Emissive Armor is 'all or nothing'. It would only aggravate the problem by forcing you to use incredibly powerful weapons, like Planetary Napalm, in order to make any attack at all -- even a capture attempt. What we need is to reduce the need for gigantic numbers to create balance.
No, our nukes could not come anywhere close to destroying the planet. There have been many discussions of this on the Master of Orion BBs. If every single nuke ever made could be piled in one place a detonated together they would not be a fraction as powerful as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If nukes totalling three times as many as have ever been made were piled in one place on the moon (which has about 1/4 the mass of the earth) and set off together they would barely alter its orbit. (Take THAT Space: 1999!
) We cannot destroy the earth or even seriously damage it, only ruin the very delicate balance that makes our lives possible.
[ June 27, 2002, 03:52: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]