The Andalite military

[Darth Zakryn]

Ok, this question is about the strength and capacity of the Andalite military. We know from the HBC that the Andalites are "the dominant force in this arm of the galaxy." They have huge Dome ships that can blow chunks out of a planet as big as a mountain. What are their weapons ranges at? Gigatons? Teratons or exatons? Also, how many ships do you guys think they HAVE? In all the books, Andalites are never shown to be large in numbers, that there was only a task force of four sent to Earth, four dozen on the Yeerk home world, and only 100 stationed on a Dome ship at a time. And we know Dome ships are relatively new. So... how many Andalites are there? How many are in the military? And what about their tactics? We saw a few Andalites fighting in #18, but they didn't ride in any vehicles like the kinds seen in the Halo series, leaving themselves exposed to enemy fire. They seemed to lack a large standing army. How do I know this? Because KA seems to heavily base space aspects of Animorphs on STAR TREK, where their ground forces could be owned by the Empire from Star Wars.

So... any thoughts?

[Unknown User]

I know nothing about weapons or ships, but as far as the size of the army goes, I think it is realatively small. The andalite warriors seem to remind me of Samuri in that each fighter is supposed to be both poet and warrior. The Millitary is ritualized and the how and why of andalite combat seems to me to be just as important to andalites as the actual killing. This suggests that they are trying to build elite soilders out of ever single andalite that enters the millitary, kind of like ancient sparta. Therefore, it makes sense to me that they would accept only the people they thought would make the best warriors. This would give them a very highly skilled but  small army.

As far as andalite population goes, I think it is small. The andalite elctorate passed a law regarding the number of children that Andalite couples are allowed to have, presumably so there would be enough grazing land for every andalite clan/family/community. This population law would keep the population Low.

[Darth Zakryn]

Ok, but how many Dome ships do you think they have? How many Andalites? Just a rough guess? Obviously they control a few planets.

[Unknown User]

I would say no more than 1 billion Andalites total, with no more than 30-40% of them being in the millitary! As far as the number of dome ships, I tend to think of them as something similar to an Aircraft carrier. In ww2, which is parrell to the andalite-yeerk conflict, the U.S., Japan, Britian, ect had relatively few carriers compared with others ships. I would say no more than maybe...20-50 dome ships and that is at the very high end; I feel like it would actually be closer to 10 to twenty.

[NateSean]

The actual Dome ships would take quite a bit of resources to build. Their fleet is always described as being spread thin so that they can only ever devote a portion of their resources to one planet at a time.

So for safety sake, lets say there about ten thousand Andalites. And then lets say only half of that makes it into the military. At a conservative estimate, we'll safely assume that about five thousand able bodied males (and possibly a few females if we're to believe that female Arisths are starting to become the norm) make it into the military.

That would be three thousand cadets, one thousand fighter pilots, nine hundred Princes and only one hundred War-Princes. That's it, that's your military.

Fighter pilots don't need a large ship, so there's naturally going to be plenty of smaller ships. Some of them will be self designed by the retired and/or disgraced military members who still have some place in the Andalite military. Cargo ships and shuttles that are needed for long-term research and military colonies will also be greater in number, but will likely be piloted by civilian crews who have basic combat training in the event they are over taken by Yeerks or other enemies.

That said, it's fair to assume that the Dome ship, which is fairly new at the time of TAC only exists in very small numbers. I'd say about twenty max.

Not sure about the technical specifications.

[Unknown User]

Maybe my 1 billion is way over-shooting the size of the Andalite poulation but 10,000 total for the whole population?! Spread over several planets? You have to remember that not all members of the millitary as fighters, a ton of them would be involved in logistics, this would subtract hugely from the number of fighting adalites which means you'd only have about  three thousand available fighters. Three thousand against Millions if not Billions of yeerks?! I don't buy it, the andalites aren't that good.

[NateSean]

Maybe my 1 billion is way over-shooting the size of the Andalite poulation but 10,000 total for the whole population?!

That's why I was being hypothetical. As indicated when I used the phrase "Lets say". If I used the phrase, "And chiseled here into the stone up there next to the ten commandments is the total number of the Andalite population" I would have been in error.

Spread over several planets?  You have to remember that not all members of the millitary as fighters, a ton of them would be involved in logistics, this would subtract hugely from the number of fighting adalites which means you'd only have about  three thousand available fighters. Three thousand against Millions if not Billions of yeerks?!

A few points to make.

1: The Andalite fleet was, as mentioned, spread pretty thin. And the military was getting so desperate to put down the Yeerk threat that they were actually resorting to "quarantine" procedures for some worlds. What do you think would have happened if the Yeerks had won the battle on Leera?

2: As also mentioned, the Andalites were practicing population control. Which, before the Yeerks became an issue, probably involved zero population growth control. That means, the births were likely only allowed when a number of Andalites had died. So, ten thousand or one million, you probably fit the entire Andalite population into New York City comfortably.

Now, I'm no exobilogist. But even when the Electorate said, "Go ahead and have yourselves as many kids as possible", I doubt the Andalites could reproduce as much as quickly as the Yeerks.

We don't see the Andalites having multiple births. At best, we can guess that they have one child at a time and that each child takes a time approximately close to either humans or Earth based horses to come to term. To say nothing of how long it takes the child to reach maturity. From Ax's story, it's fair to say that he took about the same time growing up as the Anis. But again, we can only speculate here.

All the Yeerks have to do is have a threesome and croak. Then out pop thousands of little Yeerks.

So, either way, the Yeerks have always had the advantage of numbers over the Andalites. That, and the majority of Andalite leaders continue to think of themselves as superior in everyway. They don't consider anyone a threat to them and they pay for their arrogance with their lives and unfortunately, the lives of a lot of fine officers under their command.

How many times do we personally witness the Andalites getting their furry blue behinds handed to them? No the Andalites aren't that good. But they weren't doing all that well to begin with, which is why the Yeerks were basically winning the war.

[Morilore]

Applegrant's ideas about scale are deeply weird.  I still can't wrap my head around "thousands of Hork-Bajir in the whole galaxy" + "Animorphs kill a few hundred over the course of the war on Earth."

However, it's not true that "few Dome ships" + "low crew on Dome ships" + "Dome ships super-important" = "extremely low Andalite population."  I get the impression that in Aniverse most spaceships are like the Rachel or the Jahar - small "Millenium Falcon" type craft with a single-digit number of crew.
Post Merged: February 01, 2011, 03:08:25 PM

2: As also mentioned, the Andalites were practicing population control. Which, before the Yeerks became an issue, probably involved zero population growth control. That means, the births were likely only allowed when a number of Andalites had died. So, ten thousand or one million, you probably fit the entire Andalite population into New York City comfortably.

First of all, no you couldn't, because they hate cities.  Secondly, I find the notion of an advanced species with a population of less than tens or hundreds of millions to be mind-bogglingly unrealistic.  Say that the only environment that Andalites can live in is grassland.  There's about 60 million sq km of grassland on the Earth.  If there are only 1 million Andalites and they live in families of 3 to 4, each family could have a property of almost 200 sq km!  (Remember that there's more land than water on the Andalite homeworld, so this would probably be even larger!)

[NateSean]

First of all, no you couldn't, because they hate cities. 

Your point? The idea of a city in Vermont is vastly different than a city in New York. Most people don't consider Burlington a city, for example, even though it is billed as the largest city in Vermont. And what's the total population of the City of Burlington, Vermont? 38,889 as of 2009.

Whereas the population of New York City is: 22.2 million as of the same year. So even if we were to up the population of Andalites to 500,000 thousand, they could still fit pretty nicely in New York and I doubt anyone would notice. (God knows they barely notice the wildlife that runs through the streets at night in search of food and water. And I'm not talking about squirrels and birds, folks.)
[/quote]

Secondly, I find the notion of an advanced species with a population of less than tens or hundreds of millions to be mind-bogglingly unrealistic. 

So you can't judge the technological advancements of a species by how long it has been alive, but you can judge it based on how many people there are. Interesting.

Secondly, what's unrealistic here? Most people would say that it's unrealistic for a slug-like species to develop any kind of awareness or intelligence, but we're asked to believe and accept that it has happened here. Most people would find the story of the Elemist pretty ****amime, but there it is. We accept it as gospel.

So, why is it "unrealistic" that the Andalite population is not as high as we assume it would have to be? The rules of nature on this planet don't comply to our understanding. So why would the rules of an entirely different planet, with an entirely different species that didn't even grow up in our galaxy have to make sense to us?

[Morilore]

"They hate cities" was not really a serious comment.

So you can't judge the technological advancements of a species by how long it has been alive, but you can judge it based on how many people there are. Interesting.

Actually, yes, this does make more sense than pure age, within certain parameters.

Secondly, what's unrealistic here? Most people would say that it's unrealistic for a slug-like species to develop any kind of awareness or intelligence, but we're asked to believe and accept that it has happened here. Most people would find the story of the Elemist pretty ****amime, but there it is. We accept it as gospel.

Those things are integral parts of the story, that we have to accept to understand the story.  The populations of various alien species is more or less incidental, except for the two facts that 1) humans have an unusually high population and 2) Hork-Bajir have an unusually low population.

So, why is it "unrealistic" that the Andalite population is not as high as we assume it would have to be? The rules of nature on this planet don't comply to our understanding. So why would the rules of an entirely different planet, with an entirely different species that didn't even grow up in our galaxy have to make sense to us?

1 million vs. 1 billion: without rules of some kind we have absolutely no way whatsoever of deciding between the two.

I like how you totally ignored my little calculation there about the size of Andalite family properties.  Remember TAC, when Elfangor was just leisurely strolling around and he was afraid he'd run into his neighbor?

[NateSean]

I like how you totally ignored my little calculation there about the size of Andalite family properties.  Remember TAC, when Elfangor was just leisurely strolling around and he was afraid he'd run into his neighbor?

I also noticed it doesn't answer the question of Andalite military, which is what this topic is about.

[Morilore]

The Andalite military is a significant-enough percentage of the population that battle deaths lead the government to changing its population policy, so anything relating to the total Andalite population is relevant.

[Terenia]

I had always assumed that the Andalites practiced population control out of necessity. We know that at one point they had cities, and that cities did not work out too well for the herbivores so eventually they returned to living in a scoop society. I imagine that at the height of Andalite city-building there was a bit of a population explosion and part of getting back to 'the old ways' involved controlling the birth rate.

I think that there is a fairly large population of Andalites, though nowhere near as large as humans. Perhaps half the size of the human population, maximum. I think that the vast, vast majority of these Andalites are non-military, though. The Andalites profess themselves to be a largely peaceful race and the military seems almost non-essential prior to the Yeerk war. I get the impression that the Yeerks are their first large scale intergalactic war (though they have likely had many smaller skirmishes before the Yeerks).

I would say that maybe the military itself averages around a million Andalites, with about 1-5% of those Andalites being War-Princes and Captains and a larger 20% or so being arisths, many of whom are still in Academy training at the Homeworld.

I agree that there are probably not more than 10-20 Dome Ships (each holding a few hundred to perhaps a thousand crew), and I think that there are likely a number of smaller ships that are more maneuverable and hold crews of 10-50 depending on the size.

[Phoenix004]

Best guess for Andalite population would be the low millions max. In Visser they are stunned at the prospect of a planet containing billions of potential hosts, assuming that the future Visser One meant 5 million rather than 5 billion. The Andalite homeworld is roughly similar size to Earth, but with a greater land to ocean ratio. However, we know that the Andalite population is scattered, with only 3 "cities" (spaceports) as of Andalite Chronicles. Even taking into account new spaceports being built and an increase in population after changing population laws, it's highly unlikely that the total Andalite population is higher than say 10 million.

Estimate 1 or 2 million tops for military personnel, with more helping with the designing and constructing of ships (as we are told by Elfangor). Even years after Andalite Chronicles, they will be limited in the amount of ships they are capable of building in a short amount of time. It's impossible to say how long it takes to build a dome ship, but we can assume it takes a while. A ship named after Elfangor appeared to be new, and was encountered in #54, approximately 3 years after Elfangor's death.

We also know that the Andalites have suffered heavy losses in their war with the Yeerks, due to being heavily outnumbered. They lost a dome ship in #1 and #18, possibly more in Andalite and Hork-Bajir Chronicles, and that's just the ones we know about, they probably lost significantly more.

The one man fighters would take much less time to build, and each dome ship seemed to have several dozen fighters at least. It does beg the question why fighters weren't used within atmosphere on the Hork-Bajir or Leeran homeworlds. We know they aren't as effective in a planet's atmosphere, but they function well enough and would be much more effective than simple ground troops.

Honestly, the Andalite military in general seems badly organised. Stick a few human generals in charge and their odds against the Yeerks would have increased dramatically. The morphing technology alone is a priceless weapon for infiltration, reconnaissance, guerilla warfare, fleeing and recovering from mortal wounds. Why the Andalites didn't use it more is beyond me.

[Darth Zakryn]

Fine, but how many are in the Yeerk military? How many Blade ships, Pool ships, and Bug fighters do you think they have?