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[Nmaro Makari]

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.

[Ken]

Titan doomsday weapons.  Look up "Reschard V".

[Nmaro Makari]

Well that was quick

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.

[Leopold Caine]

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.

[Saede Riordan]

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.

[Esna Pitoojee]

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.

[Gesakaarin]

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.

[Saede Riordan]

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.

[Ken]

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.

[Saede Riordan]

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.

[Ghost Hunter]

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.

[Silas Vitalia]

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

[Nmaro Makari]

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][/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

[Mithfindel]

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.

[Leopold Caine]

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.