Adrian Hurt:
>The first thing an invader would probably do is try to find all the
>planet's power sources using his neutrino sensors, and give them all
>some free mesons. If the invader doesn't have both the technology
>and the big force needed to do this, he can probably forget the
>invasion anyway, because the defender's SDB force will deal with him
>before he gets near the planet. Without power, those deep site meson
>guns are just holes in the ground.
You seem to be ignoring a few key details here:
1) Those power plants are probably protected by meson screens.
So it is easier to bandy this about in taverns than to actually
do it.
2) When you are close enough to "give them all some free mesons",
they are close enough to return the favour. And their planet
probably has more than your fleet.
3) Assuming you could destroy ALL the power generation installations
on the planet, what would be the point of conquering it?
Industries with no power are scrap metal, a TL15 civilization
with no power will be TL0 in a few hours...
And while a good-sized battleship produces more power than the
USA consumes, history indicates that power use per capita
increases exponentially as technology improves. If we assume
that a TL15 society uses ten time the power per capita that we
do (which is probably insufficient, given the power requirements
for grav), then an average High Pop TL15 world needs 150TW to
keep going, which you will find very hard to replace before the
world is reduced to savagery (late tomorrow?).
---Steve