>>27678399Sounds a bit like Harry Turtledove's World War series. The aliens unmanned probe found only knights in rusty armor, so they sent a small force to conquer. When they got to Earth, we were in the middle of WW2.
They were surprised as all hell, since they only utilize new technology when it is nearly perfected and fully understood, whereas we start mucking around with whatever we can think of.
There's also the fact that they stopped weapons development ENTIRELY when they stopped fighting amongst themselves.
They've conquered 2 different species using that same "outdated" weaponry, basically cold war era tanks, jets, choppers, and nukes.
Which is a problem for us at first, but the Nazis shelled the alien starships, using one of their massive railroad guns, and they managed to destroy the alien nuke storage ship.
This leads to a lot of conventional warfare.
So, now we have the exploits of Otto Skorzeny, who traded a rucksack full of prepared ground Ginger for... an entire tank. He then proceeds to drive the stolen alien tank to the nearest group of German armor.
Oh yeah, the aliens also get high on ginger, the way we do on amphetamines.
So, we end up with better technology than them, as well as nearly unlimited sapient resources. Then, their Colony Fleet shows up.
Completely unarmed.
Friction ensues as the entitled colonists are pretty mad that there are still free "Big Uglies" and even worse, they are still actively resisting in most parts of the world.
Fun times now, and we're working on our space capabilites. Cue a few years of dicking around in space, America getting basically a free reign.
America's spaceship is revealed, and starts its journey for the alien homeworld.
This is the greatest fight of all, where diplomats do their damndest to get humanity recognized as equals. The aliens see no reason to do so, until a human FTL vessel pops up and slides into orbit. At that point basically shat their pants for them and took our equality by superiority.