I think I remember the Vrill were already engaged in a conflict of their own against other spacefaring species/organizations. So I expect the Vrill intervening in form of chirurgic operations to try controlling VK sources and not really interfering with the ongoing war on Earth. After all, the bigger the outer menace, the higher the chances of a temporary armistice between the combatants to join forces against the Vrill. Although joint operations would be kind of strange as every part would be willing to keep its own tech and keep trying to steal another's in preparation of a restart on their mutual conflicts.

I for one can't see the SSU VK related forces willingly and openly collaborating with the Blutkreuz or viceversa, and I am not naive enough nor would the Allies command (or anyone else for that matter) to give access to former and maybe again enemies to both my technology, information or tactics beyond what they can deduce from battle reports or casualties. A simple study/recon by the Vrill would produce such conclusions so their policy should be one of low intensity and focused small actions. Given this policy neither Earth faction would have any interest in helping another but just defending its own resources.

So it would become more of a three sided conflict with a fourth unexpected guest, neither wished nor unwelcome. After securing all its resources, one faction can wait for a Vrill attack on another's resources to pile on and try to enact some later advantage of the hopefully more or less exhausted combatants and win an easier victory. That, if something else, could drive to more of a stalemate in the "normal" battlefront as every faction redirects funds and materiel to its elite VK powered forces and their own support assets. And maybe too to an economy of attack and a boost of navy and air forces?

An interesting scenario after all.

Adding to my last post, by early '43, when VK tech starts to be widely seen, the nazis had already comitted their share of atrocities so the Soviets had already built up in hate. From Stalingrad on, with the nazis replaced by the Blutkreuz, the germans won't go on with the camps, freeing a huge contribution in labor, but the hate war in the East will be already in action. If anything it would cool but no prospect of collaboration here, at least in a strategical sense. In tactical terms, however... It may depend on the time , place and, specially, commander. SSU won't risk judgement of dubious loyalty by cooperating with enemies, and obvious possible profiteering from the options previously stated would logically limit that. Note that Stalin would ally but the Red troops did not fight in cooperation with Americans nor British but on their own fronts. And leaders can be smart but not necessarily altruistic.

And we can't forget that both Allies and Axis already know of the destruciveness of VK augmented nuclears so bombing of a (remote?) Vrill installation wouldn't bring ethical concerns. Finally, even if two or all factions agree to help each other, you can't put more troops in one place that the ones that fit in. So no need for more people when we can bring our own to defend ourselves. And we can't forget that the high command will in noway be collaborative to the idea of forgetting past grudges and lose terrain in any level in favour of a guessed common good (just finalled reading Otomo's Mother Sarah and it could not be more of an example for that). Either way, I don't see any benefit in collaboration but a lot in reinforcing own position, even at the cost of tactical initiative, and hoping to take profit of another's failing to do so.

If it were the present era, I could accept Earth factions being foolish enough to not be willing to work together, but this is the WW2 era, where America was the world's arsenal, and supplied lend lease equipment of all types and technologies to all of out allies, including the Soviets.

We didn't care about ideologies. Everyone was interested in eliminating the Axis menace.

It's in viewing the DUST world through those concepts that I see Vrill attacks as something that would force peace talks.

The Axis are not the death camp utilizing monsters of history, they are simple a belligerent. Their biggest attrocities occured after Stalingrad with Hitler in charge, so how many have occured and been discovered in the DUST world are far less than happened in our world. They also know better the threat the Vrill pose, and that they may be here for revenge. While the other powers don't know that, it would certainly be an extra impetus to drive the Axis to the negotiating table. They don't know what the Vrill got in the fateful message, but they could fear a large target from a very dangerous third faction painted directly on them.

The Allies already are working together to stop the menace of the Axis, and have the newer menace of the SSU to contend with, as well. They have a history of joining forces to combat dangerous enemies, and only a fool would think aliens attacking in unknown numbers were not a greater threat than any previously faced.

The SSU has the most paranoid leader in the world, and have also been willing to 'ally with the Devil' to gain advantages. How would you expect a leader like Stalin to react to an unknown, but obviously technologically superior foe? He helped start the Cold War because of his paranoia.

The Vrill are alreay at war, and so may not be willing to expend much force for Earth's resources, but they also could be coming for revenge on the race that had the temerity to attack their people. They may also feel a short term expenditure of a heavy force to crush all Earth opposition and allow free access to the VK on Earth would be the best solution. It was noted the Vrill did not expect humanity to advance as fast as they have, which could be percieved as another reason to hit hard before humans are a greater threat.

Small actions that left no Earth survivors, and showed no additional advanced Vrill technology, would keep the Earth's forces working in the dark and assuming Vrill attacks were due to other Earth forces.

Anything more would leave all of the Earth's leadership knowing they faced an alien threat, with the Axis very keen to gain protection from a possible revenge force.

The Axis are still promulgating the war specifically to unite the Earth against an expected Vrill threat. Once the Vrill arrive, they would have to shift to political means to try and do the same thing, as further hostilities would be counterproductive to their intended goal. The arrival of the Vrill would be their worst nightmare, but also an extra incentive to open political channels to do what they felt needed to be done in whatever other form they could as quickly as they could.

Ok, so yeah... This is fiction and based on a comic, and in comics there were lots of threats that would have united the world together, but didn't... So yeah, I still want Vrill.

Gimp said:

Sorry to dissapoint you but in 1943 Axis are already monsters of history. Concentration camps like Auschwitz existed already in 1940, not to mention things that happened before the 1939 like cristal night. And we do forget Japaneese crimes in chine, like practicing hand to hand combat on live civilians... Also note that ppl now in charge of germany were also important ppl in NAZI germany. Same evil, other persons, removing nazis just removes partly the problem that some ppl see in playing the NKWD. SSU is mad at allies for peace talks with germans, and hell i don't belive even a full scale invasion of Vrill would convince Stalin and other from central bureau to ally with germans. I would more expect all 3 block try to use vrill invasion against their enemies.

I'm not disappointed. I'm thinking about the world of that time.

We know there had already been attrocites committed before Operation Barbarosa in 1941, but there is a big difference between attrocities being committed, people knowing about it, and people in power caring about it.

The West found out very late, and Stalin was already hiding his own attrocites against the Soviet people, as well as not knowing everything the Nazis had done.

While the Blutkreuz contained some of the same people, and the same type of people, as the Nazis, the removal of the Nazis would also create a 'get of of jail free' card. By blaming the attrocities on them, and showing how they had eliminated them with suggestions that those actions had been a relevant reason they did, they become an arm of justice when it gets spun by anyone that would want to do so to allow alliances against an alien threat.

Governments have been whitewashing allies problems for centuries to make the alliances palatable for their people, and there was no internet to allow promulgation of contrary facts for the general populace to see.

'Hitler and his cronies did terrible things, but the German people took action to cleanse the world of their stain. They did not release the full details of what they had found for fear of public outrage impacting German soldiers that were innocent of the Nazi attrocities.' That would be a simple spin many would be comfortable with, as little lies can make many people willing to swallow big lies.

Considering that there are many people today that still don't know everything the Japanese did in the orient, and that one becomes even easier to gloss over.

The Vrill are an unknown and dangerous threat. They come from another planet with technology we only barely understand, and are attacking as what could easily, especially in the current climate, be considered an invasion. Even without a planned invasion, there had already been multiple invasions that had not been expected, so governments would certainly be more inclined to expect one.

Even if the Vrill came in with open discussion, and tried to allay fears of invasion, look at Japan in the orient, and Germany, Russis and Italy in Europe, and the countries at war had already seen peaceful promises proven to be false too many times to want to be sucker punched again.

If the abortive message sent to the Vrill somehow included all of the information about working with the Germans, and if the Vrill decided they were willing to share that information, and if the Germans were stupid enough to not be able to come up with a good counter spin suggesting it was Vrill propaganda to divide and conquer Earth, and if the Vrill concentrated on Axis forces to support their allegations; the other factions might let the Vrill beat on the Axis while they tried to learn enough to protect themselves, but those are very huge if's weighed against invasion fears.

The Germans could easily claim they had been strung along by the Vrill, and had not passed Vrill technology out because of the war already occuring. They didn't think people would believe the threat, and could use the deposed nazis as a whipping boy to further explain their slowness in bring the Vrill to light because of Hitler's propaganda ploys making the truth more doubtful.

'Look, we have alien technology from a crashed spaceship, and dead alien bodies, too. Those aliens are coming to invade us, so stop fighting this war and work with us.' Doesn't sound very convincing when the nazi's used propaganda to gain bloodless victories just a few years before. The Axis could use that as a reasonable explanation for a lot, which paired with fears of the unknown level of alien invasion threat would certainly make them appear more supportable than the aliens.

Sorry but I for one can't get along with the "revenge" issue. Vrll won't for sure want or apply for wolrd peace on Earth, and certainly won't care for which side they're fighting against, but just fight whoever happens to be in charge of the area where the resources/devices they want to retrieve are. Also, there are two things to think about. The Vrill else have both weapons terrible enough as to wipe out entire areas of territory and no qualms about using them or they have some kind of limit to the sheer destruction they can cause, be it because of their weapons not being destructive enough, the capability of their troopers high enough or their interests or ethicals overweighing the possible caused destruction.

The first case is obviously out of question. The last case being the chosen, most surely Vrill would send in their warriors to protect their VK sources, possibly in small forces just enough for that purpose. Just as we have seen for the last 8 years in Iraq, where besides a geo estrategical option to change a liability with a mostly favourable government there was an economical interest and a will to protect it. (Note I am not speculating but just acknowledging something that happened). While we must understand that Vrill mindset will be differing from human one, shared experience demonstrates both that it is not much so and that it cannot be spared some interests that humans have. Such one is the acquisition and control of resources for own sake.

In 1947 there is no one common enemy for SSu and Allies but three sides fighting each other. The (even if sudden) manifestation of a fourth contender could be welcome as a possible enemy of my enemy. While some kind of agreement could be had with one contender to have a share of Vrill resources, it would surely become so only in a subject condition. One thing I am sure of: every one of the three factions will look upon Vrill as aggressors, just as they look upon the other two...

Hmmm i just had a terrible thought . What if the Vrill won't be an army? What if they just come and let's say ally themselves with the SSu providing armor 4 troops and hvy walkers? Or that there will come sub fractions of Vrill that will join the cause among each of old fractions:D I know, sick...

That would actually be VERY cool. I have no need for new factions. But a new group that can boost the abilities of the factions I play with, that sounds very interesting!

The Vrill as raiders working with all factions is probably the best way to get them fighting everybody, without the factions uniting against them.

They could insist on independent control, which would mean Vrill only forces, but it could be interesting to see them fielded in normal factions.

The down side to that would be it would mean Vrill fighting Vrill, which wouldn't make sense with a limited current supply of Vrill. Perhaps set up a bidding system where only one side can field Vrill in a battle, but that would be rough for tournament play.

Independently controlled Vrill forces facing other Vrill could have a 'skirmish' that drove off the opposing Vrill force and left the Vrill to collect the objective. That no Vrill were lost to the winners, or false casualties quickly replaced by other Vrill transfered from other units, would leave few questions. Any allied observers at the action would have to be amongst the casualties, but they wouldn't have Vrill armor to protect them.

The Vrill might have weapons that could cause massive destruction, but those weapons could easily have limits. If they feared detection by their current opponents, they could be keeping their ammunitions stores for their big guns to use against them. Just how big those big guns are is also open to question.

We know the Vrill have interstellar travel capabilties, and can assume they at least have nuclear power, but we have no clues what else they have. We don't know if they translate their ships into a warp space for FTL travel, or have found a way to do so in our universe. They may be restricted to jump points for interstellar travel, and so have only specific routes they can travel. They may use weapons of mass destruction, or they may limit their ships to energy weapons that are more reliable and don't require ammunition stores.

We know less of Vrill culture. The may see revenge for killing one of them as appropriate, or they may praise the person who did it. We know they can use subtrefuge, as they were willing to lie overtly and through omission, but we don't know if that was because of the situation, or an accepted racial trait for every day life.

Introducing the Vrill into the game will not be a problem. Everyone already knows that their numbers will be limited because of the problems they have been experiencing in wormhole technology. That same set of problems is also what is limiting them from bringing their biggest and heaviest warships into the battle. Otherwise, with their technology they could easily destroy human civilization. If they can gather up enough of the VK resource, they might be able to reduce the amount of destabilization their wormholes are experiencing on this end and that would allow more Vrill and their “bigger” weapons of war into our realm. That would be bad for all human factions. However, the threat is not eminent enough for humanity to forgive and forget their grudges against each other. So, there will be no truce or possibility of a “human” coalition against the Vrill until much later if ever in the story.