Population in SEIV

[Rollo]

Star Jack, don't use the load population command. Instead, park the transport over the planet and use the transfer window (hotkey T) to pick up the oxy breather.

Rollo

[StarJack]

Rollo, Thank You!

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
CSMs are nukes.

Skulky has a point; some of the weapons in SE4 would do serious damage to a planet, perhaps to the point of rendering it unlivable even if you *didn't* kill everyone off.

Phoenix-D

Yeah, we've been requesting bombardment to do some damage to the planet itself for a long time. At the very least it ought to reduce conditions. But that would make the 'Radiation Bomb' less useful as a specialty weapon, so MM is not likely to do it.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
CSMs are nukes.

Skuly has a point; some of the weapons in SE4 would do serious damage to a planet, perhaps to the point of rendering it unlivable even if you *didn't* kill everyone off.

Phoenix-D

CSM's are supposed to be nukes but their damage and ammo levels don't really reflect that.

Also, consider the opposite end of the scale - depleted uranium cannon. Good luck killing anyone with a depleted uranium cannon from outside the atmosphere of a planet. Even inside the atmosphere, good luck hitting targets, and even if you hit with every shot, you'll never have enough ammo on a space ship to kill even one million people with them.

PvK

[capnq]

B wouldn't by chance be the Roman numeral for Million would it?

Nope. M = 1000 is the largest "digit" the Romans used. For inconveniently large numbers, they drew a line over the number to indicate "1000 times". So
_
M = 1,000,000

[Phoenix-D]

"Good luck killing anyone with a depleted uranium cannon from outside the atmosphere of a planet."

Depends on how fast said cannon shot is moving. a hunk of whatever moving at .9C is going to do a lot of damage.. The DUC is probably pretty slow though.

Phoenix-D

[PvK]

Ya I hardly think every empire would start with a relativistic cannon by default. Also, if you have a shell travelling at .9C, would it help if it were uranium? Maybe it would trigger a fission reaction on impact...

In any case, my point is that anti-ship weapons would not I think generally be effective as tools of genocide from space. It doesn't really fit my imagination to have single shots eliminating millions of civillians at once, the way they currently do.

If the ship weapons are supposed to be as strong or stronger than thermonuclear bombs, then how does any ship ever survive even a single hit?

I can appreciate that some sci-fi weapons could do massive damage to planetary populations, but I don't think all of them would, and many I don't think would be capable of causing casualties in the millions at all, though the same weapons might still be quite good at neutralizing weapons platforms...

PvK

[Phoenix-D]

"If the ship weapons are supposed to be as strong or stronger than thermonuclear bombs, then how does any ship ever survive even a single hit?"

Really really strong armor? Remember that these ships can do other weird things as well- like fly through the same sector as the center of a black hole and come out unscathed (as long as they don't stop)

Phoenix-D

[PvK]

No... moving across a black hole obviously does not represent surviving the event horizon - it just means flying dangerously near, without entering. It's an abstract representation of 3D space, momentum, etc.

PvK

[Phoenix-D]

Which is why I said same sector and not *through* it.

Phoenix-D