Re: Planet conquering

Thatotherguy wrote:

>Under the SJ core rules conquering a planet (with just SJ ships, not
>gates and such) is basically impossible.  You simply can't move the
>necessary amount of people.  Now colonizing the world (or an area of
>it) and using that to begin a slow, generations long conquest is
>possible (basically what happened in the Americas, especially after
>diseases wiped out a majority of the native populace in many areas).
>
>

I guess it all depends how advanced the world you intend to conquer is.
If the invasion is taking place on a stone age world, by a much more
advanced civilisation then I'd say yes it is possible, but not by simply
sending ship after ship of troops and conquering the entire planet
outright. Instead, it would be a slow, step by step process. First you
send in a fleet of ships, troops, mages, priests, etc with enough food
and supplies to keep them going for a while. They secure a landing site,
perhap befriending or even conquering a minor tribe or settlement on the
world. Then they get busy building up a base of operations, while the
fleet heads home for more supplies, troops, carpenters, masons, farmer,
etc. And using the first base to expand, the invaders begin a slow,
outward expansion, much in the same way the America's were settled.

On a more advenced world, one with equal technological level, then it
becomes a much more difficult task, and if, for example, you had too
huge planet-wide empires facing off against each other, one with
Spelljamming technology, the other without, then I'd say it would be
very difficult for the invader to be successful using a fleet of
spelljammers. It would be possible, but the number of ships, men,
wizards, priests, etc that would be needed would make it hardly worth
while. You'd need thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of troops
for such an endeavour, and even then it is a iffy prospect, as there is
always the chance of someone like the Arcane showing up and suddenly
selling the groundling society a large number of helms and vessels.
Short of some sort of mass descturction weapon for taking out the
groundling empire's bases and cities (Witchlight Marauders perhaps) then
an invasion of a large groundling empire by a spaceborn one is almost
impossible. A suitible real world example of this would be the invasion
at normendy during WW2. Two technologically equal foes fighting each
other, and an invasion that only took place with millions of soldiers
and thousands of ships.

A better idea, rather than outright warfare, is to contact a force
opposed to the groundling empire's leader and set about assisting them
with spelljammers. There may already be rebels on the planet and with a
small fleet of spelljammers providing support the invaders could soon
have a puppet goverment in place and get most of what they wanted
anyway, for much less outlay of troops, ships, and money. For example,
the US invasion in Afghanastan, where they used air bombardment and
special forces to assist a small rebel army in overthrowing the larger
government one.