The Extra-Solar Union of Systems Archive

Central Facehuggeria wrote: See, that's pretty much the whole problem right there. At the moment this is a limited war for the ESUS.

Not quite what I was getting at - you specifically target and kill millions of Kanuckistani civilians, and three things happen. First, it becomes a war for survival(ie, defeat may means that everyone on the loosing side is killed). Secondly, it becomes very, very personal for the national mentality, who will demand revenge(ie, punishing the enemy nation/population, which does not, necessarily, mean just killing them). And finally, in terms of the larger, international picture, I'll try and make an example out of the offender, to discourage others from slaughtering my people in the future.


"Only" turning their capital and major population centers into object lessons would be the least I'd really go for(with completely wiping them out possible), and it wouldn't really have anything to do with the course of the larger war.

Balrogga wrote:One problem with attacking any Earth holdings is he will be using RKVs meaning the planet will be destroyed, something that will not happen to Earth.

I was assuming that RKV = Relativistic Kill Vehicle, which are more-or-less infinitely scalable weapons.

He also mentioned nukes, so I assumed it was more of a glassing than a fraging.

Balrogga wrote: You might have to offer up another target that is not really defended much (as per his request).

Thing is, Earth is about as undefended a planet as I have - the only other possible candidate would be Kyoto, which sits behind a lightweek's worth of FTLi, with planetary shields, a thick defence grid, Superfortress, and heavy paramilitary presence.

Every other world is in the Home Cluster.

Although, you could probably generate planet-killing fervor in Arizona Novanians just by flipping them the bird with the least of temporal weapons. How this would work in my historical continuity, I do not know (the ESUS-GFFA war is ancient history by now).

While the Godulan systems are all about as heavily defended as Thorn, the Godulans themselves would react with almost ludicrous levels of vitriol if the GFFA/New Realm slagged a few planets.

We'd be talking 'Bringing Back the Red Rain' mad.

Godular wrote:While the Godulan systems are all about as heavily defended as Thorn, the Godulans themselves would react with almost ludicrous levels of vitriol if the GFFA/New Realm slagged a few planets.

We'd be talking 'Bringing Back the Red Rain' mad.

Well, Kanuckistani wouldn't care so much about the use of planet-poppers, as they would the deliberate targeting and mass slaughter of civilians.

If the planet was mainly used for military purposes, blowing it up is a legitimate act of war - the civilian deaths would outrage and sadden, but they'd understand it to be an unfortunate reality of war. Collateral damage, unavoidible; nothing personal.




See, that's a line many NS RPers I've seen don't get - to use an MT example, it's one thing to nuke a carrier battlegroup, field army, or airbase. It's quite another to start nuking cities - that's a war of extermination, murder, genocide.

I meant if the GFFA folks slagged undefended 'civilian' worlds. Godulans HATE genocide. If civilians are intentionally slaughtered, whether through biological agents or planetwhackers, the Godulans go into a serious rage.