> From: Marc Alexandrovich Volovic [email removed]
> Subject: (2652) YACOPI (Yet Another Comment On Planetary Invasions)
>
> I assume the following - Steve Kellog suggested a possible way to
> obliterate (or, at the very least, heavily damage) any planet by a single
> Type S scout. This is a tactic employable by any starfaring nation. The
> only possibility is to have it mutually proscribed, the same going for
> planetary bombardment to destruction. Otherwise - better not speak, eh?
There is also a psycological angle that shouldn't be forgotten. People tend
to remember things like that for a long long time. A case in point would be the
Sack of Gashikan(sp?) which still affects human-vargr relations in the 1120's.
And the total destruction of a high-pop planet would probably breed hatred on
an incredible scale from not only the allies of the ex-planet, but from
everyone that could ever imagine that the bombing side could be in opposition
to them.
I think that this is the reason why the Zhodanis never simply nuked Efate and
Jewell into oblivision and why the Imperial Navy went to all the trouble of
conquering Terra and not simply dump a few multi-megaton displacement asteroids
on it.
If the Zhodanis had done it the 5FW wouldn't have ended in a cease-fire, the
population of the Imperium ("Efate yesterday, *Your* planet tomorrow?") would
have demanded that the Consulate be crushed totally and mercilessly (I doubt
that the Imperium could pull that off, but that is beside the point).
And if you think that the Solomanis are bad enough already, imagine them
fueled by the destruction of Terra.
In either case, I'd give Capitol five years before some terrorists, Zhodani
or Solomani, manage to used the Type S caper on it, or dump some virulent
bioweapon on it, or something equally nasty, and the violence would escalate
from there...
- - -bertil-
- - --
"How about black and yellow striped with neon-green highlights?" - The PCs tries
to camouflage their ship.