In defence of humanity...

[Aluminator (Kit)]

Maybe they just have a great feel for what makes an intense and dramatic book series about a resistance composed only of six kids

[Terenia]

so one question.

 if open war is so much more attractive than underground invasion, how come the Council of 13 was never bright enough to notice? I mean, given they are parasites and stuff, but they are also brutal and logical.

 However, I do believe that the underground invasion favored the Animorphs also because they were able to do infiltrating of their own. The Animorphs did more than enough by themselves.

The simple answer to that is Visser One. Edriss orchestrated the entire invasion on Earth and it was her decision to make it a silent, underground invasion. She was the expert, and the Council trusted her to make the decision that was in favor of a Yeerk success. After Visser Three took charge he did repeatedly try to change it to an open war, but the council did not trust him as much as they trusted Visser One.


EDIT: It should also be noted that Edriss did not choose silent warfare because it would best aid the Yeerks. Initially, perhaps it was a strong war tactic, but it became obvious later on that open war would be more beneficial. However, she continued to petition for infiltration due to her own personal interests, not the interests of the Yeerk Empire.

[Gumby]

I'm just saying, an open war here would make earth a hell hole for yeerks and humans alike.

[Aluminator (Kit)]

so one question.

 if open war is so much more attractive than underground invasion, how come the Council of 13 was never bright enough to notice? I mean, given they are parasites and stuff, but they are also brutal and logical.

 However, I do believe that the underground invasion favored the Animorphs also because they were able to do infiltrating of their own. The Animorphs did more than enough by themselves.

The simple answer to that is Visser One. Edriss orchestrated the entire invasion on Earth and it was her decision to make it a silent, underground invasion. She was the expert, and the Council trusted her to make the decision that was in favor of a Yeerk success. After Visser Three took charge he did repeatedly try to change it to an open war, but the council did not trust him as much as they trusted Visser One.


EDIT: It should also be noted that Edriss did not choose silent warfare because it would best aid the Yeerks. Initially, perhaps it was a strong war tactic, but it became obvious later on that open war would be more beneficial. However, she continued to petition for infiltration due to her own personal interests, not the interests of the Yeerk Empire.

Yeah, agreed on the hellhole thing. Regardless of Edriss' motivation, I still believe a silent invasion to be the right choice for the Yeerks in taking Earth, given their situation. There was a shortage of hosts in the empire, which humanity could help alleviate. Their resources appear to be spread fairly thin. How many Hork-Bajir and Taxxons would the empire lose in an open war? Sure, they can burn our cities from orbit, but they still have to capture humans alive, and that requires putting their people in harm's way. The resources the Yeerks would need to sustain an open war with humanity might not be available due to the war with the Andalites.

Then you've got to consider the payoff. True, a few million hosts would be huge to the empire, and help them sustain their power, but it doesn't give them any huge advantage over the Andalites. In open war, a billion human hosts seems like an exceptionally generous estimate. If the Yeerks manage to take all six-billion-plus humans, they become unstoppable; even the Andalites would have no chance. If they attempted to take Earth by force, I think they'd need a much higher concentration of troops here, possibly bringing the brunt of the Andalite military down on this invasion and effectively crushing the empire.

She may have been trying to save her children, but in my opinion, Edriss' decision to invade Earth silently would have saved the empire as well, without the interference of the Animorphs.

[Azguard]

 well, even if the Yeerks conquered Earth it would still take years to recover from devastation and than more years to turn Earth into a viable economic industry that would be able to fight the Andalites. Even if Earth was captured, it would take some time to arm the Human-controllers, build extra Kandrona Rays for more Yeerks, commit forces to peace-keeping and prevent revolutions (police keeping in effect), update human tech to match theirs and the Andalites, and prevent external factors from overwhelming Yeerk desires.

 It actually may have been better than to eliminate at least half the humans (and even then, 3 billion people to contain when you don't have enough Yeerks is still too much).

[Gumby]

excactly! full scale war on a multi-billion member species, a species which is very experianced in wars and with reasonable, and devadtating technology, would take huge bundles of resources from the Andalite campaign.

[voodooqueen126]

I think we could win, but in the struggle, the yeerks might cause the extinction of all those species that are preserved in zoos/special breeding programs, such as Pandas, bilbies etc, as humans redirected resources to fighting yeerks.

[Azguard]

if we won, it might not be a victory after all. we might have taxed earth so much by the end of the war that its resources would be spent.

[anijen21]

shielded shields are very good at shielding people who need to be shielded

[anijen21]

lol sorry, I didn't mean to be pedantic I just love redundancies that are redundant and repeat themselves.

TAUTOLOGY!

[anijen21]

Yes, you want to be sure to edit the sentences that you wrote after you primarily wrote them for the first time.

[Gumby]

Yes, but as this is a war to capture us and our planet, Esplin WOULDN'T just torch the planet. Yes, they could fry our computers. However shielded bug fighters and the bladeship are all forward firing, if the blade ship was attacked from multiple directions by SAMs, that'd be over rather fast. Like I said, even if you have Bio scanners and such, when you fidn the humans you still have to go down there and get them. Urban warfare would be hell for Hork bajir and taxxons anyway. And us being humans, would probably eventually nuke the yeerks, us, and the planet to radioactive grit.

[Aluminator (Kit)]

Even if the military were allowed to remain functional and given a fighting chance against against the Yeerk fleet, I don't think humans would stand a chance. Whenever the Animorphs wind up in a Bug Fighter, we see how fast they can haul butt. I don't think a SAM could hit a Yeerk spacecraft. Even if it did, we don't really have any idea how protective shields on these ships are. A Dome Ship is described as being able to "blow chunks off a planet." I'm not up for calculations at the moment, but even small chunks require their Shredders to impart tremendous energy to the planet in order to accelerate them to escape velocity. It's probably a safe assumption that Dome Ship shields are designed to withstand similar firepower. The Blade Ship annihilated a Dome Ship in just a few shots in the battle over Earth at the beginning of the series. Blade Ship shields are probably capable of shrugging off firepower in that range. What I'm getting at here is that I don't think any amount of SAM's are going to hurt Yeerk equipment if they're ready for it. You could probably nuke the Blade Ship directly and it would just shrug it off. That is, if you could even hit them.

That said, yeah, you'd lose a heck of a lot of human hosts in an open war. It all depends on the goals of the Yeerk invasion.

[Azguard]

well. the thing here is to use some stolen Protoss technology. I mean yeah, we have outdated siege tanks, but the new battlecruisers should be able to withstand nukes themselves, and indeed, in beta testing I think they do. Grab a few battlecruisers, and match mobility with the Vikings.

[Gumby]

I doubt a bladeship could take a nuke. It was never hit by the dome ships cannons anyway, it got the first blow in. If the andalites hit the bladeship it would be finished. Stund or not, the yeerks still must hit the humans while under fire. And another thing, I've never seen a yeerk dracon rifle or anything. Just the dracon beams and assault cannons which are to heavy to be used by hork-bajir. We have hundreds of weapons. EMP or not, heat-seeking missiels would still follow the heat of the bladeship and smoke it. The blade ship could only go oh-so fast in atmosphere, as one look at its desing clearly shows it is not designed for atmospheric flight.

I doubt the council would allow the destruction of several billion potential hosts. how would the yeerks know the location of every SAM or missiel sight? They don't have those secrets. Some yes, but not all. If the yeerks could make their hand-helds go on a wide-spread mode, they'd have probably used it against the andlaites laready.