Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?

[Gozra]

It SHOULD be easy to kill a planet from space. I bet 10 of our big nukes now properly used could start this planets destruction (Hitting a Plate edge maybe). Even a simple kinetic weapon used from space is terrbly destructive. I think the problem could be better solve by halving the firepower of point defense weapons which would allow near earth orbit weapons to become more effective. This would help the defense in many cases. Nothing a well designed Fleet could not overcome but it would swing things to the defender enough that Glassing would be tougher.

[Baron Munchausen]

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 ]

[Ragnarok]

I bed to differ. Not to go off topic here but I just wanted to make this point. In a recent report 5 years ago or so. They said that there were enough nukes on the plenet to destroy it 6 times over. Specking of the population and buildings. So really there is enough nuke power on this planet to destroy it. I mean look at what happened in Japan with the atomic bombs that were dropped. And I'm pretty sure the US has a few more of those some place. So more the enough power to do it.

Edit: typos...

[ June 27, 2002, 03:58: Message edited by: Ragnarok ]

[Baron Munchausen]

You are misunderstanding. Enough nukes to destroy 'our world' means enough to destroy human civilization. The earth's mass is measured in scientific notation. Quote:

5.972 sextillion metric tons, or 5,972 followed by 18 zeros.

Remembering that each decimal place represents a power of 10, you can see that the mass of the earth is really beyond our genuine comprehension. Current theory about the origin of the moon is that an object the size of Mars collided with the early earth and tore a big hole in it. Most of the material eventually fell back but some stayed in orbit and coalesced into the moon. The amount of energy represented by that collision is quite a few decimal places, too. Our entire nuclear/fusion arsenal is not even a signifigant fraction of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs let alone that moon-generating collision. We can stir up a lot of dirt but we cannot possibly 'destroy' the earth. Period.

[ June 27, 2002, 04:13: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Krsqk]

It SHOULD be easy to kill a planet from space.

I disagree, IMHO. There should be a difference between weapons which can destroy ships/bases with even thousands of ADUs, and weapons which can destroy planetary surfaces, with what? billions? trillions? of ADUs.

AFA the destroy-the-world-with-nukes thing, I think we could destroy the eco-system easily; but if we could sustain life for near-indefinite periods in space conditions, we could probably also sustain life near-indefinitely in shelters underground.

[Phoenix-D]

"There should be a difference between weapons which can destroy ships/bases with even thousands of ADUs, and weapons which can destroy planetary surfaces, with what? billions? trillions? of ADUs."

Why? These ships are heavily armored and shielded; planetary populations are *not*. The weapons in SE4 aren't exactly all featherweights either. CSM- nuclear warhead. Presumable a LARGE nuclear warhead. Anti-Proton Beam- When antimatter hits matter, e=mc^2; the beam might not even reach the ground, but it's going to do nasty things even before it gets there. Wave Motion Gun- directed fusion bomb essentially. Take all the power of a fusion bomb. Now point it at ONE point instead of speading out.

We aren't talking about destroying the planet, just killing off the population that lives there. Weapons that are designed to take out large warships will certainly take out cities. The biggest issue would be killing more spread out populations.

Phoenix-D

[Puke]

ah, i have not seen a question like this since the older days of the forum. when we had topics like 'whats the worst atrocity you have perpitrated?'

im sure the sci-fi canon (not cannon) would be an effective anti-planet device. if you have the time, you could always blow up the local star, or park a ship with techtonic bombs in orbit for a turn.

if the planet is well defended and you need a sucker punch, you could always send in planetary napalm. or you could send in a plague ship. even if there are strong defenses, one hit will do the job. if you send 2 or 3 escorts with plague bombs, one should get through. you will have to wait a while, but odds are his happyness will go to heck, and it will buy you time to come back with real weapons and take care of his defenses.

how do break the defenses depend on what they are. ships? bases? weapons plats?

[Taera]

About the topic: Best weapon to destroy the planetary population/defense/structures is of course the PN. I used to mount Large PN on 1/3 of my fleet when sieging planets defended with large WPs with PPB. With correct planning i barely lost a single ship (though repair cruisers were realy handy).

About the weapons that can/cannot damage planets, i dont like the fact that everything can target planets, but the fact is that the "small beam" measured in our huge kT ships wouldnt be so small when charged to ground, perharps giving a meson bLaster a coverage of an average city. More high-tech weapons are out of the question - i can see how Anti-Matter torpedo damages planets.

As for destroying the world, an interesting theory never heard that one.

[ June 27, 2002, 06:30: Message edited by: Taera ]

[geoschmo]

Yes, if we are striving for accuracy then as Baron says there needs to be some sort of different ratios for planetary bombardment.

Facilities and weapon platforms shoud be fairly eacy to destroy from orbit, even with standard weapons, as they are stationary, fairly large targets. Troops, not so easy, but still not all that difficult given a little time, or a lot of ships.

Orbital bombardment, even standard weapons, should degrade planetary conditions somewhat. Although I am not sure I understand the logic for haveing the resource levels of a planet drop as it does now when a colony is glassed.

Population should be fairly easy to kill off at first, but should get steadily more diffucult as the population drops. The Last million or so should be almost impossible to kill from orbit, even with planetary weapons.

The result of all this would be that heavy bombardment would result not in a glassing of a world, but a wiping out of all the infrasturture and defenses and a significant amount of the population. And degrade the conditions so that the survivors have a hard time repopulating it.

Of course this only applies for atmosphere correct planets. If it's a domed colony it should be fairly easy to completely erradicate the population.

Geoschmo

[Taera]

That would be fairly difficult to implicate in the game IMO.