Space Lobsters?

[Blueonblack83]

Dan Simmons - Ilium und Olympos.

[Imperial Grunt]

I'm sort of tired of Marines in space though.

 

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Re: Heresy

 

It's just something that's not "bad" but sort of overdone.  Much how I feel about zombies in fiction, although admittedly Marines are slightly more intelligent than the former.  Like it's gotten to the point where in some science fiction settings, everything is a space marine, there's civilian space marines, Army space marines, dentist space marines, etc etc.

 

If I had to go divvy up spaceroles I'd put the Marines on the zero-gee/enclosed environment type missions (like boarding actions, space stations, dome colonies etc) and leave the space to dirt stuff to the Army.  The real tricky thing is figuring how what'd happen to the Navy and Air Force though (the difference between a nuclear submarine and a hard scifi space ship is pretty small, so the USN seems like a good starting place for building a spacenavy, but the USAF has traditionally been the agency for space stuff).  

[Imperial Grunt]

LOL... I know, just pulling your chain.

 

I can imagine a CM scifi 'universe' in which mother earth looks fairly similar to how it is now. But the US, China, and to a lesser extent Russia, have established colonies in space via a magical FTL propulsion system/using black holes, whatever.

 

The US military dominates mankind's universe and it is pretty similar to the early 1900's but in space. Marines on US Navy ships patrol the 'space lanes', suppress insurrection on colonies, perform crisis response, and are the initial landing force for larger operations when necessary. They are organized just like MAGTFs of today but with the appropriate technology.

 

 The Army is still the principle war fighting organization with things heavy grav tanks, etc.  They also garrison planetary outposts on the primary colonies.

 

The Air Force does planetary defense and supports atmospheric ops in land campaigns (the Navy having mostly space craft and only a few fighters and shuttles to support 'ship to shore' ops. 

 

And the Chinese have their version to a lesser extent and sometimes there are "misunderstandings".

 

So between the 2 sides, third party colonial forces/military contractors, all kinds of human vs human material.  

 

Then contact with the aliens happens and there are more than one species.

 

One could be a robot AI that savages planets for resources, another could be like the "greys", another could be 'space lobsters' like the aliens in District 9 (but not just the 'workers').

 

Etc etc... I'd buy the game!