Planet Killers (weapon)

[Ectoplasmic Bidet]

Why even go through the hassle of constructing an enormous rail gun? A few detachable CG-drives to get the asteroid up to FTL speeds, aim it at the planet in question, and fire it up. The CG drives could even be programmed to disconnect at a certain range and return to the attacker. The built up momentum would be more than enough to carry the projectile the last leg of the trip and its speed would make detect and interception difficult if not impossible.

[Esckey]

I'm not so sure about throwing a ordinary asteroid at a planet would work. Depends on the defenses of the planets, a couple dozen of anti-matter cruise missles could turn that asteorid into gravel.

Probably be best to slap a couple of force fields onto the asteroid, along with plnty of MDC plating on the front. Heck might as well just make one from scratch. Override the safties on the CG FTL drives(its probably programmed to slow the craft down to .001c if not to a stop) make a solid hunk of plating with a FF generator or 3 and a couple of FTL drives. Then fire it off and watch. And if it has an undefended moon in the system you could just chuck that at the planet.

Though you could get nastier, I think I remember reading that if a Gamma Ray Burst happend in our stellar neck of the woods it would strip away our atmosphere.

[Aramanthus]

I don't think the standard powers of 3G universe could accomplish that dead of moving a plantoid body that size. Unless it was say about the size of Phobos (Moon of mars). Then maybe.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Planet-busting weapons are beyond the technological abilites of anyone in the three galaxies. problem solved.

[Marrowlight]

Personally I've always liked Planet Destroyers being in a game....it adds a nice level of wth in a galactic campaign. I think we lost three home bases to planet destruction in our last high end galactic campaign.

[Marrowlight]

Lucky me, I was the Jedi, with a fabulously disproportionate Jedi OCC found on the internet by our GM.

I think I remember that Jedi....ah the old Netbook OCC compilation. What a nightmare that would probably be to read through today eh?

[Nekira Sudacne]

Planet-busting weapons are beyond the technological abilites of anyone in the three galaxies. problem solved.

That's not true, it's clearly stated in the weapon descriptions in the Phase World Sourcebook that, if I recall, both the CAF Protector and the TGE Doombringer are capable of "coring out a planetoid in a few minutes". Therefore, a fleet aligned to such a task would be able to do so.

A planetoid is smaller than a planet. and for the record, when dealing with planet sizes, the amount of force required for compelte destruction rises exponetially.

ulimtalty? if they really, really, really wanted to, they would be able to wipe out an unihabited or inhabited by low-tech people. but it'd take way, WAY more recourses than they have to spare on such a task.

[Ectoplasmic Bidet]

What about more essoteric methods of destruction? Phase World nanotech is really advanced. I'm not talking about the Nano-plague of Splicers, but instead something engineered to simply reproduce endlessly using all available materials. If they can make guns that turn into vibro-swords, this wouldn't be a stretch at all.

Seed a planet with this stuff and very shortly you get the Gray Goo scenario. Neat extortion method, also.

[sHaka]

How to destroy the Earth - A site of some interest to those would-be planet destroyers covering most of the planet erasing angles.

Method No.7 seems the most feasable. Of course it does depend on whether you are aiming for global extinction of all life (which would seem to be within the grasp of many high-tech nations) or utter obliteration which, judging from the list, would really take some doing and require access to some hefty resources.

[Greyaxe]

Personally I've always liked Planet Destroyers being in a game....it adds a nice level of wth in a galactic campaign. I think we lost three home bases to planet destruction in our last high end galactic campaign.

Good thing there are lots of planets in the 3g.

[Marrowlight]

Personally I've always liked Planet Destroyers being in a game....it adds a nice level of wth in a galactic campaign. I think we lost three home bases to planet destruction in our last high end galactic campaign.

Good thing there are lots of planets in the 3g.

Oh this wasn't a phase world game. It took place in a setting that have five galaxies in the local cluster (though only 4 were safe to go to).

[Greyaxe]

Err... Alejandro was correct to say this thread is planet killer as opposed to planet destroyer.

Most agressors would seek to kill off the dominant intelligent sentient lifeform on the planet. That way, they can have a planet to re-populate or stripmine.

Incidentally, a small MDC shielded ball of made-to-order virus, designed specifically to kill off a species, could be dropped and released in the planet's atmostphere. Wouldn't that be more efficient? Everthing else in the eco-system lives, just not that one specified for extermination. Xenocide.

Glad your not my GM Viruses EEEEWW

[cornholioprime]

Planet-busting weapons are beyond the technological abilites of anyone in the three galaxies. problem solved.

Negative.

The Artifact's primary purpose is listed as "Planet Killer..."

...even if it can't do it in one stroke.


So can the Dominators.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Planet-busting weapons are beyond the technological abilites of anyone in the three galaxies. problem solved.

Negative.

The Artifact's primary purpose is listed as "Planet Killer..."

...even if it can't do it in one stroke.


So can the Dominators.

Allright...I should have specified.

There's no Death Star-style "push button, blow up planet" type weapon. there WAS one, the infamous Black Hole Projector that nearly wiped out the Dominators. but it's lost, and none of the races have re-discovered it.

[DhAkael]

Naughty naughty!
Trying to apply "real-world" physics to a sci-fantasy setting... Silly monkeys!

[glitterboy2098]

Even if you hit the gravity well at 100,000 miles out and it dropped you out of FTL you'd still be going at .9 light speed, which at over 187,000 mph means you'd hit the planet in less than half a second at near infinite mass.

presuming that the velocity at FTl directly relates and carries over in STL.

i've always figured the CG drives FTL mode to be an Alcubierre drive, which warps space around the ship, creating virtual velocity. in otherwords, the ship is not moving relitive to the space around it, that 'bubble' of space is moving at super-luminal speeds relitive to the rest of the universe.

with that drive, once the distorsion effect is removed, the virtual velocity is lost.

so a ship that drops out of FTL because of the gravity well would wind up travelling at the velocity it had prior to engaging FTL.

so in PB terms, if you were going mach 3, then hit the FTL up to 3 ly/h, then enter a gravity well, it would drop back to mach 3.

so you can't do the FTL kinetic impactor.



now, if you switch to a G's of accelleration based system, you can use ships as impactors.
at one G of accelleration (about 10 meters per second per second), it takes about a year to reach .9C or so (after .5C, it's gets a little wonky due to relitivity....)

at 10G's, you'd be looking at only 6 months. at 100G's, only a month.

but even if you got a runner-ship up to a mere .2 or so C, you'd be looking at an impact equivelent to the one that killed the dinosaurs.

and at the 3-4 G's runner ships are likely to be able to pull, you could do that in a few days

[glitterboy2098]

Remember anything that drops out of FTL suddenly will maintain its speed at the speed of light, at least for a short while. This object will very nearly be atomised from its solid state at that kind of speed. Becoming just another set of space particles falling into the planet's atmostphere.

Is this not right?

depends on the drive. if your 'sidestepping' physics through another universe, like in star wars, probably.

if your actively altering the nature of physics in the normal universe, probably not. your velocity would alter to match the equivelent physics of the space-time continum around you. so if you create a feild that alters space to allow you to ignore reletivity, as the feild died your momentum remains, but it would drop until the feild is gone, and your travelling at the velocity that normal physics say you should be travelling for that momentum.

[glitterboy2098]

from the known game info, it looks like the FTl interdiction effect of the gravity well for a planet with a 1G surface gravity extends for 1 light second.


the sun's surface gravity is 27.9 G's. thus if you go by gravity, the interdiction feild of the sun would be about 28 light seconds.
earth is 8 light minutes away, so no effect.


but the sun also has 332,950 times the mass of earth. and mass would be a bigger influence of the gravity well than surface gravity. but since enforcing a 9.25 light hour feild would ruin the setting. you'd have to get past pluto to jump to light speed.

the 28 light second feild for the sun works better. even mercury would be free of that feild.

[Braden Campbell]

Personally I've always liked Planet Destroyers being in a game....it adds a nice level of wth in a galactic campaign. I think we lost three home bases to planet destruction in our last high end galactic campaign.

Good thing there are lots of planets in the 3g.

Yeah, but not all of them are pleasant to live on. In fact, every time I roll a world up using the charts in the back of Anvil Galaxy, I end up with some place utterly hostile to life as we know it, or just barley habitable by cyborgs and supernatural creatures (mortal beings need not apply)

Greyaxe can confirm this. Just ask him about what Noldek's World is like...

In fact, the odds of rolling up Hydrosphere (Hydrosphere thread) are actually a million to one - for every million random Bill Coffin worlds I could roll, I would get "habitable water world under a yellow sun" once.

True, there are close to 100 million planets to live on in the Three Galaxies... but most of them suck. When you find an Earth-world then, you hang on to it. i don't think anyone really wants to destroy these few-and-far between planets. They would rather capture and control them.[/url]

[Greyaxe]

Personally I've always liked Planet Destroyers being in a game....it adds a nice level of wth in a galactic campaign. I think we lost three home bases to planet destruction in our last high end galactic campaign.

Good thing there are lots of planets in the 3g.

Yeah, but not all of them are pleasant to live on. In fact, every time I roll a world up using the charts in the back of Anvil Galaxy, I end up with some place utterly hostile to life as we know it, or just barley habitable by cyborgs and supernatural creatures (mortal beings need not apply)

Greyaxe can confirm this. Just ask him about what Noldek's World is like...

In fact, the odds of rolling up Hydrosphere (Hydrosphere thread) are actually a million to one - for every million random Bill Coffin worlds I could roll, I would get "habitable water world under a yellow sun" once.

True, there are close to 100 million planets to live on in the Three Galaxies... but most of them suck. When you find an Earth-world then, you hang on to it. i don't think anyone really wants to destroy these few-and-far between planets. They would rather capture and control them.[/url]

Its true Noldek's World is a desert planet ravaged by radiation storms. Most of the inhabitants are borgs out of necessity not just out of pride.

[Syndicate]

I like the idea of a "mass driver" presented in the Aliens Unlimited. That'd be something to concider purchasing....[/code]

[sHaka]

I guess it is our stand point that is different here. I was actually referring to particles from out of the sol system. Those within can't get anywhere near light speed. BTW light is a particle... just a very small one.

No, even particles from outside our solar system don't travel that fast.
Not only that, but the only reason a photon goes the speed of light is because it has no mass....

All other particles travel at a variety of speeds, none of which come even near a fraction of the speed of light.

More on photons.

Unlike most particles, photons have essentially zero mass, which can be asserted to a high degree of accuracy, and accounts for some of their unique properties. Nevertheless, because they have energy, the theory of general relativity states that they are affected by gravity, and this is confirmed by observation.

Wait a sec.

If photons have no mass...then how the hell does gravity affect them? Theres nothing there!

They have zero mass, but they do have energy, so are subject to gravity.