This must be the aliens' first invasion of other species

[MP]

Because honestly, they suck at it big time. It's like they don't really want to invade, but have to do it anyway. Like doing dishes, they pile up in the sink (higher threat) until they sigh dejectedly and get to it.

The laziest invaders in the universe?

[Lovecraft]

Some of the lore explains that the aliens aren't trying to conquer Earth, they're trying to win our hearts and minds (with some help from *spoilers*).

[Zarquon]

everyone saying there are few aliens obvs haven't experienced the 15K stack of alien ships that are hanging around in earth orbit destroying everything they see

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Zarquon:

everyone saying there are few aliens obvs haven't experienced the 15K stack of alien ships that are hanging around in earth orbit destroying everything they see

*cough* Alien Overlord was bathing. She's shy.

[Fwiffo]

Originally posted by db48x:

I haven’t finished the game yet, but there is one practical consideration: you cannot bring millions of soldiers and thousands of ships from one star system to another. You have to take the tools to build the tools to build the ships. And we have all these nukes, so you definitely want to put your construction equipment out of range of those. The invasion has to start out covert, so that you can learn something about who controls the nukes, and try to do something about it.

Honestly, they don't need to. Early on, a single warship could completely cripple our space capability, but they just watch you get better and better tech. You don't have to actually get boots on the ground to stop our planet's space program, we simply do not have anything capable of shooting down a proper combat space vessel, while they could bomb the planet to the stone age.
They have a big fleet right at the start of the game, and their spaceships don't require a large crew since they're largely automated. Honestly, they're like early Covenant from Halo, if you took away the Elites and asked the Grunts to command the spaceships.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Fwiffo:

Originally posted by db48x:

I haven’t finished the game yet, but there is one practical consideration: you cannot bring millions of soldiers and thousands of ships from one star system to another. You have to take the tools to build the tools to build the ships. And we have all these nukes, so you definitely want to put your construction equipment out of range of those. The invasion has to start out covert, so that you can learn something about who controls the nukes, and try to do something about it.

Honestly, they don't need to. Early on, a single warship could completely cripple our space capability, but they just watch you get better and better tech. You don't have to actually get boots on the ground to stop our planet's space program, we simply do not have anything capable of shooting down a proper combat space vessel, while they could bomb the planet to the stone age.
They have a big fleet right at the start of the game, and their spaceships don't require a large crew since they're largely automated. Honestly, they're like early Covenant from Halo, if you took away the Elites and asked the Grunts to command the spaceships.

The only reason I can think of is that they CAN'T control humanity. Yes they can militarily dominate Earth but if they don't control better than that, they might be looking at a centuries long insurrection and they might not have the people for that. I mean, look at Israel. Total military control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip but every once in a while insurrections still flare up. They might have the bombs and ships but they might not have the surveillance and manpower to prevent 7 billion people from taking cheap potshots at them over the years.

[GC13]

It's definitely not their first invasion. It's at least their second where they tried to do this, so they've had at least one learning experience.

[xmd1997]

Originally posted by Mistfox:

Originally posted by Fwiffo:

Honestly, they don't need to. Early on, a single warship could completely cripple our space capability, but they just watch you get better and better tech. You don't have to actually get boots on the ground to stop our planet's space program, we simply do not have anything capable of shooting down a proper combat space vessel, while they could bomb the planet to the stone age.
They have a big fleet right at the start of the game, and their spaceships don't require a large crew since they're largely automated. Honestly, they're like early Covenant from Halo, if you took away the Elites and asked the Grunts to command the spaceships.

The only reason I can think of is that they CAN'T control humanity. Yes they can militarily dominate Earth but if they don't control better than that, they might be looking at a centuries long insurrection and they might not have the people for that. I mean, look at Israel. Total military control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip but every once in a while insurrections still flare up. They might have the bombs and ships but they might not have the surveillance and manpower to prevent 7 billion people from taking cheap potshots at them over the years.

Actually…I think they can. Thanks to their pharacytes pheromones, they can just simply drug us into compliance. Also glob help us if the Protectorates achieve their final objective. Then a planet with 7 billion people with weapons will not matter.

There’s a reason why they’re doing kidnappings and abductions.

Also to be fair. A lot of people report that Eventually when the Aliens establish governments on our planets, their Administration will start to breakdown into civil war.

[DarkestOnion]

I think those aliens are only a few decades ahead of modern human technology. I suspect they traveled at no more that light speed with a small probe capable of identifying resources and then producing sufficient ships for mining operations. I assume that in their past they survived an attack by another aggressive space-faring intelligent species.

They boot strapped their technology and eliminated that threat. Then they slowly moved out of their home system to expand their resources and population so that extinction from intelligent alien aggression would be impossible given the light speed barrier in physics. When they saw our technological progress they got scared it was going to happen all over again so they started quickly building factories and ships to eliminate us before we bot strapped up our technology like they did.

Remember, we have a large planet and billions of people with hundreds of nations many centuries/millennia old. They have deep space factories and ships far from an efficient proximity to solar energy. They may need fissile materials and refining operations to operate their fusion based technologies upon which they have relied for centuries. What I am grateful for is that they didn't think of/want to toss a few dozen asteroid our way from long range before we could take years/decades to build our first spaceships capable of sufficient thrust, velocity, armor, and armament to even bring the fight to them in the first place

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by xmd1997:

.........

Don't forget though that it wears off and all you need is one guy who lives out in the boonies to go off his "meds" to assassinate a Hydra and they might not have the population to take such slow bleeding losses. Remember that even with their abilities, your strike teams could still kill or capture what was their elite shock troops, so their abilities are not 100%.

[[*~MAJA~*] Mandragoron]

Just 1 advanced virus, and earth is conquered.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by *~MAJA~* Mandragoron:

Just 1 advanced virus, and earth is conquered.

Exterminated, not conquered. Conquered implies control.

[db48x]

Yea, if the humans are extinct then they don’t achieve their goal.

[corisai]

Originally posted by DarkestOnion:

I think those aliens are only a few decades ahead of modern human technology.

Few centuries - they're mass using advanced fusion & travelling through wormhole.

Originally posted by Fwiffo:

Honestly, they don't need to. Early on, a single warship could completely cripple our space capability, but they just watch you get better and better tech.

They DON'T have anything but that single warship early. They need their time to collect resources & build invasion armies here in Sol as their homeworld was destroyed.

[Riftwalker]

you might notice all their early ships don't have the thrust to actually take off from earth. the aliens are limited by physics just as much as humans are. I honestly like how it leans into the alien tropes only to go, actually these are the rules.

[mie001]

If they really start throwing bombs, the resistant and Human First might win the control, and the aliens will face a whole planet that wants them dead
I'm pretty sure the alien have something like threat level, that will go off if they cross the line