; natural resources. They know it offers those resources thanks to the report of a scoutship. We know that scoutship crashed in the 1940s or 1950s because during that era there was no difference between the two Earths substantial enough to cause a different result.

We also know that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have the relevant information from that crash because that type of information falls under the umbrella of their mission statement; it is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s function to know of that ship and to have analyzed it to the best of their ability.

If you want talk about it's plausible that MCU Earth is more prepared. It's also logical that the ID4 aliens will pick up on that.

Based on what? Are you proposing to describe the range of their sensors without any canonical basis for describing that range? I'll allow that they're at least able to determine targets of strategic value from orbit, since their city destroyers know which cities to hover over -- but beyond orbital range is unsubstantiated conjecture for the limits of their sensors.

[Axton]

Anyway, it's way past when I should have been in bed. Y'all carry on, see ya manyana.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Based on what? Are you proposing to describe the range of their sensors without any canonical basis for describing that range?

Simple monitoring of Earth's radio, television, and Internet signals travelling through space. We have the technology to detect RF signals from space now, and have had that capability for some time; it is such a basic high-technological ability, there's no plausible reason(outside of justifying a no-limits fallacy for the MCU team) to assume the aliens wouldn't have it.

And, the light-speed lag would be almost irrelevant to this(as would range, because all electromagnetic energy, including RF waves, travels at the speed of light in a vacuum), and would become less relevant the nearer the aliens approach Earth.

The MCU may be prepared and they may be looking, but, absent any variables, there would be perfect information in this scenario, or as close to it as makes little difference.

Each would have some clue as to the other's plans, capabilities, and so on.

(and it's mañana)

[NecronLord]

There were many scouting missions. They probed Russel long after Roswell. Russel was stable enough to be a commissioned officer in Nam.

[Crazedwraith]

So the ID4 aliens aren't going to swan in thinking they're easy pickings like ID4 Earth so they're tactics will change and they won't give MCU Earth the same lead time that led to ID4 Earth beating them.

OR we could go with the actual vs scenario as presented. Instead of yours which is "Avengers with forewarning and inside knowledge vs ID4 aliens who are clueless" And you accuse the rest of us of stacking the scenario...

Good thinking; just one problem with it. The only way the ID4 aliens know any of that is thanks to their scoutship. A scoutship that crashed. Did it transmit complete data on the host planet? Or only just enough to relay that the prospective new host planet was environmentally suitable?

Arbitrary bollocks to make your side stronger. Scouting missions imply they want data before they move. They wouldn't just move if they didn't have data. There's no evidence the ship that crashed was the only scout at that time or subsequently. As Necronlord as pointed out, there's some evidence they visited and probed people later.

If we move the action to the MCU (and I will not concede the scoutship is part of the scenario in OP) then the scoutship wouldn't have crashed as it would have been 40 years before 2012 and this in a different year and in no way encounter whatever freak accident brought down the ID4verse scout.

So either way, they've not moving without proper data.

Based on the outcome of the original source conflict, the latter seems more probable. How do I come to that conclusion? Because in the original ficton, the ID4 aliens lost. Why did they lose? Because they had no cybersecurity and no comms security.

What's the most reasonable explanation for that technological deficit? They underestimated human technology. They didn't expect humans to have computers. That's the only rational explanation for their total lack of cybersecurity -- they didn't expect humans to have computers. And why would they? In the 1940s, when the scout crashed, we didn't.

A) The fighter crashed in the 50s. As has been quoted they've had it forty years in the 90s.
b)We had computers in both the forties and fifties.
c)The ID4 plan has them coordinating using our satellite systems if they weren't counting on us having them. Why would they do this?
d) The ID4's security is not as crap or non-existent as you continually imply. You have to gain access to the mothership and directly wire into from a trusted source (the fighter) to have any chance of uploading anything. And even then its a matter of minutes befores it'll be purged. That's not even that bad.
e) You can also read a small amount of data from their hack on the world's satellites. Read permissions not write. Do you want to prove otherwise?

So take the 1996 ID4 aliens -- as the OP preposes -- and pit them against an MCU Earth that is wired for broadband. That has J.A.R.V.I.S., a borderline sentient AI, monitoring the entire solar system from Manhattan to Saturn via the Goldstone Radar Telescope.

What movie was established that JARVIS has this access and uses to survey the solar system?

The scope and wariness of JARVIS varies highly. In Avengers he didn't even know Loki was in Stark Tower setting up a portal device until Tony got there in person.

Earth's knowledge of alien intruders is next to nothing according to Guardians Of Galaxy where people can be abducted willy-nilly.

Have them show up -- fucking let them get their licks in in New York and L.A., the Avengers don't live in either city. The Avengers will have been watching these guys crawl toward Earth, and with streamed data from Goldstone will have been tracking them and, moreover, analyzing them in more detail the closer they get.

They spring out 36 smaller ships that enter the atmosphere over hinge cities, it's not like it takes a genius to figure out what they're doing that for -- and the Avengers have more than their share of geniuses even if it did. They'll bail from those cities and yell for god and country to evacuate everyone who will go. Most will, some won't; but if they can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure they'll avenge it.

Now you're just abandoning the OP scenario to make your own imagined path to victory. We can all imagine scenarios were the Avengers win. That isn't the point. The point is who would win in the given scenario.

Also you blathering about it doesn't have to be fair is complete bollocks given your whinging that the deck was being stacked against the Avengers.

Not remotely. It has to be plausible. The ID4 aliens lack FTL. Without FTL, they lose the element of surprise, but they should not plausibly have the element of surprise. They did on ID4 Earth because ID4 Earth had not already had extraterrestrial incursions; MCU Earth has. That world would be watching for them.

MCU Earth, natively and logically, has a pre-existing defense against the ID4 faction. They'll see that force coming because they've already been hit and they're watching out for it to happen again.

The ID4 faction is also bound by parsimony; They came to MCU Earth because MCU Earth offers what they need; natural resources. They know it offers those resources thanks to the report of a scoutship. We know that scoutship crashed in the 1940s or 1950s because during that era there was no difference between the two Earths substantial enough to cause a different result.

We also know that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have the relevant information from that crash because that type of information falls under the umbrella of their mission statement; it is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s function to know of that ship and to have analyzed it to the best of their ability.

The Earth's only extra-terrestrials that they're aware of arrived by portal not spaceship. They've missed alien ships for years according to GotG.

There's no evidence that SHIELD is constantly searching the skies for alien incursions at all.

The fighter would have crashing the 60s or 70s in the mcu verse. (40-50 years pre invasion). MCU was always more advanced than IF4 earth thanks to Stark Tech. (Hydra weapons and flying cars)

It's implausible to assume the fighter or any scouts were crashed for SHIELD analysis. (I've outlined why above)

If you want talk about it's plausible that MCU Earth is more prepared. It's also logical that the ID4 aliens will pick up on that.

Based on what? Are you proposing to describe the range of their sensors without any canonical basis for describing that range? I'll allow that they're at least able to determine targets of strategic value from orbit, since their city destroyers know which cities to hover over -- but beyond orbital range is unsubstantiated conjecture for the limits of their sensors.

Cinnabar's explained about sensors.

And my logic was a mirror of yours. It's canon in the MCU that aliens know about the terrasect and respect that Earth is ready for war because of it. Why should the ID4 aliens be different if they're in the MCU? This is the same logic as your assertion that SHIELD should now all about them. It's MCU canon!!!! after all.

[NecronLord]

Why did they lose? Because they had no cybersecurity and no comms security.

But a very good malware removal toolkit, to clear a new virus in minutes. Or they're smart enough to restore to safe settings.

You keep on saying the virus doomed them - it didn't, it created a small window of opportunity for the world's military forces to exploit.

Then why, upthread, were we asked to consider a novelization version of the ID4 faction? What are we considering to be canonical, and on what basis?

Because the MCU is Marvel Earth 199999 as stated by official sources, not Earth 616.

The ID4 novellization is ostensibly set in the same world as the films {it is due for reprint with the new film novellization - the Silent War isn't, necessarily canonical any more, so I have not mentioned it, War in the Desert is almost certainly not canon as it features as prolonged ground campaign against survivors on the Arabian penninsula, from one of the City Destroyers that was headed for Mecca - the ground campaign survivors have been relocated to the Congo in the new film - though the War of 1996 website does show a city-killer was intercepted preparing to attack Mecca in the fourth wave}; Earth 616 is not the same world as Earth 199999.

There are Earth 199999 comics, and you can use those as they tie directly into the movie.

Learn Marvel canon.


As a note, the Silent War novel reconciles - as I remember it, it's hardcopy and upstairs somewhere so I can't search - the Roswell and forty years quote from the President by saying that the Area 51 research unit was founded 40 years ago. Before that it was held in a regular army base and limited testing done; Okun didn't do the original autopsies in that scenario.

Have them show up -- fucking let them get their licks in in New York and L.A., the Avengers don't live in either city. The Avengers will have been watching these guys crawl toward Earth, and with streamed data from Goldstone will have been tracking them and, moreover, analyzing them in more detail the closer they get.

They spring out 36 smaller ships that enter the atmosphere over hinge cities, it's not like it takes a genius to figure out what they're doing that for -- and the Avengers have more than their share of geniuses even if it did. They'll bail from those cities and yell for god and country to evacuate everyone who will go. Most will, some won't; but if they can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure they'll avenge it.

And by the end of the film the ship was preparing to deploy its invasion barges with its land army. You seem to be conceding here that the city will be destroyed and that the aliens will move onward with their plan, which we can't really evaluate until the new film comes out as we've never seen them fight on the ground, apart from in War in the Desert, which is unreliably canon.

Based on what? Are you proposing to describe the range of their sensors without any canonical basis for describing that range? I'll allow that they're at least able to determine targets of strategic value from orbit, since their city destroyers know which cities to hover over -- but beyond orbital range is unsubstantiated conjecture for the limits of their sensors.

"They like to get the monuments"; the one over DC hovered directly over the White House; which is not the largest or grandest building there, strongly suggesting they knew of its significance.

They also sent more destroyers to the USA than its energy output or population density would reccommend, as if they knew it was the most militarized region on the planet.

[Crazedwraith]

You're misattributing that last Axton quote to me their NecronLord.

[NecronLord]

You're misattributing that last Axton quote to me their NecronLord.

No insult intended.

[Crazedwraith]

You're misattributing that last Axton quote to me their NecronLord.

No insult intended.

Lol. No offence taken.

[Khaat]

They spring out 36 smaller ships that enter the atmosphere over hinge cities, it's not like it takes a genius to figure out what they're doing that for -- and the Avengers have more than their share of geniuses even if it did. They'll bail from those cities and yell for god and country to evacuate everyone who will go. Most will, some won't; but if they can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure they'll avenge it.

MCU shows us the Avengers choosing to take on an unknown invasion army (the chitauri). They knew what Loki had in mind with "an army", though they didn't know it was the equivalent of the "teenagers from outer space auxiliary slingshot and joy-ride club." What makes you think they'll lead with, "(ID4) Aliens? Well, those cities are fucked, we're Audi!"
Or how about the rest of the city ships are deployed from the mother ship (it carries more than 36, as NecronLord provided) and the force skips the countdown: if the MCU is "so much more advanced", the scouting missions that were neither downed nor detected ("Did they do things to you, Russell? Sexual things?"), and "Earth is ready for a higher form of war", so logically, the alien fleet doesn't bother to coordinate through a piggy-backed satellite signal. Take position, fire, repeat. "It has to be plausible." There goes the narrative loophole the protagonists exploited in the original fiction!

Yet you still cling to writer fiat (though congratulations on admitting it will be days before the Avengers save avenge the ruins of Earth and billions killed!) Very heroic!

MCU Earth, natively and logically, has a pre-existing defense against the ID4 faction. They'll see that force coming because they've already been hit and they're watching out for it to happen again.

Please provide canon evidence of this pre-existing defense. Per OP, I'm willing to grant you... the Avengers and SHIELD as seen, as of The Avengers, Battle of New York, of the MCU. And remember: the SHIELD Security Council response is "nuke it!", and we know that doesn't work.

Please recall, "Phase 2" was SHIELD's planned (though unrealized) response shown to aliens (Thor and Loki's "grudge match"), and Phase 1 hadn't even been (re)deployed to service though they had the weapons for over 50 years.

As to the attempted ad hominem: I don't care one way or the other; this versus scenario doesn't affect... well, anything. Force projections show that without writer fiat, Earth loses. The End.

[Crazedwraith]

I'd say "sorry" -- but I'm not. MCU Earth is a radically different target from ID4 Earth, and it is not going to play remotely in the ID4 faction's favor. At all.

And yes, we do need to address the Doctrine of Competing Powers. 4+4=<1. So Avengers < Original ID4 team. We know what the original ID4 team can do, we know the Avengers outclass them, so yes, it is a perfectly logically sound conclusion that

Original ID4 team > ID4 aliens
Avengers > Original ID4 team, therefore
Avengers > ID4 aliens.

There is not one logical error in that, whatsoever.

Only just saw your additions to this post.

So becauses sissors beats paper and paper beats rock. Then logically sissor beats rock as well?

Your logic only works if there is some single raw metric of comparision that decides everything. There isn't

[U.P. Cinnabar]

So Avengers < Original ID4 team

The original ID4 team was better than the Avengers?!

Somehow, I don't think that expression is saying what you think it does.

[Axton]

So Avengers < Original ID4 team

The original ID4 team was better than the Avengers?!

Somehow, I don't think that expression is saying what you think it does.

I think it's satirizing the prevailing belief, in this thread, that the original ID4 team is, on any metric, more capable than the Avengers.

There's not a single member of the original team whose skillsets even equal the skillsets brought to the table by the Avengers. Yet the "conventional wisdom" in this thread has amounted to one of two things:

1. The Avengers could not do, in the original team's place, what the original team did.

OR:

2. So heavily loading the dice in the ID4 aliens' favor that nobody could beat them, including the original team that actually beat them on screen.

[Axton]

By the way, we've only seen the ID4 aliens' forcefields repel bullets and missiles. We don't know whether those forcefields could, or could not, repel energy weapons such as the Iron man armor's repulsor beams or lightning thrown by Thor's hammer. To claim that they could do so is as baseless as claiming that the shield surrounding the Tesseract could repel the City Destroyer's energy beam. Tit for tat, boys.