I would consider supers to be rare.

I'd also think no one person could create a mass of super soldiers. Going by comic book history, one just doesn't seem to make a group of super soldiers for instance, without killing hundreds more. Usually anyways. Maybe a group of what amounts to steroided up soldiers.

I'm sure some governments would force their supers into their military.

I'm sure all governments and militaries would LOVE to have supers in their ranks.

The non supers in charge would all of course fear the supers.

The problem with Supers in a military context is ... they're all "one offs" for whatever it is that they can do.
If there's one thing that military planners (and bookkeepers) like is being able to train, sustain and field large numbers of people who can do a collection of things really well, rather than resorting to the use of the "Omega Weapon" type of supersoldier. It's the old adage that Quantity Has A Quality All Of Its Own.

Of course, the joke is that the complete opposite occurs in the flying branches of the military, such that the optimal aircraft would be so superlative that only ONE of the aircraft ever need to be built, and all of the flying services would "share" use of it, and you'd only need the one pilot to fly it, and ... I think you can see where that it going (and it's not a good place).

When it comes to military history, there have simply been way too many times when the "superweapons" of the day wound up being more trouble than they were worth, such that in a net analysis of resource consumption those weapons cost more than the benefit that they produced. Mildly famous examples of this kind of thing are various tanks of the 30s and 40s (Sherman, Panzer, T-34) where simply having the "highest performing" tank wasn't always the best for the nation fielding it. There were rail cannons built that could fire shells so stupidly enormous that they needed over 1000 men to operate and which consumed so many logistical resources to fire that if the nation fielding the "supergun" had instead just put those resources into fielding (boring) regular artillery they would have achieved a greater offensive effect for the same materials and manpower spent.

Pretty much one of the FEW times in military history that a weapon was so superlative as to be worth the effort that went into producing it was ... August 6 and 9 of 1945 when a couple of Japanese cities got visited by a lone B-29 bomber and went POOF for some reason.

What all of this means is that in the context of military applications, Supers may be good at doing some very specific things, but that makes them specialists (with "special skills"), rather than something you can train thousands of other people to do just as easily/well.

Yeah, that machine gun is really NICE and it clears the space in front of it very effectively on the Western Front in 1917 ... but if you've only got ONE of them ... for the entire Western Front ... that really isn't something you can build an entire army around. A Special Ops unit, maybe, but not an entire formation of troops.

The problem with supers in the military is that they would eventually end up taking over the world.

(The below is assuming a decently high-powered super-world, and not one where powers are little more than deformities with side-benefits.)

Logistically, why build a thousand tanks when you could have one guy who's immune to tanks throw your enemy's tanks at each other? Why spend millions on a high-tech jet planes and training pilots when you could have one flying dude strafe a city with his eye lasers?

The answer is that your enemy also has people who can do that, and you're going to have to rely on your regular forces while your guy and their guy fight. You're going to have to sit back and hope your guy comes out on top. And if he doesn't, you're SOL.

So now it becomes essential -- VITAL to your country's survival -- that you always have powerful supers on hand. A super arms race. And you have to play, because your opponent definitely is.

So you need to find supers and press them into service, regardless of what they want. Or else you lose, and probably die.

You can try indoctrinating them. Telling them the survival of The United Whatever of Wherever is in their hands. Calling them heroes, saviors. It'll work, maybe. You'll get some willing volunteers, some loyalists.

And you'll get some malcontents. People who don't give a crap about the country or its survival. And you'll need those too. Because if you make it known that it's okay not to join the military, then you're leaving the fate of your country in the hands of people who make recruitment ads. And if you do that, you might as well just surrender. So you'll send your loyalists to control them.

Except now you're essentially enslaving supers to fight and die for you. Aside from all of the moral and ethical failings, the biggest issue is one of pragmatism: You can't. Not for long, anyway. They're more powerful than you, more versatile than any human forces you could throw at them. You can try anything -- force them into line with stronger supers, take their families hostage, etc. -- but it's unstable and unsustainable. Eventually, a powerful enough super (or group of supers) is going to object, and you won't be able to stop it. Best case scenario, your loyal supers don't realize during all the chaos that they have all the power in the relationship and you spend all the time you're not fighting the other guys putting down rebellions. More likely you'll get the worst case scenario, and your loyalists turn on you. For The Good Of The Country. Congratulations. You've been usurped by supers. And if you're the first country, it won't be long until others follow.

So the best thing to do is write a treaty. Call it the NO SUPERS IN WAR EVER Act. Have all the nice, normal human governments around the world sign it. Get all the strongest supers you can find to sign it. They'll do it, in the name of Peace and Not Being Overthrown and Such. And if anyone so much as looks sideways at the possibility of breaking it, EVERYONE comes down on them like the fist of God. An arms agreement.

Of course, all these supers need something to do. Otherwise, they'll get bored and start robbing banks or something. I mean, do you really think the guy who can bench press the entire gym and everything in it is going to be content with getting a day job and scratching out a living within the rules of society? Phenomenal cosmic powers don't mesh well with itty-bitty living spaces.

Man, if only we could offer them a way to be super famous and wealthy and idolized. Preferably something that advances the common good. Something that deals with the inevitable instances of super crime that will pop up. If only...

And that's why making superheroes is actually the most pragmatic way to deal with supers.

There a real-world analog we can look at. Weaponized A.I. or at the least automatic robotic weapons. There are places where they are already in use the border between North and South Korea has weapons if a scanner spots a target will open fire. Already there are moves to ban A.I. based weapons or even advance computer operated weapons. Of course, the fear is not that the enemy will have A.I. weapons it's what will happen if the A.I. goes rogue (Skynet). The same fear will be in a Superpowered world. It's not a fear of Russa having a "Superman" It's what we need to do if our "Superman" goes "General Zod"?

Like I said the biggest issue I see of Super's in the army is no Super is standard. You might have one nation with a "Superman" level of power fighting another nation with a force of a thousand but one is more powerful than "Spiderman".

In my last supers campaign, metahumans had some impact on WW II, which is about when the true "empowered" humans started to appear publicly. The Seoul Treaty of 1947 formalized the UN approach that metas were not permitted in military or direct police activities: the threat of China bringing it its new generation of supers into the conflict gave everyone the willies on par with public dissemination of nuclear weapons plans.

Seschat wrote:

In my last supers campaign, metahumans had some impact on WW II, which is about when the true "empowered" humans started to appear publicly. The Seoul Treaty of 1947 formalized the UN approach that metas were not permitted in military or direct police activities: the threat of China bringing it its new generation of supers into the conflict gave everyone the willies on par with public dissemination of nuclear weapons plans.

In super hero comics, however, it's generally not China that has the abundance of super humans. Generally North America.

I believe, even China with it's mass of people, tends to have less supers in the comics.

Is it just a metric of 1% of the population across the board?

Then, what is the power levels?

1% of China's population may have the numbers, but if all their powers are "Create tattoos on people" they're not going to do much against the country with one lone superhero who is basically Superman.

Which is why governments are always having super soldier programs so they can win the metahuman arms race.

Which in fiction they usually only have a handful of sucesses.

Well, the rarity of supers, their average power level, and their maximum power level, would be crucial in determining the extent to which militaries used them. Social considerations also would be important. All of these factors vary greatly from universe to universe.

It's something worth considering for lore purposes in CoT. Is the city officially considered to contain every character that's ever created (the maximalist scenario)? Or only those that might appear together at one time in a Hami-like engagement, and their foes (the synoptic scenario)? Or just one's supergroup, personal allies, and personal foes (the minimalist scenario)?

In terms of average power level, if most so-called supers are weak, then the military impact would be limited. If most are on the level of Lanterns, then militaries would live in fear.

The single most powerful super is also relevant. Someone like Superman or Phoenix could defeat most conventional armies singlehandedly.

In terms of social interaction with the military, it's safe to say that there would be no single way of handling supers. Some countries would conscript them. Some would euthanize them. Some would try to mass-produce them. In some countries, the supers would coup the government and rule. Most countries probably would have a confusing mix of programs that work at cross-purposes to one another.

In terms of tactics, the thing about teams of true supers is that they can go where they want, and beat any opposition that is less mobile. The implication is that, during a war between powers with super-soldiers, there would be no safe place, and effectively no front line. If one side finds out where the other side's leadership is hiding, then there would be at least one super-team inbound to that location ASAP. Wars would be much shorter, but possibly no less destructive given the power of the combatants.

With respect to mass-producing supers, most supers universes have established that it's not practical. This is done for narrative reasons; mass-produced supers would quickly mean an end of humanity, at least in the sense that everyone would become super, and most writers don't know what to do with such a scenario.

The best argument against mass-producing supers actually comes from the magical literature, by which I mean stuff written by people who claim to be magicians in real life, and offer to teach you real magical powers - people like Aleister Crowley. In short, the ability to achieve super-human abilities requires super-human strength of character, willpower, determination, creativity, imagination, and so forth. By analogy, imagine someone born with the best throwing arm in baseball, but who lacks the determination to practice, despite the best coaching. Not major league material, right? Same with eyes beams, earth control, etc.

Social expectations can affect the outcome. People often suppose a flat percentage of the population as supers. With this model, countries having the largest population would be expected to field the most supers. However, supers as envisioned in most established universes also come from a background that embraces and encourages individual achievement. In a society where people are encouraged, nay, EXPECTED to fit in, tall poppy syndrome would be likely. People there would be more likely to ignore, deny, hide, or under-develop natural super-human abilities.

The campaign in question assumed meta-potential was at the 1/100,000 persons range. And yeah, a lot of those, particularly out of the Chinese agrarian sector, were pretty low powered. But the impact on Korean war combat of a guy with EC: Increased Density (3/3 armor, 2d6 HA, 2 lvls switchable Density Increase) is pretty damn scary for those 20 points, even at the 150 point "professional soldier" level. (4th/5th edition Hero system numbers used).

Even if China couldn't field the numbers suggested by the statistics, South Korea's allies couldn't assume that, and China was quite happy to take the free propaganda at a historical point that they [u]didn't[/u] have state of the art military hardware. Keep in mind, some of this was deliberately written to allow a more "mainstream" comic book environment to run the campaign in.

And yet none seem to have been able to do that with Tony's tech. :p

Or possibly the finances to make them.

They can't afford to give the soldiers the best armor now, how would they pay to give them all an iron man suit. :p

I guess the Marvel US Government is too busy spending ludicrous amounts of money making giant robots that hunt down mutants.

desviper wrote:

Project_Hero wrote:

I guess the Marvel US Government is too busy spending ludicrous amounts of money making giant robots that hunt down mutants.

No kidding! Sentinels are so resource intensive for how easy cyclops alone can dispatch one

Right? They probably cost like millions or billions of dollars each!

The mutant recognition software would alone likely be enough as most mutants can probably be apprehended with some tranquilizers and a couple of goons. For any that doesn't work on would likely make scrap of a Sentinel.

Unless their mutant power is resistance to tranquilizers and goons, I guess.

Just going to chime in - we have up-to-date information on the recruitment process due to one or more persons involved with development attempting to join their nation's military in an officer role, up to and including current medical standards. So we have a general idea to what kind of superpowers the military is likely to decline - it's all about universality of service, so if you happen to be an amphibian, you're only likely going to be of interest to the navy.

Well it's like this I think. Superhero settings have been around forever and they know how to reconstruct after someone deconstructs them, so more modern comic books reconstruct the tropes that capepunk deconstructs. For example buy making mad science and magic things that exist one can say that the process of learning to become a wizard or a mad scientist is very hard. Like so hard that in the time that it would take one person to get a doctorate in engeneering, biology and medicine, it would take the same man that much time to be an okay mad scientist or wizard, which tends to be the reason why, unless you're a well known and powerful superhero like Tony Stark or Doctor Strange, a mad scientist or a wizard is almost always super old. Now because of this while wizards and mad scientists are few and far between, the most powerful of them are capable of discovering things in the universe that people at that time couldn't, and because of that and what these people can figure out, that in turn can fuel regular science, meaning that humanity always has access to technology that would normally come a little later, and it's why superhero settings in the modern day have near future technology, like in the Spiderman game where even Peter Parker can afford a phone that let's each of the callers see each other even when he's phoning King Pin in jail. So as it stands, the military in this world could take on lower level superheroes, and for higher tier supers a warmage or the head mad scientist could try to make something that would take that super down. There would only be a few of these devices or magic items at most but they could still deal a lot of damage to that higher level super for sure, and as for the sentinels, those things where made by one mad scientist, he can easily make them out of junk and old cars.