A thought on killing planets

[Spoo]

Is it really realistic that a light cruiser armed with a few uranium cannons could kill the entire population of a planet? Perhaps a fleet of Dreadnaughts with planetary napalm could, but with the exception of such large scale weapons, it should require an actual invasion with troops to conquer a planet. I think that only certain weapons should be able to kill population, but that the damage dealt by these weapons should be increased.

[Harkonis]

I agree. I think that any weapon could potentially take out defenses, but to destroy the colony, that's why they have a planetary assault tech right?

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Harkonis HellRazor

[Emperor Zodd]

Each weapon should have a different damage rating for each target type. Intead of one rating for all available target types

We probably won't see this feature if at all until SE5.

[This message has been edited by Emperor Zodd (edited 20 January 2001).]

[Emperor Zodd]

I also changed the damage points to kill 1 population from 10 to 20 in the settings file.

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Spoo:
Is it really realistic that a light cruiser armed with a few uranium cannons could kill the entire population of a planet? Perhaps a fleet of Dreadnaughts with planetary napalm could, but with the exception of such large scale weapons, it should require an actual invasion with troops to conquer a planet. I think that only certain weapons should be able to kill population, but that the damage dealt by these weapons should be increased.

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Yes, this issue has been raised in the beta forums. As I suggested there, and in a thread here now scrolled away, you could solve this problem by making a weapon power/damage type that cancels the "damage points to kill population" ratio and then cranking the ratio up. Then only weapons with the special power could do much damage to population and facilities. Then you'd have to have special ships just for reducing planets, much as in real life you need special ships to make an amphibious assault or bombard a beach in preparation for an assault. This would go a long way towards solving the problems with the AI being too easy to conquer in the early game, too... IF the AI itself could deal with the change and learn to build & use "planetary bombardment ships".

[Jubala]

Many of us want the target priority weapon platforms added so we can bLast the platforms but not the population or facilities. If that is added, would it then not be possible to change many weapons to not be able to fire at planets? That way many weapons could be made ineffective against population but still be useful against platforms. I wonder if that would work? If a weapon can not target planets but the ship it is on has targeting orders for weapon platforms would be able to fire at the platform? I suppose that depends on how the weapon platform targeting is implemented.