Re: Planet Defence
In reply to #4567 Planet Defence by Bruce Pihlamae
[email removed] writes: > . Adrian Hurt points out that the first thing that an invader would do is try > . to find and destroy all the defenders power plants. > > Surely, if the defender has a decent number of meson silos then the attacker > won't get a lot of opportunity to hit the power plants unless the defender > is significantly out gunned/shipped/siloed. Also, I would have made each > silo self sufficient with its own intrinsic power plant. Buried deep > enough you wouldn't have much to detect, would you? Power plants produce neutrinos. Neutrinos go through just about anything, except neutrino sensors. (How _they_ work is a subject for another discussion. :-) So a ship with a decent neutrino sensor will find those power plants without needing spies. Note that one of the factors which determines how hard it is to hit a target is the target's agility. What is the agility of the attacking ship? What is the agility of the ground-based power plant? Which one is going to get hit first? > Wouldn't it be easier to pre-scout a planet with spies and such and then > after wiping the system clean of defending ships you simply drop nukes on > each military base via THOR delivery systems (or missiles) and then ask > them to surrender. Surely the fleet which is doing the dropping has the same problem as the fleet looking for power plants, i.e. the planet is firing back? The main problem with dropping nukes is that the planet probably also has a good supply of nuclear dampers. > . Steve points out that a 5,000 Km diameter meson screen would require 2E19 MW > . and a 1,200 Km diameter fusion plant. > > What about an anti-matter power plant? Note that the attacking ships also have meson screens. And that power plant is going to show up on the attacker's sensors rather nicely. Also note that meson screens are not impenetrable. Finally, guess what happens to anything in the vicinity of that power plant if it is the anti-matter type and it takes a direct hit from anything. Steve Higginbotham [email removed] writes: > > 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. But the fleet can evade, i.e. it has Agility, which counts against the planet's attacks. The planet, on the other hand, is a sitting target. > 3) Assuming you could destroy ALL the power generation installations > on the planet, what would be the point of conquering it? Looting, slavery, grabbing the land. Or bring a few portable power supplies, alias battleships, and let them keep the place running until the planet's own power supplies are repaired or replaced. (That should be a nice deterrent to the planet's guns, by the way - "Sorry, you've just destroyed the ships which would have saved your society. :-) - -- "Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott Adrian Hurt | JANET: [email removed] UUCP: ..!uknet!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian | ARPA: [email removed]