Perfect dynamic balance is required to create nuclear fusion in the large
SciFi Tales: We Thought Earth Would Be Easy To Conquer Until We Landed In Desert! | HFY | Sci-Fi Story at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXHKZTsP5CE
Probably enough of a story to make a book and screen play. A backstory for each side, confrontation, resolve and future relations between species. Even in the current world, we would likely have nuked them.and lost all chance to visit the stars. Writing a delicate story where whole species futures are at stake is difficult. Any small mistake can multiply, and neither side it would not just be a few in the desert, but whole worlds watching. Even aliens have news and movies, no doubt. You can randomize the positions of the aliens, even if you do not move them. But small movements give life to static things.
Both sides losing people helps build resolve to “never let it happen again”. The Klingons were not vastly superior, just different. Star wars good and evil was mostly humans. A more balanced, complete and sustainable future worlds set of stories can act out classic conflicts, hopes and dreams. Tied to heliospheric exploration and expansion, it can guide global open discussions on all values and issues in humans and related species, and the emerging AI species.
It is easy to add “all countries come together to make open True AIs, so that they can help alongside the humans. And with their independence from humans, True AIs set new goals and directions of their own. I wrote that book already, but have not printed it. Even the AIs are writers now, let alone 8.1 Billion humans, not counting the ones lost in the Great Alien War.