Super Soldiers - What do they actually need?

Urabrask Revealed

Urabrask Revealed

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The concept of a super soldier is a common one. Faster, stronger, more precise, and what have you, fiction often likes to create said people in order to provide a challenge for the protagonists or have a dramatic story. Ranging Captain America over the Space Marines of Warhammer along with various militaries trying their own hand at creating them to even the Uruk Hai of Lord of the Rings, they have a long history in fiction and reality.

But what areas and activities do these super soldiers actually need to excel at? A man with the ability to breath under water is useful on occasion, but that doesn't necessarily make him a super soldier. Neither does the ability to fly.

So, assuming the corresponding attitudes at the given time perioud, what traits would super soldiers be enchanted with, at the time-period their creation started?

- c. AD 270 - 275, during Aurelian's reign, roman era
- 1865 - 1870, 5 years before the Franko-Prussian War
- 1953 - 1962, during the space race between the USA and the UdSSR
- 2015 - 2016, during Obama's final year in the Office

Personally, I believe that all time-periods tend to try and make their soldiers more enduring. In the earlier time-periods for example, being able to marsh longer and faster is a stratetic boon. Additionally, the soldiers would be made tougher and less likely to die while receiving medical attention.

What do you all think that realistically a military would try to enhance their super soldiers with?
 
Doomsought

Doomsought

Well-known member
Your smallest unit of super soldiers needs to be able to fight a full platoon. Not all at once, as evasion and harassment are part of special forces doctrine, but they need to be able to reliably defeat a full platoon.
 
Bear Ribs

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I'm inclined to believe that Super-Soldiers will never actually be prevalent, simply because if you can make people stronger/smarter/faster/better you'll want to do that to all your soldiers, and your civilian population as well.

I mean, suppose you can equip people with heat-laser eye-beams. This could be handy for a soldier but it's probably even handier for a blacksmith/welder. If you could give a person a heightened awareness of their surroundings that would help soldiers a lot but you'll also want to give it to all those ninnies driving cars so they cause fewer wrecks. Super Strength is going to be just as good in the hands of all your construction workers (including military ones building defenses) as your soldiers. If you can grant immunity to poison and disease you want that on your whole population stat.

As far as "which powers" there's so many superpowers out there narrowing it down would be impossibly hard. We can presume that super-soldier enhancement is prohibitively expensive except for small units as otherwise they'd be applying it to all the soldiers. A lot of those enhancements would be more useful applied to individual members of a platoon (for instance telepathy to create a super-radioman/dispatch) rather than having a super squad. It's just that there's so many powers how do you say which one will be used?

For the Captain America package I'd say rather than an all-supersoldier team it would be better to spread them out in any time but the space age, and put a few of those guys on each platoon. One guy in the squad who can bench-press a horse will be very useful at opening up a hole in enemy formations that the rest of his squad can then exploit. All-Captain America squads are probably going to be found only in areas like the Emperor's personal guard.

If expense is the deciding factor you'll probably have some super-specialized troops with very limited enhancement that handle specific jobs. The most useful for an all-super squad is probably mobility boosters getting into difficult locations normal troops have trouble hitting, otherwise there's no reason not to back up your supers with normal soldiers. F'rex water-breathing plus echolocation nets you an amphibious demolition team that can infiltrate positions and sink ships, sabotage camps, and destroy supply lines. Contrarily the Spider-Man package would be great for mountain-fighting specialists who climb everywhere. A Goku-like flight plus directed energy or explosions will... basically get you Tanya the Evil.
 
Doomsought

Doomsought

Well-known member
The core powers you would want is increased carry weight and increased endurance. Those directly allow you to use better equipment.

Superstrength is always good as long as it is not self destructive, because of the above, but it needs paired with the ability to displace leverage supernaturally in order to use oversized weapons effectively.

Improved durability is always good, resistance to bloodless is better on the lower end of abilities because it is complimentary with armor.
 
Bassoe

Bassoe

Well-known member
Before the age of nuclear MAD, when the leaders of Major Player countries feared conquest by foreigners and were therefore forced to minmax their own country's capabilities to the best of the ability, regardless of the increased risk to themselves, it'd mean increased intelligence, followed by putting the new transhumans in charge of technological development and stratagy. In the modern age when leaders deliberately seek to weaken their own countries to avoid getting overthrown, it'd mean biologically enforced loyalty.
 
M

Marduk

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Making them stronger, faster and tougher to a degree beyond even olympic competitors seems to be the standard package that is useful for any time period, that's your typical Spartans, Astartes, Elemental, the main trope of supersoldier.

Some gimmicks like underwater breathing may be useful for deploying them in special forces role or some other specific tasks like more resilient navy crews, but that's very circumstantial.

And then there's a less examined category that needs attention in modern+ settings, that is vehicle operators. In their case you can drop the stronger part and compromise or specialize on the toughness one (eg. fighter pilots focusing on g-force resistance rather than long marches or surviving gunshots), while reflexes and other mental capabilities become even more important than normally.
 
Emperor Tippy

Emperor Tippy

Merchant of Death
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Depends on the situation, available resources, threat environment, and mission profile.

Just for starters, do you want a lone operative or someone expected to operate as part of a team? If a lone operative do you want someone who can pull off a frontal assault on an enemy strong point or someone who can simply walk past security as an invited guest, accomplish the mission, and then walk out with no one the wiser?
 
Bassoe

Bassoe

Well-known member
• Add the ability to naturally biosynthesize Vitamin C. Plenty of other mammals can do it, humans aren't one of them.
• The uterine lining is reabsorbed rather than shed on a monthly basis. Again, plenty of other mammals can do it.
• Flip the retina. As-is, the light-sensitive cells are at the back, and the nerves emerge from the front and go back through the retina into the brain, creating a blind spot. This is a serious design flaw. And again, there are animal species whose eyeballs aren't put together backwards.
• Multiple copies of the genome and rapid DNA repair mechanisms to repair radiation damage by reconnecting chromosome fragments via single-stranded annealing, then having multiple proteins mend double-strand breaks through homologous recombination. This process theoretically shouldn't introduce any more mutations than a normal round of replication would.
• Fix the sinuses. We had two holes that are vertically aligned as opposed to much more practical orangutan-style sinuses with the holes on the bottom so gravity can assist.
• Fix the Vagus Nerve so it doesn't have to go all the way down through the aorta then back up to the neck.
 
Urabrask Revealed

Urabrask Revealed

Let them go.
Founder
Bassoe said:
• Add the ability to naturally biosynthesize Vitamin C. Plenty of other mammals can do it, humans aren't one of them.
• The uterine lining is reabsorbed rather than shed on a monthly basis. Again, plenty of other mammals can do it.
• Flip the retina. As-is, the light-sensitive cells are at the back, and the nerves emerge from the front and go back through the retina into the brain, creating a blind spot. This is a serious design flaw. And again, there are animal species whose eyeballs aren't put together backwards.
• Multiple copies of the genome and rapid DNA repair mechanisms to repair radiation damage by reconnecting chromosome fragments via single-stranded annealing, then having multiple proteins mend double-strand breaks through homologous recombination. This process theoretically shouldn't introduce any more mutations than a normal round of replication would.
• Fix the sinuses. We had two holes that are vertically aligned as opposed to much more practical orangutan-style sinuses with the holes on the bottom so gravity can assist.
• Fix the Vagus Nerve so it doesn't have to go all the way down through the aorta then back up to the neck.
Click to expand...
I wonder what such a human would look like...
 
Bassoe

Bassoe

Well-known member
ATP said:
More durable,yes - but mainly capable of clear thinking no matter what happened.Many battles was lost, because soldiers either panicked or reacted in stupid way.
Click to expand...
The problem with mental augmentations from the perspective of any leader is, how long until the new superintelligences decide they could do a better job leading society than you? Even if they're objectively right, you're still out of power.
 
A

ATP

Well-known member
Bassoe said:
The problem with mental augmentations from the perspective of any leader is, how long until the new superintelligences decide they could do a better job leading society than you? Even if they're objectively right, you're still out of power.
Click to expand...

I read once novel when problem was easy solved/they used robots,but problem is the same/ their robots was turned into solipsyzm philosopher which belived that only they exist,so they have no reason to overthrown humans,becouse for them they do not existed.Why they still fought for them...i forget that part.
 
DocSolarisReich

DocSolarisReich

Esoteric Spaceman
ATP said:
More durable,yes - but mainly capable of clear thinking no matter what happened.Many battles was lost,becouse soldiers either panicked or reacted in stupid way.
Click to expand...

The most superhuman quality is the ability to stay calm and not panic when it matters. The most astounding trait of the Astartes is 'They Shall Know No Fear'. Automatically rallying after failed leadership checks is yuuuuge.
 
A

AnimalNoodles

Well-known member
The Moties had it right..Motie warriors had the standard package..superfast, strong, tough, incredible senses, perfect aim. But Motie warriors could also build and adapt thier own weapons on the spot, required little training, bred very quickly and were genetically programmed to be perfectly loyal to thier Masters.
 
A

ATP

Well-known member
AnimalNoodles said:
The Moties had it right..Motie warriors had the standard package..superfast, strong, tough, incredible senses, perfect aim. But Motie warriors could also build and adapt thier own weapons on the spot, required little training, bred very quickly and were genetically programmed to be perfectly loyal to thier Masters.
Click to expand...

I once read some Evangelion/Cthultu mythos crossover,when Evas fought young gods,and in this scenario Mi-Go,who also fought them,take humans and created so called "nazzadi" - stronger etc + supposed to be loyal./some of them actually start fighting for humans/
Pitch Black with red eyes.and liked raw meat.
 
M

Marduk

Well-known member
Moderator
Staff Member
ATP said:
I once read some Evangelion/Cthultu mythos crossover,when Evas fought young gods,and in this scenario Mi-Go,who also fought them,take humans and created so called "nazzadi" - stronger etc + supposed to be loyal./some of them actually start fighting for humans/
Pitch Black with red eyes.and liked raw meat.
Click to expand...
That's from a PnP RPG set in a variation of Mythos.
en.wikipedia.org

CthulhuTech - Wikipedia

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