NationStates Jolt Archive

In FT, when people can have handheld weapons that can destroy several city blocks, what is the point of a large army?

There is the claim that you need a large army to take a world, but why take a world, and loose large amounts of soilders, when it would be cheaper to have a large fleet in orbit, and use strikes to destroy food suplies, posion the avaibable fresh water, and bomb to make their lives a living hell ect. until they surrender. This would cost far less than an infantry assualt in terms of manpower, and equipment.

Next there is the fact, that if you keep even a small fleet in orbit around the world, you an destroy the surface. This should make any large scale open inserection pointless, because even if you defeated the ground troops that would keep the population in check, the orbital fleet would bomb you into a glowing,radioactive sphere.

Finally, if you want to land a large force, you must have total orbital supemecy. If you do not, the enemy will bring in what ever ships they have near by and start to destroy the landing craft in large numbers. And if you gain total orbital control, why waste the lives of your infantry?

A few reasons for the usefulness of ground combat(And I'm sure those who are into FT ground combat can come up with more, beside the fact that it makes good story):

If you wish to absorb the planet into your nation, bombing it back to the stone age is very impractical.

If you are after a specific target that you need to recover intact(documents/data, peoples, artifacts) which you don't know thier precise location.

Your weapons are can't/aren't designed for precision orbital bombing.

Also you don't need total orbital control, just sufficiant to open a hole to unload the troops, much like the storming of a beach.

Are you people trying to expel fun from FT with all these threads???

Jeez. Soon all we'll have is superweapons and orbital bombardments. Whoopie-dee-do.

Your weapons are can't/aren't designed for precision orbital bombing.

That is why you use atmospheric fighters to take out the key locations using presion muntions.

That is why you use atmospheric fighters to take out the key locations using presion muntions.

Some people don't use fighters, at all. I know I don't.

Are you people trying to expel fun from FT with all these threads???

Jeez. Soon all we'll have is superweapons and orbital bombardments. Whoopie-dee-do.


I am going to add pro army argument...

To be honest I haven't seen anybody with handheld weapons that can destroy several city blocks as you put it. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong threads.

To be honest I haven't seen anybody with handheld weapons that can destroy several city blocks as you put it. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong threads.

That was an over exargeration. However TSL has pistol that can take down a tank.

Not all nations have the fundind to support a huge fleet whose only purpose is to orbit a world to prevent rebellion. I for one, as not only a new nation but as a nation that is highly democractic and only moderately militaristic, would not have the resources to glass a world or sacrifice hunderds of warship for baby sitting duty.
You also do not NEED absolute space superiority to make a landing, as other poster have pointed out. Warfare is a constantly evolving thing.
Lets say, for example, that one nation is attacking another nation's world with a fleet of equal power. This would probably result in a stalemate from below. The invader, seeing that the ground-to-space defences are causing considerable damage to his fleet, would probably not want to waste precious firepower, bomber or fighters on destroying these defences. Instead, the invader would boldly send some ground troops to take out or, better yet, take OVER the anti-spaceship defences. With that small, but bold move, the invader drives off the defender and can now more easily conquer the planet.
Of course, one would say that the transports might be shot down, which is true, but its not entirely feasible for the defender to destroy ALL of the transports. Firing at a massive battleship is one thing, but shoting down much more small and manuvuerable transports is another.

That was an over exargeration. However TSL has pistol that can take down a tank.

What after firing several hundred times at it?

In FT said tank should have a forcefield.

FT nations need to realize such a thing as a global shield or network can be made. It is easier to defend then it is to attack in FT, take advantage of that and force major ground combat.

Using planet destruction is like using nukes in MT. Its poor and a waste of time and overall is a terrible way to RP. If you are FT, take pride in your forces and don't play with people that just use cheap superweapons that ruin any fun at all.

They haven't been used yet, but a small fusion missile launched from a mech could easily wipe out a city block. An armored exoskeleton designed to carry heavy loads-- basically a cargo loader mech, can mount light artillery. If you have tabletop fusion devices, you can build blockbusters

It is very simple why people think of armies. Unless you are standing on it most people won't acknowledged you own it. Possession is a critter holding a symbol on piece of ground.

Also if you are attacking a capital world, and want to conquer the enemy and get them to cooperate, it is much easier to attack and take over the enemies capital than turn it into a crater. The enemy will much more likely surrender and turn their assets over to you if you conquer them than destroy them.

Also if you are attacking a capital world, and want to conquer the enemy and get them to cooperate, it is much easier to attack and take over the enemies capital than turn it into a crater. The enemy will much more likely surrender and turn their assets over to you if you conquer them than destroy them.
Then again, it's easier to just nuke their governing body, film it, install your own puppet gov't and have them show it to the populace with the message "Act up and we'll do this to you." And why have them turn over their assets when you can just take them? Use precision strikes to demolish any hospitals and unleash some sort of custom bioweapon. Kill 'em with neutron bombs. There's dozens of ways to get their assets without a struggle, and most of them don't require your *ahem* benefactors to live.

Of course, I still use infantry (well, infantry surrogates, due to the astounding inefficiency of meat), for previously defined reasons, as well as for PR. After all, it's hard to claim the moral high ground when your tactics involve carpet-nuking civilian targets.

Using planet destruction is like using nukes in MT. Its poor and a waste of time and overall is a terrible way to RP.
I disagree. Some of the RPs that I've enjoyed the most have involved WMDs, both FT and MT. Properly done, they're usually more fun than just a stock war RP. Also, planet destruction isn't really neccessary in any case. Ortillery is usually sufficient, and leaves you the planet to exploit.

Of course you need Ground War! Otherwise it's all boring space-battle! The thrill of close combat, the roar of artillery, the howl of guns and the clash of blades! Of course you need it.

I will resort to methods like planetary destruction, but given that I use a 40k basis, especially a Chaos basis....I regularly thirst for ground war

Like most corporations, I prefer economic warfare to military. But if I do have to use force, I'd rather NOT blow up the very resources I'm trying to take. Soldiers on the ground are more versitile than just attacks from space.

Its only useful if you actually want to take the planet, otherwise bomb them to hell.

'Starship Troopers' sort of summed it up pretty well:
"What's the point of all this, when all we have to do to destroy another nation is push a button"
"Please hold one hand over your head"
*Cadet obeys, Sgt then inpales hand to a building*
"You see, buttons are useless if you cannot push it"

Similar concerns where raised about conventional ground combat after the invention of nuclear weapons almost immediately after the second world war.

And even though bombers of the 1970's had over 10 times the destructive effect of a WW2 bomber, things still required people on the ground. Even today, it is rather difficult to 'occupy' a nation by simply anchoring a battleship or aircraft carrier in their port or flying constant Combat Air Patrols over their airspace.

As you said, a single person can cause massive damage, therefore, the goal is to be the first in position to shoot and to have resserves a safe but tenable distace away.

The purpose of ground forces:
Capturing equipment and bases INTACT, and holding them.

Without a prompt and rapid raid, the crew of a base could easily destroy sensitive documements.

True, you could stp a revolt by nuking it, but what if this planet provided the bulk of your empire's food? Or some other vital commodity?
You'd be crippling yourself.

You should have known by now that the more advanced warfare becomes, the flashier it gets.

That's the real reason. Orbital bombardment might look like fireworks, but everyone's seen fireworks ^^.

Another potential reason could be the very thing that stopped us Earthlings from doing it during the Cold War: if you unleash huge scary superweapons, others will use the same on you. It's not just from Mutually Assured Destruction, but from other stellar civilizations thinking "Shit, they're crazy!" and seeing you as unstable and a threat.

And although I hate to echo, some big ideas:

-Humanitarian concerns: ground combat kills fewer innocents than glassing the planet, or even just large areas of it. Most people prefer it that way.

-Economic Concerns: an uninhabitable shell has limited use, compared to an entire world with industries, inhabitants, and arable land.

-Fun concerns: hell, it's just hard to get drama and story from a push-button apocalypse. Possible, of course, but hard.

Another potential reason could be the very thing that stopped us Earthlings from doing it during the Cold War: if you unleash huge scary superweapons, others will use the same on you. It's not just from Mutually Assured Destruction, but from other stellar civilizations thinking "Shit, they're crazy!" and seeing you as unstable and a threat.

There is a differnce from captial ship's heavy guns to a super weapon. A super weapon is something like a Planet destroying superlaser, or a war head that makes a sun go supernova.


-Humanitarian concerns: ground combat kills fewer innocents than glassing the planet, or even just large areas of it. Most people prefer it that way.

What if you just don't care about the enemy civilians(looks at chrono)

-Economic Concerns: an uninhabitable shell has limited use, compared to an entire world with industries, inhabitants, and arable land.

Those things don't matter as much in FT, becuase you can just go and claim some planet with a lot of asteroids, and rocky planets and you can get much more resources out of it, and you don't have to owrry about the enviromental effects becuase the planets don't have a liviable atmosphere.

In NS FT ground combat does become a bit useless unless you want to take the world without bombing it as already mentioned. The problem is when you don't want to do that, or you have the technological capabilities to rebuild the useful infrastructure of that planet.

As far as infantry that can level cities? Well, with micro-nukes maybe, but it stands to reason if you have weapons capable of that damage, then you have the armor/shielding to prevent it as well.

Also we need to know what major means. WWI style is obviously gone, but squad/company level battles over wide areas are very much likely (due mostly to the ability of armor/orbital weapons to flatten large areas, thus killing these massive armies of yours).

Otherwise, you can do what you want if you work it out with the others involved before hand.

Oh... and AB: Don't like the thread, then don't post.

In NS FT ground combat does become a bit useless unless you want to take the world without bombing it as already mentioned. The problem is when you don't want to do that, or you have the technological capabilities to rebuild the useful infrastructure of that planet.

As far as infantry that can level cities? Well, with micro-nukes maybe, but it stands to reason if you have weapons capable of that damage, then you have the armor/shielding to prevent it as well.

Also we need to know what major means. WWI style is obviously gone, but squad/company level battles over wide areas are very much likely (due mostly to the ability of armor/orbital weapons to flatten large areas, thus killing these massive armies of yours).

Otherwise, you can do what you want if you work it out with the others involved before hand.

Oh... and AB: Don't like the thread, then don't post.

When it relates to the entirety of FT, kinda hard not to. I'd personally not like to see ground combat get extinguished, sorry.

When it relates to the entirety of FT, kinda hard not to. I'd personally not like to see ground combat get extinguished, sorry.

Yes, because a discussion thread on the subject will annihilate infantry. Like it has annihilated gundams, fighters, space stations, and the myriad of other things that exist in NS FT that are both inefficient, impractical, and extant only by the whims of the RPer. Oh wait.

There is a differnce from captial ship's heavy guns to a super weapon. A super weapon is something like a Planet destroying superlaser, or a war head that makes a sun go supernova.

What if you just don't care about the enemy civilians(looks at chrono)

Those things don't matter as much in FT, becuase you can just go and claim some planet with a lot of asteroids, and rocky planets and you can get much more resources out of it, and you don't have to owrry about the enviromental effects becuase the planets don't have a liviable atmosphere.

All perfectly legitimate points. However, one or more would apply in many cases, so I still believe my case stands. Clearly, that doesn't count out exceptions.

I do see the difference between super weapons and conventional capital ship weapons. Still, the use of them over the entire surface would be a de facto superweapon (in that it would have the same effects.) So I think that MAD still applies-a perceived madman is still a perceived madman, however he is armed.

This is actually addressed in the Halo books quite well. The humans would always be defeated in space and then watch their world get glassed. However the Covenet still needed to go to the surface in order to capture certain Forerunner artifacts. Thus, if you need something on that world, or need to conquer it, you would need ground warfare.

Another thing to consider is a planet's defense capacity. For some larger worlds their Plantery Defense Grid could be capable of turning away the most powerful fleets, and have the manufacturing powe to keep using these weapons constantly. Thus it might prove useful to punch only a single hole and land ground forces.

*Looks at thread title... Looks at OP... Looks back at that other thread about space fighters...

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/2395/notthisshitagainur0.jpg

However ground combat in FT hmm? Well there has to be a good reason for putting troops on that world, such as aquiring it; now I think even somewhat realistically if you conquered an inhabitable planet you've gain something enourmous. But if you glass it you've lost something unimaginable valuable. Anyways...

I think a better alternative for regularinfanrtry would be the supreme commander doctrine of land battles. I myself dont rp ft but if I did that is what I would use on the ground. You see, you dont need a massive amount of troops that need to be trained and this and that. What you need is a tiny skelaton force or even one guy depending how you rp it, to set up mass extraction facilities and power plants and factories. The mass extractors essentially mine raw material, wood, dirt, metals, anything, just the planetary mass itself, and then it is converted into the elements and substances you need. This way with a single command unit you can build an entire base and raise an army of millions of building sized robotic land units from mechs to tanks to battleships to infantry sized stuff to airplanes. Hell do that on an enemies capital world if you can defend the sector for long enough you can basically slaughter his entire on-world population with your armies.

Anyways. That's my oppinion on ground combat in FT. I would save human troops for guard duty and defending the planets I had. Not for invasion. Sending in human infantry after the initial battle is fine but the brunt of the force I think should be carried on by the robots. You lose nothing this way. If anything you lose a single command unit and 1 or a hand full of men.

Thank about it. Land on an enemies planet and in a short period of time raise and army that quite literally can multiply indeffinetly. You could cover a continent in military forces ammassing billions of war machines or a navy or ground forces capable of defending against space-born attacks.

I think this doctrine of FT land war has HUGE potential. And may be the only reason I ever play ft..if I ever play ft that is.

Thank about it. Land on an enemies planet and in a short period of time raise and army that quite literally can multiply indeffinetly. You could cover a continent in military forces ammassing billions of war machines or a navy or ground forces capable of defending against space-born attacks.


Certainly an interesting strategy. Still, no matter how advanced and powerful your machinery or nanotech is, you'd have to keep it safe for some time for this to work. You would need a fairly serious land and air prescence to keep enemies away long enough for any serious production to happen.

Paired with conventional forces, though, a terrifying thought for enemies.

Certainly an interesting strategy. Still, no matter how advanced and powerful your machinery or nanotech is, you'd have to keep it safe for some time for this to work. You would need a fairly serious land and air prescence to keep enemies away long enough for any serious production to happen.

Paired with conventional forces, though, a terrifying thought for enemies.

If that landed on my homeworld, I would nuke it. But that's just me. That doctrine does have serious potential however.

Also that assumes you have the technology to make dirt magically be a battle drone.

Also that assumes you have the technology to make dirt magically be a battle drone.

Well, if you mine down far enough, you can generally get ahold of minerals. Plus, of course, raw elements filtered from the ground for obscure artificial compounds. I had self-replicating nanotechnology in mind-theoretically doable, at least. (Theoretical, that is, in the theoretical world of NS future tech...)

If you could set up some kind of high-speed factory (and keep it safe from nukes and conventional troops long enough) you could possibly pull it off. At least get enough production to keep reinforcments and some supplies coming for a conventional invasion force.

Well, if you mine down far enough, you can generally get ahold of minerals. Plus, of course, raw elements filtered from the ground for obscure artificial compounds. I had self-replicating nanotechnology in mind-theoretically doable, at least. (Theoretical, that is, in the theoretical world of NS future tech...)

If you could set up some kind of high-speed factory (and keep it safe from nukes and conventional troops long enough) you could possibly pull it off. At least get enough production to keep reinforcments and some supplies coming for a conventional invasion force.

Well thats all fine for most Fters, but I prefer to use a large amount of "Hard FT" so for me, robot armies may be feasible, but not the Supreme Commander concept. But for the tech you guy's use, you easily could.

I love ground combat. Not just because it is useful in taking and holding a planet, but it also provides much to the story of the RP.

It all depends on personal preference. Some folks might scrape the crust off of a planet just because they don't give a crap about civvies, or others might go through the effort to take over a planet because Civvies = do not kill (whether by altruism or the need to preserve as many slaves as possible).

Besides, if people start ignoring Ground Combat entirely, it suddenly becomes tactically advantageous again.

I'd say it's not useless, especially if in the indiscriminate use of nuclear (and other of the sort) weapons you threaten your species with extinction. And if the other side is of the same species as you, why wouldn't you try to integrate them into your own empire or whatever instead of killing them all off, anyway? The more the merrier.

It's safe to say, for one thing, that if you can successfully land and keep safe these remarkably advanced nano-drones: that you have the technology available to you to make them obsolete, since nothing the enemy has could possibly match you in technological capability (IE you can take the planet with a hand full of guys strong enough to level the continents). Also er, transmutation of wood into say, yrtonopinium or some other invincible FT metal is so energy intensive that you have to ask yourself if it's even practical.

Second is why you need to conquer things anyway in FT. Resources? Oort clouds have enough of that, and if you're going to kill a planet for minerals, it's best just to decimate the population from orbit and begin your mining operations. What about slaves? Infrastructure? Even though we limit ourselves from going towards the obvious conclusion of our tech bases, realistically, drones make better workers than slaves, and if you can conquer this planet, then chances are their infrastructure is outdated by your standards.

The third question is a matter of power: Do you or do you not have the power to level a continent in a single blast? If yes (it's always yes) then massive WWI/II-easque army formations are uh, dumb, obviously. Even if you somehow checked no, the damage that orbital (or hell, even ground-based weaponry) can cause to an area makes large ground combat operations between large armies (100k+) stupid.

Does this mean that ground combat is itself useless? No. You can't secure a building with a tank: you still need soldiers of some type at the end of the day. But, outside of RP preference, are WH40k like battles on the ground impractical, useless, and obsolete? Yeah, unfortunately.

Does this mean that ground combat is itself useless? No. You can't secure a building with a tank: you still need soldiers of some type at the end of the day. But, outside of RP preference, are WH40k like battles on the ground impractical, useless, and obsolete? Yeah, unfortunately.

Only if you aren't into "civilized" warfare. Some might actually want to make agreements in which it is stated that planets with major populaces are not to be nuked or otherwise destroyed in a massive scale to ensure the continued existence of their people even after a possible defeat. This is when ground battles become much more feasible. And as I said before, if your and your enemy's species happens to be the same, it's also possible to integrate their populace to yours. And since killing off massive amounts of people from your own species is counterproductive to the spread of it, it's far a better idea to keep them alive. Hell, they might even be all for it since you might bring all kinds of technological advancements and even a free-er society. But even if the species isn't the same, it'd still be possible to try and make them a part of your empire/whatever.

Unless you're into genocide and/or have big problems with where to put your people in. Then it's "understandable" in some way why you'd want to kill them off instead of keeping them alive.

Might be impractical but its fun as hell. I'm sort of obliged to plug it since I use it, but without the rush of ground combat I'd likely not do this. There's no fun in just having ships shooting at each, slagging planets into nothingness.

Wheres the point? If your objective is conquest, then pounding them back into the stone age is economically and environmentally unsound! You'll be causing any number of problems with the worlds ecosystem, you'll be wiping any existing framework off the map. It just doesn't make sense.

Rather you ought to subjugate through raw, brute force and cleanse with all the fury that only close, visceral combat can offer! That way when you sell its people into slavery and death, you get to use their stuff afterwards :D

Well, I consider myself a benevolent power. I pretty much refuse to planet kill in a war, unless I am left with no other choice, and that almost never happens. Always move in and take the planet for myself, civilians have no place in war unless they fight back to the last man/woman/child.

But I mostly use my army for defensive purposes.

I think in this case it's not so much practicality as ethics. Sure you can blow up the planet if you want, but that tends to piss off a lot of people.

It's like a glass barrier.

Once somebody breaks the barrier and crosses the threshold of burning worlds, they themselves show themselves to be deadly threats and their own worlds are fair game.

This may be a moot point to some, but it does justify ground wars - people are unwilling to black-mark their entire race to destroy a measly world.

In FT, when people can have handheld weapons that can destroy several city blocks, what is the point of a large army?Napoleon's so 1800, my friend. We quit moving in huge formations decades ago, really - it's just that Lucas didn't notice.

There is the claim that you need a large army to take a world, but why take a world, and loose large amounts of soilders, when it would be cheaper to have a large fleet in orbit, and use strikes to destroy food suplies, posion the avaibable fresh water, and bomb to make their lives a living hell ect. until they surrender. This would cost far less than an infantry assualt in terms of manpower, and equipment.At a guess, maybe you want the planet intact?

Or maybe not everyone is into genocide - some people might actually intend to occupy and pacify. If your reasoning actually applied, then ground forces would be irrelevant in the real world too, because ICBMs are so much simpler to use, and glassing's so much more effective than occupation.

Guess what? It doesn't.

Next there is the fact, that if you keep even a small fleet in orbit around the world, you an destroy the surface. This should make any large scale open inserection pointless, because even if you defeated the ground troops that would keep the population in check, the orbital fleet would bomb you into a glowing,radioactive sphere.Last I checked, insurgents, urban guerillas and the likes do not march into battle like Napoleon... Yes, if you're willing to set everything on fire, ground forces are useless - if you're not, you'll have to deal with small-scale urban guerillas in somewhat less collateral damaging ways.

Finally, if you want to land a large force, you must have total orbital supemecy. If you do not, the enemy will bring in what ever ships they have near by and start to destroy the landing craft in large numbers. And if you gain total orbital control, why waste the lives of your infantry?'cos one might not be about to kill a billion or so local - and civilian - residents?

Ground combat will change, yes - tanks and artillery are likely to play a much less important role than they do in the modern world. But low-intensity urban warfare will not cease because you've orbital supremacy, just as it didn't cease just because there's a bunch of F-15s in the sky. As soon as you want to control (Rather than annihilate) potentially hostile populations, you need an occupying, a policing force.

Those things don't matter as much in FT, becuase you can just go and claim some planet with a lot of asteroids, and rocky planets and you can get much more resources out of it, and you don't have to owrry about the enviromental effects becuase the planets don't have a liviable atmosphere.Right... Which raises the question 's of why you're going to war - you're not lacking resources (Several hundred billion stars in the milkyway alone), so the equivalent of an oil war is right out. You don't need space - even if there's a lack of inhabitable planets, it's much, much, much cheaper to simply convert a 'roid into a habitat -, and... Ummm... Yeah. You've no reason to go to war. At all.

What's worse, if your 'Tactic' consists of 'I blow you all to hell', then your opponent will likely do exactly the same, which means that your civilian population is at an incredible risk, which means that it's rather unlikely to support any kind of aggressive stance their government might desire to take - MAD situation right there.

Right... Which raises the question 's of why you're going to war - you're not lacking resources (Several hundred billion stars in the milkyway alone), so the equivalent of an oil war is right out. You don't need space - even if there's a lack of inhabitable planets, it's much, much, much cheaper to simply convert a 'roid into a habitat -, and... Ummm... Yeah. You've no reason to go to war. At all.

Defensive purposes prehaps?

After all, if all rival nations are destroyed, you can continue to operate as an empire?

...Techincally, ground troops has an important function, even if war degenerates to "Let kill the most civilians!" Ground troops (if converted to fight in space) can BOARD the orbital bomdarment ships and deactive them, blow them up, etc. Why? To protect their civilians and planets from being annilated. If the orbital bombardment station looks and operates like an actual Earth-sized planet, volia, Ground Combat. :)

Why not wipe them out in space? Well, orbital bombarment stations have to be well-defended, otherwise, well they pose no threat to your population. And, taking over a superweapon is far more effienct than building one yourself. Having tons of ships fire upon one big ortibal cannon is not as effienct as sending in a sucidide bomber to sabatoge the station from the inside.

Ground combat also helps demoralize your enemy.

Troops marching through city streets has an impact that a ship in orbit can rarely match. It's also very difficult to rape, pillage, and plunder from space.

However...

Not much attention seems to be payed to gravity...

There are plenty of rocks and mineral resources for the taking. However, planets that support biological life are probably pretty rare. Having a whole new set of biological resources could be quite lucrative. If it is true that unique biological resources are rarer than other forms of planets, it is well worth taking a world to get them. There are many systems where I can get rocks and minerals with no life in them. If you are planet bound, then you can also grow your population in a nice new place as well. A nice land grab. It is pretty expensive to terraform, or paraterraform a world, asteroid, or planetoid unless you have very advanced biological and ecological sciences.

So.. I often hear the "Hey, we've got assloads of stars, go for broke" point bandied about. Yeah, there's assloads of stars. But are they all really convenient? I mean, unless you want your colonies out back of beyond, or in the ass end of nowhere, odds are good you'll take the easy route to expand your territory, and take it from a neighbor you don't like.

I dunno, moving into the 'ass end of nowhere' might be pretty lucrative if the systems are sufficiently mineral rich.

Defensive purposes prehaps?

After all, if all rival nations are destroyed, you can continue to operate as an empire?
That's really why I have infantry surrogates: Just in case someone else decides that ground combat is a good idea, and for keeping local populations in line. After all, that smiling holographic face goes a long way to reassuring the locals (not to mention the multi-megaton arsenal behind said smiling holographic face).

Ground troops (if converted to fight in space) can BOARD the orbital bomdarment ships and deactive them, blow them up, etc. Why? To protect their civilians and planets from being annilated. If the orbital bombardment station looks and operates like an actual Earth-sized planet, volia, Ground Combat. :)
Ignoring the fact that boarding actions are possibly one of the more idiotic maneuvers possible in FT (The words "Disable inertial dampeners in section B" spring to mind), who says it's a station? Most, if not all, of my ships can conduct bombardments just fine, and are rather disinclined to visitors.

Ground combat also helps demoralize your enemy.

Troops marching through city streets has an impact that a ship in orbit can rarely match. It's also very difficult to rape, pillage, and plunder from space.
I personally disagree with the first part. After all, what's more terrifying than the enemy being able to indiscriminately kill your friends in a giant flash of light, with nothing you can do about it? This would be especially true for those of us (Me, for example) with more precision ortillery capabilities. The second part, of course, is indisputable, although since I don't really do those anyway... Yay for an utter lack of meat.

I dunno, troops marching through one of your cities has a symbolizism that those who use orbital bombardment can rarely match.

After all, what's more terrifying than the enemy being able to indiscriminately kill your friends in a giant flash of light, with nothing you can do about it?

Just don't expect the other side to have any kind of mercy towards your planets or anything if you do glass their planets. And that kind of action can also strengthen the enemy's resolve to resist you, and to use underhanded tactics in the war against you, and even go after your allies and terrorize the hell out of their population centers if they know of them. The only thing you'd manage to do is make the war even bloodier than necessary.

Just don't expect the other side to have any kind of mercy towards your planets or anything if you do glass their planets. And that kind of action can also strengthen the enemy's resolve to resist you, and to use underhanded tactics in the war against you, and even go after your allies and terrorize the hell out of their population centers if they know of them. The only thing you'd manage to do is make the war even bloodier than necessary.

I'm not necessarily suggesting complete extermination of life on a planet. After all, you want it usable afterwards. Merely obliterating enemy forces from orbit. Surgical ortillery strikes should cause minimal civvy casualties, leveling a block or so at most, little more than your average thousand pound bomb in modern combat. It's simply the concept of an airstrike taken to it's logical conclusion. After all, why risk men on the ground when you can simply drop a nice big rock (well, a rock with a guidance system) on your target from several miles up?

Of course, ortillery also provides a nice way to keep a population in check: If there's a guerrilla problem, level those areas that are resisting. The rest of the population should get the message rather quickly. The act of annihilating population centers, when combined with the knowledge that there's nothing that can be done to prevent the attack, tends to have a pacifying effect on a target.

Well, if its that easy to destroy guerilla group, we should win in Iraq tommarow! Unfortunately it isn't. Guerillas dont tend to stay in one place and if they do, they try not to reveal it. I think this would be even more true if those guerillas knew that the hand of god could annilate their HQ and everything in a four block radius.

Fine then, maybe the destruction of suspected guerilla outposts is a good idea. I mean come on! If they're not with the guerillas they're probably against us anyways, right? Wrong. Or mostly so. Destroying areas suspected of resistance as well as purges in general usually lead to a negative view of the controlling power. If the USSR taught us anything, its that purges lead to dissent from without and within.

Well, if its that easy to destroy guerilla group, we should win in Iraq tommarow! Unfortunately it isn't. Guerillas dont tend to stay in one place and if they do, they try not to reveal it. I think this would be even more true if those guerillas knew that the hand of god could annilate their HQ and everything in a four block radius.
Not quite what I meant. What I was saying is that if there's insurgents in an area, you glass the entire area. No population center, no insurgents. Only reason we can't in Iraq would be those pesky human rights activists.

Fine then, maybe the destruction of suspected guerilla outposts is a good idea. I mean come on! If they're not with the guerillas they're probably against us anyways, right? Wrong. Or mostly so. Destroying areas suspected of resistance as well as purges in general usually lead to a negative view of the controlling power. If the USSR taught us anything, its that purges lead to dissent from without and within.
Yes, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki taught us that glassing entire cities to get at a relatively small amount of targets works wonders for getting people to behave. Anyway, dissent from within one's own country in these circumstances is rather unlikely. The Japanese and the Germans in WWII were both portrayed as subhuman, and said propaganda actually worked rather well to dampen the impact of such events as the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, as well as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Imagine how well such propaganda would work when your enemies actually ARE inhuman (or whatever species you happen to be). Look what we can do to a human race that's only marginally different from us, and with virtually no objections, whether from within or without. What do you think we're capable of against something that's not even remotely similar to us?

Luckily, due to the hyperintensive nature of NS, any planteary bombardment brings all FT nations to call you a genocidical idiot, leading to THEM planteary bombarding you!

Another idea: What if there is a Planteary Shield? There is always defenses to new ways to exterminate all living things, no? This shield works to protect planets from bomardment, and let us assume that this shield is virtually undestroyable by simply bombing it. What if the only way to actually glass the city is to land troops down there, and blow the shield up? Horray land combat! :)

Those things don't matter as much in FT, becuase you can just go and claim some planet with a lot of asteroids, and rocky planets and you can get much more resources out of it, and you don't have to owrry about the enviromental effects becuase the planets don't have a liviable atmosphere.
All well and good, but there's just something about taking someone else's buildings and infrastructure: you don't have build new things from scratch and waste the cash doing so. Not to mention that unless the benefits outweigh the risks, there's no point in going to a faraway system in the outer rim when there's a perfectly good system right next door ripe for the taking, and it may even have suitable substitutes for what you need!

That's what I'm currently dealing with in the latest Empire pwnfest.

Not quite what I meant. What I was saying is that if there's insurgents in an area, you glass the entire area. No population center, no insurgents. Only reason we can't in Iraq would be those pesky human rights activists.


Yes, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki taught us that glassing entire cities to get at a relatively small amount of targets works wonders for getting people to behave. Anyway, dissent from within one's own country in these circumstances is rather unlikely. The Japanese and the Germans in WWII were both portrayed as subhuman, and said propaganda actually worked rather well to dampen the impact of such events as the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, as well as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Imagine how well such propaganda would work when your enemies actually ARE inhuman (or whatever species you happen to be). Look what we can do to a human race that's only marginally different from us, and with virtually no objections, whether from within or without. What do you think we're capable of against something that's not even remotely similar to us?
All true. For as long as history has been written, there's always been a sense that it's a good idea to kill a populace. It is only very recently that we have developed a thing called morality and even so, it's only the First World nations that have the compulsion to pull their punches because they can afford to.

On the other side of the coin, if you want to conquer a people, I'd say it's better to have them believe it's a better idea to be ruled by you than the other guy since if they continually rise up, pretty soon you'll have no population to rule over if you bomb them over and over again.

Luckily, due to the hyperintensive nature of NS, any planteary bombardment brings all FT nations to call you a genocidical idiot, leading to THEM planteary bombarding you!

Another idea: What if there is a Planteary Shield? There is always defenses to new ways to exterminate all living things, no? This shield works to protect planets from bomardment, and let us assume that this shield is virtually undestroyable by simply bombing it. What if the only way to actually glass the city is to land troops down there, and blow the shield up? Horray land combat! :)

Not to poke a hole in your nice idea, but that's what I'm going to do.

If a shield is enshielding a planet that can withstand being shot at with lasers/energy weapons, missiles/torpedoes, KE weaponry and other technobabble type weapons, and can keep them on the outside, then it stands to reason that it would be more than sufficiant to keep out a shuttle/dropship/drop-pod/manner of insertion of ground forces onto a planet of choice

Luckily, due to the hyperintensive nature of NS, any planteary bombardment brings all FT nations to call you a genocidical idiot, leading to THEM planteary bombarding you!
...You haven't been around very long here, have you? I (well, one of my puppets) has repeatedly glassed worlds and turned them into hell-planets. This nation once killed off a race of cute teddy-bear aliens with a tailored virus so we could have an interesting plant on their world. My puppet has had NO reprecussions for said annihilations (although I'm trying to get one of my victims to start a crusade to take back a few of the worlds I converted), and I don't believe anyone even REPLIED to the thread where I killed the teddy bears.

Lesson: In NS (especially FT NS), nobody really gives a shit.

Another idea: What if there is a Planteary Shield? There is always defenses to new ways to exterminate all living things, no? This shield works to protect planets from bomardment, and let us assume that this shield is virtually undestroyable by simply bombing it. What if the only way to actually glass the city is to land troops down there, and blow the shield up? Horray land combat! :)

So.... If your shield stops me from blowing the crap out of you from orbit... I'm supposed to land troops... how?

...You haven't been around very long here, have you? I (well, one of my puppets) has repeatedly glassed worlds and turned them into hell-planets. This nation once killed off a race of cute teddy-bear aliens with a tailored virus so we could have an interesting plant on their world. My puppet has had NO reprecussions for said annihilations (although I'm trying to get one of my victims to start a crusade to take back a few of the worlds I converted), and I don't believe anyone even REPLIED to the thread where I killed the teddy bears.

Lesson: In NS (especially FT NS), nobody really gives a shit.

...But other times, a person goes and close a church, and then you get a dogpile of huge nations invading the nation and establishing a puppet government.

I guess it all depends on who's active. :)

If a shield is enshielding a planet that can withstand being shot at with lasers/energy weapons, missiles/torpedoes, KE weaponry and other technobabble type weapons, and can keep them on the outside, then it stands to reason that it would be more than sufficiant to keep out a shuttle/dropship/drop-pod/manner of insertion of ground forces onto a planet of choice

...Which is the point, no? How to go and keep ground combat revelant. Here is how. You artifically place a McGuffin to force the enemy to land ground troops, either to attack the shield, or as you say, bypass it totally and attack the enemy garrison itself.

There are many ways actually, and to be quite honest, I'd prefer fleet combat rather than having troops battling each other on the ground. I'm just finding ways.

So.... If your shield stops me from blowing the crap out of you from orbit... I'm supposed to land troops... how?

Transparant shield that stops all superweapons, but allow people to pass freely. Look at ESB's shield generator. :p

Transparant shield that stops all superweapons, but allow people to pass freely. Look at ESB's shield generator. :p
So what's stopping me from taking a ship INSIDE the shield and blowing the planet to hell? Or just dropping a nice big multi-gigaton bomb on the generator and THEN blowing the planet to hell?

*Looks at thread title... Looks at OP... Looks back at that other thread about space fighters...

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/2395/notthisshitagainur0.jpg

QFT.

He looks to be more in pain every time I see him...

His headache just keeps getting worse. Eventually the picture you see of him will be after his head explodes :D

Ground combat useless in FT? Well only if you go around blowing up planets rather then taking them and live entirely in space and have no need for planets. Remember FT ground combat can advance along with ships, Its stupid to assume that a ground force would not develop some sort of counter to ortillery, be it immense fortifications, Theater shields powered by Generators that would make most super dreadnoughts cry in jealousy and the like. So therefore the idea that ground combat wont work...is completely, totally idiotic. However yes you could paste a world with orty, but if you kill it in the process, and the defenders return fire helps it along..you win nothing but a title as a genocidal maniac. When your that guy, others will definetly oblige you in that. I for one believe in ground combat in FT. I dont simply go "Oh NOES ORTILLERY I LUZ". I take in to account that ground defenses can be bigger then ship mounts as well as more powerful, be they shields or be they weapons.

So therefore if your city and the surrounding 120 kilometers is protected by a theater shield that will bounce your biggest guns for weeks, you know it might be more efficient to go in. After all they could turn their industry to churning out very fast, heavy and dense suicide drones whose whole purpose is to avoid death until they slam in to your ships, blowing up. Things like that can and would happen to the person who ignores ground combat. Of course you could just blow up the planet, but that is just as idiotic as saying ground combat is obsolete. After all whats the point of invading something if all your going to do is kill it.


Ground combat is FAR from obsolete now, as proven in the 2nd Isreal-Lebanon war. Why would it be obsolete then. After all if the ground defenses are so well protected your heaviest guns barely dent them, isnt it more efficient to take them out from the ground, or at least their shield generators. I make use of powerful shield generators for ground combat and defense. We dont have planetary overshields, but that is a small point. Also as for a flash of light, we use pinpoint graser strikes as ortillery. Very, very big grasers, yet we still see the need to take the fight to the enemy. Why? Only a coward destroys a world without trying to take it, only a fool fights for nothing, which is exactly what you would have after your done your orty fest.

Remember the blitz, the british morale was as high as it ever was in the war when that happened. Its not as easy to pound an enemy in to subjugation as you think.

...You haven't been around very long here, have you? I (well, one of my puppets) has repeatedly glassed worlds and turned them into hell-planets. This nation once killed off a race of cute teddy-bear aliens with a tailored virus so we could have an interesting plant on their world. My puppet has had NO reprecussions for said annihilations (although I'm trying to get one of my victims to start a crusade to take back a few of the worlds I converted), and I don't believe anyone even REPLIED to the thread where I killed the teddy bears.

Lesson: In NS (especially FT NS), nobody really gives a shit.



I'll admit that the reaction from other nations is unpredictable, but I prefer to treat planetary destruction as similar to MT nukes. IOW, if the URF (United Romanar Federation, my future "self") blows up a planet, every space-faring race in the area will be out to get us, and they won't much care if our own homeworld gets destroyed. So, unless I can justify it, not only to my own people, but to other aliens, some of whom don't really like us anyway, I'd rather avoid genocide.

...But other times, a person goes and close a church, and then you get a dogpile of huge nations invading the nation and establishing a puppet government.

I guess it all depends on who's active. :)


That is in MT. In FT, there are some many different religions, that nobody reay cares if you close a church, or bomb it to hell.




I'll admit that the reaction from other nations is unpredictable, but I prefer to treat planetary destruction as similar to MT nukes.

Well I'll just have to be extra care ful if i attack you then. Better to strike first and take out you counter response abilities beofre you can go MAD on my ass.

OOC: Is RP in FT useless?

its only not useless if you are playing a present time or past time rp

No, but i am starting to see these "are *something* useless or obsolete in FT threads are silly". I have had people tell me these threads are *proof* that these things are all obsolete, dont work or useless. It looks to me to be a thinly veiled attempt to make everyone in line with what they like. I think I am going to be staying out of these from now on, as they are really just useless arguments. Hell even in hard sci fi Man-Kzin wars, with god rod and lightspeed missile attacks against Wunderland, ground combat was definetly necessary to liberate it.

Yeah the whole Supreme Commander concept of ground war is only feasible if you have a ridiculously high tech level. Really you need the technology to be able to convert matter into other types. Like turning a certain sample of led into an equal mass of gold. I'd say using anti-matter power sources would also be on the same level as this; who needs water for nuclear fusion when 1 gram of anything has enough energy to power NYC for a week? lol.

Shit the more I talk about this the more I get interested in FT. Lol.



But I dont wannt rp FT! I like MT!!

Noo come to the dark side!!!!


not to go on a tangeant but this brings to mind my absolute favorite FT weapon...AntiMatter bombs... only usefull where there actually is matter to destroy (like inside a ship or planetside) but damn. I don't think it is physically possible to have a stronger weapon than that since matter is converted into pure raw energy. XDDD Its like a super nuke. That's it. When I go FT I'm gonna use Supremem COmmander stuff for ground, a mix of stuff including Battlestar galactica for space, with Anti-Matter warhead anti capital ship missiles.

YESSS!!!!

Lol.

Yeah the whole Supreme Commander concept of ground war is only feasible if you have a ridiculously high tech level. Really you need the technology to be able to convert matter into other types. Like turning a certain sample of led into an equal mass of gold. I'd say using anti-matter power sources would also be on the same level as this; who needs water for nuclear fusion when 1 gram of anything has enough energy to power NYC for a week? lol.

Shit the more I talk about this the more I get interested in FT. Lol.



But I dont wannt rp FT! I like MT!!

Noo come to the dark side!!!!


not to go on a tangeant but this brings to mind my absolute favorite FT weapon...AntiMatter bombs... only usefull where there actually is matter to destroy (like inside a ship or planetside) but damn. I don't think it is physically possible to have a stronger weapon than that since matter is converted into pure raw energy. XDDD Its like a super nuke. That's it. When I go FT I'm gonna use Supremem COmmander stuff for ground, a mix of stuff including Battlestar galactica for space, with Anti-Matter warhead anti capital ship missiles.

YESSS!!!!

Lol.Well, acutally if you use the equation of lol, to the myrth principle then it is quite possible to create a pancake-cookie bomb which shalld destroy.:D

Only if you aren't into "civilized" warfare. Some might actually want to make agreements in which it is stated that planets with major populaces are not to be nuked or otherwise destroyed in a massive scale to ensure the continued existence of their people even after a possible defeat. This is when ground battles become much more feasible. And as I said before, if your and your enemy's species happens to be the same, it's also possible to integrate their populace to yours. And since killing off massive amounts of people from your own species is counterproductive to the spread of it, it's far a better idea to keep them alive. Hell, they might even be all for it since you might bring all kinds of technological advancements and even a free-er society. But even if the species isn't the same, it'd still be possible to try and make them a part of your empire/whatever.

How does your first point (FT Geneva Convention) make major ground feasible? You don't need armies to hold capital cities whether or not you value the lives of the people living in it.

Point two, species expansion, seems rather... odd. If you're friendly enough not to kill them, then chances are you shouldn't have gone to war in the first place. Second is why you would want rival factions to exist, since, historically speaking, that is never the case. What technological advances you think would come would also be useless: their advanced technology didn't help them, obviously, when you toppled their empire.

To everyone else: I think it'd be a good idea to realize no one is saying infantry are obsolete, that is not anyone's stance. The argument is that WWII-era sized engagements are obsolete in FT, just like line-and-column formations became obsolete with the advent of precision artillery, shrapnel and trench warfare.

Getting all indignant about your RP preference, or about threads that seek to discuss certain issues, not only contributes nothing to the topic at hand, but also reveals a lack of reading comprehension, logic, and manners. So stop it.

I actually agree somewhat with the title of this thread. I don't think that in an environment where the technological disparity between the combatants is so wide we will see major ground operations.

This is because the West has the military force necessary to prevent the enemy from really gaining any sort of equality in the modern battlespace. However! In space, where the future is now, and technology is far more advanced than our own...you have no clue what the enemy has up their sleeve. For all you know, they could have a device that renders most of your weapons completely useless. They may have the most powerful rifles in history...but never have considered field artillery.

The enemy could have the fastest ships in the galaxy...but still fight with you slingshots and boards with nails through them.

You could have the most amazing ortillery power possessed in creation while the enemy could have the hardiest shields ever created.

OOC: Is RP in FT useless?

Yes. In real life, you roleplay futuretech. In Nationstates, Futuretech roleplays you.

How does your first point (FT Geneva Convention) make major ground feasible? You don't need armies to hold capital cities whether or not you value the lives of the people living in it.

You have multiple factions on a planet. It's not that different from how things are now. If the enemy holds the capital cities, first you need to drive them off with military force and then manage to keep them while fighting against, say, guerillas and "freedom fighters" and whatnot. You'd still have to leave a garrison of some sort to those cities. Unless you evacuate them and sack them, but then you'd kind of lose the purpose of doing this whole war thing the hard way in the first place.

But if by "major ground warfare" you mean WW2 kind of warfare, yeah, that wouldn't work unless there's some plot device that causes it to turn more like that. Ranges are longer, both sides could probably precision bomb the crap out of each other's amassed armies... And such. You'd have to keep your army in smaller groups, unless you do something comparable to the blitz. Or if the "FT Geneva convention" would state something against the usage of precision bombing even outside of population centers, for instance.

Depends on circumstance, really.

Point two, species expansion, seems rather... odd. If you're friendly enough not to kill them, then chances are you shouldn't have gone to war in the first place.

Oh, like in most modern wars on Earth? If the enemy is of the same species as you, indiscriminantly throwing around all kinds of weapons of mass destruction will only cause the enemy to (try to) do the same. This would cause massive damage to your species as a whole, cuz it may end up in the mutual destruction of two massive populaces of the species. Unless of course both are base humans and are aware that there's a crapzillion of them out there, their lives might lose value. If they aren't aware of that or aren't base humans, suddenly the survival of the species while waging the war becomes an issue.

And wars still could occur due to the lack of habitable space, certain resources and the likes. While you might have an Oort clould full of goodies, what if you need that certain goody you know the other guy has but you haven't been able to find?

Second is why you would want rival factions to exist, since, historically speaking, that is never the case.

What does this relate to anyway? If the enemy surrenders, it doesn't necessarily mean that they'll continue being your rival, but rather accept the fact that they've lost and move on (like Germany, Japan and a bunch of other countries have done in the past). Most people aren't crazed fundies who'd only accept your death. Unless having another more or less independent faction that's your ally counts as a "rival" here.

Of course, everything depends on the kind of enemy you're fighting.

What technological advances you think would come would also be useless: their advanced technology didn't help them, obviously, when you toppled their empire.

But that's not exactly true. What if your enemy wasn't that good with weapons, but was totally crazy when it came to shields/engines/whatever? Had more streamlined methods of doing thing X? You actually might have something to learn from the enemy, even if they did lose. Since, you know, even if you now managed to beat the crap out of these guys, there might be some other guy just around the corner who could beat you if you didn't incorporate the other empire's technologies into your own things.

And exactly just how likely is it that you'd actually conquer the entire opposing empire and *annex* it, instead of letting it surrender and give you concessions? Hell, that sounds expensive. Of course if this outcome is feasible depends on the enemy again more than on anything else.

I agree that WW2 tactics are obsolete. Even in the RW, we haven't fought a WW2-like war since, well WW2! Ground Combat in 3045 won't look anything like ground combat in 1945, but I suspect we'll still need soldiers on the ground.

OOC: Is RP in FT useless?

Only if you RP against a complete idiot.

Yeah the whole Supreme Commander concept of ground war is only feasible if you have a ridiculously high tech level. Really you need the technology to be able to convert matter into other types. Like turning a certain sample of led into an equal mass of gold. I'd say using anti-matter power sources would also be on the same level as this; who needs water for nuclear fusion when 1 gram of anything has enough energy to power NYC for a week? lol.

Shit the more I talk about this the more I get interested in FT. Lol.



But I dont wannt rp FT! I like MT!!

Noo come to the dark side!!!!


not to go on a tangeant but this brings to mind my absolute favorite FT weapon...AntiMatter bombs... only usefull where there actually is matter to destroy (like inside a ship or planetside) but damn. I don't think it is physically possible to have a stronger weapon than that since matter is converted into pure raw energy. XDDD Its like a super nuke. That's it. When I go FT I'm gonna use Supremem COmmander stuff for ground, a mix of stuff including Battlestar galactica for space, with Anti-Matter warhead anti capital ship missiles.

YESSS!!!!

Lol.

My anti-tank missiles have AM warheads. Hooray for the ability to penetrate armor by converting it into the very thing that's supposed to do the penetrating... It's like a double whammy! That and the near nuclear fireball should suffice to take care of any tank...

I dunno, moving into the 'ass end of nowhere' might be pretty lucrative if the systems are sufficiently mineral rich.

Assuming transports costs didn't outweigh the profits. When I say ass end of nowhere I mean the serious ass end. So far from everything else as to be insane.

So therefore if your city and the surrounding 120 kilometers is protected by a theater shield that will bounce your biggest guns for weeks, you know it might be more efficient to go in. After all they could turn their industry to churning out very fast, heavy and dense suicide drones whose whole purpose is to avoid death until they slam in to your ships, blowing up. Things like that can and would happen to the person who ignores ground combat. Of course you could just blow up the planet, but that is just as idiotic as saying ground combat is obsolete. After all whats the point of invading something if all your going to do is kill it.
Again, if your shield can negate heavy artillery, how exactly is it going to let infantry through? If it would, why not just drop just inside the shield and do the exact same thing, or bombard with KEWs?

only usefull where there actually is matter to destroy (like inside a ship or planetside) but damn.
Actually, unless the entire thing is made of AM (in which case, how are you storing it?) the casing, containing mechanism, drive, etc. should provide enough matter to make a nice big boom.

Or if the "FT Geneva convention" would state something against the usage of precision bombing even outside of population centers, for instance.
Of course, there's the fact that there ISN'T such an accord, and even if there was, how's it going to prevent those who didn't sign it from bombing the everliving crap out of you anyway?

You have multiple factions on a planet.
We do? Barring one or two planets that are jointly held by allied nations, virtually every planet in FT is owned by a single nation.


And wars still could occur due to the lack of habitable space, certain resources and the likes. While you might have an Oort clould full of goodies, what if you need that certain goody you know the other guy has but you haven't been able to find?
This is NationStates, where you get to come up with whatever resources you want. Wars for resources aren't going to happen. Even if it weren't, your average planet/solar system/what-have-you has a rather lot of resources, and metals that tend to be rare here are rather common on asteroids and such. So, unless you've come up with something silly like a planet made purely of unobtanium...

And then there's those nations (Otagia, for example) with industrial-scale transmutation technology. All these nations need is a nice gas giant to sit down next to, and they can make whatever they damn well please.


But that's not exactly true. What if your enemy wasn't that good with weapons, but was totally crazy when it came to shields/engines/whatever? Had more streamlined methods of doing thing X? You actually might have something to learn from the enemy, even if they did lose. Since, you know, even if you now managed to beat the crap out of these guys, there might be some other guy just around the corner who could beat you if you didn't incorporate the other empire's technologies into your own things.
Of course, because killing them all off and reverse engineering captured vessels certainly won't work. :rolleyes:

Greetings bridge-dwellers,

I think all the major points have been covered, however I think that rarity of habitable worlds hasn't been stressed enough. Realistically (your mileage may vary depending on your FT), habitable (whether Near-Terra or Squid-friendly or whatever) worlds would seem to be proportionately rare, getting that magic mixture of gravity, temperature, and atmosphere is got to be relatively rare given what we know about the universe.

Terra-forming is possible, but more than likely a very expensive and time-consuming process (but again, the planet must be in the right location, it would be impractical to terra-form venus or mercury).

Domed Colonies are possible, but prohibitively expensive, and not "natural" making them less than preferred to normal habitable worlds, also, sealed colonies are very vulnerable to major accidents (hole in the seal, failure of heaters/coolers/air circulation), plagues, etc, which safeguarding against further increases cost, domed colonies would probably only be used in locations of extreme mineral deposits, a need for security, or extreme overcrowding.

So, Habitable Planets are valuable by their nature. So, how do you take it? Hopefully with as little damage as possible. Let's look at some of the possibilities:

Death Star Super Laser: Well, first you have to construct one (only a couple of thousand trillion credits there) and then when you use it, it doesn't leave anything more useful than an asteroid belt behind. Handy for getting the point across, but not so good for taking planets, definately a weapon of last resort.

Base Delta Zero Operation: Sterilizing the planet by orbital bombardment not very efficient, you kill everything, but you've also killed the atmosphere, the biosphere, any infrastructure (trillions of credits of prefabbed buildings, tools, etc), and the populace (who can't revolt, but also can't serve you either. Well, you can always re-Terraform it I suppose.

Neutron Bomb Saturation: Kills peeps, leaves buildings, nice. Except once again, you kill the entire populace, biosphere, and probably upset the atmosphere, here we go Terraforming again at least the infrastructure is still there. Pretty much the same with Orbital Nightcloak devices, does the same, only slower.

Bio/Nano Weapons: basically the same thing really, and each has a nasty habit of mutating and attacking any biological, no matter how foolproof you wank it, you could kill everything and make the world uninhabitable, bravo, I suppose you could always BSD and reterraform it afterwards.

Precision Nuke Strikes: Even if you go with the cleaner, safer Fusion models, it's still a pretty dirty way to wage a war. If you employ such weapons, your foes will likely come up with counters, you build bigger bombs, they build deeper holes, will you run out of nukes or will they run out of dirt. Bombing is great for suppression, but you still need to go in with troops. "Bombing them into submission hasn't worked in any war of the modern era. The Resistance will intwine themselves around things you won't want to blow up, and if you use too many nukes, you've poisoned the planet, Terraforming + Fallout removal, yumm.

So, I say, habitable planets are a precious commodity, and worth fighting groundside for. Exceptions exist, but most of the time, habitable planets are more valuable even semi-intact than the cost incurred invading them with conventional forces, and conventional warfare is far cheaper in both money and time than terraforming.

Either way though, it really all comes down to your playstyle, you can justify a destroy all aliens burn and salt the earth philosophy easily enough, but really, the whole souless slayer of worlds angle is kind of boring for RP.

Some thoughts,

SP

A nice post, but you've missed a few options:

KEW Bombardment: Just as deadly as nuke strikes, but entirely clean, and there's no shortage of rocks to drop on people. Very nicely dialable yield, too.

Tailored Biochems: In all likelyhood, you're not shooting at the same species as yourself. So, have your bio-techs cook up a disease/gas/what-have-you that only kills whatever it is you're shooting at, be it squids, humans, or koalas. There's enough around on our own planet, so it wouldn't be particularily difficult. Especially easy on worlds that the current inhabitants aren't native to, as the local flora and fauna is going to be genetically dissimilar enough to not even get the sniffles from whatever you're using. Even better, if you don't bother cleaning it up, it provides a nice barrier against invasion.

Smart Weapons: Rather twinky and getting close to an invasion itself, but why not just saturate the planet with knife missiles and let 'em sort out the mess? Little to no collateral damage, and everyone dies.

Oh, and regarding the neutron bomb thing: They don't release any permanent (or even long lasting) radiation. Thus, they're rather safe to use environmentally, although I'm not really aware of any actual studies on what the effects of a massive neutron-bomb bombardment would be, besides "Everybody dies."

Only if you aren't into "civilized" warfare.

Civiliazed Warfare is an Oxymoron. War is hell, andalways will be. Civilized warfare is what people tell themselves is happening in the combat zone, so they can sleep at night.

Civiliazed Warfare is an Oxymoron. War is hell, andalways will be. Civilized warfare is what people tell themselves is happening in the combat zone, so they can sleep at night.

Exactly, sorting out difference via war is not civilised. The civilised way is diplomacy, no matter how dumb you believe the other side to be acting.

A nice post, but you've missed a few options:

KEW Bombardment: Just as deadly as nuke strikes, but entirely clean, and there's no shortage of rocks to drop on people. Very nicely dialable yield, too.

So, we don't have fallout, but we do destroy populace and infrastructure, create all sorts of wonderful potholes that need to be filled in, and generate enough dust to blot out the sun and trigger an artifical iceage.


Tailored Biochems: In all likelyhood, you're not shooting at the same species as yourself. So, have your bio-techs cook up a disease/gas/what-have-you that only kills whatever it is you're shooting at, be it squids, humans, or koalas. There's enough around on our own planet, so it wouldn't be particularily difficult. Especially easy on worlds that the current inhabitants aren't native to, as the local flora and fauna is going to be genetically dissimilar enough to not even get the sniffles from whatever you're using. Even better, if you don't bother cleaning it up, it provides a nice barrier against invasion.

And if the virus mutates and attacks you? What if it kills all the trees by accident, you going to make O2 the hard way? We've been waging Biochem warfare on mosquitoes for years with more problems than results. Superbugs...I just don't trust them not to get out of hand and be more trouble than they are worth.


Smart Weapons: Rather twinky and getting close to an invasion itself, but why not just saturate the planet with knife missiles and let 'em sort out the mess? Little to no collateral damage, and everyone dies.

I believe one of the reasons that the Nazi's started building the gas chambers because it was cheaper than bullets. 3 billion+ micromissiles at xx credits each.....conventional war starts looking more economical

Oh, and regarding the neutron bomb thing: They don't release any permanent (or even long lasting) radiation. Thus, they're rather safe to use environmentally, although I'm not really aware of any actual studies on what the effects of a massive neutron-bomb bombardment would be, besides "Everybody dies."

I'm aware of what a neutron bomb is supposed to do. I would imagine it would kill EVERYTHING, you, your dog, your potted posies, your flu, the crusty little bacteria in your sink, EVERYTHING......that can't be good, you don't even get that new planet smell when you sterilize the biosphere. In limited applications, they seem to have some uses, but when you start carpet bombing a planet with them, I think the effects would be less than desirable.

YMMV

Seti Prime

Ok, its simple. As I said a well defended world of over a billion is going to be able to defend against your fleets bombardment. I can have a much bigger reactor then even your biggest ubar dreadnought. Only something approaching the death star can quantitatively take out planetary shielding and kill the planet. Sure I mean if the person agrees and all whatever, but this IS FT. Ok even if you want to genocide them, with their massive ubar defense systems still running, it would be damn hard to kill them all when they are shooting back and knocking out or diffusing your death killy guns.

So then now, you find yourself having to hammer defenses to allow ZOMG!!!!!! Troops landings!!! So your ground troops can go in and take out the planetary defenses. Then you can recall them and god rod them and nuke them to hell.

I for one wont accept a neutron or Bio-chem attack against my worlds. Tannelornians for one have Gengineering as one of their biggest things, seeing as we dont use conventional AI or cybernetics, but are gene augmentation freaks. So diseases are out, oh looky bomb shelters and well bomb shelters. So now you come down, claim the world and my people come out and kill all your colonists, as they have nothing to defend themselves with..because you think ground combat is useless.


What happens when i drop several thousand troops in to your population center? Are your nuke drones going to indiscriminately kill your own civilians? Now as far as it goes war is actually very civilised, seeing as we humans evolved from the only truly predatory ape, and learned how to eat vegetables, not meat as it was believed before, war is a natural extension of the food/territory/mating circle. You war for food, for mating diversity and for territory. A civilised war is a war of ideals, remarkably its also the only kind of war where genocide is acceptable as victory.

In a video game, your objective is to kill all enemies. In war you have real objectives, because after all spending all that time and resources and getting nothing but debt for it is a real bummer.

You have multiple factions on a planet. It's not that different from how things are now. If the enemy holds the capital cities, first you need to drive them off with military force and then manage to keep them while fighting against, say, guerillas and "freedom fighters" and whatnot. You'd still have to leave a garrison of some sort to those cities. Unless you evacuate them and sack them, but then you'd kind of lose the purpose of doing this whole war thing the hard way in the first place.

So this means you need a large ground force how? There are tens of millions of people in Iraq, but perhaps 200k max occupying forces, which happen to be occupying an unfriendly population. Scale up the advances in logistics and military technology for FT and you need even less around to successfully occupy a country.

But if by "major ground warfare" you mean WW2 kind of warfare, yeah, that wouldn't work unless there's some plot device that causes it to turn more like that. Ranges are longer, both sides could probably precision bomb the crap out of each other's amassed armies... And such. You'd have to keep your army in smaller groups, unless you do something comparable to the blitz. Or if the "FT Geneva convention" would state something against the usage of precision bombing even outside of population centers, for instance.

... Why, incidentally, is what is being discussed. Why bring up why we need infantry in the first place if that's not even the issue being discussed?

Oh, like in most modern wars on Earth? If the enemy is of the same species as you, indiscriminantly throwing around all kinds of weapons of mass destruction will only cause the enemy to (try to) do the same. This would cause massive damage to your species as a whole, cuz it may end up in the mutual destruction of two massive populaces of the species. Unless of course both are base humans and are aware that there's a crapzillion of them out there, their lives might lose value. If they aren't aware of that or aren't base humans, suddenly the survival of the species while waging the war becomes an issue.

No, no it wouldn't, because the pre-described situation implies that one side is losing to another and therefore does not have the ability to retaliate in such a manner.

And wars still could occur due to the lack of habitable space, certain resources and the likes. While you might have an Oort clould full of goodies, what if you need that certain goody you know the other guy has but you haven't been able to find?

Then you can't conquer this person because he's more technologically advanced than you are.

What does this relate to anyway? If the enemy surrenders, it doesn't necessarily mean that they'll continue being your rival, but rather accept the fact that they've lost and move on (like Germany, Japan and a bunch of other countries have done in the past). Most people aren't crazed fundies who'd only accept your death. Unless having another more or less independent faction that's your ally counts as a "rival" here.

... Germany and France still hate each other, as does China and Japan. And in any case, the point is that you don't need to value human life and therefore require WWII-easque infantry formations to conquer planets.

But that's not exactly true. What if your enemy wasn't that good with weapons, but was totally crazy when it came to shields/engines/whatever? Had more streamlined methods of doing thing X? You actually might have something to learn from the enemy, even if they did lose. Since, you know, even if you now managed to beat the crap out of these guys, there might be some other guy just around the corner who could beat you if you didn't incorporate the other empire's technologies into your own things.

Science is not an MoOII-style discipline. Unless you're totally incompetent when it comes to application and ingenuity, any advancements you make in shield technology necessitates the creation of advances weapons technology, and generally also means that you have the ability to advance yourself (even if slower) in other fields. Otherwise, you're talking about a video game, and nothing that comes close to being realistic.

And exactly just how likely is it that you'd actually conquer the entire opposing empire and *annex* it, instead of letting it surrender and give you concessions? Hell, that sounds expensive. Of course if this outcome is feasible depends on the enemy again more than on anything else.

What does it matter either way? You don't need to engage in major ground combat in either situation.

Greetings bridge-dwellers,

I think all the major points have been covered, however I think that rarity of habitable worlds hasn't been stressed enough. Realistically (your mileage may vary depending on your FT), habitable (whether Near-Terra or Squid-friendly or whatever) worlds would seem to be proportionately rare, getting that magic mixture of gravity, temperature, and atmosphere is got to be relatively rare given what we know about the universe.

The universe is big, really big. The rare-earth hypothesis (it's not bad but not proven given current limitations in detection technology) could just as easily be false to the degree that the next system over contains several terras (Also rather assumes all races originate from an Earth-easque environment in the first place, which er, they don't).

Terra-forming is possible, but more than likely a very expensive and time-consuming process (but again, the planet must be in the right location, it would be impractical to terra-form venus or mercury).

Depends on technology level, really, and in any case this != justifies large infantry formations.

Domed Colonies are possible, but prohibitively expensive, and not "natural" making them less than preferred to normal habitable worlds, also, sealed colonies are very vulnerable to major accidents (hole in the seal, failure of heaters/coolers/air circulation), plagues, etc, which safeguarding against further increases cost, domed colonies would probably only be used in locations of extreme mineral deposits, a need for security, or extreme overcrowding.

... Expensive, why? The economics of the future are not the economics of today, as it does follow that your ability to create domed colonies means things are less expensive. Being unnatural is ... non-sequitur, and the other problems are not major given FT technology.

Death Star Super Laser: Well, first you have to construct one (only a couple of thousand trillion credits there) and then when you use it, it doesn't leave anything more useful than an asteroid belt behind. Handy for getting the point across, but not so good for taking planets, definately a weapon of last resort.

Most FT powers have energy yields exceeding the DS, and even then it begs the question as to why you'd ever consider this option in the first place.

Base Delta Zero Operation: Sterilizing the planet by orbital bombardment not very efficient, you kill everything, but you've also killed the atmosphere, the biosphere, any infrastructure (trillions of credits of prefabbed buildings, tools, etc), and the populace (who can't revolt, but also can't serve you either. Well, you can always re-Terraform it I suppose.

Terraform, slaves, question as to why you'd bother doing this in the first place.

Neutron Bomb Saturation: Kills peeps, leaves buildings, nice. Except once again, you kill the entire populace, biosphere, and probably upset the atmosphere, here we go Terraforming again at least the infrastructure is still there. Pretty much the same with Orbital Nightcloak devices, does the same, only slower.

Just going to ask: why do you keep it up with these absurd options that no one would consider unless they didn't want the planet?

Bio/Nano Weapons: basically the same thing really, and each has a nasty habit of mutating and attacking any biological, no matter how foolproof you wank it, you could kill everything and make the world uninhabitable, bravo, I suppose you could always BSD and reterraform it afterwards.

The flu hasn't killed off the entire biosphere, so I think most biospheres are safe against virii that are hard-coded by FT powers not to fuck around. See questions of why-you-are-suggesting-this above, as well.

Precision Nuke Strikes: Even if you go with the cleaner, safer Fusion models, it's still a pretty dirty way to wage a war. If you employ such weapons, your foes will likely come up with counters, you build bigger bombs, they build deeper holes, will you run out of nukes or will they run out of dirt. Bombing is great for suppression, but you still need to go in with troops. "Bombing them into submission hasn't worked in any war of the modern era. The Resistance will intwine themselves around things you won't want to blow up, and if you use too many nukes, you've poisoned the planet, Terraforming + Fallout removal, yumm.

If you're bombing their planet, then they've lost. Clear and simple. Digging a hole in the ground won't help you against 50mt bombs and you've likely not the time to dig that far down in the first place.

So, I say, habitable planets are a precious commodity, and worth fighting groundside for. Exceptions exist, but most of the time, habitable planets are more valuable even semi-intact than the cost incurred invading them with conventional forces, and conventional warfare is far cheaper in both money and time than terraforming.

And you're either wrong, or barely correct. At least as far as value and number of earth-like planets go. You're just flat wrong about 'conventional' warfare being cheap, as loosing a million soldiers and their equipment (plus their economic contributions since well, dead men can't work) is far more expensive than bombing the shit out of someone.

You won't accept that forces you deploy might have ER weapons employed against them? Truly your brilliance dazzles us all with its intense shineyness. You refuse to accept that said ER weapons could be employed against your population centers to make very nice gut puking radiation wasted corpses out of your civvies? Because it's all terribly inconvenient. Yeah, you can get in shelters, but that takes time, and sheltering an entire planetary population would be...tricky to say the least. VERY time consuming without a doubt. Unless of course you live in a hole in the ground, in which case what we do up on the surface really shouldn't matter all that much to you.

You won't accept that forces you deploy might have ER weapons employed against them? Truly your brilliance dazzles us all with its intense shineyness. You refuse to accept that said ER weapons could be employed against your population centers to make very nice gut puking radiation wasted corpses out of your civvies? Because it's all terribly inconvenient. Yeah, you can get in shelters, but that takes time, and sheltering an entire planetary population would be...tricky to say the least. VERY time consuming without a doubt. Unless of course you live in a hole in the ground, in which case what we do up on the surface really shouldn't matter all that much to you.

So I should send in more troops to be gutted by neutron bombs? Great logic there. And yes, that's exactly what you're saying since the question is whether or not large ground armies are still useful. You also fail to analyze the situation correctly, wherein it is already established that there is orbital dominance, and thus you've lost the war and the ability to fight back.

Good job there, with you know: reading.

The universe is big, really big. The rare-earth hypothesis (it's not bad but not proven given current limitations in detection technology) could just as easily be false to the degree that the next system over contains several terras (Also rather assumes all races originate from an Earth-easque environment in the first place, which er, they don't).

As I stated, this may vary according to the rules of your particular FT, even the more common ST and SW-esque have far more habitable worlds than is realistic to expect, as do most soft sci-fi universes (habitable worlds are more interesting). GENERALLY though, I would expect them to be less common than uninhabitable worlds. If such is not the case, if you have more habitable worlds than you know what to do with, then your need to conquer alien worlds is purely psychological, and it is better to destroy the planets you don't need, but I assume MOST people's FT uni's operate on a "habitable worlds are less than common" basis, and therefore valuable.



Depends on technology level, really, and in any case this != justifies large infantry formations.

The point being that it is generally quicker, easier, and cheaper to conquer a habitable world than to find and terraform an uninhabitable one. Unless of course you are operating at a tech level were you can tow planets into the proper orbits, quickly and cheaply generate atmospheres, stabilize tectonic activities, etc., then by all means, make planets when you need them and break the ones that don't behave.


... Expensive, why? The economics of the future are not the economics of today, as it does follow that your ability to create domed colonies means things are less expensive. Being unnatural is ... non-sequitur, and the other problems are not major given FT technology.

Does it follow that a non-environmentally sealed habitat is less complex to manufacture than a sealed one? Do environmentally sealed habitats need to be produced at a higher quality/skill level than a non-sealed one? More resource intensive? Please illustrate a tech that can produce a space station for the cost of a split level ranch.


Most FT powers have energy yields exceeding the DS, and even then it begs the question as to why you'd ever consider this option in the first place.


The point is, that total destruction of the planet is efficient in the destruction of your enemies and their will to resist, but leaves no planet to exploit. And if habitable planetary exploitation is one of your strategic goals (which it should be, if you deem habitable planets valuable). So, if want to exploit a planet, you must leave a planet to exploit, PREFERABLY in as intact a state as possible.


Terraform, slaves, question as to why you'd bother doing this in the first place.
Vague, argumentative, question as to what you mean with this statement.



Just going to ask: why do you keep it up with these absurd options that no one would consider unless they didn't want the planet?

Are you argeeing with me now? The precise point is you wouldn't consider these options if you wanted the planet. The point is to illustrate that is is nigh-impossible to realistically "kill all the peoples but leave the planet intact" through strategic bombardment or WMD saturation.



The flu hasn't killed off the entire biosphere, so I think most biospheres are safe against virii that are hard-coded by FT powers not to fuck around. See questions of why-you-are-suggesting-this above, as well.

My bio-weapon is infallible, it is incredible deadly, incredible contagious, there is no cure, it only kills you, and there is no way that it will turn around and bite me in the ass....does that sound like a wank to you? Because it does to me.



If you're bombing their planet, then they've lost. Clear and simple. Digging a hole in the ground won't help you against 50mt bombs and you've likely not the time to dig that far down in the first place.

Strange, in the 50s and 60s a whole bunch of people built bomb shelters when they though nuclear bombardment was an imminent threat. In FT would there not be quicker, easier, deeper ways to tunnel? I suppose there are no radiation suits either. We've bombed the crap out of nations before, and it didn't stop them from resisting.



And you're either wrong, or barely correct. At least as far as value and number of earth-like planets go. You're just flat wrong about 'conventional' warfare being cheap, as loosing a million soldiers and their equipment (plus their economic contributions since well, dead men can't work) is far more expensive than bombing the shit out of someone.

The number and value of habitable planets is dependent upon the rules of your FT, but I do believe that in most FT's habitable worlds would be at least uncommon and valuable. I didn't say "conventional" warfare was cheap or even cheaper than bombardment. I do say that "conventional" warfare is more effective for taking a world mostly intact than bombardment, and that the prize, a mostly intact habitable world, is more valuable than the cost of the war and a viable if not desirable goal. The Earth's domestic gdp was something like 19 trillion dollars a year in 1995 according to one source, you can buy a lot of troops with that kind of money.

Feeding trolls is fun,

SP

As I stated, this may vary according to the rules of your particular FT, even the more common ST and SW-esque have far more habitable worlds than is realistic to expect, as do most soft sci-fi universes (habitable worlds are more interesting). GENERALLY though, I would expect them to be less common than uninhabitable worlds. If such is not the case, if you have more habitable worlds than you know what to do with, then your need to conquer alien worlds is purely psychological, and it is better to destroy the planets you don't need, but I assume MOST people's FT uni's operate on a "habitable worlds are less than common" basis, and therefore valuable.

Which means you assume everyone operates under conditions that are vague and only serve to help you. Denied.

The point being that it is generally quicker, easier, and cheaper to conquer a habitable world than to find and terraform an uninhabitable one. Unless of course you are operating at a tech level were you can tow planets into the proper orbits, quickly and cheaply generate atmospheres, stabilize tectonic activities, etc., then by all means, make planets when you need them and break the ones that don't behave.

So why bring this up? It doesn't justify major ground combat formations, and points out the stupidly obvious, which means you've not contributed anything by saying it.

Does it follow that a non-environmentally sealed habitat is less complex to manufacture than a sealed one? Do environmentally sealed habitats need to be produced at a higher quality/skill level than a non-sealed one? More resource intensive? Please illustrate a tech that can produce a space station for the cost of a split level ranch.

No, actually, it doesn't. A greenhouse is less complex than the atmosphere in its entirety. Just as said greenhouse has a lower upkeep cost than does a state in tornado alley. Artificial habitats are less expensive in the long run, and as far as efficiency go, more reliable than the biosphere of an entire planet, but I guess you don't watch the news long enough to see the local weather reports.

The point is, that total destruction of the planet is efficient in the destruction of your enemies and their will to resist, but leaves no planet to exploit. And if habitable planetary exploitation is one of your strategic goals (which it should be, if you deem habitable planets valuable). So, if want to exploit a planet, you must leave a planet to exploit, PREFERABLY in as intact a state as possible.

Are you argeeing with me now? The precise point is you wouldn't consider these options if you wanted the planet. The point is to illustrate that is is nigh-impossible to realistically "kill all the peoples but leave the planet intact" through strategic bombardment or WMD saturation.


This is what is known as a false dilemma, because it is either blow up the planet or conquer it with large groups of infantry. Totally discounting other methods of conquest. You also assume that $_nation wants this planet, that they are the kind of race that can make use of it, or that they still want to conquer the planet with weapons that are meant to kill planets entirely.

Denied.

Vague, argumentative, question as to what you mean with this statement.

Not my problem if you can't read.

My bio-weapon is infallible, it is incredible deadly, incredible contagious, there is no cure, it only kills you, and there is no way that it will turn around and bite me in the ass....does that sound like a wank to you? Because it does to me.

Sounds like mother-nature is the biggest and longest standing bio-wanker of all then, according to you.

Strange, in the 50s and 60s a whole bunch of people built bomb shelters when they though nuclear bombardment was an imminent threat. In FT would there not be quicker, easier, deeper ways to tunnel? I suppose there are no radiation suits either. We've bombed the crap out of nations before, and it didn't stop them from resisting.

Irrelevant. People in the 1400's thought the earth was flat, your point? You also try to compare nuclear weapons to conventional explosives. Also denied.

Read up on the effects of weapons that are 50mt and higher, you'd then know (since you'd also have some idea as to what you're talking about) that bomb shelters won't help you.

The number and value of habitable planets is dependent upon the rules of your FT, but I do believe that in most FT's habitable worlds would be at least uncommon and valuable. I didn't say "conventional" warfare was cheap or even cheaper than bombardment. I do say that "conventional" warfare is more effective for taking a world mostly intact than bombardment, and that the prize, a mostly intact habitable world, is more valuable than the cost of the war and a viable if not desirable goal. The Earth's domestic gdp was something like 19 trillion dollars a year in 1995 according to one source, you can buy a lot of troops with that kind of money.

Your premise is denied, for two reasons: one you cannot argue from both ends, that it depends on FT but at the same time they are also a rarity. You also don't understand post-scarcity economics, you lack common sense, and you seem to think tailoring the argument into a situation where infantry are needed makes you smart.

It doesn't.

It's just annoying.

Feeding trolls is fun,

SP

Aye, too bad education idiots isn't so fun.

Which means you assume everyone operates under conditions that are vague and only serve to help you. Denied.

Welcome to FT. Everyone can operate under unique conditions. Your FT universe can have abundant habitable worlds, mine may not, your FT universe might have anti-matter, psychics, or a host of other technologies that mine may or may not share. Until you agree consensually within your RP with all the participants, the rules of your little universe only apply to yourself. It is easy to concieve of FT universes where this argument does not apply, hence the caveat "Your mileage may vary according to the rules of your FT", the disclaimer was inserted that this argument only applies to FT's where Habitable worlds are relatively rare and precious commodities.



So why bring this up? It doesn't justify major ground combat formations, and points out the stupidly obvious, which means you've not contributed anything by saying it.

It couldn't have been that stupidly obvious, as I needed to clarify it for you. Also, how does showing that terraforming uninhabitable worlds and exterminating hostile habitated ones less efficient than conquering habitable ones not justify conquering through ground combat? Are you going to conquer worlds by bombardment alone? IT DOES NOT WORK. If you have a scenario in which it does, I'd love to entertain it, please feel free to illustrate.



No, actually, it doesn't. A greenhouse is less complex than the atmosphere in its entirety. Just as said greenhouse has a lower upkeep cost than does a state in tornado alley. Artificial habitats are less expensive in the long run, and as far as efficiency go, more reliable than the biosphere of an entire planet, but I guess you don't watch the news long enough to see the local weather reports.

a.) A greenhouse is not a sealed environment.
b.) A greenhouse does not compare to a state in tornado alley unless it is the same size and under the same conditions.
c.)Stating that artificial habitats are less expensive to maintain than natural habitats is a pretty spectacular claim, care to expand on that boast?
d.) I guess you don't study planetary environments enough to know how severe weather can be on uninhabitable worlds, mother nature here is pretty damn destructive, but relatively mild compared to some of the other environments in the solar system.

So, I guess I would say that a sealed habit the size of a state in a tornado zone would be more expensive to maintain than an unsealed habitat in similiar conditions. Please feel free to demonstrate the opposite.



This is what is known as a false dilemma, because it is either blow up the planet or conquer it with large groups of infantry. Totally discounting other methods of conquest. You also assume that $_nation wants this planet, that they are the kind of race that can make use of it, or that they still want to conquer the planet with weapons that are meant to kill planets entirely.

Denied.
Nobody said masses of infantry, major ground combat.
Yes, it is my assumption that you want the planet and that you are able to make use of it, otherwise the argument is pretty damn silly, no? If you don't want the planet, or can't make use of it, the only reason to invade is for moral (ie, you would find it more kind to shoot them than to bomb the shit out of them) or psychological (you derive pleasure from killing on a personal level or dominating a hostile population).
The major argument against major ground combat is that it is easier to exterminate the resistance through bombardment than it is to conquer the planet through major ground combat. The core of my counter-argument is that it is more profitable to conquer a planet through major ground combat than it is to exterminate the planet's populace and try to exploit afterwards. That the level of planetary bombardment needed exterminate the populace would be counterproductive to the eventual exploitation of said planet.

If you have a valid counter-argument beyond "Denied", please express it.



Sounds like mother-nature is the biggest and longest standing bio-wanker of all then, according to you.
I would agree with the statement that mother nature is the biggest bio-wanker of them all. Would you agree than screwing with that wanker to achieve a desired result is generally a "bad idea"?



Irrelevant. People in the 1400's thought the earth was flat, your point? You also try to compare nuclear weapons to conventional explosives. Also denied.
The point is, that a populace that is aware of a imminent threat is likely to take precautions against such threat, including nuclear bombardment. If you want me to stop equivalating nucleur weapons with conventional explosive, please kindly ask the world to stop rating them in conventional explosive equivalents.


Read up on the effects of weapons that are 50mt and higher, you'd then know (since you'd also have some idea as to what you're talking about) that bomb shelters won't help you.

There has only been one 50mt detonation, nothing higher. And you are saying that nothing will help me? In FT, you can have force fields, digging machines that can to down miles, etc I can think of alot of defenses that could make a shelter survivable from a 50mt explosion, hell kid, a Star Destroyer's turbolasers are rated at almost 600 megatons, if you have weapons of a certain degree of destructiveness, it is feasible to have defenses of an equal level of effectiveness as you yourself have stated in other arguments.



Your premise is denied, for two reasons: one you cannot argue from both ends, that it depends on FT but at the same time they are also a rarity. You also don't understand post-scarcity economics, you lack common sense, and you seem to think tailoring the argument into a situation where infantry are needed makes you smart.

I can certainly state that my position does not apply to all FT's, but does apply to those FT's that hold habitable worlds as a rare commodity. I would hold that post-scarcity economics don't hold water in NS where you have economic stats (implying that there are a finite supply of resources at your disposal). I am not concerned about your opinion of my common sense. And of course, I am not smart.

I'm arguing with someone on the internets.

Cheers,

SP


Aye, too bad education idiots isn't so fun.
Yes, too bad educating idiots isn't either.

There isn't a clear yes or no answer to the question. There are far too many variables involved in FT conflicts between different factions that personally I believe that whether ground combat on a large scale is useful or not is a sort of a grey area.

I tend to RP large scale ground combat for several reasons, starting with the personal opinion that ground combat is fun to write about.

Secondly, the relative tech-levels in the engagement come to play. Does your enemy have air/space defense systems that are effectively capable of causing such a high rate of attrition to your air/spaceborne systems that you need to eliminate such systems via ground insertion? Do you have in your disposal mobile air/space defense systems that are capable of effectively reducing attrition to your ground forces from enemy air/space fire support assets? Is your nation ready to accept extremely high collateral damage to enemy/friendly civilian populace in order to wipe out enemy ground assets with air/space fire support, in case the enemy holes up within a highly populated urban area? Do your forces possess a working and effective mobile or easily relocatable area point-defense system? Do you/your enemy possess an effective man portable armor/suit that is capable of sustaining your personnel in a theatre where NBC weaponry is deployed liberally?

Many of these questions also affect why I tend to RP large scale ground combat in FT environments. Then there is also finally the almighty power of plot-device. If in order to write a good story I would need to employ a plot device to justify ground combat, I'll do so in a heartbeat. In an FT environment the usage of plot-devices is in addition much easier than in an MT or PMT environment.

My tired two cents on the matter.

So I should send in more troops to be gutted by neutron bombs? Great logic there. And yes, that's exactly what you're saying since the question is whether or not large ground armies are still useful. You also fail to analyze the situation correctly, wherein it is already established that there is orbital dominance, and thus you've lost the war and the ability to fight back.

Good job there, with you know: reading.

That was for Tannelorn. I've already got an answer to orbital superiority, which we addressed elsewhere. On the other hand... Large ground armies are rarely useful. I've employed a division or two from time to time, but nothing like the masses of troops you'll find on most WWIesque FT threads.

Really, both SP and ElectricX (I don't really care how its really spelled,) are right. You can conquer a planet quickly through orbital bombardment (of varying sorts) but you'll destroy much of what your trying to gain. You can also conquer through ground troops a world while keeping the populace and most of the infastructure, however it takes a long time and costs a lot of supplies and men.

These points, however, are far from the main question: "Is Major (think WWII,) useless in FT?" The answear is, in most cases, yes. There could be circumstances where space navies are ineffective in dealing with world conquering or rebellion supression that could lead to major ground combat, but these are very rare.

Really, conquering a world is up to the invader. Would you prefer a world with most of its populace and infrastructure or one that has been bombarded more thoroughly requiring more reconstruction and manpower to reach full effeciency? Would you prefer a quick, but destructive victory? Or prehaps a slower but more economical (from a reconstruction stand point,) option? There really is no arguement here, because major ground combat in MT is growing more useless by the decade. What use are million man armies in the future then?

In closing, orbital bombardment and ground invasions both have their own economical advantages to world taking. Major ground combat IS (in most circumstances,) useless in FT. And ElectronicX(or whater his name is,) is a horribly self righteous and trollish, though in some ways correct. He is not much unlike WWI President Wilson who was so terribly self righteous that, though right, the Entente nor the increasingly isolationist Congress wouldn't listen to his fourteen points*.


*Note, this is extremely paraphrased. The extremely high cost of lives the Entente paid was also cause for them to ignore Wilson's idealistic 14 points, among other things.

Welcome to FT. Everyone can operate under unique conditions. Your FT universe can have abundant habitable worlds, mine may not, your FT universe might have anti-matter, psychics, or a host of other technologies that mine may or may not share. Until you agree consensually within your RP with all the participants, the rules of your little universe only apply to yourself. It is easy to concieve of FT universes where this argument does not apply, hence the caveat "Your mileage may vary according to the rules of your FT", the disclaimer was inserted that this argument only applies to FT's where Habitable worlds are relatively rare and precious commodities.

Basically arguments wherein you have a better chance of being right, and therefore also contributing nothing to this thread. Congratulations.

It couldn't have been that stupidly obvious, as I needed to clarify it for you. Also, how does showing that terraforming uninhabitable worlds and exterminating hostile habitated ones less efficient than conquering habitable ones not justify conquering through ground combat? Are you going to conquer worlds by bombardment alone? IT DOES NOT WORK. If you have a scenario in which it does, I'd love to entertain it, please feel free to illustrate.

You're right: You had to clarify because random statements concerning planetary annihilation are generally considered retarded within the "I want to take this planet" context. To your second point: it discounts other methods of planet conquest (precision strikes on population centers that do not damage much or any of the surrounding country-side), while also again not answering the question as to whether or not this justifies major ground combat operations comparable to WWII or Vietnam style operations. Basically you've said so much without saying anything at all.

a.) A greenhouse is not a sealed environment.
b.) A greenhouse does not compare to a state in tornado alley unless it is the same size and under the same conditions.
c.)Stating that artificial habitats are less expensive to maintain than natural habitats is a pretty spectacular claim, care to expand on that boast?
d.) I guess you don't study planetary environments enough to know how severe weather can be on uninhabitable worlds, mother nature here is pretty damn destructive, but relatively mild compared to some of the other environments in the solar system.

Wow, I'm amazed that someone actually does not get it. A sealed environment where you are in control of the conditions within, and not the chaotic forces of mother nature is by leaps and bounds cheaper and more efficient than a non-sealed environment. It doesn't take a college degree in both ecology and economics to arrive at this conclusion, especially when scaled up into FT where we have post-scarcity economics and not the CnC style video game system you seem to be working with.

As to the greenhouse: It's called an analogy, and one I'm surprised you're unable to get. Granted, a greenhouse is not a perfectly sealed environment, but the stuff that grows in their under more stringently controlled conditions usually fair better than that which is subject to nature's fury, durh.

So, I guess I would say that a sealed habit the size of a state in a tornado zone would be more expensive to maintain than an unsealed habitat in similiar conditions. Please feel free to demonstrate the opposite.

Property isn't destroyed in the sealed zone, because there are no tornadoes. Amazing I had to spell that out for you.

Nobody said masses of infantry, major ground combat.
Yes, it is my assumption that you want the planet and that you are able to make use of it, otherwise the argument is pretty damn silly, no? If you don't want the planet, or can't make use of it, the only reason to invade is for moral (ie, you would find it more kind to shoot them than to bomb the shit out of them) or psychological (you derive pleasure from killing on a personal level or dominating a hostile population).

Or maybe you want to neutralize an enemy, neh? Oh wait, my bad, that is rather silly in the context of war :rolleyes:.

Also it is rather implied that major ground-combat = large forces of infantry, unless you call two superman-easque soldiers fighting it our major ground combat.

The major argument against major ground combat is that it is easier to exterminate the resistance through bombardment than it is to conquer the planet through major ground combat. The core of my counter-argument is that it is more profitable to conquer a planet through major ground combat than it is to exterminate the planet's populace and try to exploit afterwards. That the level of planetary bombardment needed exterminate the populace would be counterproductive to the eventual exploitation of said planet.

The major argument is that it's easier to use your orbital superiority to gank the shit out of the enemy than trying to fight them on their own terms, on the ground, with large armies. Your major argument is that which you just mentioned, and no one but you seems to be talking about it. Also note several presuppositions in your argument: that all extermination methods are necessarily overly destruction (neutron bombs leave the equipment intact, for example), or that you need the populace of the planet to exploit it instead of using more efficient mining drones or some sort of artificial life form.

Well guess what: You're wrong, again.

I would agree with the statement that mother nature is the biggest bio-wanker of them all. Would you agree than screwing with that wanker to achieve a desired result is generally a "bad idea"?

So you've side-stepped the argument. Good, concession accepted and later question ignored on the grounds that it's irrelevant.

The point is, that a populace that is aware of a imminent threat is likely to take precautions against such threat, including nuclear bombardment. If you want me to stop equivalating nucleur weapons with conventional explosive, please kindly ask the world to stop rating them in conventional explosive equivalents.

The world, uh, doesn't do that? Unless somewhere out there exists a system that describes a hand grenade as .0000000000000000000000001 nuclear missiles.

Also taking precautions doesn't means that a threat is somehow annulled, denied.

There has only been one 50mt detonation, nothing higher. And you are saying that nothing will help me? In FT, you can have force fields, digging machines that can to down miles, etc I can think of alot of defenses that could make a shelter survivable from a 50mt explosion, hell kid, a Star Destroyer's turbolasers are rated at almost 600 megatons, if you have weapons of a certain degree of destructiveness, it is feasible to have defenses of an equal level of effectiveness as you yourself have stated in other arguments.

Yes, and that one detonation is proof enough that FT level explosions and weapons will not be denied by holes in the ground.

I also never stated that there existed strategic defenses against strategic weapons that make the latter ineffective: ABM shields, for example.

Also how do forcefields help you when I have orbital superiority and I can bomb you for um, ever? They need to be invincible, in that case.

I can certainly state that my position does not apply to all FT's, but does apply to those FT's that hold habitable worlds as a rare commodity. I would hold that post-scarcity economics don't hold water in NS where you have economic stats (implying that there are a finite supply of resources at your disposal). I am not concerned about your opinion of my common sense. And of course, I am not smart.

Your position doesn't even apply to rare-earth FT (do any of us even play that here?) for reasons already mentioned.

And if you want to bring in the stats then there is no NS FT, because NS was never built with that in mind (which also means another tailored argument = FAIL!).

I'm arguing with someone on the internets.

Cheers,

SP

And look at how well you're doing too!

:rolleyes:


Yes, too bad educating idiots isn't either.

If only being a spelling-nazi meant something...

Basically arguments wherein you have a better chance of being right, and therefore also contributing nothing to this thread. Congratulations.

So you are implying I should frame my arguments within circumstances where they make no sense?


You're right: You had to clarify because random statements concerning planetary annihilation are generally considered retarded within the "I want to take this planet" context. To your second point: it discounts other methods of planet conquest (precision strikes on population centers that do not damage much or any of the surrounding country-side), while also again not answering the question as to whether or not this justifies major ground combat operations comparable to WWII or Vietnam style operations. Basically you've said so much without saying anything at all.

So let me get this straight, first you ask me to clarify my position, then you chastize me for stating the obvious, and then your masterstroke is "When you explain your position to me it's just dumb"? Which side of your face am I addressing?

You launch your precision strikes on population centers, now what? You still haven't killed everyone, and you still haven't conquered the planet. I'm sorry, I don't consider this a method of conquest, I consider it bombardment, which may aid in a conquest, but cannot achieve a conquest by itself. You could obliterate every population center on Earth with a pop more than a 1,000, and you still wouldn't conquer the planet. Sooner or later, you must send in ground forces of some nature to deal with the stragglers, how soon is dependant on how much damage you want to do to the planet.



Wow, I'm amazed that someone actually does not get it. A sealed environment where you are in control of the conditions within, and not the chaotic forces of mother nature is by leaps and bounds cheaper and more efficient than a non-sealed environment. It doesn't take a college degree in both ecology and economics to arrive at this conclusion, especially when scaled up into FT where we have post-scarcity economics and not the CnC style video game system you seem to be working with.

I'm not going to even touch post-scarcity economics, save it for Star Fleet, the whole "I have so many resources that nothing costs anything" is hopefully not a typical RP environment.

How exactly do you control this environment again? If you are on a planet with an atmosphere (not necessarily breatheable), it will have weather, which I suppose you can regulate, but I would assume that it is cheaper to regulate the weather of a habitable planet (which by nature of being habitable should have milder weather) than an uninhabitable planet, which more than likely will have more severe weather. If you build on an airless moon or similiar without atmosphere, you have less weather effects, but are more susceptible to stellar effects (the atmosphere protects from all that wonderful radiation, etc). Please, explain to me how a sealed community of 10,000 would be cheaper to build on the venus, mars, or the moon than a unsealed community of 10,000 in Texas.


As to the greenhouse: It's called an analogy, and one I'm surprised you're unable to get. Granted, a greenhouse is not a perfectly sealed environment, but the stuff that grows in their under more stringently controlled conditions usually fair better than that which is subject to nature's fury, durh.

If you are going to make analogies, at least make sure the scale is correct, yes, elephants and mice are both mammals, your point? It is hard to substitute a greenhouse for a sealed environment, why not try something simpler, say contrast a submarine with a sailboat?



Property isn't destroyed in the sealed zone, because there are no tornadoes. Amazing I had to spell that out for you.

Life is destroyed in the sealed zone if there is a breach or equipment failure.



Or maybe you want to neutralize an enemy, neh? Oh wait, my bad, that is rather silly in the context of war :rolleyes:.

Please, if your sole goal is to neutralize the enemy, boil off the atmosphere.


Also it is rather implied that major ground-combat = large forces of infantry, unless you call two superman-easque soldiers fighting it our major ground combat.
Major ground combat is what you make of it in FT, you could have super-mechs, droid armies, godzilla, starship troopers, gun-drones, you name it, hopefully is a combined arms force that mixes several styles. Your limitations are on your imagination and what your RP partners are willing to accept.



The major argument is that it's easier to use your orbital superiority to gank the shit out of the enemy than trying to fight them on their own terms, on the ground, with large armies. Your major argument is that which you just mentioned, and no one but you seems to be talking about it. Also note several presuppositions in your argument: that all extermination methods are necessarily overly destruction (neutron bombs leave the equipment intact, for example), or that you need the populace of the planet to exploit it instead of using more efficient mining drones or some sort of artificial life form.

You can use your orbital superiority to bomb them into the stone age, and you should, but if you rely SOLELY on bombardment to eradicate a species it would seem to overly damage the planet. To limit damage, sooner or later, you must but boots/feelers/repulsor pods/whatever on the ground an meet the enemy in ground combat.

I'm not saying that you cannot have limited release of ortillery to help you conquer the planet, in fact I encourage it. I am saying you cannot rely on such alone to kill everything.

Neutron bombs are one of the better solutions, but as I have said before, in order to eradicate the species you will more than likely have to saturate the planet in enough radiation to do major damage to the biosphere.

You don't have to keep the populace, your ideology may indicate otherwise, they are both a perk and a hinderance if you do decide to do so.


The world, uh, doesn't do that? Unless somewhere out there exists a system that describes a hand grenade as .0000000000000000000000001 nuclear missiles.

No, there exists a system that rates nuclear weapons in equivalent energy yield of TNT. Your vaunted 50mt Nuke for example releases the equivalent energy of 50 million tons of TNT, what did you think a megaton meant?


Also taking precautions doesn't means that a threat is somehow annulled, denied.

There are no perfect weapons in NS, and there are no perfect defenses. I never said precautions would nullify, but they could certainly abate.


Yes, and that one detonation is proof enough that FT level explosions and weapons will not be denied by holes in the ground.

How so? It was an airburst with about 4km killzone (granted its effects could be felt much further, it WAS an impressive blast). Subsurface it would be much abated. You saying I can't dig deeper than that? I can't park my shelters under mountains? I can't armor my holes in the ground? I can't fortify them with forcefields?

I also never stated that there existed strategic defenses against strategic weapons that make the latter ineffective: ABM shields, for example.


Also how do forcefields help you when I have orbital superiority and I can bomb you for um, ever? They need to be invincible, in that case.

Your ship based reactors provide you with an eternity of destructive power, but my ground based reactors can power my defenses only a finite amount of time? That sounds fair...


And if you want to bring in the stats then there is no NS FT, because NS was never built with that in mind (which also means another tailored argument = FAIL!).
There are stats, and NS FT exists despite those stats, it's the world we live in, deal.

With regards,

SP

Really, both SP and ElectricX (I don't really care how its really spelled,) are right. You can conquer a planet quickly through orbital bombardment (of varying sorts) but you'll destroy much of what your trying to gain. You can also conquer through ground troops a world while keeping the populace and most of the infastructure, however it takes a long time and costs a lot of supplies and men.

Supposes that most FT powers want anything the conquered populace has.

Also if it's so incomprehensibly difficult to spell my name correctly, then how can you be trusted on an intellectual level to actually know what you're talking about? The answer is oh so obvious but I'll let you get it.

Really, conquering a world is up to the invader. Would you prefer a world with most of its populace and infrastructure or one that has been bombarded more thoroughly requiring more reconstruction and manpower to reach full effeciency? Would you prefer a quick, but destructive victory? Or prehaps a slower but more economical (from a reconstruction stand point,) option? There really is no arguement here, because major ground combat in MT is growing more useless by the decade. What use are million man armies in the future then?

Who says you need their infrastructure? That you can't rebuild it in a day? Or that traditional economics even play a factor?

In closing, orbital bombardment and ground invasions both have their own economical advantages to world taking. Major ground combat IS (in most circumstances,) useless in FT. And ElectronicX(or whater his name is,) is a horribly self righteous and trollish, though in some ways correct. He is not much unlike WWI President Wilson who was so terribly self righteous that, though right, the Entente nor the increasingly isolationist Congress wouldn't listen to his fourteen points*.

It's more trollish to intentionally misspell someone's name, misconstrue their arguments, and also not read their posts (or any other in the thread), while also repeating that which has already been stated, than it is to make forceful arguments.

Style over substance says you fail.


*Note, this is extremely paraphrased. The extremely high cost of lives the Entente paid was also cause for them to ignore Wilson's idealistic 14 points, among other things.

Or maybe it was because American domination of European politics was considered inappropriate at the time?

If I remember right, not even the U.S. approved those 14 points either...

So you are implying I should frame my arguments within circumstances where they make no sense?

I'm saying you should do the exact opposite. Instead you continue to do otherwise as you have since you decided to grace us with your presence.

So let me get this straight, first you ask me to clarify my position, then you chastize me for stating the obvious, and then your masterstroke is "When you explain your position to me it's just dumb"? Which side of your face am I addressing?

It went like this really:

"Wtf are you talking about?" "...No shit" "That's stupid."

Which paraphrased looks something like, "Why do you continue to not contribute anything to this thread?"

You launch your precision strikes on population centers, now what? You still haven't killed everyone, and you still haven't conquered the planet. I'm sorry, I don't consider this a method of conquest, I consider it bombardment, which may aid in a conquest, but cannot achieve a conquest by itself. You could obliterate every population center on Earth with a pop more than a 1,000, and you still wouldn't conquer the planet. Sooner or later, you must send in ground forces of some nature to deal with the stragglers, how soon is dependant on how much damage you want to do to the planet.

Then you kill said stragglers by using the same precision strikes on a smaller scale.

I'm not going to even touch post-scarcity economics, save it for Star Fleet, the whole "I have so many resources that nothing costs anything" is hopefully not a typical RP environment.

It's a part of the FT scene. If you can't deal with it, then don't bother posting here: I'll not give up a reality of the future so you can argue the usefulness of major ground combat.

How exactly do you control this environment again? If you are on a planet with an atmosphere (not necessarily breatheable), it will have weather, which I suppose you can regulate, but I would assume that it is cheaper to regulate the weather of a habitable planet (which by nature of being habitable should have milder weather) than an uninhabitable planet, which more than likely will have more severe weather. If you build on an airless moon or similiar without atmosphere, you have less weather effects, but are more susceptible to stellar effects (the atmosphere protects from all that wonderful radiation, etc). Please, explain to me how a sealed community of 10,000 would be cheaper to build on the venus, mars, or the moon than a unsealed community of 10,000 in Texas.

This planet is habitable. It's weather is not mild. Uninhabitable planets such as Venus would be more likely terraformed (so many volatiles just sitting around is wasteful), so that leaves places like Pluto and the Moon. Stellar effects are wholly irrelevant; if I can build said sealed environment (while also conquer other planets and slug it out with other space fleets) then solar radiation is a non-issue.

And the sealed community would be immune to hostile weather effects. The unsealed community in Texas can be taken out by a tornado or electrical storm.

If you are going to make analogies, at least make sure the scale is correct, yes, elephants and mice are both mammals, your point? It is hard to substitute a greenhouse for a sealed environment, why not try something simpler, say contrast a submarine with a sailboat?

Scale isn't important; effect is. And in fact my correctly scaling it works more to my advantage than yours, since said alley-sized greenhouse is better than a non-alley-sized greenhouse.

The point behind your attack on my analogy is also lost: you add no context and thereby make said attack nothing more than a useless sentence in a bigger paragraph. Congratulations.

Life is destroyed in the sealed zone if there is a breach or equipment failure.

And? We can't quickly fix this why? This somehow stops the total destruction of entire communities and various other forms of property damage from weather related phenomena how?

Please, if your sole goal is to neutralize the enemy, boil off the atmosphere.

And do what you've been arguing against? Oh God, not that! I MIGHT WANT THAT PLANET! :rolleyes:

Major ground combat is what you make of it in FT, you could have super-mechs, droid armies, godzilla, starship troopers, gun-drones, you name it, hopefully is a combined arms force that mixes several styles. Your limitations are on your imagination and what your RP partners are willing to accept.

If you've been reading this thread then you'd know what there is at least a loose definition for what major ground combat really is, so your attempt to bypass the argument by claiming ambiguity is denied.

You can use your orbital superiority to bomb them into the stone age, and you should, but if you rely SOLELY on bombardment to eradicate a species it would seem to overly damage the planet. To limit damage, sooner or later, you must but boots/feelers/repulsor pods/whatever on the ground an meet the enemy in ground combat.

Justify your statement that it would damage the planet overly, and that said planet is useful to said bombarding species.

I'm not saying that you cannot have limited release of ortillery to help you conquer the planet, in fact I encourage it. I am saying you cannot rely on such alone to kill everything.

It works, so yes I can.

Neutron bombs are one of the better solutions, but as I have said before, in order to eradicate the species you will more than likely have to saturate the planet in enough radiation to do major damage to the biosphere.


See above.

No, there exists a system that rates nuclear weapons in equivalent energy yield of TNT. Your vaunted 50mt Nuke for example releases the equivalent energy of 50 million tons of TNT, what did you think a megaton meant?

I thought a megaton meant just that, and that its application dealt with nuclear weapons, thereby clearing up any ambiguity. How you managed to find some is beyond me, honestly.

There are no perfect weapons in NS, and there are no perfect defenses. I never said precautions would nullify, but they could certainly abate.

Cannons killed the castle. Oh shit reality god-modded!

How so? It was an airburst with about 4km killzone (granted its effects could be felt much further, it WAS an impressive blast). Subsurface it would be much abated. You saying I can't dig deeper than that? I can't park my shelters under mountains? I can't armor my holes in the ground? I can't fortify them with forcefields?

So a ground detonation would have left a much larger crater, and also a much larger seismic disturbance. Use FT tech to shape the blast and it's that much worse, and even without doing so a mountain isn't good protection unless you're only ever hit once; armor melts or just vaporizes, and forcefields are easily hit static defenses. You still lose.

Your ship based reactors provide you with an eternity of destructive power, but my ground based reactors can power my defenses only a finite amount of time? That sounds fair...

My orbital superiority provides me with an eternity of destructive power, your ground-based reactors give you a limited amount of time to make due with a limited amount of resources.

It makes sense when you fully explain reality, doesn't it?


There are stats, and NS FT exists despite those stats, it's the world we live in, deal.

With regards,

SP

According to your logic it shouldn't since stats-r-God; either stick with your arguments or don't make them.

And btw:

The world knows who made this post; I don't need to sign it with my initials to avoid confusion.

If I remember right, not even the U.S. approved those 14 points either...

Correct. Only after WWII did America decide that it was to be the world-referee after Europe gave up the reigns to that position.

Both Congress and mainland Europe detested the idea of America meddling in European politics, especially those concerning the long-held tradition of needlessly punishing defeated enemies regardless of the severity of the damage they inflicted upon the victor.

Though this is for another thread...

I'm late to this discussion, but I'll thrust in my opinion.

In a FT war, he who controls the orbitals controls the planet. That being said, in order to truly subjugate a planet one would need ground forces to reduce and eliminate enemy forces.

Of course, if one's goal is complete genocide, you don't need those troops. Just drop asteroids on them.

Really, both SP and ElectricX (I don't really care how its really spelled,) are right. You can conquer a planet quickly through orbital bombardment (of varying sorts) but you'll destroy much of what your trying to gain. You can also conquer through ground troops a world while keeping the populace and most of the infastructure, however it takes a long time and costs a lot of supplies and men.

If allowed the suspension of disbelief to certain extent, the one and only method of completely subduing a planet via space bombardment is through the utilization of long-range kinetic strikes. Be it slugging asteroids, throwing relativistic kill-vechiles or anything similar, your launch platforms will be out of range from possible planetary defense systems. Ofcourse, this method will wipe out most of the target planet, and a civilian populace possibly ranging in the billions.

These points, however, are far from the main question: "Is Major (think WWII,) useless in FT?" The answear is, in most cases, yes. There could be circumstances where space navies are ineffective in dealing with world conquering or rebellion supression that could lead to major ground combat, but these are very rare.

You're not thinking in broad enough terms to be honest. When we start talking about actual Space Navies, it is reasonable to assume that the enemy possesses a spacy navy of their own, as well as orbital and surface based defense installations. Depending on the extent of such installations, the rate of attrition to your space forces might be more than you're willing to accept. Ground forces will always be cheaper than spaceborne warships.

Really, conquering a world is up to the invader. Would you prefer a world with most of its populace and infrastructure or one that has been bombarded more thoroughly requiring more reconstruction and manpower to reach full effeciency? Would you prefer a quick, but destructive victory? Or prehaps a slower but more economical (from a reconstruction stand point,) option? There really is no arguement here, because major ground combat in MT is growing more useless by the decade. What use are million man armies in the future then?

If we're talking about FT nations capable of building large space fleets and the spaceborne infrastructure to support them, it is reasonable to assume such a nation would also have the capability to construct planetary infrastructures at a reasonable pace. But the point of killing a civilian populace of millions to billions would not realistically be an option to any but the most genocidal of nations.

The reason why the importance of ground combat seems to be low at the moment stems from the force inbalance of the opposing armies. Take the US invasion of Iraq. Iraq did not have much in the way of air-defense capability to speak of, nor an Air Force that could have helped in suppressing the massive advantage the Coalition had from their air support. Nor a navy capable of engaging US Naval elements.

In closing, orbital bombardment and ground invasions both have their own economical advantages to world taking. Major ground combat IS (in most circumstances,) useless in FT. And ElectronicX(or whater his name is,) is a horribly self righteous and trollish, though in some ways correct. He is not much unlike WWI President Wilson who was so terribly self righteous that, though right, the Entente nor the increasingly isolationist Congress wouldn't listen to his fourteen points*.

Major ground combat is only useless if you dont really care if you wipe out a city with a civilian populace of millions just to neutralize a single enemy battalion holed up in said city.

Really, collateral damage is the key to why you dont just nuke a planet from orbit to rid yourself of the nuisance of enemy ground forces positioning themselves near population centers. The answer isnt to use a smaller precision strike, because if you use kinetics, the size of said kinetic needs to be such that it doesnt burn up in the athmosphere. Which basically means that in order to wipe out that single enemy battalion in a high population density city, you just killed tens- to hundreds of thousands of civilians.

If allowed the suspension of disbelief to certain extent, the one and only method of completely subduing a planet via space bombardment is through the utilization of long-range kinetic strikes. Be it slugging asteroids, throwing relativistic kill-vechiles or anything similar, your launch platforms will be out of range from possible planetary defense systems. Ofcourse, this method will wipe out most of the target planet, and a civilian populace possibly ranging in the billions.
Untrue. To land troops, you'd need to take out any anti-ship defenses anyway. Thus, you could just sit in orbit and bombard your target with all sorts of weaponry (albeit still virtually all kinetics if we want to keep things realistic).



You're not thinking in broad enough terms to be honest. When we start talking about actual Space Navies, it is reasonable to assume that the enemy possesses a spacy navy of their own, as well as orbital and surface based defense installations. Depending on the extent of such installations, the rate of attrition to your space forces might be more than you're willing to accept. Ground forces will always be cheaper than spaceborne warships.
Quite true. However, to land troops, you'd need to neutralise their space navy, orbital and surface defense installations anyway. Thus, you're already paying for your own fleet, which can deal with enemy troops on its own.

Major ground combat is only useless if you dont really care if you wipe out a city with a civilian populace of millions just to neutralize a single enemy battalion holed up in said city.

Really, collateral damage is the key to why you dont just nuke a planet from orbit to rid yourself of the nuisance of enemy ground forces positioning themselves near population centers. The answer isnt to use a smaller precision strike, because if you use kinetics, the size of said kinetic needs to be such that it doesnt burn up in the athmosphere. Which basically means that in order to wipe out that single enemy battalion in a high population density city, you just killed tens- to hundreds of thousands of civilians.
I disagree. While it's true that you'll have to use a certain mass to keep from being destroyed on reentry (assuming you don't have all sorts of FT technobabble to keep it from burning up), there's nothing preventing you from decelerating to a less absurdly lethal velocity, capable of even picking off individual targets with a bit of guidance. Heck, you could even burn off enough of your projectile upon reentry to the size of a ping pong ball if you wanted, and keep your velocity.

Im sorry for intruding to your debate ElectronX and Seti Prime, but I felt that I had to offer my opinion to some of the issues thrown around.

Then you kill said stragglers by using the same precision strikes on a smaller scale.

A habitable planet is a really big place. You can have company to battalion sized ground units running around its surface without any real concern of an enemy in orbit detecting you if you have any kind of moderately effective stealth methods at your disposal. When your attack fleet arrives at an enemy planet, you wont have reconnaissance satellites already in orbit and finding the enemy on the ground for you. You will have to do that from orbit, while simultaneously taking fire from possible orbital and surface defense batteries.

It's a part of the FT scene. If you can't deal with it, then don't bother posting here: I'll not give up a reality of the future so you can argue the usefulness of major ground combat.

While its true that for an FT civilization there is an abundance of raw materials available in space, you cant really automatically assume you will have a matching abundance of infrastructure capable of utilizing all those raw materials.

This planet is habitable. It's weather is not mild. Uninhabitable planets such as Venus would be more likely terraformed (so many volatiles just sitting around is wasteful), so that leaves places like Pluto and the Moon. Stellar effects are wholly irrelevant; if I can build said sealed environment (while also conquer other planets and slug it out with other space fleets) then solar radiation is a non-issue.

Terraforming with any connection at all to reality would take a really long time to turn even a Mars-like planet to anything close to human habitable.

And do what you've been arguing against? Oh God, not that! I MIGHT WANT THAT PLANET! :rolleyes:

I dont think there is much problem in actually wiping out a planetary population and military presence on such planet if an attacker is dedicated on carrying through the attack no matter the cost. Just chug asteroids at the planet from a safe distance and sooner or later your job will be done.

Justify your statement that it would damage the planet overly, and that said planet is useful to said bombarding species.

Umm... I think its relatively easy to argue that if you deploy nukes or kinetics on a sufficient level to wipe out a species spanning the entire surface of a planet, you end up throwing so much dust and radiation to the athmosphere that it wont be a nice place to live in for a while.

It works, so yes I can.

Actually, what do you do if your enemy utilizes shelters dug really deep within the planetary bedrock? This is an FT setting afterall and if we start imposing an endless no limits fallacy, you could have a population and military presence ranging in the millions dug in so deep to the planet that you have to quite literally blow the planet apart to the mantle to kill everything.

I thought a megaton meant just that, and that its application dealt with nuclear weapons, thereby clearing up any ambiguity. How you managed to find some is beyond me, honestly.

Megatons, kilotons etc. are not solely applied when talking about nuclear weapons. They are simply measurements of weight, when applied to nuclear weapons they are just put into a context where the term "megaton" can be directly used to describe the destructive power of a certain type of warhead.

Cannons killed the castle. Oh shit reality god-modded!

I think its a bit of an over-generalization to say that cannons killed the castle. Several castles after the invent of gunpowder were modified to be useful against cannons and armed with cannons.

So a ground detonation would have left a much larger crater, and also a much larger seismic disturbance. Use FT tech to shape the blast and it's that much worse, and even without doing so a mountain isn't good protection unless you're only ever hit once; armor melts or just vaporizes, and forcefields are easily hit static defenses. You still lose.

Saying that you use "FT tech to shape the blast" is a bit of a no limits fallacy. Similarily your opponent can claim he uses FT tech to create forcefields that have high recharge capabilities and capable of absorbing nuke blasts.

Blowing through a mountain or kilometers worth of bedrock isnt exactly quite a trivial task as you make it out to be. Consider that vaporizing a 400 meter diameter nickel-iron asteroid requires no less than 479 megatons worth of energy to bring it to boil. Or alternatively, if the asteroid is granite it still requires nearly 250 megatons to achieve the same feat. Now, vaporizing, or fragmenting an entire mountain sitting on top of a defensive installation requires orders of magnitude more firepower. Not to even mention doing the same against an installation buried several kilometers beneath the bedrock of a planet.

My orbital superiority provides me with an eternity of destructive power, your ground-based reactors give you a limited amount of time to make due with a limited amount of resources.

You assume that you will achieve orbital superiority in the first place. Ground based reactors can run far longer than you are probably prepared to wait. While simultaneously you take fire from every surface battery in line-of-sight to your force.

Untrue. To land troops, you'd need to take out any anti-ship defenses anyway. Thus, you could just sit in orbit and bombard your target with all sorts of weaponry (albeit still virtually all kinetics if we want to keep things realistic).

Obviously you need to land troops, but lets be serious here, which is an easier target, a small insertion vessel or a multi-hundred meter long spacecraft sitting in geosynchronous orbit? Consider an operation where you deploy a strike force of lets say 70 warships against an enemy planet, now they will be more concerned at shooting your orbital fire support down than hundreds of much smaller troop landers. Ofcourse, as in any landing operation casualties would be high, but less so in terms of economics than losing actual spaceships.

Quite true. However, to land troops, you'd need to neutralise their space navy, orbital and surface defense installations anyway. Thus, you're already paying for your own fleet, which can deal with enemy troops on its own.

Not quite, you can commence landing your troops before neutralizing all of their orbital and surface based defenses. Small landing craft are lesser a target than warships in orbit.

I disagree. While it's true that you'll have to use a certain mass to keep from being destroyed on reentry (assuming you don't have all sorts of FT technobabble to keep it from burning up), there's nothing preventing you from decelerating to a less absurdly lethal velocity, capable of even picking off individual targets with a bit of guidance. Heck, you could even burn off enough of your projectile upon reentry to the size of a ping pong ball if you wanted, and keep your velocity.

Hmm, agreed I didnt consider it that way. However, if it gets to the point that you can start sniping individual people from orbit, I think its safe to say that the no limits fallacy has been exploited to such a degree that the enemy can have interception capabilities, shielding (be it physical or non-physical) and generally countermeasures on a level which would be able to reduce the impact of such attacks.

Yet to add something to my previous post.

There is a clear line between limited orbital superiority and total orbital superiority. Limited orbital superiority would be a situation where your attacking space assets eliminate surface based defenses on a certain zone on the target planet to help your ground forces get through. Such a bombardment would take far less time and commitment not to mention cost your space forces much less to undertake, than total suppression of all orbital and surface based weapons.

With limited orbital superiority, you would be able to deliver you troops to the ground with less casualties to both the ground and space element.

Thing is, with limited orbital superiority, what's stopping them from retaking the general area you're landing in and picking off any footholds your troops have taken on the surface from orbit? You'd need to at least take out their entire fleet to ensure that your landing parties aren't simply annihilated a few minutes later.


Hmm, agreed I didnt consider it that way. However, if it gets to the point that you can start sniping individual people from orbit, I think its safe to say that the no limits fallacy has been exploited to such a degree that the enemy can have interception capabilities, shielding (be it physical or non-physical) and generally countermeasures on a level which would be able to reduce the impact of such attacks.
True. However, once you reach the point where enemy shielding/armor can shrug off ortillery strikes (even small ones), you've also reached the points where any weapon that WILL take them down reliably is going to cause a good deal of collateral damage as well, meaning even your ground troops are going to be killing civilians left and right, causing environmental damage, etc.

As for sniping people, it's really quite easy to do, not too far out of current capabilities if you were willing to spend enough on the projectile. You just need a camera and some sort of control system. In FT, you could probably cram all of that into something the size of a pencil rather easily.

So this means you need a large ground force how? There are tens of millions of people in Iraq, but perhaps 200k max occupying forces, which happen to be occupying an unfriendly population.

Countries tend to be slightly smaller than entire planets. Not to mention that it's easier to hide something massive all around the planet than in a single country which had no way of doing anything in the first place. If you're fighting the hillbillies in the ass end of the Galaxy, then this analogy works.

No, no it wouldn't, because the pre-described situation implies that one side is losing to another and therefore does not have the ability to retaliate in such a manner.

One side is losing *A* planet to another. Considering the II FT nature of this setting, the one side probably has more planets than the one you are taking over. Thus it only means that the other side is losing some of its powerbase, but the war isn't necessarily quite over yet.

Then you can't conquer this person because he's more technologically advanced than you are.

Never heard of quantity over quality? Or superior strategies and tactics being the deciding factor? Or even just the enemy having made strides in techology as it was losing and simply couldn't put the new stuff to effective use before losing?

Seriously, if technology mattered so much, why did the Americans end up running head first from Vietnam? Or why did the Soviets not manage to take over the entirety of Finland? Using the other side's technology for your own

... Germany and France still hate each other, as does China and Japan. And in any case, the point is that you don't need to value human life and therefore require WWII-easque infantry formations to conquer planets.

Germany and France don't really hate each other all that much. But as you probably can see, in real life people can co-exist peacefully even if they don't like each other! Isn't it wonderful? Having these "rival" factions is the difference between a bloody occupation that would not stop claiming lives and co-existence.

And ffs, I already said it too that you don't need WWII-esque infantry formations especially when both sides have precision crap and ranges being longer and stuff. Does repetition prove the point better or what? Unless you WANT the war to be WWII-esque, there's no need for it.

Science is not an MoOII-style discipline.

zomg, coulda fooled me

--, and generally also means that you have the ability to advance yourself (even if slower) in other fields. Otherwise, you're talking about a video game, and nothing that comes close to being realistic.

Or you're talking about a pacifist regime that thinks that making research in defense is better than making them in weaponry. Or maybe science ISN'T a linear line where you just go from spot A to spot B to spot C! Thus you might actually go past the other guy in SOME technologies, while you are totally behind in others. Cuz you know, it's highly doubtful that both empires here are fully cooperating with each other technologically just before the war starts, so it's likely that their different emphasis in technology will show, not to mention the difference in where the hell they've actually gotten with all the sciency stuff.

What does it matter either way? You don't need to engage in major ground combat in either situation.

It matters in the sense that I don't know where the hell did people pick up the notion of wars only ending in the total destruction of the other side, which hasn't been the case in quite a few hundred years.

Dumb argument is dumb.

Thing is, with limited orbital superiority, what's stopping them from retaking the general area you're landing in and picking off any footholds your troops have taken on the surface from orbit? You'd need to at least take out their entire fleet to ensure that your landing parties aren't simply annihilated a few minutes later.

Absolutely nothing, and I concur that eliminating any mobile space assets would be crucial for any succesfull planetfall operation. However, the point of mobile platforms capable of orbital denial fire should not be overlooked, if you drop such platforms to the planet, the enemy might not be so liberal in engaging you from orbit in order to avoid collateral damage to their own planet. Anyway, you can put a lot more weapons on surface of a planet than in a fleet of any sane size.

True. However, once you reach the point where enemy shielding/armor can shrug off ortillery strikes (even small ones), you've also reached the points where any weapon that WILL take them down reliably is going to cause a good deal of collateral damage as well, meaning even your ground troops are going to be killing civilians left and right, causing environmental damage, etc.

To a degree yes, however there are other countermeasures such as active interception and ECM. Armor and shielding by rule lag behind the capabilities of offensive weaponry. Besides, if your enemy has Power Armor capable of shrugging off .50 cal fire or an equivalent ortillery strike, your infantry need not wipe out entire city blocks to kill such troopers.

As for sniping people, it's really quite easy to do, not too far out of current capabilities if you were willing to spend enough on the projectile. You just need a camera and some sort of control system. In FT, you could probably cram all of that into something the size of a pencil rather easily.

Economics once again play their part in how useful such a system would be on the battlefield. If an ortillery round capable of such precision as killing a single person on a planet costs more than deploying an Infantry platoon to do the same job, its not really worth it. In any prolonged conflict it's hard to imagine such a system being in any way cost effective.

A habitable planet is a really big place. You can have company to battalion sized ground units running around its surface without any real concern of an enemy in orbit detecting you if you have any kind of moderately effective stealth methods at your disposal. When your attack fleet arrives at an enemy planet, you wont have reconnaissance satellites already in orbit and finding the enemy on the ground for you. You will have to do that from orbit, while simultaneously taking fire from possible orbital and surface defense batteries.
Not so. Perfect stealth only exists in the imagination, and most stealth fields generate just that: a field, which is itself detectable by the flurry of micro-satellites you can throw into orbit from the cargo bays of an orbiting warship. It also stands to reason that if the ant-orbital defenses are still up, that I won't be in orbit around the planet anyway.

While its true that for an FT civilization there is an abundance of raw materials available in space, you cant really automatically assume you will have a matching abundance of infrastructure capable of utilizing all those raw materials.

Yes, actually, you can. Since it's rather easy to build various plants to pump out various products from the infinite amount of resources you have at your disposal. If you mean using all said infinite resources at once, such as the Oort cloud, Kupier belt, and worthless moons, then yes: the infrastructure to use it all up would take time to build, but that has nothing to do with post-scarcity economics.

Terraforming with any connection at all to reality would take a really long time to turn even a Mars-like planet to anything close to human habitable.

Really? Why.

I dont think there is much problem in actually wiping out a planetary population and military presence on such planet if an attacker is dedicated on carrying through the attack no matter the cost. Just chug asteroids at the planet from a safe distance and sooner or later your job will be done.


I think you miss the point of the quoted text...

Umm... I think its relatively easy to argue that if you deploy nukes or kinetics on a sufficient level to wipe out a species spanning the entire surface of a planet, you end up throwing so much dust and radiation to the athmosphere that it wont be a nice place to live in for a while.

Anti-matter; precision kinetic ordnances; energy weapons, whatever: it all works and does not always have to entail zOMG eco-sphere destruction, despite what the movies and video games might tell you.

Actually, what do you do if your enemy utilizes shelters dug really deep within the planetary bedrock? This is an FT setting afterall and if we start imposing an endless no limits fallacy, you could have a population and military presence ranging in the millions dug in so deep to the planet that you have to quite literally blow the planet apart to the mantle to kill everything.


Then I chuck bombs into the shafts; and I'm done (since well, going that deep into the planet isn't good shelter anyway...). Also there is no need to drag SD.net logical terms here: we're not arguing Chuck Norris v. the Living Tribunal.

Megatons, kilotons etc. are not solely applied when talking about nuclear weapons. They are simply measurements of weight, when applied to nuclear weapons they are just put into a context where the term "megaton" can be directly used to describe the destructive power of a certain type of warhead.

They are measurements of energy as well as of weight, something I and others probably knew full well; so why you brought that up puzzles me.

I think its a bit of an over-generalization to say that cannons killed the castle. Several castles after the invent of gunpowder were modified to be useful against cannons and armed with cannons.


No, actually: it's not. The medieval castles of the Renaissance era are gone because the Howitzer and other forms of artillery made them so. And in any case: why did you just side-step the argument there? It's annoying.

Stop it.

Saying that you use "FT tech to shape the blast" is a bit of a no limits fallacy. Similarily your opponent can claim he uses FT tech to create forcefields that have high recharge capabilities and capable of absorbing nuke blasts.

No, no it's not. No limits would be that I can design a bomb to destroy the universe the size of a quark. Claiming that I can shape the blast-wave (we do that already with more conventional explosives, and project orion I believe wished to do much the same thing) is not, obviously, the same.

Energy absorption and most other wank-filled red herrings, have this problem with being bad: I just nuke the shit out of your shields until the capacitors overload and you're dead anyway.

Nifty how that works.

Blowing through a mountain or kilometers worth of bedrock isnt exactly quite a trivial task as you make it out to be. Consider that vaporizing a 400 meter diameter nickel-iron asteroid requires no less than 479 megatons worth of energy to bring it to boil. Or alternatively, if the asteroid is granite it still requires nearly 250 megatons to achieve the same feat. Now, vaporizing, or fragmenting an entire mountain sitting on top of a defensive installation requires orders of magnitude more firepower. Not to even mention doing the same against an installation buried several kilometers beneath the bedrock of a planet.

There's a bit of a difference between insta-vaping a mountain, and slagging it (or instead just making a really big hole for more nukes to be dropped in). Course, and I might now have made this clear though why anyone would assume the opposite only proves a lack of intellect: but I'm going to hit it with more than one bomb, obviously.

You assume that you will achieve orbital superiority in the first place. Ground based reactors can run far longer than you are probably prepared to wait. While simultaneously you take fire from every surface battery in line-of-sight to your force.

If I control the sky, then the anti-orbital weaponry is either dead or ineffective; why else would I be there bombing you if you're shooting me down? Ground based reactors also have this problem with needing absurd energy outputs to deal with the absurd amount of energy that the weapons are levying against the shield systems (why did this of all things need to be pointed out?). So yeah, ineffectual argument.

Seriously though, why make me point out the glaringly obvious everytime?

Anyway, you can put a lot more weapons on surface of a planet than in a fleet of any sane size.
Not quite true. While yes, it's possible to do so, it's not necessarily going to happen. Fixed defenses like these are inherently vulnerable, especially to your aforementioned RKV strikes. The things are bound to be large, and putting them near population centers would simply turn them into targets (one of the reasons that US nuke silos tend to be in places like Kansas), so there's a limited amount of space where it's really viable to put the things. Usually, it's easier and cheaper to build ships, where there's no pesky atmosphere preventing their shots from doing much damage, and they don't attract all sorts of fiery death to your population centers (and they can dodge RKV fire, which is always a boon).



To a degree yes, however there are other countermeasures such as active interception and ECM. Armor and shielding by rule lag behind the capabilities of offensive weaponry. Besides, if your enemy has Power Armor capable of shrugging off .50 cal fire or an equivalent ortillery strike, your infantry need not wipe out entire city blocks to kill such troopers.
So use the ortillery equivalent of a 25mm cannon. Anyway, to extend my previous argument, said active protection systems, ECM, etc. should work even better against ground troops, as their weaponry is inherently less powerful and easier to intercept.



Economics once again play their part in how useful such a system would be on the battlefield. If an ortillery round capable of such precision as killing a single person on a planet costs more than deploying an Infantry platoon to do the same job, its not really worth it. In any prolonged conflict it's hard to imagine such a system being in any way cost effective.
True. However, I was referring to attempting something similar in MT when talking about the cost, where you have to factor in the cost of getting it in orbit, a heat resistant camera, and an effective remote control system. In FT, it's a lot easier (and cheaper) to make such a projectile, especially in a mass-based economy.

Countries tend to be slightly smaller than entire planets. Not to mention that it's easier to hide something massive all around the planet than in a single country which had no way of doing anything in the first place. If you're fighting the hillbillies in the ass end of the Galaxy, then this analogy works.

Or maybe if you had an education that extended beyond learning your ABC's up to D you'd be able to comprehend the meaning behind the analogy, because it's reeeeeeal simple: technological advancements have made the need for the a-typical 1:4 ratio of occupiers to the occupied a thing of history.

One side is losing *A* planet to another. Considering the II FT nature of this setting, the one side probably has more planets than the one you are taking over. Thus it only means that the other side is losing some of its powerbase, but the war isn't necessarily quite over yet.

How big do you assume most II empires are? So large that they have multiple planets of such strategic importance that the war is supposed to last six years? Sorry, but no one nation has been around that long.

Never heard of quantity over quality? Or superior strategies and tactics being the deciding factor? Or even just the enemy having made strides in techology as it was losing and simply couldn't put the new stuff to effective use before losing?

The Vietnamese had more men than we did in that war: but guess what, we still whooped their asses in every major battle save the one that happened in the living rooms at night.

Basically the quantity over quality argument is uhm, wrong, no matter where you turn, and is only the exception to the rule when the other side is either too small or inept compared to the numerically superior force, and in this case it's not likely that the former would have achieved orbital superiority over the later in the first place.

Tactics and strategies is not an argument; it assumes that technologically advanced is already inept compared to the other, and vice versa, and there's no need to entertain that little fallacy there.

Your last argument shows ignorance of history if you're trying to say that war = more and newer tech (war is bad for science, fortunately). Though, if you're saying that tech that is just lying around will become the money maker in a war because now people can Macgyver it into such, then I just ignore the argument as being both ineffectual (the other side can't do the same thing.. why?) and unjustified: how can you make this a general argument when it's only applicable under special circumstance?

Seriously, if technology mattered so much, why did the Americans end up running head first from Vietnam? Or why did the Soviets not manage to take over the entirety of Finland? Using the other side's technology for your own

Because you don't know anything about history?

Germany and France don't really hate each other all that much. But as you probably can see, in real life people can co-exist peacefully even if they don't like each other! Isn't it wonderful? Having these "rival" factions is the difference between a bloody occupation that would not stop claiming lives and co-existence.
So you ignore the fact that they are still rivals despite beating each other in a war? Good job there.

And ffs, I already said it too that you don't need WWII-esque infantry formations especially when both sides have precision crap and ranges being longer and stuff. Does repetition prove the point better or what? Unless you WANT the war to be WWII-esque, there's no need for it.


Then don't bother replying if you agree that major ground combat is obsolete: it just makes you look like you want to appear intelligent.

Too bad no one is fooled.

Or you're talking about a pacifist regime that thinks that making research in defense is better than making them in weaponry. Or maybe science ISN'T a linear line where you just go from spot A to spot B to spot C! Thus you might actually go past the other guy in SOME technologies, while you are totally behind in others. Cuz you know, it's highly doubtful that both empires here are fully cooperating with each other technologically just before the war starts, so it's likely that their different emphasis in technology will show, not to mention the difference in where the hell they've actually gotten with all the sciency stuff.

Technology doesn't work that way, of course. I can't build a nuclear reactor while also not having discovered fire. If there isn't a linear progression, then applying science doesn't work because you don't understand all the concepts needed to make a technology work. Not that such isn't obvious or that most everyone (cept you) didn't know that already.

It matters in the sense that I don't know where the hell did people pick up the notion of wars only ending in the total destruction of the other side, which hasn't been the case in quite a few hundred years.

Dumb argument is dumb.

You don't know anything about history (or have the ability to use common sense, or logic, or even think it seems).

You bore me Bryn.

Good bye.

I'm saying you should do the exact opposite. Instead you continue to do otherwise as you have since you decided to grace us with your presence.
Let's recap shall we.

EX: You are unfairly framing your argument so it makes the most sense.
SP: Are you saying I should frame my argument so it makes the least sense?
EX: No, I'm saying you should make your argument make sense, which it never did, except I just said it made the most sense a moment ago.

Are you sure you are emotionally heathly enough to continue this discourse?


It went like this really:

"Wtf are you talking about?" "...No shit" "That's stupid."

Which paraphrased looks something like, "Why do you continue to not contribute anything to this thread?"

As opposed to your empty criticism and insults which are oh so enriching? Please, enlighten us with your great intellect and wisdom and PUT FORTH VALID COUNTER-ARGUMENTS, and stop wasting my time with these childish tactics.



Then you kill said stragglers by using the same precision strikes on a smaller scale.

How exactly would you prefer to do that? A nuke per each? How many thousands of nukes can you rain down on a planet before you break it exactly? Because I'm sure that it will take tens if not hundreds of thousands to saturate a planet to the point of eradication.

Ortillery Anti-Personnel Sniper Laser Perhaps? Could be effective for a while, but I'm sure once everyone's heads starting sprouting holes, people will go to ground? Next move?



It's a part of the FT scene. If you can't deal with it, then don't bother posting here: I'll not give up a reality of the future so you can argue the usefulness of major ground combat.

Reality of the future? Are you prescient as well as omniscient? Post-scarcity is a theorectical economic model at best, and not one that many players use as far as I can see. If you do use this model, then this argument has no relevence for you, and planets are sufficiently devalued.


This planet is habitable. It's weather is not mild. Uninhabitable planets such as Venus would be more likely terraformed (so many volatiles just sitting around is wasteful), so that leaves places like Pluto and the Moon. Stellar effects are wholly irrelevant; if I can build said sealed environment (while also conquer other planets and slug it out with other space fleets) then solar radiation is a non-issue.

And the sealed community would be immune to hostile weather effects. The unsealed community in Texas can be taken out by a tornado or electrical storm.

And the part where you actually answer my question is where in this drivel? So far, you've said you'd terraform two of the options (which, I suppose in post-scarcity fantasy land is cheaper than sealed habitats), and that your moon base would be cheaper than my earth community because it couldn't get hit by a tornado? Is this the best you have?

Scale isn't important; effect is. And in fact my correctly scaling it works more to my advantage than yours, since said alley-sized greenhouse is better than a non-alley-sized greenhouse.

You say a green house is cheaper than an entire state and say size doesn't matter? Keep telling yourself that buddy.


The point behind your attack on my analogy is also lost: you add no context and thereby make said attack nothing more than a useless sentence in a bigger paragraph. Congratulations.

I'm sorry, I won't offer your a more accurate analogy again, in the future, I will only offer the absurd ones that make your arguments foolish that you seem to prefer.


And? We can't quickly fix this why? This somehow stops the total destruction of entire communities and various other forms of property damage from weather related phenomena how?

EX, stop frothing at the mouth for a moment and pay attention.

A. There is no 100% guarantee that my community is going to get hit by a tornado in the first place, or that it will totally destroy my community if it does hit it. I could easily say your moon base could get wiped out by an asteroid strike, what then, it's not likely, but plausible.

B.I can fortify my community against these wonderfuly convenient tornados for less cost than your moon base, as even if my community is more robust than yours, I don't need all the environmental recycling, safety equipment, compartmentization, gravity compensation, redunancy, maintenance, and interconnection yours does, nor does my community need to be manufactured at a quality level to provide a 100% airtight seal, or the additional engineering and technical expertise.

Tell me again how yours is more cheaper again? Because mine MIGHT be destroyed by an act of god? I wouldn't be surprised if mine could get leveled and rebuilt 10 times for the cost of yours, and that's being charitable.



And do what you've been arguing against? Oh God, not that! I MIGHT WANT THAT PLANET! :rolleyes:

If you have your heart set on destroying a planet, then by all means go ahead, just about any FT can, I question why you would want to do this in all instances though.



If you've been reading this thread then you'd know what there is at least a loose definition for what major ground combat really is, so your attempt to bypass the argument by claiming ambiguity is denied.

Strange, you seem to claim that it means trench warfare and napoleonic massed infantry formations, my interpretation is different, since you are a bit slow, I tried to clear that up for you, sorry.



Justify your statement that it would damage the planet overly, and that said planet is useful to said bombarding species.

You want to drop a couple of Teratons of Nukes on a planet and you don't think that'll screw up the planet? Get a grip. I've already said repeatedly that if you are unable to find a use for the planet blow it up.



It works, so yes I can.
Sure it works, in EX land, first we nuke/rock/radiate the major pop centers, ortillery snipe the surface survivors, and then burrow nuke anybody cowering subsurface. There defenses will be ineffective, their cloaking and jamming ineffective, any resistance is doomed, they really should do you the favor of commiting mass suicide. If you are going to wank, why go through the trouble, just wish them all dead, you can kill with a thought, right?


I thought a megaton meant just that, and that its application dealt with nuclear weapons, thereby clearing up any ambiguity. How you managed to find some is beyond me, honestly.

Recap part deux:

EX: Please don't equate nukes to conventional explosive, they are not the same.
SP: Why not, the world rates nukes in equivalent explosive force?
EX: Snort, nuhuh, a hand grenade isn't .00000000000000001 nuke
SP: No, but a 50mt warhead releases the equivalent energy of 50million tons of TNT, what did you think 50mt meant? the warhead weighed 50million tons?
EX: I knew that it meant that, how could you think me confused?

Indeed, how could I, how could I?



Cannons killed the castle. Oh shit reality god-modded!
Siege equipment evolved, fortifications evolved, tactics evolved, warfare evolved, I'd hardly consider that godmodding. Shaped Charge AT missiles were supposed to make tanks obsolete, then reactive armor made AT missiles obsolete, now EFP top attack warheads are all the rage and active defenses are being developed. In Iraq, there were several bunkers that could not be penetrated by bombing, what's your point?



So a ground detonation would have left a much larger crater, and also a much larger seismic disturbance. Use FT tech to shape the blast and it's that much worse, and even without doing so a mountain isn't good protection unless you're only ever hit once; armor melts or just vaporizes, and forcefields are easily hit static defenses. You still lose.

Subsurface detonations actually attenuate nuclear blasts, airbursts are optimally effective, you'd know that, you know, if you knew what you were talking about.

As for repeatedly hammering at defenses, the more destructive force you throw, the more likely you are to seriously damage the planet.



My orbital superiority provides me with an eternity of destructive power, your ground-based reactors give you a limited amount of time to make due with a limited amount of resources.

It makes sense when you fully explain reality, doesn't it?

My planet is bigger than your ships (I hope), we have comparatively power technology, why can't I build bigger reactors on the ground than you can transport to my location through space? How long are you going to lay siege to my planet? Centuries?




According to your logic it shouldn't since stats-r-God; either stick with your arguments or don't make them.
The stats are used, and are accepted by the majority of the forum, if you don't play that way, good for you.

Regards,

SP

Or maybe if you had an education that extended beyond learning your ABC's up to D --

Reducing yourself to the level of personal attacks, huh. That requires such skill and intelligence. Or not. Kills your credibility and only makes me think that you are an asshole.

you'd be able to comprehend the meaning behind the analogy, because it's reeeeeeal simple: technological advancements have made the need for the a-typical 1:4 ratio of occupiers to the occupied a thing of history.

Yeah, when the other guy has technology the other side couldn't even dream of. If it was a US versus a US, things would be rather different. Then put it in an FT setting. When both sides have practically limitless resources...

You see where I'm getting at? Dumbass.

How big do you assume most II empires are? So large that they have multiple planets of such strategic importance that the war is supposed to last six years? Sorry, but no one nation has been around that long.

So large that they usually don't get extincted in a war, and rarely lose totally unless it's an alliance vs a couple of guys kind of deal. Thus being a dumbass "I will killz tis planut taht will only kill civilianz and nut ur gigantic military powarbaes" doesn't really make the enemy think he shouldn't do the same. Dying in that manner also has to do with consent as it is in a freeform RP environment, of course.

Basically the quantity over quality argument is uhm, wrong, --

So you're saying that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES you can overcome a technologically advanced side with sheer numbers? Interesting. Dumb, but interesting.

Case in point: Germany had technological superiority over the Russkies and the Ameeeeericans, and still lost. The Soviets and the Americans, on the other hand, had numerical superiority!

no matter where you turn, and is only the exception to the rule when the other side is either too small or inept compared to the numerically superior force, and in this case it's not likely that the former would have achieved orbital superiority over the later in the first place.

Yeah. Then this technologically inferior, but numerically superior force would've gotten orbital superiority over the technologically superior, but smaller, force!

Stop proving my points already! It's making this all too easy!

Tactics and strategies is not an argument;

Yes they are.

it assumes that technologically advanced is already inept compared to the other, and vice versa, and there's no need to entertain that little fallacy there.

But guess WHAT? IT HAPPENS. See "Russkies versus Finskies in 2nd World War, take one". And other stuff! It's not a fallacy, but something that actually happens, even in real life. You being "superior" in tech AND even in numbers doesn't always mean that you are actually superior where it counts.

(They simulate this in Civilization games even, you know. Sometimes your tank loses to a damn phalanx!)

Your last argument shows ignorance of history if you're trying to say that war = more and newer tech (war is bad for science, fortunately).

Creating more and newer war-related tech is entirely possible, and very much a necessity. Never heard of the V-rockets, or other rather crazy war-related tech-ups the Germans did *during* the 2nd World War? Or the new panzer designs they had to do because, say, the Soviet T-34 was just TOO MUCH for their current panzers? War maybe bad for the cure for cancer, but it's good for trying out that new cannon/missile/whatever you came up with yesterday!

Though, if you're saying that tech that is just lying around will become the money maker in a war because now people can Macgyver it into such,

Why the hell do you try to make such a simple thing into something so friggin complex? Because of your dumb genes? If you win in an FT war where the enemy has technology you find to be insanely nasty but still manage to beat them, it's wise to try to see what you can do to incorporate it to your own stuff. A prudent warlord doesn't always assume that his shit > everyone else, just cuz he manages to beat stuff up with a stick.

Maybe the other guy died from laughing at your stupid loin cloth instead of that hit from your stick, and the stick is found ineffectual against a more serious opponent.

then I just ignore the argument as being both ineffectual (the other side can't do the same thing.. why?) and unjustified: how can you make this a general argument when it's only applicable under special circumstance?

The other side couldn't do it if it's annexed, destroyed, obliterated, Mr Simpleton. The other side is more than likely to do everything it can to counter your crap if it's still around. Not as much if it is not. That was related to the "other side beaten, we won, we get phat lewt" scenario.

Because you don't know anything about history?

Because you're dumber than you try to look?

So you ignore the fact that they are still rivals despite beating each other in a war? Good job there.

So you ignore the fact that they can co-exist peacefully after beating each other in a war? Good job there.

Then don't bother replying if you agree that major ground combat is obsolete: it just makes you look like you want to appear intelligent.

I still say that it depends on circumstance. If one side is totally greater in every way than the other, yes. Obviously, major ground actions are a waste of time, at least for the one with the higher technology base. There'd still be a possibility of the other side trying to use major ground warfare tactics, even if it's not useful. But if two sides with practically same technological level come around and start a war, they can come up with rules of engagement which could make major ground combat a big part of the war.

Too bad no one is fooled.

Yeah, you try too hard man, stop it!

STOP IT!

Technology doesn't work that way, of course. I can't build a nuclear reactor while also not having discovered fire. If there isn't a linear progression, then applying science doesn't work because you don't understand all the concepts needed to make a technology work. Not that such isn't obvious or that most everyone (cept you) didn't know that already.

Dumbass. You knew what I meant, and chose to be a tard about it. Not that I expected anything else from you based on this little dumb "argument" we've been having about one of the dumbest things in the history of the Internet. You can come up with certain things without even giving a second thought to others.

Linear progression is what games use, dumbo. You know exactly what you're going to research next because you can only research between Better Stick XI or Better Bum Cover IX. Or maybe you'll go with Better Toiletry. But you know you'll come up with them all either way so it doesn't matter what you do in the first place.

Now, in real life, things aren't that simple. Usually you don't really have the faintest idea what the hell could you come up with in the first place. Since you don't know and need inspiration of some sort, it can't be exactly linear now can it. Technology doesn't advance like a straight line, it advances like a fuggin rollercoaster.

Dumbass.

You don't know anything about history (or have the ability to use common sense, or logic, or even think it seems).

You cannot win, I have the high ground!

You bore me Bryn.

Who the hell is Bryn? One of your dumbass friends you like to get into retarded arguments with, perhaps?

Good bye.

Good riddens.

Let's recap shall we.

EX: You are unfairly framing your argument so it makes the most sense.
SP: Are you saying I should frame my argument so it makes the least sense?
EX: No, I'm saying you should make your argument make sense, which it never did, except I just said it made the most sense a moment ago.

Are you sure you are emotionally heathly enough to continue this discourse?

Wow, if you could be more wrong I'd be surprised. It actually went something like this:

Me: You're framing your arguments in such a way that is fallacious, stop it.
You: Are you saying I should frame my arguments in a way that makes no sense?
Me: No, I'm saying make actual arguments that are not based on fallacy, and arguments not built around you looking intelligent.

As opposed to your empty criticism and insults which are oh so enriching? Please, enlighten us with your great intellect and wisdom and PUT FORTH VALID COUNTER-ARGUMENTS, and stop wasting my time with these childish tactics.

Hahahahaha! Damn, I never laughed so hard since... your last post. The entire context of what was quoted gets down to your trying to create a false dilemma: either I kill planets with super-weapons, or take them with large infantry formations. The former is just plain stupid, and the later has no justification.

You've in fact done, er, no work as it concerns proving either argument.

But please, if you really want to amuse me, go on.

How exactly would you prefer to do that? A nuke per each? How many thousands of nukes can you rain down on a planet before you break it exactly? Because I'm sure that it will take tens if not hundreds of thousands to saturate a planet to the point of eradication.

Obviously I wouldn't use a method that is so stupid. Either precision kinetic strikes with kinetic rounds of small enough size but big enough mass to kill things living in $_area, without being more damaging than a 25lb bomb. Then there are various energy weapons, micromissiles, and a myriad of other things that do not fit within your "annihilate or bust" paradigm.

Ortillery Anti-Personnel Sniper Laser Perhaps? Could be effective for a while, but I'm sure once everyone's heads starting sprouting holes, people will go to ground? Next move?

Read the response to Clairmont, and also realize that even if orbital bombardment is impractical in that case, you've still not justified major ground combat.

Reality of the future? Are you prescient as well as omniscient? Post-scarcity is a theorectical economic model at best, and not one that many players use as far as I can see. If you do use this model, then this argument has no relevence for you, and planets are sufficiently devalued.

If you want to contest post-scarcity, then learn something about it: otherwise don't try to waste my time with a concept you can't bother yourself to understand in a setting where its existence is all but guaranteed.

And the part where you actually answer my question is where in this drivel? So far, you've said you'd terraform two of the options (which, I suppose in post-scarcity fantasy land is cheaper than sealed habitats), and that your moon base would be cheaper than my earth community because it couldn't get hit by a tornado? Is this the best you have?

If you don't like the answer, then come up with a way to shoot it down. Otherwise stop ranting like an idiot because the argument is inconvenient.

You say a green house is cheaper than an entire state and say size doesn't matter? Keep telling yourself that buddy.


"I can't bother to understand the analogy!" Concession accepted.

I'm sorry, I won't offer your a more accurate analogy again, in the future, I will only offer the absurd ones that make your arguments foolish that you seem to prefer.

Or maybe you could stop spouting random bollocks and bother justifying your position/attacking mine and we could get somewhere instead of you constantly wasting my time. I have a feeling that'd be more productive, but that's just me.

EX, stop frothing at the mouth for a moment and pay attention.

Because obliterating every one of your arguments like a tornado plowing into a house of cards makes me rabid. I guess you've never debated before, neh?

A. There is no 100% guarantee that my community is going to get hit by a tornado in the first place, or that it will totally destroy my community if it does hit it. I could easily say your moon base could get wiped out by an asteroid strike, what then, it's not likely, but plausible.


Then you'd be ignoring common weather phenomena while also comparing it to something which is uncommon and/or rare. Guess what: that doesn't work, and you fail.

B.I can fortify my community against these wonderfuly convenient tornados for less cost than your moon base, as even if my community is more robust than yours, I don't need all the environmental recycling, safety equipment, compartmentization, gravity compensation, redunancy, maintenance, and interconnection yours does, nor does my community need to be manufactured at a quality level to provide a 100% airtight seal, or the additional engineering and technical expertise.

So you plan on making every house and apartment strong enough to withstand a direct hit by a tornado, the ravaging tide of flood waters, and everything else nature may through at you, and yet yours is less expensive? Hah. More funniness. It's just too bad that a sealed environment in the setting discussed isn't very expensive in the first place, and given post-scarcity (oh yes, too bad this is still valid even if you despise it) economics, sealed environments wouldn't be that expensive int he first place.

This also ignoring the fact that the technical problems of making every building comparable to that of a sealed environment needlessly complicates the manufacturing process...

Tell me again how yours is more cheaper again? Because mine MIGHT be destroyed by an act of god? I wouldn't be surprised if mine could get leveled and rebuilt 10 times for the cost of yours, and that's being charitable.


Yes, because tornadoes, hurricanes, and all these littles inconveniences of nature are acts of God :rolleyes:.

Strange, you seem to claim that it means trench warfare and napoleonic massed infantry formations, my interpretation is different, since you are a bit slow, I tried to clear that up for you, sorry.


Indeed, I'm slow for agreeing with post-scarcity, acknowledging that tornadoes do damage, that nature itself is destructive, that I don't need to use a DS to kill a planet, and because I'm able to trash anything you ever say with a few simple keystrokes.

Yes.

I'm retarded. :rolleyes:

This while also trying to claim that no one here has been working with a definition of major ground combat in some sense.

How needlessly arrogant we are.

You want to drop a couple of Teratons of Nukes on a planet and you don't think that'll screw up the planet? Get a grip. I've already said repeatedly that if you are unable to find a use for the planet blow it up.


Who said I needed to drop teratons, or that I was? Oh wait, you did because only if we completely level planets with each take over do your arguments work.

Too bad I don't accept that premise.

Sure it works, in EX land, first we nuke/rock/radiate the major pop centers, ortillery snipe the surface survivors, and then burrow nuke anybody cowering subsurface. There defenses will be ineffective, their cloaking and jamming ineffective, any resistance is doomed, they really should do you the favor of commiting mass suicide. If you are going to wank, why go through the trouble, just wish them all dead, you can kill with a thought, right?


Strawmans may be fun to build but anyone who can recognize them just laughs at you for crawling so low. Myself, I'm laughing my ass off.

If you have orbital superiority, then you can easily kill anything on the surface. If you have orbital superiority, then you can easily bomb underground defenses without even getting through the shields: the problems with pressure waves from even 1mt devices is that they usually crush what's underground (too bad you didn't do any research so that you may find this out, and consequentially know what you're talking about).

Cloaking and jamming tells the enemy exactly where you are: "Dude, a jamming/cloaking field!" "BOMB IT!"

Soooo wanky isn't it?

EX: Please don't equate nukes to conventional explosive, they are not the same.
SP: Why not, the world rates nukes in equivalent explosive force?
EX: Snort, nuhuh, a hand grenade isn't .00000000000000001 nuke
SP: No, but a 50mt warhead releases the equivalent energy of 50million tons of TNT, what did you think 50mt meant? the warhead weighed 50million tons?
EX: I knew that it meant that, how could you think me confused?

Sure, let's recap:

You: I think that a nuke is a conventional explosive because the system used to rate energy output is the same.
Me: You're wrong, and no one else manages to find such ambiguity that they must use the terms conventional and nuclear in the same sentence.
You: So you're confused? Hah, you're so retarded for not being confused because I am easily confused by a system that doesn't confuse anyone else!
Me: Why are yous till talking?

Funny that your idea of reality differs so.

Siege equipment evolved, fortifications evolved, tactics evolved, warfare evolved, I'd hardly consider that godmodding. Shaped Charge AT missiles were supposed to make tanks obsolete, then reactive armor made AT missiles obsolete, now EFP top attack warheads are all the rage and active defenses are being developed. In Iraq, there were several bunkers that could not be penetrated by bombing, what's your point?

Well, since the point obviously flew by you like a missile or cannon ball: that certain military technologies become obsolete because a perfect counter is developed. Look at castles, or the armored night on horseback.

Even looking at tanks and missiles, it assumes that the missile is the perfect counter: obviously it's not, but then you'd be getting the analogy ant this wouldn't have been brought up now would it?

Subsurface detonations actually attenuate nuclear blasts, airbursts are optimally effective, you'd know that, you know, if you knew what you were talking about.

Hahahahah! Damn, your comedic skills have yet to fail. A bomb that is detonated on the ground does more damage to the ground than does an airbust, just as a subsurface detonation does even more. Course, I knew this already because I bother to know what I'm talking about before I hit the "reply" button.

You should try it.

It makes you look a lot smarter.

As for repeatedly hammering at defenses, the more destructive force you throw, the more likely you are to seriously damage the planet.


Indeed, but as previously mentioned this isn't necessarily a problem if you're so advanced that you're able to blow the planet up DS style int he first place, and it's not ridiculously hard to limit the damage to that location in the first place (or hell, us the overpressure from a Tsar Bomba equivalent to crush whatever fortresses are underground).

My planet is bigger than your ships (I hope), we have comparatively power technology, why can't I build bigger reactors on the ground than you can transport to my location through space? How long are you going to lay siege to my planet? Centuries?

Because it doesn't... work that way mayhaps? I have orbital superiority, that means you can't go anywhere to build these mythical reactors while I can utilize resources from any other location to build more than you can. Or failing that, I could always compromise the integrity of a single section by hitting it with energy densities it was never designed to withstand. Course, I also know how shields (Should) work given established concepts and common sense, so that's probably why I don't see a problem.

The stats are used, and are accepted by the majority of the forum, if you don't play that way, good for you.

Regards,

SP

Then FT doesn't exist according to you. Good job.

Not so. Perfect stealth only exists in the imagination, and most stealth fields generate just that: a field, which is itself detectable by the flurry of micro-satellites you can throw into orbit from the cargo bays of an orbiting warship. It also stands to reason that if the ant-orbital defenses are still up, that I won't be in orbit around the planet anyway.

Unlimited raw material processing and mining capability also exists purely in imagination. What the heck are you talking about stealth fields? Ever heard of EMCON? Or Emissions Control? Limiting your visibility via purely optical camouflage and reducing your emissions via stealth methods not involving any sort of "fields" you wont be putting out anything detectable to orbit. Besides, what the heck is the point of having any kind of stealth "field" if said field is easily detectable? I cant imagine why anyone would design such a "stealth" system.

If you wont be in orbit, you wont be doing much in the way of bombardment of ground assets. Not with the same amount of reliability anyway.

Yes, actually, you can. Since it's rather easy to build various plants to pump out various products from the infinite amount of resources you have at your disposal. If you mean using all said infinite resources at once, such as the Oort cloud, Kupier belt, and worthless moons, then yes: the infrastructure to use it all up would take time to build, but that has nothing to do with post-scarcity economics.

This is an endless no limits fallacy. Basically you are assuming that you will automatically have the industrial capacity to construct these massive resource processing and mining operations and run them while producing infinite amounts of resources. In order to actually utilize more than a bare fraction of the resources available in lets say our Solar System, you would need a massive resource gathering infrastructure. Before you could even build that infrastructure, you would need a massive spaceborne construction infrastructure. In barebones, you need the tools to build the tools to build the tools to gather the resources to build more tools.

Really? Why.

For starters, you need to generate an atmosphere capable of sustaining human life. You would need to increase planetary mean temperature to levels survivable for humans. And so on, ofcourse its possible to wave the no limits fallacy FT wand and terraform planets in less time than it takes to order a pizza but, I hope you see why this is silly.

I think you miss the point of the quoted text...

Not at all. I was merely trying to bring across the fact of the matter that you can extinguish life on a planetary scale, but there is a horde of reasons why such a tactic isnt as feasible to be deployed in every bush war as you seem to suggest.

Anti-matter; precision kinetic ordnances; energy weapons, whatever: it all works and does not always have to entail zOMG eco-sphere destruction, despite what the movies and video games might tell you.

Eh? Its a question of science, if you deploy enough firepower to carve out deep planetary shelters for civilian populace and military forces and to annihilate every population center of any size on a planet, be it kinetics or any weapon or mass destruction you will be dumping so much energy at the planet that its ecology will be screwed up for a long time to come.

Then I chuck bombs into the shafts; and I'm done (since well, going that deep into the planet isn't good shelter anyway...). Also there is no need to drag SD.net logical terms here: we're not arguing Chuck Norris v. the Living Tribunal.

How will you find these shafts? How will you put bombs through them if they are covered to any reasonable degree? Going deep into a planet is arguably the best shelter from heavy orbital bombardment, kilometers worth of planetary bedrock is worth a lot of armor.

This has nothing to do with SD.net, Im simply pointing the quite obvious holes in your logic.

They are measurements of energy as well as of weight, something I and others probably knew full well; so why you brought that up puzzles me.

To elaborate what the term actually means, since you seemed to be quite fixed on megatons being part of nukes only terminology.

No, actually: it's not. The medieval castles of the Renaissance era are gone because the Howitzer and other forms of artillery made them so. And in any case: why did you just side-step the argument there? It's annoying.

Stop it.

Side step the argument? Please, you claimed cannons killed the castle, I pointed out that castles evolved to be more effective against cannons. While I would agree that building castles was no longer economical, cannons alone did not directly OMGJ00 cannon [headshot] castle if you catch my drift.

No, no it's not. No limits would be that I can design a bomb to destroy the universe the size of a quark. Claiming that I can shape the blast-wave (we do that already with more conventional explosives, and project orion I believe wished to do much the same thing) is not, obviously, the same.

It actually is a no limits fallacy if you employ handwavium to create super shaped nuclear or similar explosions. Shaping the blast of an anti-tank missile is a bit different than shaping the blast of a multi-megaton nuclear weapon for instance, so your analogy is flawed Im afraid. Project Orion did not aim to use shaped nuclear charges according to what I have read of it.

Energy absorption and most other wank-filled red herrings, have this problem with being bad: I just nuke the shit out of your shields until the capacitors overload and you're dead anyway.

Yes, and perhaps if your enemy is so oblivious, ignorant, blind or plain stupid that he will actually let all those nukes hit without employing active countermeasures, point-defense or similar systems. Lets hope your nation only fights such idiots.

Nifty how that works.

Yes, even the most painfully simple tactics work against retards.

There's a bit of a difference between insta-vaping a mountain, and slagging it (or instead just making a really big hole for more nukes to be dropped in). Course, and I might now have made this clear though why anyone would assume the opposite only proves a lack of intellect: but I'm going to hit it with more than one bomb, obviously.

It doesnt really matter, you dont seem to have any idea what kind of firepower you would need to deploy in order to shatter a friggin mountain, and you assume all those nukes of yours will automatically hit. This is often a problem with armchair tacticians who dont actually have any real tactical sense outside of playing some Master of Orion.

If I control the sky, then the anti-orbital weaponry is either dead or ineffective; why else would I be there bombing you if you're shooting me down? Ground based reactors also have this problem with needing absurd energy outputs to deal with the absurd amount of energy that the weapons are levying against the shield systems (why did this of all things need to be pointed out?). So yeah, ineffectual argument.

Uh hellooo? You can put a LOT more weapons on the surface of a planet than you can put in a space fleet of any remotely realistic size. If you dont want to enter within range of those weapons, then dont attack the planet but then you automatically lose.

Yes, ground based reactors need to put out a lot of energy, wow you are quite clearly a true master of the painfully obvious. The problem is, those reactors will have a constant supply of fuel far in excess of anything your fleet can bring with it, not to mention, you can fit a lot of reactors on a planet. If you really think you can outlast a planet in a siege by waiting it to run out of fuel for its reactors, you seriously need to get a clue.

Seriously though, why make me point out the glaringly obvious everytime?

Seconded, but against you Im afraid. There are such glaring holes in your arguments and in your supposedly flawless logic that Im amazed you believe in the drivel you spout so strongly.

Not quite true. While yes, it's possible to do so, it's not necessarily going to happen. Fixed defenses like these are inherently vulnerable, especially to your aforementioned RKV strikes. The things are bound to be large, and putting them near population centers would simply turn them into targets (one of the reasons that US nuke silos tend to be in places like Kansas), so there's a limited amount of space where it's really viable to put the things. Usually, it's easier and cheaper to build ships, where there's no pesky atmosphere preventing their shots from doing much damage, and they don't attract all sorts of fiery death to your population centers (and they can dodge RKV fire, which is always a boon).

Fixed defenses need not be without their own defensive umbrellas in the form of point-defense or active countermeasures. Relativistic kill-vehicles work wonderfully in situations where your enemy does not have the capability to shoot the kill-vehicles down. But, if your enemy has any kind of reliable detection and interception capability, the task of shooting down long-range RKV's becomes trivial. They cannot evade, for if they bore in under power they are easily detected and engaged.

In order to actually take out the supposedly vulnerable fixed planetary defenses, you not only need to saturate the enemy defense but in addition be capable of immensely accurate targeting over long distances since RKV's are not generally guided weapons. Measure in ECM, and plain optical camouflage of stationary surface defenses and your task of destroying those systems becomes far less trivial.

Yet on the amount of available space, any human habitable planet would have an immense abundance of usable space for anti orbital defenses. Even if you placed them far away from any major population centers. You would have even more space at your disposal if your civilization expands its population centers both vertically and horizontally at the same pace.

So use the ortillery equivalent of a 25mm cannon. Anyway, to extend my previous argument, said active protection systems, ECM, etc. should work even better against ground troops, as their weaponry is inherently less powerful and easier to intercept.

Ground troops aside from actual orbital denial platforms dont actually need to see your ships in orbit, or detect them on sensors, they dont have the capability to do anything to them anyway. You wont be packing much ECM into an ortillery round of 25mm size while the passive ECM, EMCON measures and plain optical camouflage make it quite a task for you to even find the ground troops, much less hit them with small bullets from orbit.

True. However, I was referring to attempting something similar in MT when talking about the cost, where you have to factor in the cost of getting it in orbit, a heat resistant camera, and an effective remote control system. In FT, it's a lot easier (and cheaper) to make such a projectile, especially in a mass-based economy.

I would again here like to make a point against applying the no limits fallacy to assume mass deployment of such a system would automatically be feasible because of FT. You need to factor in a lot of stuff to your orbital sniper round. You need to cram in that tiny space a communications system, camera, heat shield, battery, payload (if needed) etc. And this is only for what is basically a dumb fire round. It wont have much in the way of ability to maneuver to hit its target, if you want it to be able to do that, then you need to cram in a drive system and fuel source as well.

Because you don't know anything about history?

He seems to know a bit more about the Finnish vs. Soviets fight during WWII than you. Soviets had the material and numerical advantage, Finland had homefield defensive advantage. The Soviets for the intents and purposes of casualties lost, badly.

Let's recap shall we.

EX: You are unfairly framing your argument so it makes the most sense.
SP: Are you saying I should frame my argument so it makes the least sense?
EX: No, I'm saying you should make your argument make sense, which it never did, except I just said it made the most sense a moment ago.

Are you sure you are emotionally heathly enough to continue this discourse?


You want to drop a couple of Teratons of Nukes on a planet and you don't think that'll screw up the planet? Get a grip. I've already said repeatedly that if you are unable to find a use for the planet blow it up.

My planet is bigger than your ships (I hope), we have comparatively power technology, why can't I build bigger reactors on the ground than you can transport to my location through space? How long are you going to lay siege to my planet? Centuries?


SP

Addressing the quoted portions in turn...

What he actually said is that you're operating under the inaccurate either/or assumption, wherby you must use ground troops to pacify a target, because nuking a couple population centers won't get the message across that you'll keep killing if there's no surrender. And the sexy thing about N-Bombs is that they tend to kill through radiation, rather short lived radiation at that(read, months of decay time, versus millenia). You can use therm from a sufficient height that their admittedly large nuclear blasts won't do too much damage to the infrastructure, while still making everyone sexily glow in the dark neon green. You seem to assume that everyone is a resolute last defender, to never surrender unless the last soldier is dead. Your realism seems to have taken a vacation. Very rarely will it get to that point except with professional soldiers. And then only a very special breed of soldier at that.

Who needs teratonnages? I could always use my handy dandy particle beams to slag the mountain(melts things quite nicely) or wide angle grasers to make things VERY unpleasant on the surface. There are alot of ways to reduce defenses that don't require me to blow them all to hell. Admittedly a shaped charge nuke or similar weapon would be rather more efficient at gross damage, but melting a hole and chucking a nice matter annihilation weapon in the hole seems to be the best bet. Hooray antimatter. Which actually doesn't explode, but that's a tangent.

Your planet is interdicted, his ships are in your orbit, your reactors'll run out of fuel before his do. Hooray resupply. And with him hammering your defenses, they'll run out even faster trying to keep the shields up.

Unlimited raw material processing and mining capability also exists purely in imagination. What the heck are you talking about stealth fields? Ever heard of EMCON? Or Emissions Control? Limiting your visibility via purely optical camouflage and reducing your emissions via stealth methods not involving any sort of "fields" you wont be putting out anything detectable to orbit. Besides, what the heck is the point of having any kind of stealth "field" if said field is easily detectable? I cant imagine why anyone would design such a "stealth" system.

There's a difference: post scarcity can become reality, perfect stealth cannot. Emissions control is also not the end-all to be-all, in that you have to be shunting these emissions somewhere, since obviously you don't get something for nothing. If you're doing it into an alternate dimension, then scanners there will find you. If you're dumping them into capacitors or anything similar, then eventually you'll have to let the heat cook off of have them explode. If it's just purely energy absorption material then sorry: there is only so much they can absorb.

Optical camo is iffy: natural imperfections in the system can easily come up on extremely sensitive systems, and is only applicable on the surface, where a combination of sensor systems would be working to detect these people (yes, I'm not saying it would be automatic, or why have stealth, only that it would happen eventually).

Though this would assume you knew anything about the systems you mentioned in the first place.

Which you don't.

If you wont be in orbit, you wont be doing much in the way of bombardment of ground assets. Not with the same amount of reliability anyway.

Wow, no shit is my only response. Why even bring this up? Why point this out? If I'm not in orbit I don't have orbital superiority, if I don't have that then I need to be more careful about my bombardment trajectories until I take it. I knew this already, most everyone knew this already: why the hell did you find it prudent to point such out?

This is an endless no limits fallacy. Basically you are assuming that you will automatically have the industrial capacity to construct these massive resource processing and mining operations and run them while producing infinite amounts of resources. In order to actually utilize more than a bare fraction of the resources available in lets say our Solar System, you would need a massive resource gathering infrastructure. Before you could even build that infrastructure, you would need a massive spaceborne construction infrastructure. In barebones, you need the tools to build the tools to build the tools to gather the resources to build more tools.

No limits is not applicable here: an Oort cloud is not the Dalek Mothership.

You don't understand economics: steel, oil, everything has a price due to its availability. Things that are more common are less expensive, things that are less common are more expensive: it's supply and demand. If I come across an infinite supply of material, then those materials are cheap. Congrats, you understand the bare bones basics of economic theory now.

Your issue with infrastructure is non sequitur, as it does not follow that access to these materials would come before the minimal amount of infrastructure is acquired to utilize it. It's like trying to say that we can have cannons before we invent gunpowder.

For starters, you need to generate an atmosphere capable of sustaining human life. You would need to increase planetary mean temperature to levels survivable for humans. And so on, ofcourse its possible to wave the no limits fallacy FT wand and terraform planets in less time than it takes to order a pizza but, I hope you see why this is silly.

You bandy about no limits as if you can apply it here: the alternative is that the FT power is so primitive that it's nothing more than high PMT and even then they can more than conquer a planet without large ground battles. You can't argue from both ends and cry foul: that's a fallacy in its own right.

It's also (insert word that means dumb) to assume that terraforming int he future be as complicated as it is now: if we are to believe everything we're told about GW, then using modern technology, humanity is terraforming the planet and doing the things you already described.

It's only hard if you want it to be so you can try to look smart in an argument.

Not at all. I was merely trying to bring across the fact of the matter that you can extinguish life on a planetary scale, but there is a horde of reasons why such a tactic isnt as feasible to be deployed in every bush war as you seem to suggest.

I never said it was a good idea: I said that it isn't hard, and for various reasons not necessarily destructive to the victor. I've yet to be proven wrong.

Eh? Its a question of science, if you deploy enough firepower to carve out deep planetary shelters for civilian populace and military forces and to annihilate every population center of any size on a planet, be it kinetics or any weapon or mass destruction you will be dumping so much energy at the planet that its ecology will be screwed up for a long time to come.


Science, huh? A 50MT AM bomb doesn't release the radiation commonly associated with traditional nukes, but manages the same destructive power to wipe out a population, just as a 50MT dirty bomb with a cobalt fuse does.

You don't know anything about method, do you?

How will you find these shafts? How will you put bombs through them if they are covered to any reasonable degree? Going deep into a planet is arguably the best shelter from heavy orbital bombardment, kilometers worth of planetary bedrock is worth a lot of armor.


As already described in your first point when you proved that you don't understand stealth systems, at all, finding underground shafts that house massive population centers is um, easy. Then it gets down to crushing these fortresses with pressure waves from megaton scale devices because knowledge of geology (or a Google search for those who want to be credible) will tell you that being deep underground when nukes start flying is not always such a good thing.

This has nothing to do with SD.net, Im simply pointing the quite obvious holes in your logic.


Yes, holes in my logic that are so glaringly obvious you've shattered all I've said with a single post. Oh wait, you haven't done that then haven't you? In fact I think the exact opposite has been occurring since you decided to inject yourself into a debate where you have no idea what you're talking about.

To elaborate what the term actually means, since you seemed to be quite fixed on megatons being part of nukes only terminology.


... Yes, because it isn't solely a part of nuke terminology in a discussion entirely about nukes.

My mistake for using terms where their application is needed.

:rolleyes:

Side step the argument? Please, you claimed cannons killed the castle, I pointed out that castles evolved to be more effective against cannons. While I would agree that building castles was no longer economical, cannons alone did not directly OMGJ00 cannon [headshot] castle if you catch my drift.


Argument: perfect counters exist. Proof: no more castles. Your response: Some castles faired better than others, thus completely missing the point like someone who has to grasp at straws would.

Also you don't know anything about castles either, do you?

It actually is a no limits fallacy if you employ handwavium to create super shaped nuclear or similar explosions. Shaping the blast of an anti-tank missile is a bit different than shaping the blast of a multi-megaton nuclear weapon for instance, so your analogy is flawed Im afraid. Project Orion did not aim to use shaped nuclear charges according to what I have read of it.

No, it's not, unless all of FT is a no limits fallacy since most FT tech is created via handwavium. Also the analogy is only flawed if it assumes that it is jsut as easy to shape nuclear blasts as it is conventional explosives: that wasn't my point; it was that doing so is not impossible.

And yes, I appear to have gotten PO confused with someone else, my bad, though the viability of a steel pusher plate seems to cast doubt on your assertion that materials that could be used to shape such a charge do not exist.

This also forgetting that if FT armor can survive against FT nukage for even alone blast, that the same material can be used to shape a nuclear blast.

Funny how that works isn't it?

Yes, and perhaps if your enemy is so oblivious, ignorant, blind or plain stupid that he will actually let all those nukes hit without employing active countermeasures, point-defense or similar systems. Lets hope your nation only fights such idiots.


Indeed, because these point-defense systems still exist after I've gained orbital superiority for any length of time, that these systems will even be effective in mitigating the damage (see ABM shields), or that they'd work in the first place.

Yes, let's assume these things so your argument will at least look like it makes sense...

...

Just kidding.

Yes, even the most painfully simple tactics work against retards.


Fail.

It doesnt really matter, you dont seem to have any idea what kind of firepower you would need to deploy in order to shatter a friggin mountain, and you assume all those nukes of yours will automatically hit. This is often a problem with armchair tacticians who dont actually have any real tactical sense outside of playing some Master of Orion.

Heh, even if MoO was my tactical base, it's better than the great warfare simulator of Solitaire that you seem to be using, if it even is that advanced. And concessions accepted: unless you can do something other than whine.

Uh hellooo? You can put a LOT more weapons on the surface of a planet than you can put in a space fleet of any remotely realistic size. If you dont want to enter within range of those weapons, then dont attack the planet but then you automatically lose.

I can move a space fleet, you can't move a planet. I can shatter large areas of the planet if I want to using the glorious effects of atmospheric refocusing after utilizing 50MT< devices in the atmosphere. You can just sit there and fire potshots hoping to hit something.

See the difference between ability and effectiveness? The castle doesn't come back just because the walls are made of dicktainium instead of concrete.

Yes, ground based reactors need to put out a lot of energy, wow you are quite clearly a true master of the painfully obvious. The problem is, those reactors will have a constant supply of fuel far in excess of anything your fleet can bring with it, not to mention, you can fit a lot of reactors on a planet. If you really think you can outlast a planet in a siege by waiting it to run out of fuel for its reactors, you seriously need to get a clue.

It can't be too painfully obvious if you bothered mentioning ground-based reactors as viable means of defense in the first place, and as well can't be too painfully obvious if yous till defend them.

A planet has a limited amount of fuel. My fleet does not.

A shield isn't meant to deal with massive energy densities that equal even ten percent of its own total output in an area the size of a pinpoint while hoping to remain an effective defense.

Too bad you need to know something about science, or just have a good deal of common sense to come to this conclusion in the first place.

Seconded, but against you Im afraid. There are such glaring holes in your arguments and in your supposedly flawless logic that Im amazed you believe in the drivel you spout so strongly.

Indeed, well supported arguments is equitable to drivel. In that case, what do we make of ... whatever we would call the 'interesting' things you've managed to say here today?

He seems to know a bit more about the Finnish vs. Soviets fight during WWII than you. Soviets had the material and numerical advantage, Finland had homefield defensive advantage. The Soviets for the intents and purposes of casualties lost, badly.

The Soviets were inept, and also got the hell beaten out of them by their own ammunition. Only when the Finns ran out could the Soviets make advancements anywhere, in both the Winter War and the Continuation War.

At best its an example of extreme quantity beating limited quality, no proof that quantity > quality.

The Soviets were inept, and also got the hell beaten out of them by their own ammunition. Only when the Finns ran out could the Soviets make advancements anywhere, in both the Winter War and the Continuation War.


During the 1939 Winter War the war changed radically with the arrival of Timoshenko. During the Continuation War the Finns were actually squarely defeated, even if the Soviets lost around two times the amount of personnel during the offensive. The Red Army in 1944 was completely different to the Red Army in 1939, which was caught in a transition between the purges of 1937 and the reorganization scheduled for 1942. In 1944 the Red Army had both quantity and quality (although perhaps not that much quality in their infantry).

Something to think about: Let us assume that we have two superpower empires, each of whom have the power to blast the enemy to the stone age.

Let them fight each other.

Let them blast the enemy to the stone age.

Once that happens, both sides are wounded and weakened. All their infrasturcture is destroyed. It looks like they HAVE to resort to major ground combat now to defeat the other side. :)

And if there is only one superpower, then really, it doesn't matter how that superpower fights and take over territory. As long as it doesn't get overwhealmed by a horde of rebels (like how everyone hate the Empire when they blew up Alderran), it will be fine.

Something to think about: Let us assume that we have two superpower empires, each of whom have the power to blast the enemy to the stone age.

Let them fight each other.

Let them blast the enemy to the stone age.

Once that happens, both sides are wounded and weakened. All their infrasturcture is destroyed. It looks like they HAVE to resort to major ground combat now to defeat the other side. :)

And if there is only one superpower, then really, it doesn't matter how that superpower fights and take over territory. As long as it doesn't get overwhealmed by a horde of rebels (like how everyone hate the Empire when they blew up Alderran), it will be fine.

Yes, assuming that you follow what I like to think of as the "Total Annihilation" scenario, it works. On the other hand, if we have sense and realize that there are few if any FT superpowers(the only really notable powers on either side are people like CoreWorlds and Chronosia, the ESUS being trapped in a stagnant war, and the GFFA being likewise, and Sith being Sith, and therefore underwhelming), and that those Superpowers are effectively checkmated by the tendency of smaller nations to band together in job lots. And the fact that medium sized nations are almost all anti-GE. Myself in my several incarnations for example.

Another thing to note is that ground war really is an option that's a bad idea, unless you have some way to negate orbital superiority. I've got several, and they'll all be discussed as they come up. Anyone familiar with Hell's Gate and Hell Hath No Fury will have a fair idea of exactly what's happening here.

Another thing to note is that ground war really is an option that's a bad idea, unless you have some way to negate orbital superiority. I've got several, and they'll all be discussed as they come up. Anyone familiar with Hell's Gate and Hell Hath No Fury will have a fair idea of exactly what's happening here.

Oh, very nice, another Weber fan.

I don't get the analogy, though.

There's a difference: post scarcity can become reality, perfect stealth cannot. Emissions control is also not the end-all to be-all, in that you have to be shunting these emissions somewhere, since obviously you don't get something for nothing. If you're doing it into an alternate dimension, then scanners there will find you. If you're dumping them into capacitors or anything similar, then eventually you'll have to let the heat cook off of have them explode. If it's just purely energy absorption material then sorry: there is only so much they can absorb.

If you want to RP your nation having infinite resource mining and processing capability, you might as well start RPing fantasy. EMCON is not the end all of stealth, but its the simplest form of passive stealth. Controlling the amount of emissions your unit puts out. These emissions include everything that can give away your position, radar, lidar, communications, active sensors, sound, infra-red, and ofcourse all the wonderful emissions supposedly detectable by FT sensors. There are passive methods of limiting your emissions, you dont need to be shunting them to subspace or some form of other technobabble.

Optical camo is iffy: natural imperfections in the system can easily come up on extremely sensitive systems, and is only applicable on the surface, where a combination of sensor systems would be working to detect these people (yes, I'm not saying it would be automatic, or why have stealth, only that it would happen eventually).

Imperfections that cant be automatically assumed to exist. Ofcourse, no system is perfect, and your sensor finding that single company of enemy infantry utilizing passive forms of stealth and lets say, some form of chameleon style optical camouflage system would take time to be found, as your sensors scan every square meter of land on the enemy planet to find them.

Though this would assume you knew anything about the systems you mentioned in the first place.

Which you don't.

Hehe, funny to hear this coming from a guy who automatically assumes EMCON means you need to be shunting your emissions to subspace. You dont seem to have the slightest clue about passive stealth systems. I suggest you get that clue, fast.

Wow, no shit is my only response. Why even bring this up? Why point this out? If I'm not in orbit I don't have orbital superiority, if I don't have that then I need to be more careful about my bombardment trajectories until I take it. I knew this already, most everyone knew this already: why the hell did you find it prudent to point such out?

Your bombardment trajectories? Ah bombardment from beyond the range of the planetary defense? Such a wonderful thing, a shame that against an enemy with a half decent detection and interception capability, your bombardment from beyond their planetary defense range wont be doing squat.

No limits is not applicable here: an Oort cloud is not the Dalek Mothership.

You don't understand economics: steel, oil, everything has a price due to its availability. Things that are more common are less expensive, things that are less common are more expensive: it's supply and demand. If I come across an infinite supply of material, then those materials are cheap. Congrats, you understand the bare bones basics of economic theory now.

Eh, you dont even seem to have a clue about economics, Im hardly surprised. The fact that you have discovered an infinite amount of resources does not instantly reduce the market price of said resource. You're not actually putting any of that infinite amount of resources to the market yet. Supply and demand has as much to do with the capability of taking advantage of those resources, e.g the actual amount of resources you put out into the market determines supply of it, not the discovery of said infinite resource source. Ever wonder why the gas prices go up when a major Oil Refinery somewhere is having problems? The oil is still there, but its not being turned into the use of the market.

Your issue with infrastructure is non sequitur, as it does not follow that access to these materials would come before the minimal amount of infrastructure is acquired to utilize it. It's like trying to say that we can have cannons before we invent gunpowder.

At this point I need to say, what the fuck? How do you think the access to those materials comes? Via magic? You need the infrastructure to harvest and PROCESS those resources to turn them into a market commodity.

You bandy about no limits as if you can apply it here: the alternative is that the FT power is so primitive that it's nothing more than high PMT and even then they can more than conquer a planet without large ground battles. You can't argue from both ends and cry foul: that's a fallacy in its own right.

This is total red herring to what I said.

It's also (insert word that means dumb) to assume that terraforming int he future be as complicated as it is now: if we are to believe everything we're told about GW, then using modern technology, humanity is terraforming the planet and doing the things you already described.

It's only hard if you want it to be so you can try to look smart in an argument.

Yes ofcourse, because of your übar FT MAGIC you can create athmospheres without actually importing the gases to create them. Materialize water from thin air. Increase the mean temperature of a planet with a flick of a finger and create protection from solar radiation without even bothering to try. No limits fallacy in its finest.

I never said it was a good idea: I said that it isn't hard, and for various reasons not necessarily destructive to the victor. I've yet to be proven wrong.

It all depends on how stupid and how primitive your opponent is. If he has the capability to intercept say long-range kinetic strikes, well you're crap out of luck.

Science, huh? A 50MT AM bomb doesn't release the radiation commonly associated with traditional nukes, but manages the same destructive power to wipe out a population, just as a 50MT dirty bomb with a cobalt fuse does.


You don't know anything about method, do you?

Obviously far more than you do. Your 50mt AM bomb will still generate a lot of HEAT. It will also be blowing up dust out of the wazoo into the atmosphere of your target planet. Throw down enough of these magic bombs and you have achieved massive ecological damage that will make the planet useless for you.

As already described in your first point when you proved that you don't understand stealth systems, at all, finding underground shafts that house massive population centers is um, easy. Then it gets down to crushing these fortresses with pressure waves from megaton scale devices because knowledge of geology (or a Google search for those who want to be credible) will tell you that being deep underground when nukes start flying is not always such a good thing.

Haha! You mean the first point to which you responded with subspace fields proving you dont have the slightest clue what EMCON is? I wonder if the US Armed Forces utilize their magical subspace dumping capabilities on anything else.

And again, how do you find these underground shafts? You did not actually answer the question, merely handwaved it past you that you will magically find it in any case. Sure you will find it, in time. Lets hope its not beneath a mountain and in addition armored and shielded or otherwise you'll be bombing it till the next decade.

Being kilometers beneath the bedrock is quite a good cover against nuke happy idiots who dont understand the mechanics of nuclear warfare.



Yes, holes in my logic that are so glaringly obvious you've shattered all I've said with a single post. Oh wait, you haven't done that then haven't you? In fact I think the exact opposite has been occurring since you decided to inject yourself into a debate where you have no idea what you're talking about.

Hmm, I just have to check if you've been banned from SD.net. Your debating tactics remind me far too much of the forum trolls to be a coincidence. All I say to this mindless babble is this, I think everyone here can read, and you arent convincing anyone but yourself.

... Yes, because it isn't solely a part of nuke terminology in a discussion entirely about nukes.

My mistake for using terms where their application is needed.

:rolleyes:

Well naturally at that point it is, which doesnt actually negate my point in any way. I merely pointed out that the term can be applied to many contexts.

Argument: perfect counters exist. Proof: no more castles. Your response: Some castles faired better than others, thus completely missing the point like someone who has to grasp at straws would.

Also you don't know anything about castles either, do you?

Ah, so you agree that perfect counters exist? Excellent, then you can concede the entire debate since your opponent can have perfect counters to your offensive.

Anyway, you sidestepped my point. You claimed cannons killed the castle, I pointed out castles evolved to deal better with the evolved battlefield, ergo you are clueless once more.

I have actually seen castles, outside of my computer screen. How many have you seen?

No, it's not, unless all of FT is a no limits fallacy since most FT tech is created via handwavium. Also the analogy is only flawed if it assumes that it is jsut as easy to shape nuclear blasts as it is conventional explosives: that wasn't my point; it was that doing so is not impossible.

FT in itself isnt a no limits fallacy, utilizing FT and justifying that by using it you can do practically any magical feat in your mind is a no limits fallacy. Shaping those nuke blasts is not impossible, however I would say that if you automatically assume that if your enemy has a mountain on top of his base, you'll throw a gigaton shaped nuke at their head, you're making use of the no limits fallacy.

And yes, I appear to have gotten PO confused with someone else, my bad, though the viability of a steel pusher plate seems to cast doubt on your assertion that materials that could be used to shape such a charge do not exist.

I never claimed such materials dont exist, I pointed out that applying the concept of shaped charge without limit to any warhead is a no limits fallacy. Also, the pusher-plate on the Orion would not have dealt with contact detonations, not to mention the nukes the Orion would have used werent megaton level.

This also forgetting that if FT armor can survive against FT nukage for even alone blast, that the same material can be used to shape a nuclear blast.

Funny how that works isn't it?

You can put enough modern materials into a reeeeally thick plate that can survive a multi-megaton nuke, yet we cant shape the blasts of multimegaton nukes.

Funny how it most certainly doesnt work that way.

Indeed, because these point-defense systems still exist after I've gained orbital superiority for any length of time, that these systems will even be effective in mitigating the damage (see ABM shields), or that they'd work in the first place.

How will you gain orbital superiority? Remember, this planet has more guns than your fleet, more ammunition for them and more fuel for their reactors. They have the capability to intercept or sustain long-range strikes. In fact, you constantly harp around orbital superiority but never once you bother to elaborate your magic methods of gaining that orbital superiority in the face of any kind of smart defense in depth.

Yes, let's assume these things so your argument will at least look like it makes sense...

...

Just kidding.



Fail.

Lets pretend you're not a worthless troll....wait... no you're still a worthless troll.

Heh, even if MoO was my tactical base, it's better than the great warfare simulator of Solitaire that you seem to be using, if it even is that advanced. And concessions accepted: unless you can do something other than whine.

You bypassed the entire point and have thus far failed to actually counter any of the very real problems against your illusions with other than handwavium. Therefore I think its you who actually conceded, but Im hardly surprised you dont have a clue of the proper methods of going about a debate.

Oh and by the way, I got my tactical sense from the army. Guess you lose.

I can move a space fleet, you can't move a planet. I can shatter large areas of the planet if I want to using the glorious effects of atmospheric refocusing after utilizing 50MT< devices in the atmosphere. You can just sit there and fire potshots hoping to hit something.

See the difference between ability and effectiveness? The castle doesn't come back just because the walls are made of dicktainium instead of concrete.

I dont need to move a planet, if your shots dont connect to the planet or miss entirely, you wont be doing shit. Meanwhile the massive amounts of weapons I have both on the surface and in orbit are having a grand turkey shoot to blow your fleet out of the sky before they litter the orbital space any more than they already have.

Guess you lose again.

It can't be too painfully obvious if you bothered mentioning ground-based reactors as viable means of defense in the first place, and as well can't be too painfully obvious if yous till defend them.

Ofcourse they are a viable means of defense, since you obviously are oblivious to the First Law of Thermodynamics and Conservation of Energy, you dont understand that power to the defense systems doesnt come out of thin air.

A planet has a limited amount of fuel. My fleet does not.

If you want to oversimplify the matter then yeah, I guess they have limited amount of fuel if it can last them through the defense for say, fifty thousand years. Your fleet has to get its fuel from your home bases, the planet has an overabundance of fuel right there. They can run their generators until your crews grow old and die. Pretty long siege.

A shield isn't meant to deal with massive energy densities that equal even ten percent of its own total output in an area the size of a pinpoint while hoping to remain an effective defense.

Eh? A shield does not translate to big honking field of magic energy. You can have such things as point-deflectors or if you really want to jump into magic tech, gravity shields similar to Impeller Wedges from David Webers Honorverse.

Btw, so you're concentrating that nuke to a pinpoint now? Tsk tsk, didnt we talk about that no-limits fallacy?

Too bad you need to know something about science, or just have a good deal of common sense to come to this conclusion in the first place.

Says the guy who has no clue about the difficulties of terraforming, nor a clue of the amount of ecological damage to a planet due to extensive nuclear level bombardment. Dont even talk about science, you obviously are clueless about it.

Indeed, well supported arguments is equitable to drivel. In that case, what do we make of ... whatever we would call the 'interesting' things you've managed to say here today?

Well supported arguments are never drivel, the problem is that I fail to see no well supported arguments coming from you. I see red herring, handwavium, ignorance of any science and generally plain incapability to actually counter any of the arguments I've thrown through the holes in your logic.


Now, please continue to spout the same drivel as you have done until now, then I can happily ignore you and concentrate on doing something worthwhile with my time.

The Soviets were inept, and also got the hell beaten out of them by their own ammunition. Only when the Finns ran out could the Soviets make advancements anywhere, in both the Winter War and the Continuation War.

At best its an example of extreme quantity beating limited quality, no proof that quantity > quality.

To be actually precise, the total tactical ineptitude of the Soviets was what killed them in the Winter War. It wasnt the shortage of ammunition on the Finnish side but rather the fact that quantity is a quality all in its own.

Quantity does not win over quality, quantity is a quality all in its own. Gosh, and I actually thought your tactical genius understood this.

During the 1939 Winter War the war changed radically with the arrival of Timoshenko. During the Continuation War the Finns were actually squarely defeated, even if the Soviets lost around two times the amount of personnel during the offensive. The Red Army in 1944 was completely different to the Red Army in 1939, which was caught in a transition between the purges of 1937 and the reorganization scheduled for 1942. In 1944 the Red Army had both quantity and quality (although perhaps not that much quality in their infantry).

Quite true. They had learned something between 1939 and 1944. They again had the material and numerical superiority which was their major advantage and guaranteed them success. Even so, their major offensive at 1944 was still stopped and the casualties were heavily tilted in the Finnish favor. Unfortunately, since Finland had much less manpower to throw into the grinder in the first place, nor the infrastructure to create material to match the Soviets. In the end, quantity won the war for the Soviets.

Obviously far more than you do. Your 50mt AM bomb will still generate a lot of HEAT. It will also be blowing up dust out of the wazoo into the atmosphere of your target planet. Throw down enough of these magic bombs and you have achieved massive ecological damage that will make the planet useless for you.
At ground zero, antimatter-matter annihiliation produces a lot of hard radiation, like gamma rays. I don't think its persists for too long, but I wouldn't like to travel through ground zero of an antimatter strike right away.

I'm going to say this, and not going to add on to defend it because debates like this on the internet tend to be as pointless as some people are saying ground combat is.

Your fleet, just like a modern air force, can bomb the crap out of an area or a planet all you want. The territory is not actually yours until there are troops on the ground. Air forces and orbital fleets are a form of heavy support, similar to artillery, when it comes to ground combat. They'll take a lot of work off of the shoulders of the army, destroying enemy forces as much as possible, keeping enemy fleets and air forces away, etc., but the army still has to be there to take and hold the desired territory.

Quite true. They had learned something between 1939 and 1944.


They learned more from themselves. Up until 1937 the Red Army was the leader in deep operation and mechanized tactics. The Germans caught the Soviets in a time of chaos in the Red Army, when they had killed their primary military thinkers, but were returning to deep operation. In other words, had the Germans invaded in 1942 they probably would have lost.

They again had the material and numerical superiority which was their major advantage and guaranteed them success.

It really didn't guarantee them anything. Soviet victory in Finland in 1939 came with new leadership and reorganization, not numerical superiority. I'm sure that numerical superiority allowed them to take more casualties and let them have that luxury of defeat to slowly turn it into victory, but in the end it was Soviet ingenuity which won the war.

Even so, their major offensive at 1944 was still stopped and the casualties were heavily tilted in the Finnish favor.

Although Gorovov's offensive did fail at retaking all territory lost (in reference to 1941 borders), the example of the Continuation War is really an exemption, as opposed to the rule, of the conduct of the Red Army in 1944.

In the end, quantity won the war for the Soviets.

In part, yes, but by 1944 the Red Army also had quality - especially quality in the war material they were using, the quality of their leadership and the quality of their spearheads.

Well, when you have a nation like mine, who's soldiers are to avoid killing the enemy at all costs(don't ask why), and who has no orbital weapon capable of safely incapacitating every single one of millions of people on a planet, ground combat is really your only choice. Besides, even if you could K.O. millions of people from space without killing them, what about hospitals? People who need treatment wouldn't get it, because the doctors would be on the floor, and they'd die. Orbital, even aerial bombardment isn't accurate enough, thus ground troops are the scalpel where everything else is the hammer. yeah, ground troops are space marines, where everything else is the guard.

Except our ground troops aren't wearing near-impenetrable armor, nor can they crush a tank barrel with one hand, while lifting the tank with the other.

If you want to RP your nation having infinite resource mining and processing capability, you might as well start RPing fantasy. EMCON is not the end all of stealth, but its the simplest form of passive stealth. Controlling the amount of emissions your unit puts out. These emissions include everything that can give away your position, radar, lidar, communications, active sensors, sound, infra-red, and ofcourse all the wonderful emissions supposedly detectable by FT sensors. There are passive methods of limiting your emissions, you dont need to be shunting them to subspace or some form of other technobabble.

Er, yes you do, unless you think that the radiation, be it in the form of heat or gamma rays, just goes nowhere through EC systems, especially in FT where the heat levels are uhm, fucking huge. But since common sense is beyond you, I guess I had to point this out as well.

Imperfections that cant be automatically assumed to exist. Ofcourse, no system is perfect, and your sensor finding that single company of enemy infantry utilizing passive forms of stealth and lets say, some form of chameleon style optical camouflage system would take time to be found, as your sensors scan every square meter of land on the enemy planet to find them.

Yes, they can be assumed to exist, because uhm, they do. Nothing can be perfectly ordered and constructed, especially when it comes to optical camo.

The above about the limitations passive stealth (EC) is slightly less applicable to infantry, only because said infantryman can only produce so much heat, and said heat would not likely appear to out of place in an ecosphere, though the problem of being seen eventually by powerful sensor systems still remain.

Hehe, funny to hear this coming from a guy who automatically assumes EMCON means you need to be shunting your emissions to subspace. You dont seem to have the slightest clue about passive stealth systems. I suggest you get that clue, fast.


You've no idea what you're talking about, that's what it gets down to. If you think for an instant that you don't need to shunt emissions off into another dimension, given the amount of radiation and heat that FT generators (and of course, these shields and weapons you so love), then please, enlighten me with a method that doesn't violate every law of science known to man as it pertains to this very field.

Since you can't do that, of course, please don't bother responding.

Your bombardment trajectories? Ah bombardment from beyond the range of the planetary defense? Such a wonderful thing, a shame that against an enemy with a half decent detection and interception capability, your bombardment from beyond their planetary defense range wont be doing squat.


Uh, wrong? Missiles, suicide drones loaded down with various armaments that range from simple explosives to particle beams, KE spam: the list goes on.

The most glaringly obvious hole in your logic here is that you think static defenses can avoid these things.

They can't.

They're static.

Eh, you dont even seem to have a clue about economics, Im hardly surprised. The fact that you have discovered an infinite amount of resources does not instantly reduce the market price of said resource. You're not actually putting any of that infinite amount of resources to the market yet. Supply and demand has as much to do with the capability of taking advantage of those resources, e.g the actual amount of resources you put out into the market determines supply of it, not the discovery of said infinite resource source. Ever wonder why the gas prices go up when a major Oil Refinery somewhere is having problems? The oil is still there, but its not being turned into the use of the market.

When supply outstrips demand, then prices fall. When you have an infinite amount of resources that FT mining and manufacturing technology gives you, then your supply outstrips demand.

Amazing how you can't get something so simple.

At this point I need to say, what the fuck? How do you think the access to those materials comes? Via magic? You need the infrastructure to harvest and PROCESS those resources to turn them into a market commodity.


Apparently you don't get it: not surprised in the slightest, but I assume that at some point you could comprehend something this simple: I can't have access to these resources if I don't already have a minimal amount of the needed FT infrastructure developed, just as you can't have guns without gunpowder. To have one proves the existence of the other.

Soooo simple...

This is total red herring to what I said.

Red herrings are distractions. My response was not, unless you think that pointing out your arguments to be fallacious is distracting.

Yes ofcourse, because of your übar FT MAGIC you can create athmospheres without actually importing the gases to create them. Materialize water from thin air. Increase the mean temperature of a planet with a flick of a finger and create protection from solar radiation without even bothering to try. No limits fallacy in its finest.

Stop using the word no limits as if you are familiar with its application; guess what: you're not. You're instead building strawman after strawman when you claim that terraforming equates to an instant process when the only other alternative is that it takes forever using current technology.

Too bad I don't buy the argument, because you're wrong.

It all depends on how stupid and how primitive your opponent is. If he has the capability to intercept say long-range kinetic strikes, well you're crap out of luck.


Because the ability to intercept missiles has made them obsolete as well, my apologies :rolleyes:.

Obviously far more than you do. Your 50mt AM bomb will still generate a lot of HEAT. It will also be blowing up dust out of the wazoo into the atmosphere of your target planet. Throw down enough of these magic bombs and you have achieved massive ecological damage that will make the planet useless for you.


Does that makes me wrong that some methods are less destructive than others? Or are you just whining?

Concessions accepted.

Haha! You mean the first point to which you responded with subspace fields proving you dont have the slightest clue what EMCON is? I wonder if the US Armed Forces utilize their magical subspace dumping capabilities on anything else.


I wonder if the US armed forces have anything that generates FT levels of heat.

I also wonder if you know what you're talking about, though I already know the answer to that question.

And again, how do you find these underground shafts? You did not actually answer the question, merely handwaved it past you that you will magically find it in any case. Sure you will find it, in time. Lets hope its not beneath a mountain and in addition armored and shielded or otherwise you'll be bombing it till the next decade.

Because it's impossible to hide an FT level civilization underground. But then again I have an understanding of the realities of NS FT, and you don't, so the lack of comprehension on your part is understandable.

Concessions again are appreciated.

Being kilometers beneath the bedrock is quite a good cover against nuke happy idiots who dont understand the mechanics of nuclear warfare.


The concept of pressure laughs at you.

Hmm, I just have to check if you've been banned from SD.net. Your debating tactics remind me far too much of the forum trolls to be a coincidence. All I say to this mindless babble is this, I think everyone here can read, and you arent convincing anyone but yourself.

Banning people with debating skills and general knowledge must be the newest fad over at SD.net I guess, yet sadly I don't have an account there; though given the previously stated, I'd not fair long anyway.

Well naturally at that point it is, which doesnt actually negate my point in any way. I merely pointed out that the term can be applied to many contexts.

It does negate your point, because in the context of the debate, it's useless, like so many other things you've managed to throw up since injecting yourself here.

Ah, so you agree that perfect counters exist? Excellent, then you can concede the entire debate since your opponent can have perfect counters to your offensive.


Strawmen aren't arguments, or is the opposite taught at your beloved SD.net?

Wasn't my argument that having a way to destroy a defense or render it ineffective isn't inherently wanky? Why yes, yes it was.

Wasn't your argument that a perfect counter does not, can not, and has not ever existed? Why yes! It was again!

Weren't you also wrong? Amazing, three times yes!

Are you about to argue that it's acceptable to have a shield system that is perfectly immune to all weapons, thereby creating another strawman and rendering the entire debate useless by doing so? Maybe, but most likely yes.

Someone's certainly on a roll today.

Anyway, you sidestepped my point. You claimed cannons killed the castle, I pointed out castles evolved to deal better with the evolved battlefield, ergo you are clueless once more.

And your point was A) Useless and B) the creation of ignorance. Castles were constructed to better deal with cannon damage, but they still died to cannon fire, and its their vulnerability to the cannon that made them worthless as actual fortifications against serious opponents.

I have actually seen castles, outside of my computer screen. How many have you seen?


Nope, yet I know more about then than you do.

Odd how that works.

FT in itself isnt a no limits fallacy, utilizing FT and justifying that by using it you can do practically any magical feat in your mind is a no limits fallacy. Shaping those nuke blasts is not impossible, however I would say that if you automatically assume that if your enemy has a mountain on top of his base, you'll throw a gigaton shaped nuke at their head, you're making use of the no limits fallacy.

Indeed it is, because nearly all FT tech is justified with what is colloquially known as bullshit. Now, despite this, objective analysis can still be done in this environment, utilizing logic, common sense, and the facts as they've been established by science. See the difference? I doubt you do, but I'll be courteous and ask anyway.

Your second point only brings question marks: why can't I have a gigaton-level nuke and shape the blast wave? You haven't justified that it's wanky, you've only whined like a child about it.

I never claimed such materials dont exist, I pointed out that applying the concept of shaped charge without limit to any warhead is a no limits fallacy. Also, the pusher-plate on the Orion would not have dealt with contact detonations, not to mention the nukes the Orion would have used werent megaton level.

And you'd be wrong, in the general sense. If we are instead using yields that make focusing the blast impossible, then I don't need to do so in the first place: the entire region will likely be vaporized by the strategic blast.

Also, concessions accepted: the point was that FT technology made nuke shaping possible, using MT level technology as an example (although in the literal sense incorrect). You've yet to disagree without such being based on whining.

You can put enough modern materials into a reeeeally thick plate that can survive a multi-megaton nuke, yet we cant shape the blasts of multimegaton nukes.

Funny how it most certainly doesnt work that way.

If it can survive the blastwave, then what happens to said blastwave? It disappears? Why not, it doesn't. It gets focused in another direction. Thanks for the concession, even if you did not knowingly make it.

How will you gain orbital superiority? Remember, this planet has more guns than your fleet, more ammunition for them and more fuel for their reactors. They have the capability to intercept or sustain long-range strikes. In fact, you constantly harp around orbital superiority but never once you bother to elaborate your magic methods of gaining that orbital superiority in the face of any kind of smart defense in depth.

Red herring: the debate starts when orbital superiority is gained. Otherwise you can't land troops OR bombard the planet, effectively anyway.

Stop trying to waste time.

Lets pretend you're not a worthless troll....wait... no you're still a worthless troll.

A worthless troll you've still yet to best apparently.

Now what does that say about you?

You bypassed the entire point and have thus far failed to actually counter any of the very real problems against your illusions with other than handwavium. Therefore I think its you who actually conceded, but Im hardly surprised you dont have a clue of the proper methods of going about a debate.

Oh and by the way, I got my tactical sense from the army. Guess you lose.

Show me where I've bypassed or don't bother throwing about the red herring.

It also begs the question as to which army you're talking about, and if said army can still exist given its tactical and strategic knowledge is so poor I doubt they could take down a group of napping kindergarteners in the heart of France.

I dont need to move a planet, if your shots dont connect to the planet or miss entirely, you wont be doing shit. Meanwhile the massive amounts of weapons I have both on the surface and in orbit are having a grand turkey shoot to blow your fleet out of the sky before they litter the orbital space any more than they already have.

Guess you lose again.

So my targeting abilities are that poor? Wow, I can detect a city in the core of a planet but I've not the computational power in my targeting computers to match a graphing calculator!

Too bad we've already established that the debate starts at orbital superiority already being established, so your red herring proves ineffectual.

Ofcourse they are a viable means of defense, since you obviously are oblivious to the First Law of Thermodynamics and Conservation of Energy, you dont understand that power to the defense systems doesnt come out of thin air.


Physics has nothing to do with reactors being effectual, unfortunately. Swing and a miss.

If you want to oversimplify the matter then yeah, I guess they have limited amount of fuel if it can last them through the defense for say, fifty thousand years. Your fleet has to get its fuel from your home bases, the planet has an overabundance of fuel right there. They can run their generators until your crews grow old and die. Pretty long siege.


Justify the fifty-thousand year figure, mayhaps? Or how this one planet has more fuel than can be found in the rest of the universe, where I have free reign? Oh wait, you can't: because it's not possible.

Eh? A shield does not translate to big honking field of magic energy. You can have such things as point-deflectors or if you really want to jump into magic tech, gravity shields similar to Impeller Wedges from David Webers Honorverse.

Point deflectors are still limited by the point you failed to address: namely that energy in one location is not energy in another, and concentrated bombardments do threaten these magic systems of yours in ways you don't realize because you don't understand the basics of science, physics, economics, or even simple FT: a maxim whereby something is not gained from nothing.

And I'll not jump into 'magic tech' for your benefit, especially that which would destroy the defenders for me (Weber).

Btw, so you're concentrating that nuke to a pinpoint now? Tsk tsk, didnt we talk about that no-limits fallacy?


Yes, we did, and you proved yourself incapable of using said 'fallacy' correctly.

And no, I didn't say anything about pinpoint blastwave precision. Perhaps such could be construed, but given I mentioned various other weapons already, it's implied I wasn't talking about using a tsar bomba when I used the word pinpoint.

Says the guy who has no clue about the difficulties of terraforming, nor a clue of the amount of ecological damage to a planet due to extensive nuclear level bombardment. Dont even talk about science, you obviously are clueless about it.


Yes, since your attempts in educating me, and your iron-clad justification for your stances in the aforementioned areas are correct, or even comprehensible.

Oh wait, your every post proves the exact opposite to be the case.

:rolleyes:.

Well supported arguments are never drivel, the problem is that I fail to see no well supported arguments coming from you. I see red herring, handwavium, ignorance of any science and generally plain incapability to actually counter any of the arguments I've thrown through the holes in your logic.

You fail to see many things apparently, so why am I not surprised that you'd take such a stance?

Now, please continue to spout the same drivel as you have done until now, then I can happily ignore you and concentrate on doing something worthwhile with my time.

If this is your way of conceding, then I accept. Now run along.

Wow, if you could be more wrong I'd be surprised. It actually went something like this:

Me: You're framing your arguments in such a way that is fallacious, stop it.
You: Are you saying I should frame my arguments in a way that makes no sense?
Me: No, I'm saying make actual arguments that are not based on fallacy, and arguments not built around you looking intelligent.


Basically arguments wherein you have a better chance of being right, and therefore also contributing nothing to this thread. Congratulations.

So you are implying I should frame my arguments within circumstances where they make no sense?

I'm saying you should do the exact opposite. Instead you continue to do otherwise as you have since you decided to grace us with your presence.


Please try sticking to the truth. Your paraphrasing wasn't what you said.


Hahahahaha! Damn, I never laughed so hard since... your last post. The entire context of what was quoted gets down to your trying to create a false dilemma: either I kill planets with super-weapons, or take them with large infantry formations. The former is just plain stupid, and the later has no justification.

A.) The entirety of what was quoted was start putting down valid counterarguments.

B.)The dilemma is not that simple sir. The true dilemma, as opposed to the one you prefer to address, is how do you conquer a planet through bombardment alone more efficiently than through a combined arms invasion while keeping collateral damage to a minimum to maximize future exploitation of the conquered planet.


Obviously I wouldn't use a method that is so stupid. Either precision kinetic strikes with kinetic rounds of small enough size but big enough mass to kill things living in $_area, without being more damaging than a 25lb bomb. Then there are various energy weapons, micromissiles, and a myriad of other things that do not fit within your "annihilate or bust" paradigm.

Funny how all of a sudden your capital starships started sprouting all of these orbital anti-personnel weapons, but whatever, I'm sure each ship keeps a couple of million AP kinetic kill rounds "just in case". And when the populace retreats into fortifications able to withstand your AP rounds? Back to bigger bombs again?



Read the response to Clairmont, and also realize that even if orbital bombardment is impractical in that case, you've still not justified major ground combat.
You sir still haven't told me how you plan to conquer the planet through bombardment.


If you don't like the answer, then come up with a way to shoot it down. Otherwise stop ranting like an idiot because the argument is inconvenient.
Sorry if I find your answer "lacking". Granted, it's about 1 step above "Because I said so", but only barely. When you come up with something better than "Sealed environments are cheaper because they don't have to deal with environmental effects", I'd like to know, because I find it incredulous that you would believe than generating an enviroment is cheaper/easier than adapting to one as relatively mild as Earth's.



"I can't bother to understand the analogy!"
I can't be bothered with someone saying that something 10,000 times smaller than something else would obviously be cheaper, matchbox cars are cheaper than real cars, your point?


Because obliterating every one of your arguments like a tornado plowing into a house of cards makes me rabid. I guess you've never debated before, neh?

Yuh, right, what color is the sky in your world again? Debating with you is like arguing with a monkey that is screeching and throwing feces at you. Well, maybe not that pleasant.


Then you'd be ignoring common weather phenomena while also comparing it to something which is uncommon and/or rare.
Stop exagerating, if it is so common, why am I building there again? If it is such a common phenomona, why do people live in Texas, why do people live in California, they have all those earthquakes, forest fires, mudslides, ecetera.



So you plan on making every house and apartment strong enough to withstand a direct hit by a tornado, the ravaging tide of flood waters, and everything else nature may through at you, and yet yours is less expensive?

Flooding now too? What's next, should I prepare for locusts? I know, maybe a volcano will spontaneously erupt under my community. Try sticking with a premise and stop altering the deal when things aren't going your way.

Hah. More funniness. It's just too bad that a sealed environment in the setting discussed isn't very expensive in the first place, and given post-scarcity (oh yes, too bad this is still valid even if you despise it) economics, sealed environments wouldn't be that expensive int he first place.
Sorry, your no-limits argument doesn't hold water here, even where technology, expertise, materials, and labor are infinitely cheap, I am still using less of each.


This also ignoring the fact that the technical problems of making every building comparable to that of a sealed environment needlessly complicates the manufacturing process...
Comparable how?



Yes, because tornadoes, hurricanes, and all these littles inconveniences of nature are acts of God :rolleyes:.
Was that an attempt at a dodge? Because I fail to see how that answers the question of how is your community cheaper, when even if my community POSSIBLY gets destroyed, I can rebuild it several times for less than the cost of yours?


Who said I needed to drop teratons, or that I was? Oh wait, you did because only if we completely level planets with each take over do your arguments work. Too bad I don't accept that premise.

So how would you do it? I'm still waiting for that valid counter-argument.


If you have orbital superiority, then you can easily kill anything on the surface. If you have orbital superiority, then you can easily bomb underground defenses without even getting through the shields: the problems with pressure waves from even 1mt devices is that they usually crush what's underground (too bad you didn't do any research so that you may find this out, and consequentially know what you're talking about).
The pressure wave, or ground shock, is greatly attenuated by the earth (which acts as a giant shock absorber), so, in order to collapse said underground structure, you still have to drill or burrow to a depth where said device will be effective (as I assume defensive planners would place shelters at least below the danger-zone from a surface blast), and, you have the possibility of free floating structures as well which are much more resistant to ground shock. Not quite as cut and dried as you like to make it seem.


Cloaking and jamming tells the enemy exactly where you are: "Dude, a jamming/cloaking field!" "BOMB IT!"

Soooo wanky isn't it?

Uh, yeah, actually, why am I using cloaks that tell the enemy exactly where I am? I think that's called a beacon, not a cloak. You can spread a jamming field over a few square km at least (probably much more with FT power tech), bomb all of that? You could try to triangulate, but I can have mobile jammers, decoys, etc. I call Perfect Sensors that have no counter kind of wanky, yeah.


Well, since the point obviously flew by you like a missile or cannon ball: that certain military technologies become obsolete because a perfect counter is developed. Look at castles, or the armored night on horseback.
Hmm, you say they were obsolete, I say they evolved. The Castle turned into Cheyenne Mountain, The armored knight into the main battle tank. The concepts are still kicking around today.



Hahahahah! Damn, your comedic skills have yet to fail. A bomb that is detonated on the ground does more damage to the ground than does an airbust, just as a subsurface detonation does even more. Course, I knew this already because I bother to know what I'm talking about before I hit the "reply" button.
That's all fine and dandy, but that does not address the fact that the blast and heat effects are lessened by surface and subsurface detonations. Yes, you blow up more dirt than you do from an airburst, but the blast/area of effect is much smaller, smaller, as the bomb must expend more energy heating and displacing dirt than it must air. The Siesmic Wave is larger, but not equatable with the blast wave from an airburst and rapidly decreases from the point of detonation.


Indeed, but as previously mentioned this isn't necessarily a problem if you're so advanced that you're able to blow the planet up DS style int he first place, and it's not ridiculously hard to limit the damage to that location in the first place (or hell, us the overpressure from a Tsar Bomba equivalent to crush whatever fortresses are underground).
Overpressure and seismic shock effect are not the same, please keep your effects straight, as I assume since seismic shock effect is what you are actually talking about as it is much more effective subsurface than overpressure. In any case, either can be defended against. The question still remains, can you overcome those defenses through ortillery without seriously damaging the planet?



Because it doesn't... work that way mayhaps? I have orbital superiority, that means you can't go anywhere to build these mythical reactors while I can utilize resources from any other location to build more than you can. Or failing that, I could always compromise the integrity of a single section by hitting it with energy densities it was never designed to withstand. Course, I also know how shields (Should) work given established concepts and common sense, so that's probably why I don't see a problem.
I would assume I would already have these reactors built ahead of time. Should I wait until you achieve orbital superiority before I decide it is a good time to defend myself? Shields can be focussed on point locations, just as weapons can.

Oh, very nice, another Weber fan.

I don't get the analogy, though.

Well, can your ships assault through a portal?

You can build reactors on a planet you know...wow this is amazing. It just always makes me laugh to see one of these threads, which then get pointed at people as a "be all. end all" in the matter. I have seen all these types of threads used to quantitatively "prove" these points. All i see are people arguing against things that are not their massive ubar spaceships of deat and destruction, powered by an AI that is frankly, superior to any human, period, no matter what. Of course that too was "proven" likely in another thread. This is FT, which means then that it is possible to have some form of defense.

If you would like to explode planets, then yes a Ground army is obsolete. However if you like to, you know, keep the planets you conquer..or god forbid defend yours from someone who likes it as much as you...then you damn well need a ground army.

One thing about FT is we don't even understand how most of it works today, and a lot of you seem to misunderstand certain key concepts such as, how badly you kill a planet wiping out all life on a planet of 6 billion populated by mean, paranoid, warlike bastards. They could have reinforced the very planet itself to withstand attacks, added forcefields of mind boggling power to them that require a ground invasion to take off. Some people would call this god modding but that is not true. As there is a definitive weakness of the overshields and defense guns. That troops on the ground can kill them with ease and without fear of them.

This then makes it fair and easy to play. Fact is that if someone invaded me, thats what they would face. We like to keep our planets, and a well populated planet is going to be very, very well defended. Especially after what happened with our last one. You can take my worlds, you just have to invade them first. I find it rather dull and tedious to see this whole " I R USE GANK FLEET OF 9000!!!!! spacedyships and powns j00r planetz! haha." repeated over and over again. To give the people that actually believe that the sort of nonsense that ground combat is obsolete because of technology really have not been watching the news lately. Israel versus Lebanon last summer was a perfect example of a ground army that was designed to defeat a modern army. All infantry, mobile with very, very heavy firepower.

A planet can have VERY, VERY heavy return firepower [Grand cannon from Robotech comes to mind.] as well as heavy shields, powered by the planet itself through its core as well as thousands of reactors that could be the size of bloody mountains, hidden in geo-fronts. Then you can reinforce the ground itself by various means.


So now your ships have to get VERY close to kill these shield generators, now they are within return fire range of massive super dreadnought devouring cannons of d00m, swatting ships, kinetics and missiles down like gnats. Would it not then be easier in this instance to mount a diversionary attack to land troops, say by flinging a bunch of disposable orty-sats in to their path, then landing a massive wave of ground troops around each majour fortress, to wage a...ground war?. In this case majour ground combat would occur around strategic areas. Ground combat in the open may be dead, but thats because we will use clean fusion bombs against each other to wipe everything out that moves.

Very few armies can pull off open field fighting in FT, most do it through masses of either fast combat vehicles, massive war machines or small units fighting with nuclear weapons. A few rare ones do it conventionally through other means, such as theater shields and void shields or some other form of force field cover.

This being said, strategic areas would be planetary shield generators and the like, which would become the planets fortresses. So yes, this does mean a return to castles. You have to storm the walls before you can attack the keep. Then you can move your ships in at your leisure and wipe the planet out. Not every planet will be this well defended, but it is an example of a planet that could hold out against a well armed gank fleet.

So therefore the argument is moot, even if you can blow up the enemy planet, what happens when someone invades you. You will have nothing to defend yourself with, nuke flinging drones or no, if they land in your cities with nothing to stop them, you lose, period. Unless of course you want to commit suicide with your population.

powered by an AI that is frankly, superior to any human, period, no matter what.

Making a computer that's a better fighter pilot or gunner than a human isn't that difficult. Get an old PC shooting game. Jack it up to sooper overclocked speed, set it on maximum difficulty, and see how you do. Remember, no restarts or saves now, y'hear? You get one shot.

And then consider that those AIs were designed to give you a fair chance at beating them. Something anyone designing a computer for a space gun isn't going to do.

stuff

Someone doesn't know what BVR means.

They could have reinforced the very planet itself to withstand attacks, added forcefields of mind boggling power to them that require a ground invasion to take off.Curious - how would an invasion force get through these when generic ordnance can't?

As there is a definitive weakness of the overshields and defense guns. That troops on the ground can kill them with ease and without fear of them.Yours, maybe...

Israel versus Lebanon last summer was a perfect example of a ground army that was designed to defeat a modern army. All infantry, mobile with very, very heavy firepower.This is kinda off topic, but hey.

Hezbollah took heavier casualties than Israel
Its firepower was inferior to the firepower Israel brought to bear
Its firepower was /hilariously/ inferior to the firepower Israel /could/ have brought to bear if it'd decided not to give a fuck about world opinion. This would, among other things, have resulted in a depopulated Lebanon, but hey
The conflict was, in effect, guerilla warfare in a desert. Which is, coincidentally, the exact opposite of tank rushes and WW 1-era infantry waves
It is indeed a good example for how to use the influence of the media, ruthfulness and the likes to force one's opponent to fight a war he can actually lose, as opposed to fighting a war he can win in five minutes flat
It is, however, a hilariously poor example for a tactical paradigm that actually prevents a ruthless enemy from succeeding - if Israel was as amoral as its neighbors, and the rest of the world didn't care, it could've flattened the entirety of Lebanon, and won with very little efford & casualties
The same applies to SciFi scenarios

So now your ships have to get VERY close to kill these shield generatorsWhy?

Static target + space + FTL + missiles == infinite range.

This does, admittedly, apply to missiles launched from the planet, too - but the attacking force isn't static :-)

Would it not then be easier in this instance to mount a diversionary attack to land troops, say by flinging a bunch of disposable orty-sats in to their path, then landing a massive wave of ground troops around each majour fortress, to wage a...ground war?No.

You've shields capable of shrugging off positively absurd wattage (Judging by some of your posts on Mars, I figure a DEATstar at full power would be little more dangerous than a rat's fart to your planets), up to and including KE. How would a shuttle carrying troops penetrate it when it involves maybe one millionth (Or billionth) of this KE?
You must have a means to prevent teleporting bombs under the shield - whatever does it will do the same to teleporting people, or tanks
If your defensive system can effordlessly deal with entire armadas, a 'Diversion' in the form of a few orty sats wouldn't require more than maybe a thousandth or so of its capabilities to go active. 99.9% of it would therefore be ready to intercept any attempt at getting a ground force down there. Nevermind that a 'Small Diversion' isn't going to succeed when somewhere else, ten million soldiers plus equipment get moved. I mean, you can see these guys
A 'Massive wave' of ground forces is bound to need an armada to carry it, no? The same armada you've previously - and not necessarily incorrectly - said to be able to deal with quite effordlessly. Or do you randomly scan ships and let the ones carrying troops through in order to have a 'Fair Fight'?
The defensive measures emplaced on the planet would make resupplying this force extremely difficult. Unless it can achive its objectives within a handful of hours, it dies. A bit much of a risk

Ground combat in the open may be dead, but thats because we will use clean fusion bombs against each other to wipe everything out that moves.I thought you were arguing in favour of ground combat...?

Er, yes you do, unless you think that the radiation, be it in the form of heat or gamma rays, just goes nowhere through EC systems, especially in FT where the heat levels are uhm, fucking huge. But since common sense is beyond you, I guess I had to point this out as well.

No shit? They put out heat? Gosh, thanks for pointing out the painfully obvious once again. Gamma rays? Are the FT infantry companies you are imagining here running with fission plants on their backs? You are also making baseless assumptions once again, you assume that because they are FT ground forces they must be putting out insane amounts of heat. I found absolutely no counter to my original argument here, concession accepted.

Yes, they can be assumed to exist, because uhm, they do. Nothing can be perfectly ordered and constructed, especially when it comes to optical camo.

That includes sensors btw, concession accepted.

The above about the limitations passive stealth (EC) is slightly less applicable to infantry, only because said infantryman can only produce so much heat, and said heat would not likely appear to out of place in an ecosphere, though the problem of being seen eventually by powerful sensor systems still remain.

Yes ofcourse, these sensors will magically find the troops on the surface of a planet no matter what kind of stealth they utilize because they are "powerful"?

You've no idea what you're talking about, that's what it gets down to. If you think for an instant that you don't need to shunt emissions off into another dimension, given the amount of radiation and heat that FT generators (and of course, these shields and weapons you so love), then please, enlighten me with a method that doesn't violate every law of science known to man as it pertains to this very field.

Now why the heck would I try to hide the ground based defense systems? The second they fire, they will be detected. That is a given, Im talking about ground TROOPS, which dont radiate as much on the EM spectrum than a big honkin railgun or a nuclear reactor.

Uh, wrong? Missiles, suicide drones loaded down with various armaments that range from simple explosives to particle beams, KE spam: the list goes on.

The most glaringly obvious hole in your logic here is that you think static defenses can avoid these things.

They can't.

They're static.

Mobile orbital denial platforms, active sensor jamming, point-defense and interception. Once again you spout the exact same drivel and completely bypass these problems that I have pointed out before. Concession accepted.

When supply outstrips demand, then prices fall. When you have an infinite amount of resources that FT mining and manufacturing technology gives you, then your supply outstrips demand.

Amazing how you can't get something so simple.

Concession accepted. The level of supply is directly tied to the extent of infrastructure providing that supply. Infrastructure that does not appear out of thin air.

Apparently you don't get it: not surprised in the slightest, but I assume that at some point you could comprehend something this simple: I can't have access to these resources if I don't already have a minimal amount of the needed FT infrastructure developed, just as you can't have guns without gunpowder. To have one proves the existence of the other.

Soooo simple...

Hehe, funny. My response was to your claim how your simple discovery of infinite amount of resources would directly translate to supply. And again, you completely miss my point about the difficulty of constructing a massive enough infrastructure to provide said infinite amount of supply. Concession accepted.

Red herrings are distractions. My response was not, unless you think that pointing out your arguments to be fallacious is distracting.

Except that your point did not really answer my argument in any way, which makes it red herring.

Stop using the word no limits as if you are familiar with its application; guess what: you're not. You're instead building strawman after strawman when you claim that terraforming equates to an instant process when the only other alternative is that it takes forever using current technology.

Too bad I don't buy the argument, because you're wrong.

Haha, did I say that terraforming takes forever? Gosh, apparently I didnt. However, I did point out that terraforming is quite a lengthy process, lengthy enough when staying outside the realm of fantasy that you dont translate Mars-like planets to human habitable out of the wazoo simply by invoking "I use FT magic!". Concession accepted.

Because the ability to intercept missiles has made them obsolete as well, my apologies :rolleyes:.

Wow, did I say interception capability makes missiles useless? No? Damn, guess you screwed up again. Lets just say that interception capability of sufficient scale can degrade your waunted long-range attack capability to sufficient degree to make such a tactic unfavorable in the long term. Your honkin space fleet needs ammo afterall.

Does that makes me wrong that some methods are less destructive than others? Or are you just whining?

Concessions accepted.

Naturally not, though you seem to continuously ignore the fact that massive bombardment with megaton level weapons will cause large scale ecological damage. Oh and I think the concession was yours.

I wonder if the US armed forces have anything that generates FT levels of heat.

I also wonder if you know what you're talking about, though I already know the answer to that question.

Funny that you gave no implication that you even understood how EMCON works in the real world. You jumped straight to babbling about subspace fields. Oh btw, since we're talking about FT levels of heat, shall we talk about Cold Fusion reactors? Oh shit, no we cant do that, they really hurt your "argument". Is it your stock answer to claim your opponent does not understand what he is talking about when you dont have a clue how to respond to their arguments? Anyway, concession accepted.

Because it's impossible to hide an FT level civilization underground. But then again I have an understanding of the realities of NS FT, and you don't, so the lack of comprehension on your part is understandable.

Concessions again are appreciated.

Why? You seem happy to automatically assume infinite infrastructure to take advantage of infinite resources. Nobody is talking about hiding an entire civilization underground, thats your assumption, deep planetary shelters are another matter entirely.

Oh, I dont understand realities of NS FT? Please enlighten me, this should be hilarious. Oh and btw, you really cant accept a concession from me since afteral, you failed to answer my initial point with a real counter argument instead of babble "its impossible".

The concept of pressure laughs at you.

Air pressure? What a shame that air pressure above the ground does very little to a shelter that is kilometers beneath the bedrock. Or do you mean these shelters wouldnt work because of pressure from the surrounding crust material? A shame that since we are talking about FT here, FT materials sciences would make this point of yours null and void. Concession accepted.

Banning people with debating skills and general knowledge must be the newest fad over at SD.net I guess, yet sadly I don't have an account there; though given the previously stated, I'd not fair long anyway.

Your debating "skills" and general "knowledge" can be measured with two words = forum troll.

Strawmen aren't arguments, or is the opposite taught at your beloved SD.net?

Wasn't my argument that having a way to destroy a defense or render it ineffective isn't inherently wanky? Why yes, yes it was.

Wasn't your argument that a perfect counter does not, can not, and has not ever existed? Why yes! It was again!

Weren't you also wrong? Amazing, three times yes!

Strawman's are depended on me misinterpreting your point, which I havent. You simply dont seem to understand the inherent problems in your "logic".

Yes your argument was that, however you failed, continuously, to account for the possible existence of defense in depth employing FT. Which makes you fail.

Actually, you're rewriting history by claiming your argument was not that perfect counters exist, you claimed they do. I suggest you actually read the point of yours to which I replied. This simply makes you a liar in addition to being a troll.

Concession accepted.

Are you about to argue that it's acceptable to have a shield system that is perfectly immune to all weapons, thereby creating another strawman and rendering the entire debate useless by doing so? Maybe, but most likely yes.

Someone's certainly on a roll today.

Oh no, ofcourse not. Its your skill to create invincible and flawless weapons and tactics out of thin air.

And your point was A) Useless and B) the creation of ignorance. Castles were constructed to better deal with cannon damage, but they still died to cannon fire, and its their vulnerability to the cannon that made them worthless as actual fortifications against serious opponents.

Funny that castles were heavily utilized in defense of coastal cities against hostile fleets long after the advent of the cannon, a role in which they proved to be useful. Quite a similar situation to what we're dealing with here no? Concession accepted.

Nope, yet I know more about then than you do.

Odd how that works.

Odd how it doesnt, actually seeing a castle evolved to fighting with and against cannons helps to understand my point.

Indeed it is, because nearly all FT tech is justified with what is colloquially known as bullshit. Now, despite this, objective analysis can still be done in this environment, utilizing logic, common sense, and the facts as they've been established by science. See the difference? I doubt you do, but I'll be courteous and ask anyway.

Absolutely, what's funny is that you actually defeated your own argument here. Concession thereby accepted.

Your second point only brings question marks: why can't I have a gigaton-level nuke and shape the blast wave? You haven't justified that it's wanky, you've only whined like a child about it.

Ofcourse you can, but dont assume anyone is going to take you seriously in any RP if you employ these weapons and utilize handwavium to explain them. You just talked about logic, common sense and science, which quite frankly work against you here.

And you'd be wrong, in the general sense. If we are instead using yields that make focusing the blast impossible, then I don't need to do so in the first place: the entire region will likely be vaporized by the strategic blast.

Hehe, since we're talking about RPing FT, a concept which has little to no connection at all to reality and since you're free to RP your nation with any kind of bullshit you want, Im not going to even bother to answer this one.

Also, concessions accepted: the point was that FT technology made nuke shaping possible, using MT level technology as an example (although in the literal sense incorrect). You've yet to disagree without such being based on whining.

Actually, if you note I agreed that nuke blast shaping is possible with FT tech, therefore you cant utilize the concession accepted tactic because there was no concession to be accepted. See above, you're free to RP your FT with any kind of bullshit you want.

If it can survive the blastwave, then what happens to said blastwave? It disappears? Why not, it doesn't. It gets focused in another direction. Thanks for the concession, even if you did not knowingly make it.

Funny how my point went straight over your head. Since you are obviously far too stupid to understand what that point was, let me explain. Even if you can construct a plate of armor so thick and heavy that it can survive a nuke, it does not mean you can apply that same plate of armor to any kind of practical sized warhead. Or you can, but at that point it will be so huge that it will be trivial to shoot it down. Concession accepted.

Red herring: the debate starts when orbital superiority is gained. Otherwise you can't land troops OR bombard the planet, effectively anyway.

Stop trying to waste time.

Wrong, see my point about limited orbital superiority. Guess that went straight over your head.

A worthless troll you've still yet to best apparently.

Now what does that say about you?

The funny thing about worthless troll's is that they will argue endlessly, despite the fact that they've lost the actual argument. I'll let you figure out what that means.

Show me where I've bypassed or don't bother throwing about the red herring.

It also begs the question as to which army you're talking about, and if said army can still exist given its tactical and strategic knowledge is so poor I doubt they could take down a group of napping kindergarteners in the heart of France.

Right where you ignored the actual main point of what I initially said. And spouted red herring.

Oh, said army exists and is quite healthy. The events of the Second World War guaranteed that.

So my targeting abilities are that poor? Wow, I can detect a city in the core of a planet but I've not the computational power in my targeting computers to match a graphing calculator!

Electronic Warfare is a bitch aint it?

Too bad we've already established that the debate starts at orbital superiority already being established, so your red herring proves ineffectual.

Does orbital superiority in your mind translate to you having magically annihilated all ground based defenses? If it doesnt, concession accepted.

Physics has nothing to do with reactors being effectual, unfortunately. Swing and a miss.

Actually it does, power needs to be generated, since it doesnt appear out of thin air thanks to physics.

Justify the fifty-thousand year figure, mayhaps? Or how this one planet has more fuel than can be found in the rest of the universe, where I have free reign? Oh wait, you can't: because it's not possible.

Anti-matter and hydrogen. Since we're talking about FT where Fusion and AM power are commonplace, it is reasonable to assume that technologies exist that make both the extraction of hydrogen from water and creation of AM economically feasible. A planet has quite a bit of raw material for both of these fuel types.

Point deflectors are still limited by the point you failed to address: namely that energy in one location is not energy in another, and concentrated bombardments do threaten these magic systems of yours in ways you don't realize because you don't understand the basics of science, physics, economics, or even simple FT: a maxim whereby something is not gained from nothing.

Ofcourse mass bombardments threaten these systems you moron, my point was to point out that shield != Star Trek shield. Funny how you talk about magic systems when you're constantly employing your own magic systems to try and keep your "arguments" standing. Also funny how you talk about science and economics when you have displayed you dont understand either.

And I'll not jump into 'magic tech' for your benefit, especially that which would destroy the defenders for me (Weber).

Really? Oh joy, you want to debate this in terms of Weber's works? We can do that if you want.

Yes, we did, and you proved yourself incapable of using said 'fallacy' correctly.

And no, I didn't say anything about pinpoint blastwave precision. Perhaps such could be construed, but given I mentioned various other weapons already, it's implied I wasn't talking about using a tsar bomba when I used the word pinpoint.


*snigger* Whatever you say friend, unfortunately the history of this debate is against you.

Yes, since your attempts in educating me, and your iron-clad justification for your stances in the aforementioned areas are correct, or even comprehensible.

Oh wait, your every post proves the exact opposite to be the case.

:rolleyes:.

Funny how you still fail to properly understand, counter or even answer to the points I used as basis for my assertion. Which makes this babble nothing but baseless rambling, concession accepted.

If this is your way of conceding, then I accept. Now run along.

No, its my way of saying that unless you can actually COUNTER the points I've made, I wont bother to use any more time on a useless troll. Now, I could actually accept your concession at this point, seeing as to how you either knowingly or unknowingly conceded several of the main points and failed to counter others in your last post.

So, it's been asked several times before, but I'd actually like an answer to the question of how we're supposed to insert ground troops through these shields that stop our rather immense fleet bombardments. It doesn't make much sense for a simple shuttle to make it through all these fleet destroying, planet guarding, armada stopping, bombardment defeating defenses of yours. "You can't break the shield so land troops." *troops splat rather spectacularly against said shield*

You know, these threads are better than chocolate, especially when people commit to overly zealous immense posts about how right they are and how wrong the opponent whom they've quoted oh too many times is.

Threads like this and people with enough...Oh I don't know, arrogant involvement in the game beyond the point of having fun and into the realm of proving points that don't matter....Gods you just light up my life.

After ten pages of argument and debate and the fact that people will continue to have ground armies (And the fact that no one is really stupid enough to slag every world they come across), it makes you wonder...Is it worth it?

(And the fact that no one is really stupid enough to slag every world they come across)

Does it count if you use your ground forces to slag the planet?

Does it count if you use your ground forces to slag the planet?

That depends on how many tentacles you have.

(And the fact that no one is really stupid enough to slag every world they come across)
Lies! Lies I say! If you can't take a planet and you don't need it, why not slag it?

You know, these threads are better than chocolate, especially when people commit to overly zealous immense posts about how right they are and how wrong the opponent whom they've quoted oh too many times is.

Threads like this and people with enough...Oh I don't know, arrogant involvement in the game beyond the point of having fun and into the realm of proving points that don't matter....Gods you just light up my life.

After ten pages of argument and debate and the fact that people will continue to have ground armies (And the fact that no one is really stupid enough to slag every world they come across), it makes you wonder...Is it worth it?

Posting this thread was a mistake.

Snip

Though imitation is the highest form of flattery, according to some, I must decline the offer by pointing out you can only use the words 'concession(s) accepted' when the opponent has failed to address your actual argument in any form whatsoever. Which is why I have used the phrase so much: your actions fit the criteria.

There is one area in which I feel the need to apologize: that is entertaining your red herring argument. Everything from ground-based reactors and anti-orty defenses are nothing more than red herrings, since this debate is concerned with the viability of large ground armies, then we start at already having achieved orbital superiority. Anything before that is irrelevant.

Otherwise, your incessant use of the no limits fallacy is telling as to the tactics and style of SD.net, wherein you argue from an MT/PMTish standpoint while also decrying anything that goes beyond that limit, into legitimate FT territory, as a no limits fallacy. You also throw logic, reason, common sense, and even science to the wind when you do so because otherwise we reach the inevitable conclusion: that short of using magic, the planet must be left alone in order for it to be left intact. Because otherwise we use ground armies, or we use orbital strikes, and in both cases, to defeat your defenses of uberness, we have to use inordinate amounts of firepower to end the resistance.

See now? Even if we accept the collateral damage to the environment argument, the same conclusion is reached, and you're still wrong.

Though since you've left in a huff like a child, I guess I'm wasting my breath, and given I at least know how to apply the following phrase: concessions accepted.

Lies! Lies I say! If you can't take a planet and you don't need it, why not slag it?

Because the first ones not happened yet :P

You know, these threads are better than chocolate, especially when people commit to overly zealous immense posts about how right they are and how wrong the opponent whom they've quoted oh too many times is.

Threads like this and people with enough...Oh I don't know, arrogant involvement in the game beyond the point of having fun and into the realm of proving points that don't matter....Gods you just light up my life.

After ten pages of argument and debate and the fact that people will continue to have ground armies (And the fact that no one is really stupid enough to slag every world they come across), it makes you wonder...Is it worth it?

I'm inclined to agree with Chronosia here. What's the point of roleplaying out an even semi-decent roleplay about a war when all you're doing is moving from point A to point B, fragging point B, and then moving to point C and rinsing and repeating?

Seriously, the point of having a ground army is for the roleplaying purposes. Like Chrono said on page one, "Of course you need ground warfare!" It's so fun! And there's so much blood, and gore, and pwnage of the best kind!

Why, praytell, would anyone want to remove that from the roleplaying aspect?

As Spock would say, 'It's illogical.'

I'm inclined to agree with Chronosia here. What's the point of roleplaying out an even semi-decent roleplay about a war when all you're doing is moving from point A to point B, fragging point B, and then moving to point C and rinsing and repeating?

Seriously, the point of having a ground army is for the roleplaying purposes. Like Chrono said on page one, "Of course you need ground warfare!" It's so fun! And there's so much blood, and gore, and pwnage of the best kind!

Why, praytell, would anyone want to remove that from the roleplaying aspect?

As Spock would say, 'It's illogical.'

but But BUT MUST WIN INTERNET ARGUMENT ENUUUUGHGHGHGHGHHG :mp5:

I'm interested. What's Clairmont's username for SDN then?

I'm interested. What's Clairmont's username for SDN then?

Ill TG it to you if thats ok.

Though imitation is the highest form of flattery, according to some, I must decline the offer by pointing out you can only use the words 'concession(s) accepted' when the opponent has failed to address your actual argument in any form whatsoever. Which is why I have used the phrase so much: your actions fit the criteria.

There is one area in which I feel the need to apologize: that is entertaining your red herring argument. Everything from ground-based reactors and anti-orty defenses are nothing more than red herrings, since this debate is concerned with the viability of large ground armies, then we start at already having achieved orbital superiority. Anything before that is irrelevant.

Otherwise, your incessant use of the no limits fallacy is telling as to the tactics and style of SD.net, wherein you argue from an MT/PMTish standpoint while also decrying anything that goes beyond that limit, into legitimate FT territory, as a no limits fallacy. You also throw logic, reason, common sense, and even science to the wind when you do so because otherwise we reach the inevitable conclusion: that short of using magic, the planet must be left alone in order for it to be left intact. Because otherwise we use ground armies, or we use orbital strikes, and in both cases, to defeat your defenses of uberness, we have to use inordinate amounts of firepower to end the resistance.

See now? Even if we accept the collateral damage to the environment argument, the same conclusion is reached, and you're still wrong.

Though since you've left in a huff like a child, I guess I'm wasting my breath, and given I at least know how to apply the following phrase: concessions accepted.

You failed to address the arguments in a way that would have countered them, and you repeated to do so. Therefore you might as well have conceded all things considered. Seeing your constant failure to address the most relevant points I brought up with anything that would have succesfully countered them in the context of the argument, you lost.

Those ground based defenses are hardly red herring at the point when we start discussing the viability of ground armies, see the thread title. See my point about limited orbital superiority and my point about defense in depth. Even if we ignore the problem of defense in depth, we still have the points which did not regard actual anti-space defenses but rather the viability of engaging FT equipped ground forces from space, points which you failed to counter.

How nice of you to accuse me of taking use of no limits fallacy when you continuously exploited it yourself during our argument back there. Like in the case about resources. Revisionist history is such a bad thing when what you say is actually right there on the previous page.

As you note, I did not decry anything ranging to FT as a no limits fallacy. I accused you of taking use of the no limits fallacy when you expanded a certain concept without limit, justifying it simply by babbling about FT. But offcourse, your ignorance allows you to evade this problem by skillfully pointing the accusing finger at your opponent in hopes of convincing someone other than yourself.

Its also nice how you accuse me of throwing common sense, logic and science out of the window when I originally utilized all the three to demolish your arguments. Btw, you should really expand your nuclear weapon knowledge. If you had the slightest clue how they work, you wouldnt have pursued your "I n00k j00r shelters kilometers deep in the crust" because, as you would have then known, nukes arent really too good at busting deep underground bunkers. Check FAS.org

Hey Harry Pothead, dont accuse me of using magic rather than FT. It was you who pulled out magical creation of infinite infrastructures from your behind wasnt it? Or magical terraforming of planets?

Since here in the end you still fail to understand the consequences of a large-scale enough bombardment to annihilate an entire population, not to mention an army, hell bent on surviving at any cost, from the surface of a planet, I can only conclude that you indeed are as clueless as I surmised.

Oh and in regards to the concessions, the honor (what there is of it in bashing a clueless idiot in a debate) is all mine. Better luck next time friend.

You know, these threads are better than chocolate, especially when people commit to overly zealous immense posts about how right they are and how wrong the opponent whom they've quoted oh too many times is.

Threads like this and people with enough...Oh I don't know, arrogant involvement in the game beyond the point of having fun and into the realm of proving points that don't matter....Gods you just light up my life.

After ten pages of argument and debate and the fact that people will continue to have ground armies (And the fact that no one is really stupid enough to slag every world they come across), it makes you wonder...Is it worth it?

My first post in this thread was mainly about the reasons why I write ground wars in FT RP's, because I like to write about them. I also raised a few short points that can affect the reasons why one would need to employ ground armies and thus bring some internal consistency to writing a good story.

As a few others pointed out, writing about ground troops is fun. Writing about a doomfleet slagging planets for convenience is boring. If its possible to keep the story internally consistant while still keeping Ground Troops in the play, all the better.

You failed to address the arguments in a way that would have countered them, and you repeated to do so. Therefore you might as well have conceded all things considered. Seeing your constant failure to address the most relevant points I brought up with anything that would have succesfully countered them in the context of the argument, you lost.

Oh really? Guess what: in any real debate there is justification for a statement. Each time you say I never addressed or countered an argument, you never justified your stance. You just said "concessions accepted! Whaaaa! You never answered my arguments cuz I said so! Whaaa!" As if such could be justification: sorry but it's not. I've answered your arguments with my own by pointing out the holes in them, and how they are irrelevant to the debate: whether or not they have merit is not just determined by the blanket 'you're wrong, concession's accepted' statement you bandy about due to some issue with my having done the same thing, only with justification being present when I find it prudent to use the phrase.

Either justify your statements or leave: I won't entertain your nonsense any further.

Those ground based defenses are hardly red herring at the point when we start discussing the viability of ground armies, see the thread title. See my point about limited orbital superiority and my point about defense in depth. Even if we ignore the problem of defense in depth, we still have the points which did not regard actual anti-space defenses but rather the viability of engaging FT equipped ground forces from space, points which you failed to counter.

Guess what? Ground armies are useless if you don't have orbital superiority: wanna know why? Bet you can't guess... OH WAIT! It's because you can't land these magic troops of yours in the first place. See why your argument is irrelevant? I do.

As to defense in depth: we've been over it enough, and we won't go through it again. Not only are you wrong about EC in FT, but as already pointed out such is fallacy because the debate is not in any way concerned with what happens prior to the ability to land ground armies.

How nice of you to accuse me of taking use of no limits fallacy when you continuously exploited it yourself during our argument back there. Like in the case about resources. Revisionist history is such a bad thing when what you say is actually right there on the previous page.

So you're saying that a trapped civilization interdicted by a space navy has the exact same amount of resources available to it as the interdicting force? Which is not limited in any sense? That's what you keep saying. Whenever resources are brought up, it's back to no limits, because post scarcity totally lampoons your every single argument and your attempt to keep us from going there despite it being a reality of the FT universe. If you don't like it, then too bad.

As you note, I did not decry anything ranging to FT as a no limits fallacy. I accused you of taking use of the no limits fallacy when you expanded a certain concept without limit, justifying it simply by babbling about FT. But offcourse, your ignorance allows you to evade this problem by skillfully pointing the accusing finger at your opponent in hopes of convincing someone other than yourself.

Ignorance eh? It's ignorant to assume that access to an infinite amount of resources, given advancements in the relevant technology, will bring us to a post scarcity economic environment? It may be inconvenient as it pertains to your stance, but it's not ignorant.

Its also nice how you accuse me of throwing common sense, logic and science out of the window when I originally utilized all the three to demolish your arguments. Btw, you should really expand your nuclear weapon knowledge. If you had the slightest clue how they work, you wouldnt have pursued your "I n00k j00r shelters kilometers deep in the crust" because, as you would have then known, nukes arent really too good at busting deep underground bunkers. Check FAS.org

See, this is an example of where saying something doesn't make it so. Give me one example to where you managed to use any of the aforementioned at all to lampoon any of my primary arguments. Then we'll talk.

And I checked FAS.org and a myriad of other sites: being able to crush a bunker at 1km with a 1+- megaton device using current technology is impressive. Using FT technology, it's not improbable to assume that we could go much, much deeper.

Course, that is your biggest problem: you don't know what FT is, because all of your arguments are based around an MT/PMT point of view, hence the constant references to such technology as being irrelevant in the FT environ.

Oh well.

Hey Harry Pothead, dont accuse me of using magic rather than FT. It was you who pulled out magical creation of infinite infrastructures from your behind wasnt it? Or magical terraforming of planets?


If you want to call it magical, then fine. I don't care, your other alternative is no scarcity or terraforming at all, which is a premise I won't accept. At least with FT, 'magical' economic theories and 'magical' terraforming technology is more probable than the world you envision.

Since here in the end you still fail to understand the consequences of a large-scale enough bombardment to annihilate an entire population, not to mention an army, hell bent on surviving at any cost, from the surface of a planet, I can only conclude that you indeed are as clueless as I surmised.

So you think ground armies will be less destructive how? Since orbital strikes are a great deal more precise, and less prone to missing than the nuclear powered laser cannons of a meaty trooper, I doubt that.

Being hellbent to survive at any cost is irrelevant, as already pointed out, and calling me clueless given I am operating in an FT environ and you an MT is probably the best argument you can come up with.

Oh and in regards to the concessions, the honor (what there is of it in bashing a clueless idiot in a debate) is all mine. Better luck next time friend.

You act now as I stated you had previously, therefore the honor still belongs to me, and the second attempt at flattery without understanding of method is still denied.

Because this ElectronX is such a funny guy, I wanna take part in this "debate" now, too! Again! Because it's... Uh... Like hitting your head against a brick wall. Isn't that really fun?

Oh really? Guess what: in any real debate there is justification for a statement.

Guess what: That makes this not a real debate, but a monumental waste of time. You can't justify your claims about a thing you can't have any serious factual idea about, because, you know, this all is just IN OUR HEADS. It's all fiction! Fantasy!

MADNESS.

Each time you say I never addressed or countered an argument, you never justified your stance. You just said "concessions accepted! Whaaaa! You never answered my arguments cuz I said so! Whaaa!"

You did that yourself, by the way. "EVERYTHING I SAY IS RIGHT BECAUSE I SAY SO, AND EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS A STRAWMAN ARGUMENT. BECAUSE I SAY SO. SO I WIN."

As if such could be justification: sorry but it's not. I've answered your arguments with my own by pointing out the holes in them, and how they are irrelevant to the debate:

You supposedly did that (pointed out how irrelevant to the debate his points were) after he shot down your own attempts at derailing the "debate", man. Everyone saw it. No point trying to hide it.

whether or not they have merit is not just determined by the blanket 'you're wrong, concession's accepted' statement you bandy about due to some issue with my having done the same thing, only with justification in using the phrase.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Seriously man, if you don't like others using the same crappy phrases you use all the time because you aren't making any sense, don't use them in the first place. It's that simple.

Either justify your statements or leave: I won't entertain your nonsense any further.

I have no idea why the hell did he entertain your nonsense this long, to be quite honest. Has to be some kind of world record. I guess this was brought forth by the fact that before you were already claiming victory because you thought he got tired of arguing with you. But I'm just guessing.

Guess what? Ground armies are useless if you don't have orbital superiority: wanna know why? Bet you can't guess... OH WAIT! It's because you can't land these magic troops of yours in the first place. See why your argument is irrelevant? I do.

He's been talking about "partial orbital superiority", man. And I think he's right. You don't need to control the entire damn orbit to land troops on a planet. Kind of like how you don't need full aerial superiority to bomb stuff, or how you can resupply stranded troops through air even though you haven't been able to destroy the enemy's AA stuffs. In real life. The idea works just fine in FT, too. And in FT, you'd think it'd be a lot harder to get rid of you once you have people down there securing land for the greater glory of the Empire of Empiredudes.

Not only are you wrong about EC in FT, but as already pointed out such is fallacy because the debate is not in any way concerned with what happens prior to the ability to land ground armies.

You brought it (what happens prior to the ability to land ground armies in YOUR opinion, thus making landing them pointless!) up yourself originally, so you gotta deal with it. That sucks.

So you're saying that a trapped civilization interdicted by a space navy has the exact same amount of resources available to it as the interdicting force?

You do know that the interdicted civilization has a lot shorter lines of supply and has far better reaction times when it comes to moving whatever it still has left? And gets +1 from being at home? And another +1 for probable morale boost from "FOR FREEDOM" effect! Doesn't make the resources the same, but it levels the playing field somewhat.

Which is not limited in any sense?

Except in the length and reliability of supply lines, chain of command and so on and so on. Not to mention that they're probably in unknown territory, need to patrol, search and destroy... There's a lot of things that ought to be weakening the "non-limited" force, too.

Whenever resources are brought up, it's back to no limits, because post scarcity totally lampoons your every single argument and your attempt to keep us from going there despite it being a reality of the FT universe.

But to get to post scarcity you first need to actually make the infrastructure which was his point in the first place. The refineries, manufacturing plants, mines and stuff. Which probably would be pretty hard to make in the first place, especially "if" (read: when) your nation is actually multiple factions trying to gain the same thing at the same time (except here, all nations stand united, so disregard). I guess in the way you said it could be done "easier"... You could just make bare minimum bits for it and then wait for a few thousand years and you have "post-scarcity", but... Either it's gonna exhaust everything you have to get there, or it's likely to take a lot of time. You choose.

Ignorance eh? It's ignorant to assume that access to an infinite amount of resources, given advancements in the relevant technology, will bring us to a post scarcity economic environment? It may be inconvenient as it pertains to your stance, but it's not ignorant.

Actually, expecting to find lots and lots of all resources you might need now and in the future even in one full fledged star system could be a bit far fetched. No one ever said that minerals were balanced in the Universe.

Not to mention that, like in current real world (you know, we have to actually search for oil and whatnot), you actually first have to find the right resources from a billion asteroids, which is again likely to take even more time.

Damn, we need more space-prospectors.

See, this is an example of where saying something doesn't make it so.

Yes, this entire "debate" is an example of that. Most get that.

And I checked FAS.org and a myriad of other sites: being able to crush a bunker at 1km with a 1+- megaton device using current technology is impressive.

It (FAS.org) says the megaton nuke couldn't reliably even destroy a tunnel that was more than 300 meters below ground.

Course, that is your biggest problem: you don't know what FT is, because all of your arguments are based around an MT/PMT point of view, hence the constant references to such technology as being irrelevant in the FT environ.

Who died and made you the master of all things FT, anyway?

At least with FT, 'magical' economic theories and 'magical' terraforming technology is more probable than the world you envision.

He said he doesn't believe in instant terraforming, not that he doesn't believe in terraforming. You could first read what people are saying and THEN start bashing them with a log. It could make you look a lil bit smarter (hoo, PERSONAL ATTACK!).

So you think ground armies will be less destructive how? Since orbital strikes are a great deal more precise, and less prone to missing than the nuclear powered laser cannons of a meaty trooper.

Yeah, we know. Also, a good old fashioned nuclear war on Earth would be far less destructive than a regular ground war. Or maybe not.

I'd say something that can vaporize an entire city/continent is much more destructive than a laser that can (*gasp*) burn through a wall, personally.

How being hellbent on surviving at any cost is irrelevant, as already pointed out, and calling me clueless given I am operating in an FT environ and you an MT is probably the best argument you can come up with.

Lol wut. The guy who's bombing the other guy into stoneage and beyond is being hellbent on surviving and thus destroying the enemy with big bombs or who or what are you talking about? And by the way, that "I'm FT, you're MT, so you lose!" argument is pretty desperate, man. Stop graspin' at straws and admit it, you're just talking crap like everyone else.

EVEN THOUGH your mommy keeps saying you're special, it doesn't make it so.

Its late, I'm tired, and I have no will or want to join the above "debate/argument". I was wondering if anyone had presented the idea that major ground forces are useful in FT just because of the terror factor? With eleven pages of posts I'm sure some on has, but I might as well post anyways. Nukes and uber WMDs are great for glassing a planet and making it a hellish rock I'll admit. But by using ground forces you can bring destruction to a personal level. With WMDs the dead are usually just statistics, with few if any survivors to tell stories. Using WMDs on civies and entire planets would turn any war into a Armageddon race where nations would win by being the first to annihilate their enemy. By using conventional forces a nation can terrorize a population into submission. Every conventional defeat an enemy suffers would just demoralize them more and more, making surrender look like an ever increasingly appealing option.

As for the idea that a navy blockading a planet and holding its orbitals rendering ground forces obsolete, thats crap. Sure you can keep stuff from entering or exiting the planet, but if there's a determined ground force it'd be hard to get any benefit from the planets resources. Politically the planet would still be "the enemy's". If you never land any troops then all it takes for the enemy to get their world back is for them to run your fleet off. Sure, an orbiting fleet can bombard a planet, but why? On a limited tactile scale it'd make sense if you're supporting you troops, or on a strategic scale if your fleet was just raiding the planet. Anything larger then that would start going into the realm of an Armageddon race, and you better hope you could win if you start one.

To sum up me sleep deprived post:

1) Death by WMD is a statistic. Death by conventional forces is personal.
2) Usage of WMDs starts a Mutually Assured Destruction race. Usage of Conventional forces allows you to demoralize the enemy.
3)Fleets and shiny stuff take orbitals and land. Infantry holds it.

Oh really? Guess what: in any real debate there is justification for a statement. Each time you say I never addressed or countered an argument, you never justified your stance. You just said "concessions accepted! Whaaaa! You never answered my arguments cuz I said so! Whaaa!" As if such could be justification: sorry but it's not. I've answered your arguments with my own by pointing out the holes in them, and how they are irrelevant to the debate: whether or not they have merit is not just determined by the blanket 'you're wrong, concession's accepted' statement you bandy about due to some issue with my having done the same thing, only with justification being present when I find it prudent to use the phrase.

What did I say about revisionist history? You flatly IGNORED the justifications for me accepting your concession, either that you simply did not understand those justifications. Either way, its not my problem at that point.

Either justify your statements or leave: I won't entertain your nonsense any further.

I did justify them, not my problem if you did not understand those justifications in the context they were presented.

Guess what? Ground armies are useless if you don't have orbital superiority: wanna know why? Bet you can't guess... OH WAIT! It's because you can't land these magic troops of yours in the first place. See why your argument is irrelevant? I do.

Here we again see how you simply did not understand what I was talking about, again not my problem. Again, see my point about limited orbital superiority. Check mate for you friend.

As to defense in depth: we've been over it enough, and we won't go through it again. Not only are you wrong about EC in FT, but as already pointed out such is fallacy because the debate is not in any way concerned with what happens prior to the ability to land ground armies.

Here you dont understand defense in depth. To be precise btw, we were over the defense in depth argument, you just never really succeeded in explaining your way through it. This THREAD is about the viability of ground armies genius, my entire case was about the justification of ground armies in FT.

So you're saying that a trapped civilization interdicted by a space navy has the exact same amount of resources available to it as the interdicting force? Which is not limited in any sense? That's what you keep saying. Whenever resources are brought up, it's back to no limits, because post scarcity totally lampoons your every single argument and your attempt to keep us from going there despite it being a reality of the FT universe. If you don't like it, then too bad.

See my point about your siege lasting long enough for your crews to go old and die. The trapped civilization has the resources of an entire planet at their disposal, which means in FT terms an abundance of fuel which will make your siege too lengthy to be of any use. You can babble about your hypothetical post-scarcity economy all you want really, which does not change the fact that you flatly ignored the problem of time required to construct an infrastructure capable of even remotely supporting such an economy.

"reality of the FT universe" is an oxymoron btw, its fiction. See what I said earlier, if you want to RP no-limits bullshit, you are ofcourse free to do so.

Ignorance eh? It's ignorant to assume that access to an infinite amount of resources, given advancements in the relevant technology, will bring us to a post scarcity economic environment? It may be inconvenient as it pertains to your stance, but it's not ignorant.

You ignore the simple problems of constructing an infrastructure to be even remotely capable of taking advantage of assumed infinite amounts of resources and the fact that there are a whole lot of other civilizations in the FT universe here you so high and mightily preach about which just might be contesting you for those resources. In essence, you ignore every logical problem facing your post-scarcity economy and accept it as reality. Therefore, its ignorant.

See, this is an example of where saying something doesn't make it so. Give me one example to where you managed to use any of the aforementioned at all to lampoon any of my primary arguments. Then we'll talk.

Like how you failed to even answer the terraforming case in any kind of depth? Or how you failed to address the problem of creating infinite infrastructures. These problems I brought up, and are direct products of common sense, logic and science which sink your arguments. I wonder how many times I've said this already, no matter, if you cant get it now, I wont be going over it again.

And I checked FAS.org and a myriad of other sites: being able to crush a bunker at 1km with a 1+- megaton device using current technology is impressive. Using FT technology, it's not improbable to assume that we could go much, much deeper.

Check it again friend, and this time actually read and understand it. It is specifically stated there that the B83 with a yield of 1.2 megatons cant even crush unlined tunnels beneath 1 kilometer of granite. As such, its quite flatly impossible to destroy bunkers excavated as deep as tens of kilometers beneath the crust of a planet, line and braced with FT materials, with the 50 Megaton AM bomb you talked about. Thanks for displaying your ignorance so openly.

Course, that is your biggest problem: you don't know what FT is, because all of your arguments are based around an MT/PMT point of view, hence the constant references to such technology as being irrelevant in the FT environ.

Oh well.

The problem is, really, that I understand and know what FT is. I simply dont like to apply it in a way that is basically a no limits fallacy.

If you want to call it magical, then fine. I don't care, your other alternative is no scarcity or terraforming at all, which is a premise I won't accept. At least with FT, 'magical' economic theories and 'magical' terraforming technology is more probable than the world you envision.

That is your opinion and as I said earlier, you are free to RP in any way you like. However, I personally RP my nation in a way that does not make terraforming as easy as ordering a pizza, or resource gathering and processing infinitely abundant. You can have terraforming take 1000, or even 2000 years with FT. With that, you'll be doing it far faster than current theories envision and you can practically solve the problem of living space. You can, with FT, mine the asteroid fields of a single solar system or bore deep to the mantle of a planet to extract resources without yet straying into the realm of infinite resources but rather abundant resources for a large spacefaring civilization. But again, those are all your choices.

So you think ground armies will be less destructive how? Since orbital strikes are a great deal more precise, and less prone to missing than the nuclear powered laser cannons of a meaty trooper, I doubt that.

Haha, nuke powered lasers on ground troopers. Is anyone actually using something like that? I hope not. Anyway, ground troops allow you to clear out enemy combatants from a skyscraper in a city without blowing said skyscraper and its surroundings apart. Sure, your ground troops can fling around megaton level nukes with glee, but I personally avoid that.

Being hellbent to survive at any cost is irrelevant, as already pointed out, and calling me clueless given I am operating in an FT environ and you an MT is probably the best argument you can come up with.

In terms of my nation, its FT. In terms of my argument here, its sensible FT. And no, its not irrelevant as I pointed out. You can either dig those people out, which takes a lot of time but does less damage in the end, or you can mass bombard the planet in such extent that those shelters will be destroyed, in such a case you just for all practical purposes destroyed the planet. Again, I've explained this quite a few times now and you simply fail to understand.

You act now as I stated you had previously, therefore the honor still belongs to me, and the second attempt at flattery without understanding of method is still denied.

In your eyes, I dont doubt it. However, your plain ignorance is once again made clear in this post which is more than enough for me.

He's been talking about "partial orbital superiority", man. And I think he's right. You don't need to control the entire damn orbit to land troops on a planet. Kind of like how you don't need full aerial superiority to bomb stuff, or how you can resupply stranded troops through air even though you haven't been able to destroy the enemy's AA stuffs. In real life. The idea works just fine in FT, too. And in FT, you'd think it'd be a lot harder to get rid of you once you have people down there securing land for the greater glory of the Empire of Empiredudes.

Limited Orbital Superiority, but yes this is exactly what I was talking about. Establishing Limited Orbital Superiority would be far easier than establishing Total Orbital Superiority since the curvature of a planet means that direct fire weapons out of line-of-sight from an enemy in tight formation would allow an enemy formation to destroy anti-space defenses in a limited area and establish a beachhead with ground troops.

He said he doesn't believe in instant terraforming, not that he doesn't believe in terraforming. You could first read what people are saying and THEN start bashing them with a log. It could make you look a lil bit smarter (hoo, PERSONAL ATTACK!).

Pretty much my point, I question the viability of instant or practically instant (in relative terms to the current science of terraforming a planet) terraforming. In purely RP terms, my nation doesnt do terraforming out of reasons related to my tech.

Establishing Limited Orbital Superiority would be far easier than establishing Total Orbital Superiority since the curvature of a planet means that direct fire weapons out of line-of-sight from an enemy in tight formation would allow an enemy formation to destroy anti-space defenses in a limited area and establish a beachhead with ground troops.Definitely!

If 1. Missiles don't exist, 2. Engagement ranges are measured in hundreds or, at best, thousands of kilometres, and 3. Everyone accelerates on a scale that doesn't make the ideal rocket equation scream in pain, this is definitely possible.

Of course, missiles exist, (Effective) engagement ranges in NS tend to be anywhere between .1 & 10 lightseconds (For static targets, it can go up to, oh, lightyears with missiles, lightminutes for DEWs... Oh, wait, a planet is a static target, isn't it?), everyone accelerates with a couple hundred or thousand gees, and there's the small problem that if you lose your limited orbital superiority, your marines are likely dead...

Anyway.

If I may ask... What exactly do you need a beachhead for? AFAIK, IRL, beachheads are there to organise the landing force before moving inland (Unnecessary - being in orbit equals perfect strategic mobility from there), to run supply lines through them (Unnecessary - it can be moved from orbit to basically everywhere one wants it) and... Well, that's about it, I think. Personally I'd find it rather more appropriate to get the (Absurdly heavily armed) forces spread out over the target... Continent, particularly so as to avoid a single strike wiping them all out, and getting on with rooting out guerillas and trying to get the local populace to obey them.

But maybe that's just me, and the invention of fireteams to avoid absurdly crowded forces being wiped out by the absurdly increased firepower of the invantry was really just a mistake.

There's the alternative 'Battlescreen'd Bolos in Land Warfare Battlegroups!' - but of course, these, too, wouldn't need 'Beachheads', due to their tendency of rampaging through the land while presenting a credible threat to spacedyships.

Oh, I'm also iffy on their 'Rapid Deployment', but meh.

But, the much bigger problem with your 'Limited Orbital Superiority and Landing' idea is, I think, the possibility of you losing this limited orbital superiority.

Which raises a small issue - namely, that the ground forces would in all likelyhood be lost as well. Which strikes me as... Mildly stupid.

Haha, nuke powered lasers on ground troopers. Is anyone actually using something like that? I hope not. Anyway, ground troops allow you to clear out enemy combatants from a skyscraper in a city without blowing said skyscraper and its surroundings apart. Sure, your ground troops can fling around megaton level nukes with glee, but I personally avoid that.

Why yes, yes I do. Or, did. Not really sure what else you'd power an effective FT anti-tank energy weapon with...

Definitely!

If 1. Missiles don't exist, 2. Engagement ranges are measured in hundreds or, at best, thousands of kilometres, and 3. Everyone accelerates on a scale that doesn't make the ideal rocket equation scream in pain, this is definitely possible.

Missiles can be actively intercepted, lightspeed beam weapons cant (or FT fast railgun rounds for that matter). Missiles are also easier to decieve than lightspeed weapons, they need to find their target themselves, with a lightspeed weapon, if you can see them, you can hit them.

Of course, missiles exist, (Effective) engagement ranges in NS tend to be anywhere between .1 & 10 lightseconds (For static targets, it can go up to, oh, lightyears with missiles, lightminutes for DEWs... Oh, wait, a planet is a static target, isn't it?), everyone accelerates with a couple hundred or thousand gees, and there's the small problem that if you lose your limited orbital superiority, your marines are likely dead...

Again, missiles can be intercepted and/or actively jammed. It doesnt matter if a planet is a static target, that planet can have an immense amount of missile interception capability in surface and orbit. And about losing limited orbital superiority, thats why it would be smart for a landing force to bring with it mobile orbital denial platforms to effect some sort of coverage from enemy space assets (barring ofcourse a situation where the enemy can bring enough of its own ships to orbit to take the damage and destroy the ground force anyway).

Anyway.

If I may ask... What exactly do you need a beachhead for? AFAIK, IRL, beachheads are there to organise the landing force before moving inland (Unnecessary - being in orbit equals perfect strategic mobility from there), to run supply lines through them (Unnecessary - it can be moved from orbit to basically everywhere one wants it) and... Well, that's about it, I think. Personally I'd find it rather more appropriate to get the (Absurdly heavily armed) forces spread out over the target... Continent, particularly so as to avoid a single strike wiping them all out, and getting on with rooting out guerillas and trying to get the local populace to obey them.

You do have perfect strategic mobility from orbit, but if the enemy has an abundance of defensive systems, you may not be capable of taking advantage of the strategic mobility offered by your orbital position. Henceforth limited orbital superiority. The beachhead analogy was about establishing a secure landing zone without blowing through the ENTIRE orbital and surface defense of an enemy planet, but instead blowing a clear corridor which would allow you to land troops. Concentrating forces on a beachhead might risk a lucky strike wiping them out, but you still have your initial fleet force holding orbit above you and you have deployed your own area-defense and orbital denial systems to give you some overhead cover.

But maybe that's just me, and the invention of fireteams to avoid absurdly crowded forces being wiped out by the absurdly increased firepower of the invantry was really just a mistake.

Again, I fully endorse the point of "dont bunch up", but if you consider any kind of defense in depth for the enemy, it might be easier to simply establish that beachhead and start maneuvering away from it as quickly as possible.

There's the alternative 'Battlescreen'd Bolos in Land Warfare Battlegroups!' - but of course, these, too, wouldn't need 'Beachheads', due to their tendency of rampaging through the land while presenting a credible threat to spacedyships.

Oh, I'm also iffy on their 'Rapid Deployment', but meh.

Bolo's are highly vulnerable in their landing phase from orbit, that is, for the canon Boloverse Bolos. The entire point of the beachhead in the context Im talking about is to create a landing zone safe from orbital fire, and cleared of immediate vicinity large threats (by your fleet contignent in orbit that established limited orbital superiority) where you can re-group your forces and start maneuvering from there.

But, the much bigger problem with your 'Limited Orbital Superiority and Landing' idea is, I think, the possibility of you losing this limited orbital superiority.

Which raises a small issue - namely, that the ground forces would in all likelyhood be lost as well. Which strikes me as... Mildly stupid.

Naturally, losing it is a risk. Which is a good reason to deploy platforms that are capable of orbital-denial fire and shooting down overhead threats in your initial landfall. Ofcourse, if the enemy simply brings enough of his own ships to orbit to wipe out your ground troops despite the orbital-denial platforms, you lose. Finally, the enemy wont be too eager to engage you with large yield weapons from orbit if your ground forces have had enough time to move to urban areas.

Why yes, yes I do. Or, did. Not really sure what else you'd power an effective FT anti-tank energy weapon with...

Supra-conducting battery packs made out of FT materials? Might be a tad safer in terms of stealth and health of the troopers. Besides, why deploy energy weapons for infantry anyway? The presence of atmosphere makes them far less useful than in space. Kinetic AT weapons for the win.

Missiles can be actively intercepted, lightspeed beam weapons cant (or FT fast railgun rounds for that matter). Missiles are also easier to decieve than lightspeed weapons, they need to find their target themselves, with a lightspeed weapon, if you can see them, you can hit them.Unless you've a perfect and absolutely impenetrable missile defence, irrelevant. The average missile's tendency to feature a yield significantly in excess of a DEW on the other hand (I don't know about others - factor 10000 for me), not so much.

And incidentally, if your railgun can accelerate a projectile to some absurd fraction of c, a missile's propulsion will tend to manage the same. Similar energy densities and all that.

You're also missinterpreting the realities of target acquisiton - with DEWs, you hope to hit a target that's moving more or less erratically. You need a load of shots, hoping that one or two might hit. The missile has the not particularly hard job of finding a multimillion ton target radiating kilotons/ second of wasteheat into space, and generally having a stealth factor zero when in active combat.

Yus. ECM exists (But it's much easier to find a hundred mio ton ship than a ten kiloton missile). And space does indeed make it easier to engage and intercept missiles. But your assumption that they'll be nigh-worthless is... Well, funny. We'll for now disregard the problem that you're presumably numerically inferior (Otherwise, why go for merely limited orbital supremacy?), further worsening your position (Missilespam ahoi).

Oh, and last but not least, you seem to have ignored my point on engagement ranges and acceleration - when combatants can fire into melee from somewhere at the edge of the planet's hill sphere, planetary curvature becomes somewhat less of an issue... because it's just not in the way when you can afford to exceed escape velocity and hit .001c in a matter of minutes.

Again, missiles can be intercepted and/or actively jammed. It doesnt matter if a planet is a static target, that planet can have an immense amount of missile interception capability in surface and orbit.So? As mentioned above, unless you feature absolutely perfect defences, something will get through. One doesn't even have to be a horrible wanker like me and transform 1 ppb of the local Oort cloud into missiles - a few ('Few' being a rather vague term. Anywhere between tens and thousands, I suppose) black-body missiles sent on an unpowered interception trajectory, essentially doing a stealth run until lighting up for the last moments of their approach ought to achive something.

Hell. Upper-end weapons ought to achive something when blowing up in a directed blast a few thousand kilometres off.

And about losing limited orbital superiority, thats why it would be smart for a landing force to bring with it mobile orbital denial platforms to effect some sort of coverage from enemy space assets (barring ofcourse a situation where the enemy can bring enough of its own ships to orbit to take the damage and destroy the ground force anyway).Bold by me

Which is, of course, almost certainly the case when you're only capable of achiving limited orbital superiority, because the enemy's reinforcements - the ones you think are hindered by being on the other side of the planet - are all of five minutes away (If that). And don't even have to come into line of sight because launching explosive ordnance - kinetics alone are unlikely to do it at the soft-SciFi level usually seen in NS. Not at a handful of km/s, anyway - in retrograde orbits can do the job quite effordlessly.

I suppose your tactic does have merit - it does give you an advantage in the initial phase of the engagement, and ought to suffice for a positive kill ratio over the first minute or so. But that's good for either a) a hit&run attack, b) Initial stage to achive total orbital supremacy or c) deploying a handful of partisan-esque forces to cause some mischief.

It's however unsuited for the insertion of a conventional ground force.

You do have perfect strategic mobility from orbit, but if the enemy has an abundance of defensive systems, you may not be capable of taking advantage of the strategic mobility offered by your orbital position.So how do you get your forces on the grund in the first place? The ranges of these defensive systems are likely to suffice for the entire hemisphere - you have to clear them over half the planet to be able to operate over a sixth of it.

In any case - launching an invasion when you depend on such thin a resupply route, and indeed, such massively increased (And SLOW, compared to what you could have) logistics, strikes me as a very bad idea. You'll be bottled up, you'll be limited in your ability to resupply the force, you're under crossfire...

Seriously. That's just suicide.

Henceforth limited orbital superiority.Which, due to the absurd mobility (NS-) spaceships have, means zero superiority for either side, and killdeath for everything small that tries to get through?

The beachhead analogy was about establishing a secure landing zone without blowing through the ENTIRE orbital and surface defense of an enemy planet, but instead blowing a clear corridor which would allow you to land troops.Which is problematic for aforementioned reasons. Well. It depends on the size of the 'Corridor' and the size of your force, I suppose. And its equipment. There's some possibilities that could make it work I think... Twinky as they are.

Care enlightening me?

Concentrating forces on a beachhead might risk a lucky strike wiping them out, but you still have your initial fleet force holding orbit above you and you have deployed your own area-defense and orbital denial systems to give you some overhead cover.True. The question is - what is the objective? What requires you to send in the ground force - presumably prematurely -, risking its loss, keeping them all bottled up in a relatively small territory, where they can do little more than turtle under multi-kiloton mobile shield carriers and Bolo-equivalents, and have to pray there's no nuke digged into the ground they stand on.

As opposed to a staged, less rushed invasion or a low-force insertion of partisans.

Again, I fully endorse the point of "dont bunch up", but if you consider any kind of defense in depth for the enemy, it might be easier to simply establish that beachhead and start maneuvering away from it as quickly as possible.Depends on the size of your 'Beachhead'. If we're talking about something the size of pangea, then I suppose so.

Hemispheral suppression & rapid insertion of Land Warfare Battlegroups strikes me as much more useful for an invasion, though - it avoids being bottled in rather more effectively, it avoids one-shot kills, and it greatly increases the affected area, not to mention the disruption in enemy communications it causes. Granted, this depends in part on the firepower available to the ground forces - if you're operating with the kind of firepower (And speed) you see on Hoth, this doesn't work.

Bolo's are highly vulnerable in their landing phase from orbit, that is, for the canon Boloverse Bolos.Yes... Hence, 'Iffy'.

The entire point of the beachhead in the context Im talking about is to create a landing zone safe from orbital fireI'd be more worried about ground fire... It's not like you can land a force - at least, not wthout taking absurd losses - when it's massively shot at in orbit, so bothering with that bit is rather unnecessary.

and cleared of immediate vicinity large threatsIf you've the ability to effectively protect your 'Beachhead' frm orbital fire, doesn't it stand to reason that your opponent can do the same with his stuff, rendering the whole operation impossible?

Either both die, or neither does.

Finally, the enemy wont be too eager to engage you with large yield weapons from orbit if your ground forces have had enough time to move to urban areas.This is true. It's even reasonable to assume that there's not been an effective evacuation - interstellar war being the wet dream of everyone with a liking for surprise attacks does that.

Depending on one's twink, they might even be able to operate for rather significant amounts of time without supplies.

What is a problem is for them to actually get there in time, with a relatively conventional force structure, and what they're going to do there once they manage it. Oh, and it's difficult to fit a properly-sized planetary invasion force into a city...

Or a tenth of it.

Besides, why deploy energy weapons for infantry anyway? The presence of atmosphere makes them far less useful than in space. Kinetic AT weapons for the win.Well, for starters, dialable-frequency lasers have awesome versatility (Wonderful for electronic warfare). Particle beams can do nice secondary damage (Irradiation), and are capable of penetrating everything - firing a 9 mm pistol at a tank wont destroy it, even if you fire a million rounds. A particle beam will slowly, but surely, vaporise a hole through the armour.

And at certain levels of SciFi, energy densities become so absurd, your kinetic rounds explode on contact with the atmosphere if enough kinetic energy's dumped into them. Now, lasers and particle beams will do nasty things, too - generally a good idea to wear some serious protection and/ or being a machine to avoid being harmed by ionised air, plasma, the heatwave etc - but at least they'll propagate through it for more than .001 seconds.

Unless you've a perfect and absolutely impenetrable missile defence, irrelevant. The average missile's tendency to feature a yield significantly in excess of a DEW on the other hand (I don't know about others - factor 10000 for me), not so much.

And incidentally, if your railgun can accelerate a projectile to some absurd fraction of c, a missile's propulsion will tend to manage the same. Similar energy densities and all that.

You're also missinterpreting the realities of target acquisiton - with DEWs, you hope to hit a target that's moving more or less erratically. You need a load of shots, hoping that one or two might hit. The missile has the not particularly hard job of finding a multimillion ton target radiating kilotons/ second of wasteheat into space, and generally having a stealth factor zero when in active combat.

Yus. ECM exists (But it's much easier to find a hundred mio ton ship than a ten kiloton missile). And space does indeed make it easier to engage and intercept missiles. But your assumption that they'll be nigh-worthless is... Well, funny. We'll for now disregard the problem that you're presumably numerically inferior (Otherwise, why go for merely limited orbital supremacy?), further worsening your position (Missilespam ahoi).

Oh, and last but not least, you seem to have ignored my point on engagement ranges and acceleration - when combatants can fire into melee from somewhere at the edge of the planet's hill sphere, planetary curvature becomes somewhat less of an issue... because it's just not in the way when you can afford to exceed escape velocity and hit .001c in a matter of minutes.

Hardly irrelevant, those orbiting ships (or not orbiting, whatever is your battleplan) are not running with infinite ammunition. A planet can have a lot of detection and interception capability. Even if your enemy's interception capability isnt perfect, quantity is a quality all in its own.

Your railgun vs. missile argument is correct, however the question is mainly rate of acceleration and distance. Its easier for the railgun to fire at ships in near- or geosynchronous orbit with velocities like say 100km/sec for projectile than for a missile to avoid interception coming from deep space at similar velocity (if it doesnt accelerate by itself).

Again, your case about DEW's, if you here mean my argument about railguns vs. orbiting warships. You have a weapon that fires more or less straight, an enemy at a low distance (in interplanetary terms) and a projectile that can cross that distance relatively quickly. Now, those honkin space warships will take time to generate any significant amount of momentum to a certain direction other than the direction they are already traveling towards to. Ofcourse, this doesnt even apply to lightspeed weapons (or does if the range is high enough). Again, the missile can find that target that is supposedly (I place emphasis on this, EMCON and all) radiating a lot of heat, however it can be actively jammed. Which every smart enemy will be doing.

Firstly, I havent assumed missiles are worthless. Secondly, I once again place emphasis on my earlier statement of defense in depth. A planet can have an immense amount of detection and interception capability, especially if the defense utilizes FT. Your fleet does not have unlimited ammunition.

My point with planetary curvature was about ground defenses (or orbital) vs. orbiting warships. Planetary curvature prevents your direct fire weapons from engaging an enemy that is out of their direct line-of-sight. Unless ofcourse your orbital weapons platforms and surface defenses are capable of rapid accelerations to relativistic velocities (which when you think about it is silly).

So? As mentioned above, unless you feature absolutely perfect defences, something will get through. One doesn't even have to be a horrible wanker like me and transform 1 ppb of the local Oort cloud into missiles - a few ('Few' being a rather vague term. Anywhere between tens and thousands, I suppose) black-body missiles sent on an unpowered interception trajectory, essentially doing a stealth run until lighting up for the last moments of their approach ought to achive something.

Hell. Upper-end weapons ought to achive something when blowing up in a directed blast a few thousand kilometres off.

As I've mentioned time and again in this thread, the planet can have a doublewide buttload of weapons and detection capability. In orbit, and in surface. Defense in depth. The problem with unpowered missiles is that if your enemy detects your launch, and doesnt see the missiles, they will be trivially easy to shoot down. An unpowered missile is just that, inert. It will be flying in a more or less straight line, making interception easy.

Bold by me

Which is, of course, almost certainly the case when you're only capable of achiving limited orbital superiority, because the enemy's reinforcements - the ones you think are hindered by being on the other side of the planet - are all of five minutes away (If that). And don't even have to come into line of sight because launching explosive ordnance - kinetics alone are unlikely to do it at the soft-SciFi level usually seen in NS. Not at a handful of km/s, anyway - in retrograde orbits can do the job quite effordlessly.

I suppose your tactic does have merit - it does give you an advantage in the initial phase of the engagement, and ought to suffice for a positive kill ratio over the first minute or so. But that's good for either a) a hit&run attack, b) Initial stage to achive total orbital supremacy or c) deploying a handful of partisan-esque forces to cause some mischief.

It's however unsuited for the insertion of a conventional ground force.

Do note, that not in any single point have I talked about the enemy mobile space assets being the cause of need or the cause of usefulness of limited orbital superiority. My point has always been about the surface and orbital defenses, which are more or less static (atleast in interplanetary terms). Again, yes missiles are unimpeded by line-of-sight. You are bound to take casualties while establishing your limited orbital superiority, but then again those missiles arent quaranteed to hit, as I've brought up, a probability which is far higher for direct fire weapons.

My tactic so to speak allows you to 1) Clear out only a limited amount of a planet's anti-space capability without engaging all of it. 2) Land a ground force into that cleared space 3) Establish your domination of limited amount of the enemy's sky.

So how do you get your forces on the grund in the first place? The ranges of these defensive systems are likely to suffice for the entire hemisphere - you have to clear them over half the planet to be able to operate over a sixth of it.

In any case - launching an invasion when you depend on such thin a resupply route, and indeed, such massively increased (And SLOW, compared to what you could have) logistics, strikes me as a very bad idea. You'll be bottled up, you'll be limited in your ability to resupply the force, you're under crossfire...

Seriously. That's just suicide.

Low-enough orbit for your fleet and the enemy cant engage with even nearly all of their direct-fire weapons. Not to mention they will be less triggerhappy firing off large yield nukes in missilespams. EMP and all that. And the number of the direct fire weapons that can engage even then will completely depend on how low can they depress. You cant take advantage of your orbital position to drop troops anywhere, but you can drop and maintain your force to a cleared area.

Seriously, the only thing you need to do in order to supply your troops is to make sure you can keep your supply ships in orbit, and hope that no overkill enemy fleet force arrives.

Which, due to the absurd mobility (NS-) spaceships have, means zero superiority for either side, and killdeath for everything small that tries to get through?

At this point, Im starting to wonder why I bother when nobody even reads what I type before replying. As I've said, propably the thousandth time now, at no point have I factored in to my scenario, or claimed viability for my scenario, if the enemy has mobile naval assets still in system.

Which is problematic for aforementioned reasons. Well. It depends on the size of the 'Corridor' and the size of your force, I suppose. And its equipment. There's some possibilities that could make it work I think... Twinky as they are.

Care enlightening me?

1) Landing ships (dropships if you want) are smaller than those big warships, thus a bit harder logically to engage with the kind of huge ground defenses that would have the power to shoot at something tens- to hundreds of thousands of km in space from the planet. 2) The landing force will be engaged by a decreasing amount of weapons every km that they drop due to line of sight, the lower the orbit your fleet is keeping, the better. 3) Your fleet will be actively suppressing ground batteries that could threaten your landing force.

Numbers and equipment, for both sides, matter the most in this however. I cant concretely say would this always work since the number of different technologies in soft and hard NS FT is immensely vast. But its one of the ways how I like to reason my droop trops in RPing.

True. The question is - what is the objective? What requires you to send in the ground force - presumably prematurely -, risking its loss, keeping them all bottled up in a relatively small territory, where they can do little more than turtle under multi-kiloton mobile shield carriers and Bolo-equivalents, and have to pray there's no nuke digged into the ground they stand on.

As opposed to a staged, less rushed invasion or a low-force insertion of partisans.

The enemy isnt precognitive, hopefully. They cant know exactly where you'll be dropping your troops. And unless the nuke/nukes they have digged to the ground are of huge yield or immensely numerous (the latter is doubtfull because of the enemy doesnt have unlimited time in their disposal), even a relatively small landing area where troops are atleast somewhat dispersed, that nuke wont be doing crap to the force as a whole. Once they are in the ground, they can immediately start maneuvering. Most likely achieving local superiority over enemy ground forces (due to them not being precognitive) and your space and land anti-air and anti-space systems working against them airlifting large numbers of troops directly to oppose you.

Ultimately, the mission of the ground force might be something like capturing the planets Capitol city, their Central Command, Government etc.

Depends on the size of your 'Beachhead'. If we're talking about something the size of pangea, then I suppose so.

Hemispheral suppression & rapid insertion of Land Warfare Battlegroups strikes me as much more useful for an invasion, though - it avoids being bottled in rather more effectively, it avoids one-shot kills, and it greatly increases the affected area, not to mention the disruption in enemy communications it causes. Granted, this depends in part on the firepower available to the ground forces - if you're operating with the kind of firepower (And speed) you see on Hoth, this doesn't work.

It hardly needs to be that huge, unless your enemy will be mass firing mega arty-nukes or ground-skimmer cruise missiles with heavy nukes or some such, you can disperse an immensely heavy force over a relatively small piece of land. Ofcourse, the enemy might not be willing to slag their own planet just to get your ground force. Naturally, Im not entertaining the "beachhead" idea as the only possible strategem for justifying ground warfare.

I'd be more worried about ground fire... It's not like you can land a force - at least, not wthout taking absurd losses - when it's massively shot at in orbit, so bothering with that bit is rather unnecessary.

Suppression of ground batteries directly threatening the landing force is part of the idea. And the number of those batteries depends entirely on how low of an orbit is your fleet maintaining.

If you've the ability to effectively protect your 'Beachhead' frm orbital fire, doesn't it stand to reason that your opponent can do the same with his stuff, rendering the whole operation impossible?

Either both die, or neither does.

Actually, as you note I pretty much pointed out that it would be impossible for the ground force to bring with it enough weapons to suppress any and all enemy orbital activities. Mainly the purpose of such weapons would be to prevent any absurdly small units from taking a lucky potshot and wiping out a division or more of troops. I do try to keep some level of sense to the idea.

This is true. It's even reasonable to assume that there's not been an effective evacuation - interstellar war being the wet dream of everyone with a liking for surprise attacks does that.

Depending on one's twink, they might even be able to operate for rather significant amounts of time without supplies.

What is a problem is for them to actually get there in time, with a relatively conventional force structure, and what they're going to do there once they manage it. Oh, and it's difficult to fit a properly-sized planetary invasion force into a city...

Or a tenth of it.

Assuming that this invasion would take place against any reasonably populated planet, mass evacuating millions to billions people with little to no warning would be either flat-out impossible or very hard. Assuming there even would be some place where to put the evacuated population.

They might be capable of operating for some time without resupply of fuel (if they can for example, manage field manufacturing of hydrogen fuel from water) and ammunition (if they use energy weapons and energy packs that can be charged from practically any source of light). But food, spare parts and such are always a problem.

The invasion force wouldnt necessarily have to fit to a single city, proper battleplan would ofcourse see several army groups from the original force commencing maneuvering and dispersal to take differing objectives. Getting there in time would depend a lot on how far from urban areas would they initially land.

Well, for starters, dialable-frequency lasers have awesome versatility (Wonderful for electronic warfare). Particle beams can do nice secondary damage (Irradiation), and are capable of penetrating everything - firing a 9 mm pistol at a tank wont destroy it, even if you fire a million rounds. A particle beam will slowly, but surely, vaporise a hole through the armour.

And at certain levels of SciFi, energy densities become so absurd, your kinetic rounds explode on contact with the atmosphere if enough kinetic energy's dumped into them. Now, lasers and particle beams will do nasty things, too - generally a good idea to wear some serious protection and/ or being a machine to avoid being harmed by ionised air, plasma, the heatwave etc - but at least they'll propagate through it for more than .001 seconds.

I've used that 9mm vs. tank analogy many times myself, although in different context. But, funny to see the coincidence. Anyways, you have a point. I personally just dont much fancy energy weapons for more conventional ground troops, barring really heavy such weapons in tanks.

And at certain levels of SciFi, you can try and explain how your rounds survive their trip through the atmosphere at somewhat silly velocities by using theories with little backing in actual practical science. Anyways, I guess the kinetics or energy weapons in ground troops is more of a matter of preference.

Supra-conducting battery packs made out of FT materials? Might be a tad safer in terms of stealth and health of the troopers. Besides, why deploy energy weapons for infantry anyway? The presence of atmosphere makes them far less useful than in space. Kinetic AT weapons for the win.

Yes, but can you turn the battery pack into a portable nuke at need? Thought not.

Yes, but can you turn the battery pack into a portable nuke at need? Thought not.

Indeed, good point. Nuke 'em for effect, tagline of FT ground combat :D