Weapon of coice for glassing a homeworld?

[Gandalph]

I agree with Baron that this needs to be changed. Because of the planetary destructive power of normal weapons, I don't even bother to research planetary weapons. I either take the planet with troops, or glass it with APB's.

[Krsqk]

Why not create a weapon-platform-only emissive armor with a decently high emissive level? It could start out around, say, 65 or 75 at level 1, and work its way up to around 400-500 at level 6. At max tech, normal mount PN, and heavy or massive mount big guns, like WMGs or TKPs, could still damage planets, but even massive APBs/PPBs couldn't, or would have to be at point-blank range, which can be fatal while fighting planets.

[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.