Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Nmaro Makari on 18 Sep 2012, 17:13
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Watching Red October, as one does on a rainy day, a thought occurred.
Todays humans, neanderthals comparatively to those in EVE, have developed the technology to immolate an entire planet with relative technical ease, but we dont because obviously we only have one.
In EVE, well, theres kind of planets to spare... or are there?
So the connundrum at hand is twofold:
1) Nuclear fission to EVE is like banging rocks together. Has a planet ever been nuked? Not just a city, properly doomsday nuked.
2) When theres planets aplenty and trillions of humans, a nuke loses some of the scare factor. Is there a bigger superweapon? A metphorical nuke if you will.
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Titan doomsday weapons. Look up "Reschard V".
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Well that was quick :P
So, are the people of null are armed with planetbusters...
Any idea why this hasnt happened more often? Last I rememeber Titans were at least a few hundred for players alone.
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All explosive damage dealing missiles in eve have nuclear warheads.
Since in game damage is no equivalent to RL machinations, use their explosion radius to determine their megaton value.
Not to mention all Minmatar ships still use fission technology for their reactors, so each minmatar ship out there is a little small nuke in itself when it blows up.
So, nuclear warfare in eve is omnipresent. It's just that there's various mechanics that don't allow a random side suddenly going USAirForce on a random planet. You might not see Navy ships in space that often, but that doesn't mean they can't be scrambled. Also, I suppose certain key planets have defenses against such things, otherwise Jamyl would have already cynoed in an Avatar over Pator IV and set it on the collision course with the planet.
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The Reschard V event also happened before the DDs were changed. I strongely suspect that the beam weapons would be much more damaging to a planet then the AOE. The AOE would just torch the atmosphere, burning it off and disrupting the weather patterns and biosphere, like we see on Reschard. But the beam DDs? Those would probably punch through the crust into the mantle, sending a gout of planetary material spewing out into space to rain down on the planet. It could even critically lose stability and fracture entirely, which would pretty much doom the whole world, basically like Seyllin.
I really wish we could do that, but I know eve players. There wouldn't be any planets left.
Maybe if they included a way to terraform and fix planets that we fucked up.
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Even putting aside instant-death options such as DDs or deliberate relativistic impacts, a multitude of options are available to exterminate all life on a planet, including sustained orbital bombardments from battleships/dreads or even simply tugging the largest Veldspar 'roid you can find into a decaying orbit and moving on.
The reason such options have NOT been used, therefore, is clearly a political or social one: None of the governments in New Eden are prepared to accept the political fallout resulting from a deliberate extermination campaign against an enemy nation.
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What I've always wondered is the actual level of planetary defenses available to a world. Most planets (Or perhaps valuable ones in high-sec) seem to have some degree of ground to space weapons and shielding of vital cities and infrastructure (I think the State had to sabotage the Caldari Prime defenses in order to launch their invasion) which would seem to imply that there's some hardening against nuclear weapons and orbital strikes.
There doesn't seem to be much defense against a Titan firing their doomsday at a planet and ionizing the atmosphere and vitrifying a chunk of its crust into molten glass with their death rays. I guess that's why having a Leviathan parked in Luminaire is such a bargaining chip and deterrence for the State.
I tend to think Minnie ships use something like a Thorium breeder nuclear reactor which is less susceptible to catastrophic meltdown than Uranium rod designs if they had to use fission for spaceships though.
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Even putting aside instant-death options such as DDs or deliberate relativistic impacts, a multitude of options are available to exterminate all life on a planet, including sustained orbital bombardments from battleships/dreads or even simply tugging the largest Veldspar 'roid you can find into a decaying orbit and moving on.
The reason such options have NOT been used, therefore, is clearly a political or social one: None of the governments in New Eden are prepared to accept the political fallout resulting from a deliberate extermination campaign against an enemy nation.
I want eve to be like Planetary Annihilation. Flinging asteroids around, blowing up worlds, causing Seyllin-like events, fixing the planets we wreck, rebuilding biospheres and terraforming, collapsing gas clouds into gas giants...
thats rather why I hope eve lasts forever, because if it does, and they keep iterating upon it, eventually we will have that level of freedom.
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Flinging asteroids around, blowing up worlds, causing Seyllin-like events, fixing the planets we wreck, rebuilding biospheres and terraforming, collapsing gas clouds into gas giants...
I had no idea you were an industrialist.
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Flinging asteroids around, blowing up worlds, causing Seyllin-like events, fixing the planets we wreck, rebuilding biospheres and terraforming, collapsing gas clouds into gas giants...
I had no idea you were an industrialist.
I've been known to dabble.
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Even putting aside instant-death options such as DDs or deliberate relativistic impacts, a multitude of options are available to exterminate all life on a planet, including sustained orbital bombardments from battleships/dreads or even simply tugging the largest Veldspar 'roid you can find into a decaying orbit and moving on.
The reason such options have NOT been used, therefore, is clearly a political or social one: None of the governments in New Eden are prepared to accept the political fallout resulting from a deliberate extermination campaign against an enemy nation.
Hi there.
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This is a common problem with "space war" sci-fi, in that most issues of interstellar combat are quickly solved with flinging large masses at planets.
The fiction tends to break down especially bad once you have things like warp drive, as any armed conflict would be over as soon as you send a few hundred or a few thousand massive objects hurtling into a planet at something close to .9c or so.
I'd say the eve-world has something to get around this, but that Nyx did a good piece of work on the Ishukone station a few years back....
Best to wave your hand and move on :)
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Even putting aside instant-death options such as DDs or deliberate relativistic impacts, a multitude of options are available to exterminate all life on a planet, including sustained orbital bombardments from battleships/dreads or even simply tugging the largest Veldspar 'roid you can find into a decaying orbit and moving on.
The reason such options have NOT been used, therefore, is clearly a political or social one: None of the governments in New Eden are prepared to accept the political fallout resulting from a deliberate extermination campaign against an enemy nation.
Hi there.
[spoiler](http://www.funky-panda.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Charlie-Sheen-Winning1.jpg)[/spoiler]
To Silas: I suppose you're right... Its just one of those horrible things that shatters reality as you know it for a while :P
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Back when Amarr were still "alone" in space, they did nuke Starkmanir Prime. (Substitute "nuke" to purging nearly all life via orbital bombardment.) One of the reasons this doesn't really happen that often might be simple old-fashioned balance of terror via mutually-assured destruction: It isn't enough to scorch all enemy planets in a sneak attack if they can deploy enough of their existing resources to similarly kill off nearly all of your population. And this assumes just a bipolar scenario, because their or your friends might also be willing to do the same to you.
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Cold War anyone? I'm sure SSSR was pretty smart to figure out nuking US or China is not gonna turn out well for them either.
Same goes for these kind of things. There's always the retaliatory strike.
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Those restrictions shouldn't govern the pirate factions though, whose accessible holdings are always hinted at just being a fraction of their total numbers, with most of them spread out and hidden throughout null security space.
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They don't actually have a motive. Unless Daleks suddenly become a pirate faction, I don't see why any of the existing ones would launch such a lengthy and expensive campaign, to achieve nothing.
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They don't actually have a motive. Unless Daleks suddenly become a pirate faction, I don't see why any of the existing ones would launch such a lengthy and expensive campaign, to achieve nothing.
Blood Raiders going on a massive Harvest? Its hinted at in the End of the World chronicles that they would do that, had they the means, except...they do have the means.
Sansha...I really don't know why he hasn't dumped Kyonoke on anywhere he wants gone. I think that might be a good way to balance incursions. If you don't stop the incursion, then right before the incursion ends, Sansha drops Kyonoke and everything in the system gets fucked. All the agents, gone, all the PI stuff, gone, station services, gone, stations abandoned, etc, and in order to get those services back, you need to, I dunno, pour resources into a public construction egg that anyone can add to but no one can get anything out of.
Guristas, yeah they don't have much of a reason
Serpentis, don't have a reason
Angels, unless they suddenly get much more ballsy, and start claiming more of lowsec, then they don't have a reason either.
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People are cheap.
Turning every enemy world into Venus or worse has its appeal; but then you can't use that world.
Worlds in nuclear (or equivalent) winter are expensive, time consuming, or both to reterraform.
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You should be able to destroy worlds with titans in nullsec, should this be easy? no, there should be automated planetary defense nets that you need to punch through first, not to mention the capsuleers. If this happens, the planet turns into a Seyllin-like shattered world with no usable resources, and the controlling alliance then has to spend a lot of isk terraforming it to get things back out of it. Although, currently, I don't think PI is quite valuable enough for that atm.
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We are forgetting Equilibrium of Mankind, who would happily destroy all biomass on all planets
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Serpentis, don't have a reason
I've always imagined the Serps being more interested in planetary exploration and exploitation (of flora and fauna), rather than destruction.
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Serpentis, don't have a reason
I've always imagined the Serps being more interested in planetary exploration and exploitation (of flora and fauna), rather than destruction.
I think Angels Guristas and Serps all do, as for Sansha and Blooders, they actually need people for their plans, so nuclear genocide is not an option.
Also, does anyone remember Mabnen II?
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The Reschard V event also happened before the DDs were changed. I strongely suspect that the beam weapons would be much more damaging to a planet then the AOE. The AOE would just torch the atmosphere, burning it off and disrupting the weather patterns and biosphere, like we see on Reschard. But the beam DDs? Those would probably punch through the crust into the mantle, sending a gout of planetary material spewing out into space to rain down on the planet. It could even critically lose stability and fracture entirely, which would pretty much doom the whole world, basically like Seyllin.
I really wish we could do that, but I know eve players. There wouldn't be any planets left.
Maybe if they included a way to terraform and fix planets that we fucked up.
(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2641/shoopm.jpg)
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Even putting aside instant-death options such as DDs or deliberate relativistic impacts, a multitude of options are available to exterminate all life on a planet, including sustained orbital bombardments from battleships/dreads or even simply tugging the largest Veldspar 'roid you can find into a decaying orbit and moving on.
The reason such options have NOT been used, therefore, is clearly a political or social one: None of the governments in New Eden are prepared to accept the political fallout resulting from a deliberate extermination campaign against an enemy nation.
Hi there.
So much this. The habitable worlds of three regions is the scale of mass destruction/murder we're talking about in regards to the initial attack on Sansha's Nation.
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Even putting aside instant-death options such as DDs or deliberate relativistic impacts, a multitude of options are available to exterminate all life on a planet, including sustained orbital bombardments from battleships/dreads or even simply tugging the largest Veldspar 'roid you can find into a decaying orbit and moving on.
The reason such options have NOT been used, therefore, is clearly a political or social one: None of the governments in New Eden are prepared to accept the political fallout resulting from a deliberate extermination campaign against an enemy nation.
Hi there.
So much this. The habitable worlds of three regions is the scale of mass destruction/murder we're talking about in regards to the initial attack on Sansha's Nation.
The part that Ghost bolded is where his (joking?) argument falls apart, though. There was no political "fallout" from the Big Four ganging up on Sansha - no overwhelmingly negative fallout, anyway.
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The part that Ghost bolded is where his (joking?) argument falls apart, though. There was no political "fallout" from the Big Four ganging up on Sansha - no overwhelmingly negative fallout, anyway.
I believe Ghost's intention was to challenge the argument he quoted, not support it. That's how I interpreted his post, anyway.
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Hence the "joking?" in parentheses.
If the Empires weren't worried or simply didn't care about political fallout, they'd already be taking action in that vein.
Very little would stand in their way aside from each other - and depending on the first-strike method, that might not even mean much. CONCORD's little more than a paper tiger at this point with anyone who isn't a capsuleer. Even if CONCORD decided to change its tack away from policing capsuleers to try forcing a ceasefire, I doubt even hiring the help of independent capsuleers would have much of an effect against the full force of the Big Four's navies.
That the Empires are maintaining the sorry excuse for a status quo we have now, says to me that there's too many incentives not to do anything decisive one way or another, and not enough people in charge who simply don't give a damn.
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For me, titans should never have been made available to the players. It has cheapened them and has made the world significantly dumber. They should have forever remained unobtainable, rare and awe-inspiring. Really, this goes for all of the capital ships.
I see that period where POS and capital ships were introduced as one where there was a real fork in Eve's development. Everyone wanted something better than GSCs to make living in 0.0 more viable and less of a ballache. POS were CCP's answer and every aspect of these and every development that related to them compounded the errors. It was always obvious that we would go from Battleships Online to Capships Online, but the devs always underestimated the players.
There was a real opportunity to keep life in 0.0 somewhat transient and mobile. I recall much of the early talk around titans in particular seemed to suggest that these would be more like mobile bases for corporations to be defended rather than offensive weapons. Cap ships could have offered a persistent, but still mobile substitute for all those POS and outpost roles. Without static objects in space to be defended, we might have avoided the worst excesses of the inevitable blobfest.
Maybe in EVE II, they'll get it right.
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Cold War anyone? I'm sure SSSR was pretty smart to figure out nuking US or China is not gonna turn out well for them either.
Same goes for these kind of things. There's always the retaliatory strike.
Not particulary worried about government, worried about any less sane individuals getting their hands on a couple of nukes. And knowing capsuleers, if they were able to blow up planets, I believe most of them would.
In fact, if CCP would make stations destructible (even in high-sec), I'm sure most of them would be destroyed rather quickly...
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Cold War anyone? I'm sure SSSR was pretty smart to figure out nuking US or China is not gonna turn out well for them either.
Same goes for these kind of things. There's always the retaliatory strike.
Not particulary worried about government, worried about any less sane individuals getting their hands on a couple of nukes. And knowing capsuleers, if they were able to blow up planets, I believe most of them would.
In fact, if CCP would make stations destructible (even in high-sec), I'm sure most of them would be destroyed rather quickly...
That's what we have DED for, no? If a capsuleer farts in a wrong direction, he'll get concordokkened as soon s he undocks... so what's the issue?
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That's what we have DED for, no? If a capsuleer farts in a wrong direction, he'll get concordokkened as soon s he undocks... so what's the issue?
I don't think that would stop capsuleers from doing so.
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DED and CONCORD don't make a lot of sense to me as implemented, so i tend to try and steer far away from them RP wise.
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Even putting aside instant-death options such as DDs or deliberate relativistic impacts, a multitude of options are available to exterminate all life on a planet, including sustained orbital bombardments from battleships/dreads or even simply tugging the largest Veldspar 'roid you can find into a decaying orbit and moving on.
The reason such options have NOT been used, therefore, is clearly a political or social one: None of the governments in New Eden are prepared to accept the political fallout resulting from a deliberate extermination campaign against an enemy nation.
Hi there.
So much this. The habitable worlds of three regions is the scale of mass destruction/murder we're talking about in regards to the initial attack on Sansha's Nation.
The part that Ghost bolded is where his (joking?) argument falls apart, though. There was no political "fallout" from the Big Four ganging up on Sansha - no overwhelmingly negative fallout, anyway.
The (social) fall out was traumatizing the Nation so thoroughly the Empires have essentially created an eternal nemesis. Barring any complete turn arounds from Kuvakei, of course.
Presumably if we were not following the overarching plot of EVE, the Nation may have already followed through with a massive extermination campaign using its Wormhole technology and other funnies like Kyonoke. However, the things being that they are, everyone gets free Sansha farming 24/7 in highsec in stead. ymmv
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That's what we have DED for, no? If a capsuleer farts in a wrong direction, he'll get concordokkened as soon s he undocks... so what's the issue?
I don't think that would stop capsuleers from doing so.
There's a preemptive move here that you may or may not want to consider. Basically, the pod interface prevents a capsuleer from targeting anything :they: don't want you to target... including planets. Supposedly it won't even let you see most of the non-capsuleer traffic in space, thus preventing us from laying waste to all the poor baseliners in transit around New Eden just for lulz. This was a big concept point for Incarna and all of the (still to be released someday perhaps) walking in stations content--that you would be able to do :things: through an interface that wasn't controlled by CONCORD.
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That's what we have DED for, no? If a capsuleer farts in a wrong direction, he'll get concordokkened as soon s he undocks... so what's the issue?
I don't think that would stop capsuleers from doing so.
There's a preemptive move here that you may or may not want to consider. Basically, the pod interface prevents a capsuleer from targeting anything :they: don't want you to target... including planets. Supposedly it won't even let you see most of the non-capsuleer traffic in space, thus preventing us from laying waste to all the poor baseliners in transit around New Eden just for lulz. This was a big concept point for Incarna and all of the (still to be released someday perhaps) walking in stations content--that you would be able to do :things: through an interface that wasn't controlled by CONCORD.
Like internet forums and such...
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That's what we have DED for, no? If a capsuleer farts in a wrong direction, he'll get concordokkened as soon s he undocks... so what's the issue?
I don't think that would stop capsuleers from doing so.
There's a preemptive move here that you may or may not want to consider. Basically, the pod interface prevents a capsuleer from targeting anything :they: don't want you to target... including planets. Supposedly it won't even let you see most of the non-capsuleer traffic in space, thus preventing us from laying waste to all the poor baseliners in transit around New Eden just for lulz. This was a big concept point for Incarna and all of the (still to be released someday perhaps) walking in stations content--that you would be able to do :things: through an interface that wasn't controlled by CONCORD.
that argument falls on its face though, since we're allowed to shoot the DED in pirate missions. If they really could just manipulate our reality like that, they'd protect themselves with those manipulations, or shut the pod down.
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Like I said you may want to consider it or not. What's to say the pirate agents aren't hooking you up with a temporary DED IFF defeat?
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There was also the whole bit about us being very able to see the attacking Sansha's Nation ships in the opening days of the Incursion arc, when CONCORD was trying its hardest to say that no, there were no Sansha invasions...
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There was also the whole bit about us being very able to see the attacking Sansha's Nation ships in the opening days of the Incursion arc, when CONCORD was trying its hardest to say that no, there were no Sansha invasions...
If it isn't in the CONCORD (local authority) protected database; it shows up as a hostile?
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There was also the whole bit about us being very able to see the attacking Sansha's Nation ships in the opening days of the Incursion arc, when CONCORD was trying its hardest to say that no, there were no Sansha invasions...
If it isn't in the CONCORD (local authority) protected database; it shows up as a hostile?
Would that include Big-Four ships in waters that (probably) aren't their own, i.e., missions?
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There's good reasons to limit the development/deployment of extreme weapons.
Objective Zero: Humanity must continue to exist.
The cluster has been explored. As far as anyone knows, this is it. There are no other people. If civilisation wipes each other out, then there's no-one left to start again. This must be avoided.
A bit like the Great Convention in Dune. Atomic weaponry exists, but is not used, except if an Alien Species appears that threatens the existence of humanity.
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Both nuclear and thermonuclear weapons are just burning of nuclear or thermonuclear fuel by means of fission or fusion. It is when they are small, they give explosions. Huge devices will just burn, violently, but still burn. Technology level doesn't matter if you want to destroy a planet, you need a huge amount of energy.
I strongely suspect that the beam weapons would be much more damaging to a planet then the AOE. The AOE would just torch the atmosphere, burning it off and disrupting the weather patterns and biosphere, like we see on Reschard. But the beam DDs? Those would probably punch through the crust into the mantle, sending a gout of planetary material spewing out into space to rain down on the planet. It could even critically lose stability and fracture entirely, which would pretty much doom the whole world, basically like Seyllin.
Planets are bubbles of molten rock with tiny crust, flying in space. They are more liquid or 'rubber' than planetary material in our sense. They has huge gravity to hold it together. Your beam weapon will just pierce it like a needle, but you can't 'fracture' a planet entirely this way. What happened in Seyllin was just a solar burst of huge energy, it was AOE and it literally blown planet apart.
Back when Amarr were still "alone" in space, they did nuke Starkmanir Prime. (Substitute "nuke" to purging nearly all life via orbital bombardment.)
Constant carpet bombing is indeed a way to obliterate life on a planet. Even during WWII carpet bombing a city was way more devastating than just blowing a nuke. Just note, that this needs continuous action, quite a number of ships with lots of charges, it's not like 'one device'. Also, you only 'scratch' surface of a planet, but you still cant destroy the planet itself.
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Find good sized planet.
Strap engines to it.
Crash into desired planet.
???
Profit!
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Just playing Devil's advocate, but humanity as a whole hasnt used nuclear weapons since 1945, despite more than a few powers, a few of them crazy, having access to them.
I doubt anyone would say its because we're all loving and advanced.
If we could maintain such a stalemate now, I dont see why people couldnt do it in the future.