Jalinth wrote:MKSheppard wrote:
Excuse me, that makes NO SENSE.
Why would we even have those levels of casualties AT ALL? We're going up against a race of giant centauroid aliens who have virtually no experience in tactics.
They have insane numbers on their side (billions), virtually unstoppable direct fire weaponry, amazingly accurate firing systems (if they can see it, they can basically hit it) even though minimal electronic aids exist outside the God Kings, and an unreal tooth to tail ratio (they somehow operate with virtually no support troops. Combat support and service support don't seem to exist and yet the Posleen troops never seem to run out of ammo).
This illogical situation is canon, so bitch to Ringo about it.
Call it the ultimate in human wave attacks.
Don't forget the nearly unkillable flying skyscrapers.
As far as logistics goes, the Posleen computers keep track of everything. Who owns what, who owes what, who has what needs. When additional God-kings come up from the rear, a quick 'need ammo, give you stuff' barter can take care of immediate needs. For long-term stuff, the God-Kings that care to think long-term can forward their requests, pay off the debt that new Battlemasters owe for their initial issue of weaponry for their units, and have the Net tell them to move forward to join up. Of course, the average Posleen is also highly unlikely to shoot through his entire combat load before getting wasted. And if it beats the odds, all of the dead Posties that didn't don't need their magazines any more.
Food is even more simple: If they won, there's all the dead defenders. If they lost, there's a lot fewer Posleen, and allthe dead ones are now food.
The moronic political decision not to use nukes at every applicable opportunity also hurt badly. As near as I can tell, against the initial landings, the Pres in question wanted to win conventionally, and the fact that a conventional victory was won gave ammunition to the 'no nukes' spewing dumb cunt that inherited the Presidency.
There is a pronounced disparity in the relative competence displayed in the two major conflicts we have first-hand information on, with the German Posleen being far more ably handled than those in the States. My personal wild ass guess is that the Darhel used the Diess Expeditionary Force to roughly gauge a given nation's ability to successfully resist the Posleen, and influenced the Posleen landing patterns to suit their expected need. The initial landing at Fredericksburg would have encouraged the Darhel to believe the U.S. to be a relatively easy target, two heavy corps and a battalion of ACS essentially annihilated against four million Posleen.
In terms of numbers: 1.2-1.4 billion or so Posleen hit the Earth in five major waves, with scattered groups of
only four million or so dropping in approximately whenever and wherever they felt like it. Then you have expeditionary forces engaged in three entirely different planetary actions, these forces can be expected to encounter two hundred million or more Posleen per planet, more if they've had any length of time to breed. After six years of bitter fighting on Earth, losing millions in single combat actions, the Posleen were at an estimated twelve billion strong and growing.
Of course, this ignores the Darhel sabotaging every damned level of the process. Giving ACS communiations codes to the enemy, done that. Hacking artillery fire control to induce Blue-on-Blue incidents, done that. Assassinating the highest ranking U.S. military officer when he proved too able, done that too. Then there's the deliberate witholding of equipment, especially that desperately needed to counteract the Posleen landers.
