Scott Tortorice
Senior Member
This is a really good article. I don't agree with everything, but it definitely makes a lot of good points:
Your Military Science Fiction Isn't Really Military Science Fiction
Your Military Science Fiction Isn't Really Military Science Fiction
This is a point that applies to mil sci-fi gaming as well:Futuristic militaries are a staple in science fiction. With their powered armor and laser guns, military science fiction novels are among the most exciting reads out there. Except for one problem. Most are not really about warfare.
While military SF involves military personnel and technology, the cores of the stories tend to focus on elements other than warfare. Before I'm tracked down and shot for saying that, let me qualify that statement. Military SF novels aren't about the institution of warfare; they focus on the effects of war, on the soldiers, on the morality of an organization, and on what humanity will do to survive.
But warfare is much more than just its destructive effects: It is an institution with its own theories and reasoning. It represents significant strategic, economic and political events, all coming together in a destructive crescendo. When military science fiction focuses on people, there is very little about warfare, and how it is conducted. In these tales, futuristic warfare is often incredibly simplified, on both the storytelling level, as well as the actual elements that make up the story. Here are some of the biggest problems with representations of war in most military SF.
I still yearn for the day that a 4X game makes planetary conquest as difficult as it right well should be.Warfare, especially in its modern form, is an incredibly complex beast, and that's just dealing with a single planet. In numerous books, planets are approached as if they were countries, with warfare being conducted as small scale tactical assaults that are over by the end of the day. Not only is this unrealistic to the nth degree, it's an incredible oversimplification and abridgment of how warfare is actually conducted. Furthermore, with many of the aforementioned books using units that focus on highly mobile, unsupported tactics, the idea of capturing a planet becomes flat out unrealistic. (Well, more so than military units fighting on other planets.)