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So besides Aliens, Avatar, Starship Troopers, Edge of Tomorrow,Space, Above and Beyond, Battlestar Galactica, and nominally Star Wars, what other movies and TV shows are there that have revolved around a futuristic military? More Imperial Guardish than Space Marine. Thanks!

Dune? I don't know, you've named practically all of them already.

Uh. Halo?

Serenity/ Firefly (kinda).
Futurama (If you count Zap Brannigan etc.)
Avatar
Stargate (maybe not futuristic enough)

Code Geass, pretty much ever mecha ever made. Robocop. The Forever War.

Oooh, Legend of Galactic Heroes!

 j31c3n wrote:
Oooh, Legend of Galactic Heroes!

Oooh thanks for this one.....Looks interesting.

Might also like 08th MS Team. It's part of the Gundam franchise but it deals with a group of grunts piloting standard-issue mobile suits, instead of hotshot bishonen piloting super-advanced mega prototypes.

Cool I'll look into it!

I'm trying to make a (non IG) Marine army using Colonial Marines as the scout infantry, with Edge of Tomorrow exosuits as space marines, Starship Trooper drop pods, and Edge of Tomorrow gunships/transports. I figured I'd try to get a little of everything into it.

There will be an Inquisitor unit, maybe I can do do Browncoats for that. Not sure how I will fit in SAaB.

Book sources:

Heinlein's Starship Troopers
Lensmen series
John Ringo's Posleen Wars series
Armour
Hammer's Slammers, and anything else by David Drake
Pretty much anything by Eric Flint
David Webber's Honor Harrington series
The Fleet anthology
BattleTech and MechWarrior

That's a few hundred books to put on your reading list!

SJ

Tanya Huff's Confederation series, as well as the Damned trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.

Both depict a setting where most aliens are physically unimposing and nonviolent, where humans are not the baseline, but rather at the physical extreme, with a marked advantage in martial prowess (and by comparison, an extremely bloodthirsty mindset).

The Damned is the best scifi I ever read.

From Anime, we get:

Appleseed, Gundress, and Ghost in the Shell
Anything related to Gundam
Son of Fang Dugrom
Crusher Joe
Macross
VOTOM
Gasaraki
Full Metal Panic
MD Geist
Five Star Stories, Metal Head
Knights of Sydonia
Vision of Escaflowne
Patlabor

SJ

It's not TV/movies/novels, but the X-COM games seem like they'd be a good source for IG ideas if you want more "futuristic" and less "historical" Guard.
And it might even give inspiration for Transports and Marine allies!

The most militarily realistic sci-fi I've seen is probably Battlestar Galactica. Warfare itself is based entirely around fleet/aerial warfare, tactical nukes and electronic warfare dominate engagements, etc.. Really the only thing missing was drones....But it's understandable why the Colonies didnt use those anymore.

The least militarily realistic sci-fi I've seen is 40k, but that's okay. It's also my favorite sci-fi setting

I didn't see anyone mention Star Blazers 2199. I haven't actually seen much of it, but I know it is futuristic military (not sure if it's very applicable to 40k minis or not).
Someone mentioned John Ringo and mentioned one of his novel series; I might suggest his Troy Rising series (Live Free or Die, Citadel, The Hot Gate). Sort of futuristic military, and damn good books!
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 has some futuristic stuff in it. Perhaps not futuristic enough, though.
Older military sci fi might include War World and the Berserker Wars stories.

Troy series is John Ringo. He's great with military sci-fi.

SJ

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 has some futuristic stuff in it. Perhaps not futuristic enough, though.

Considering most Imperial tanks are based off WW1/2 things, that's probably okay.

Not exactly sci-fi, but play CoD: World at War on Veteran difficulty to feel like a Guardsman.

Buck Rogers

Babylon 5 had a few infantry engagements in it as well.

Janes, the defacto source on military hardware and tactics from around the world publishes a report once a year about the future of warfare. It's VERY interesting stuff and highly technical in nature. It's also at the unclassified level, so all the information is available to the public. The stuff they have written about sounds like it's straight out of Science Fiction, but it's closer to the truth then a lot of people know. Check it out!

Sci-Fi combat is really broken down into "Space Opera" and "Hard Sci-fi". Examples: Star Wars/Star Trek are "Space Opera" where technology is borderline magic and defies all we know about the physical universe. It just works like magic. "Hard Sci-fi" is like the new Battlestar Galactica, or a better example is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. BSG was borderline hard Sci-Fi, but the Honor Harington series up to about book 7-10 was a fantastic romp through relativistic space battles and tactics, but Mr. Weber moved away from what made the series so good (interstellar warfare with space ships) to politics, religion, and personal relationships (I really don't care what the maid or butler thinks about the interstellar foreign policy made by the main characters or why that's important to the overall plot line... LOL).

More inspiration: Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and the Peripheral by William Gibson gives some fantastic insight on cyberwarfare, and how it could effect the "real" battlefield. To a lesser extant, Tom Clancy and Ghost Recon, and even his series "Net Force" (not the cheesy TV show).

This kind of stuff fascinates me, and I could go on for pages about "modern warfare" and project those ideas far into the future. VERY kewl stuff!

Spaceballs the movie

ah, correct thread this time. . . .
try www.baenebooks.com for free ccess to some of Flint, Ringo, & Weber's books. on the lighter side, consider the web comics 'schlock mercenary' & 'exterminatus now'

 Flinty wrote:
Buck Rogers

Babylon 5 had a few infantry engagements in it as well.

The military episodes of B5 were almost all naval in nature, but they were some of the best of the show.

Just want to shamelessly post one of my favorite bullet porn mangas: Red Eyes

 King Pariah wrote:
Just want to shamelessly post one of my favorite bullet porn mangas: Red Eyes

Yeah was reading it 2-3 years ago, but then i lost track of it and couldn't come back on the name, is it still ongoin or is it finished?

There is also Nobunaga the Fool, where it mixes Historical figures from 14-19Century with Mechas.

 Slayer le boucher wrote:

 King Pariah wrote:
Just want to shamelessly post one of my favorite bullet porn mangas: Red Eyes

Yeah was reading it 2-3 years ago, but then i lost track of it and couldn't come back on the name, is it still ongoin or is it finished?

There is also Nobunaga the Fool, where it mixes Historical figures from 14-19Century with Mechas.

Still ongoing I believe... such a slow update on it that I lost track of it for a little bit until this thread suddenly got me remembering that I might have some serious catching up to do... which was unfounded as there were only a couple chapters released since I last read it