Captain Ginyu tracks down The Great Elder

[In Brightest Day]

Rather than Freeza dealing with the situation personally, he let's Captain Ginyu take care of it for him. The scenario plays out the same with him being confronted by Nail. Meanwhile, Freeza continues to sit around his Spaceship.

How exactly would this slight change of events impact the rest of the Namek arc?

[Gonstead]

Jeice returns from the ass-whooping Goku gave to the Ginyu Force, which probably leads to Frieza killing him in an outrage.

There are then two likely options.

1. Frieza stays put and everyone comes to him. They hold him off in his first state but when he transforms, he kicks all of their asses, Goku included.

2. Frieza decides that he'll just sort out the mess himself and heads of to where Jeice came from. At this point, everyone is literally putting cow manure to shame. Goku forcibly tells Krillan and Gohan to go and find the ragon Balls to make the wish and to get going immediately. They leave while Frieza arrives. Frieza is shocked at the resemblance Goku has to Bardock but brushes it off quickly.

Events play out as they do normally except with Goku now being a part of the fight from the beginning.

Just how I see things playing out

[Kingdom Heartless]

I'm not sure even Goku would go near the spaceship if Freeza was hanging around, let alone Kuririn and the others. Either Goku would grab Gohan, Kuririn and Bulma (maybe even ask Vegeta if he wants to be dropped off anywhere on the way, only to be met with an obnoxious reply) and get away from Namek, or put them on the spaceship and send them home, so he could stay and attempt to get the Dragon Balls on his own.

With the latter, Goku ends up going up against Freeza, possibly with Vegeta fighting alongside him. Vegeta is dispatched fairly quickly while Freeza is in his first form, meanwhile Goku manages to push him to his second form before getting the living hell beaten out of him and discarded. But due to Freeza's lack of Ki sensing ability and the fact that Goku was more resilient than he could anticipate, Goku is left barely alive, and Freeza goes elsewhere, maybe just back to his ship, after the battle bad slowly moved them elsewhere. Somehow Dende comes across Goku and heals him. Now Goku is around his level when he fought Freeza in the series, so he challenges him again and for a while things play out like in the series. Unfortunately, while Goku is gathering energy for the Genki Dama, Piccolo isn't there to come to his rescue, and Goku is killed by Freeza's point blank death beam. At this point, Freeza doesn't feel the need to go out of his way to destroy Earth, since Goku is dead and never got to hurt him much to begin with.

That's not taking into account whatever the heck Ginyu gets up to. Maybe he gets back in between rounds one and two of Goku vs. Freeza, but is stopped by Goku before he can switch bodies with him. If that's the case, after killing Goku, By this stage, the Great Elder is long dead, so without the Dragon Balls around, Freeza leaves Namek and turns it to space dust (along with Dende. He doesn't go to Earth because there's no reason for him to.

Trunks is never born, Doctor Gero and #19 show up and start wrecking everything. Gohan and Kuririn are the closest thing Earth has to warriors now, so there's not much they can do, probably even if Gohan was able to transform. Gero ends up in control of the world.

Pilaf drops in and asks for a slice only to receive an eye beam to the skull.

His reign lasts until Freeza eventually makes it to Earth, at which point Freeza wipes him out along with any remaining humans left. Earth is put up on Freeza's eBay account.

A happy ending all around.

[Pantalones]

I dunno about how Freeza vs. Gero and #19 would turn out. I figure that #19 and #20/Gero together would be able to handle Freeza even if one of them individually wouldn't be enough, especially after they've drained him or absorbed some of his blasts (because there's no way he's going to expect ki attacks to not work the first few times he tries them, he'd probably assume they managed to block his first attack or something because he just didn't use a big enough blast the first time... and give them even more energy.) Also, he probably wouldn't still be in his final/true form when he came to Earth, and I doubt either of the androids is weak enough to lose to any form short of that one even if they don't quite match up to his 100% power.

Plus, there's still #17 and #18 (and maybe #16) left deactivated, so if Freeza is too much for the first two, Gero would probably run off and activate them.

[Fox666]

Jeice returns from the ass-whooping Goku gave to the Ginyu Force, which probably leads to Freeza killing him in an outrage.

Huh, going by the manga I don't think Freeza would be the kind of killing his subordinates out of nowhere. While he didn't cared much when his weaker subordinates were killed, he kinda of complained that Dodoria, Zarbon or the Ginyu Tokusentai died.

Anyway, I guess without the power-up Goku received before fighting Freeza they would be screwed. With a Kaio-ken times 20 Goku should be able to put down Freeza's first transformation but that's as far as he can do.

[Kingdom Heartless]

Since Kuririn and Gohan aren't there to lead Vegeta to the Dragon Balls here, I would guess that Vegeta would start with intercepting Jeice, and ultimately killing him before he got to Freeza.

[Pantalones]

Anyway, I guess without the power-up Goku received before fighting Freeza they would be screwed. With a Kaio-ken times 20 Goku should be able to put down Freeza's first transformation but that's as far as he can do.

Hmm... 90,000 with a Kaio-Ken x20 would put him at 1,800,000. I'd think that'd be enough to completely wipe out Freeza's first form and beat up on his second (since his second was supposed to only be around 1 million to start with, and Piccolo still managed to keep up with him even after he powered up within the form.) Of course, he can't really use 20x Kaio-Ken for all that long, so if he didn't manage to kill Freeza in his first or second form (or took too long with the second and started weakening from Kaio-Ken overuse) they'd be screwed.

[dario03]

Could he even use KKx20 when he had a base of 90,000? It seemed to put a lot of stress on him when his base was 3,000,000.

[Kingdom Heartless]

Good question. If I had to guess, I'd say his ability to do the higher levels of Kaio-ken has more to do with the training he went through than his physical strength.

[Fox666]

Could he even use KKx20 when he had a base of 90,000? It seemed to put a lot of stress on him when his base was 3,000,000.

I guess, when his ship landed Goku said he could use a Kaio-ken times 10, so I guess 20 times would have the same effect as it was with Freeza.

[Xyex]

Yeah, I don't think his max with the Kaioken was power related but training related. He'd improved his durability in the 100x gravity training which was what let him use the higher level, more straining, Kaioken. So even when he first landed he'd still been able to do the x20.

A well placed Kaioken x20 +Kamehameha vs. 2nd or 3rd Form Freeza would kill him. Otherwise, Goku would end up dead. Either way, though, the Androids would obliterate everyone later.