I endorse planet destroyers, as it is the only way to cleanse an elf infestation.
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Another completely legitimate reason to destroy a planet would be to make a Dyson sphere. Even Niven's Ringworld talked about finding completely empty solar systems near the ringworld. Personally I would expect to detonate a planet into an asteroid field for the purpose of ease of mining - blow up the planet, and have a few million barges waiting to collect the pieces. Gas giants could be ripped apart by strategic placement of gravity generators. Stars would be the same idea - just scaled up.
A solid Dyson Sphere would, conservatively, require a stellar mass to make, and would also not be ideal for habitation without gravity generators coating the interior, because if you span it instead you'd push everything on the interior into an equatorial band
.A ringworld (or Dyson Ring if you prefer) would "merely" require multiple planetary masses to make, and wouldn't have the same issue with spinning it to simulate gravity.
Note BTW that both megastructures would need to be stabilised to avoid them (or the star they're around) moving and having star and megastructure smack into each other. Larry Niven proposed using ramjets IIRC, but if you've got magic gravity generators and such something like that may work instead.
Do want to make them in Stellaris though
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To kill a planet just drop a asteroid on it, A rock of a kilometer radius would suffice, no need for a Death Star and a whole lot cheaper. It would take time and you would have opposing fleets trying to direct the path of the asteroid.
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Ah, but we already agreed that we have the magic gravity generators which makes Dyson Spheres completely feasible.A solid Dyson Sphere would, conservatively, require a stellar mass to make, and would also not be ideal for habitation without gravity generators coating the interior, because if you span it instead you'd push everything on the interior into an equatorial band
A ringworld (or Dyson Ring if you prefer) would "merely" require multiple planetary masses to make, and wouldn't have the same issue with spinning it to simulate gravity.
Note BTW that both megastructures would need to be stabilised to avoid them (or the star they're around) moving and having star and megastructure smack into each other. Larry Niven proposed using ramjets IIRC, but if you've got magic gravity generators and such something like that may work instead.
Do want to make them in Stellaris though
Of course the Star Trek implementation of the Dyson Sphere was to obscure the star and to provide 100% energy collection from the star itself. A planet was still orbiting inside the sphere. No need for magic gravity paint.
Wouldn't have worked on Alderaan, and we could probably survive it as a species today (albeit with the collapse of civilisation as we know it).
You need magic gravity paint if you want to inhabit the entire inside surface of the Dyson Sphere, but if you're just concerned with energy collection you don't want a solid shell, but a swarm of (basically) solar panel satellites around the star. Easier to avoid having a Dyson Swarm smacking into the star too.
Artificial black holes Nice if they go out of control and eat the whole game.
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Exterminatus!
We should be able to do that in the game. If the game can't model destruction of planet, the game could at least destroy all things at that planet, and make the planet a dead planet. In Star Wars : Empire at War the Empire could destroy planets, but instead of disappearing they are changed into asteroids, that could still be contested, and could still be used to host space stations and battle fleets.
We should be able to do that in the game. If the game can't model destruction of planet, the game could at least destroy all things at that planet, and make the planet a dead planet. In Star Wars : Empire at War the Empire could destroy planets, but instead of disappearing they are changed into asteroids, that could still be contested, and could still be used to host space stations and battle fleets.
I feel sorry for all the collateral damage that laser beam caused as it continued hurtling through space!
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I would like the ability to create biological weapons, and then preferably sell the vaccine to the victims.
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Of course, the odds of it hitting anything else are astronomically low....
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I sincerely hope that the option to destroy planets (multiple ways, think death star and red matter) will be included in the game
Space is really, really big. That weapon is what... a thousand kilometers in diameter at most? The solar system is 9,090,000,000 km in diameter. And most of that space is empty. Now space between solar systems?
The average density of the universe's normal matter (matter that can be interacted with by physics as we understand it) is one atom of hydrogen per four cubic meters. And most of that is concentrated inside stars, planets, and black holes.
Certainly, if the energy weapon goes on forever without dissipating, it'll hit SOMETHING, but the odds of it hitting another planet, a sun, a spaceship are really, really low. So low they don't even bear calculation.
If you were to buy one ticket for the lottery every week for a year, you'd be more likely to win every one of those lotteries than for that beam to hit anything else larger than an atom of hydrogen.
The average density of the universe's normal matter (matter that can be interacted with by physics as we understand it) is one atom of hydrogen per four cubic meters. And most of that is concentrated inside stars, planets, and black holes.
Certainly, if the energy weapon goes on forever without dissipating, it'll hit SOMETHING, but the odds of it hitting another planet, a sun, a spaceship are really, really low. So low they don't even bear calculation.
If you were to buy one ticket for the lottery every week for a year, you'd be more likely to win every one of those lotteries than for that beam to hit anything else larger than an atom of hydrogen.
The most problem with those calculations is they ignore how much time space have for those things to happens.
In fact time is one thing the universe have a lot to spare XD.
A missed shot is not going to hit anyone for thousands of years, maybe millions, billions. The universe have trillions.
Would be funny seeing a primitive civilization ending because of a missed shot done in a war 1 billion years ago..
Of course we are all also joking. If we went really realistic here a laser shot will lose its power long before it becomes a threat to anyone really far away.
The solid bullets are the real threat. Unless they hit something they will keep going forever as they will not decay or lose energy of time.
In fact time is one thing the universe have a lot to spare XD.
A missed shot is not going to hit anyone for thousands of years, maybe millions, billions. The universe have trillions.
Would be funny seeing a primitive civilization ending because of a missed shot done in a war 1 billion years ago.
. Of course we are all also joking. If we went really realistic here a laser shot will lose its power long before it becomes a threat to anyone really far away.
The solid bullets are the real threat. Unless they hit something they will keep going forever as they will not decay or lose energy of time.
Offense-defense theory springs to mind pretty strong here. Personally, just knowing that the enemy has the capacity to develop this technology is enough to warrant using it before they have a chance (from an amoral survivalist perspective of course!). But for Fun Factor, I'd say Cold Wars make far more interesting scenarios than Hot Wars, and trying to circumvent an all out doomsday war with the nearby big-bad sounds like an epic game... provided not every playthrough goes that way. I'd much prefer it if superweapons only rarely rolled up on the tech tree, and if they did, then after the first is researched it becomes much more common so no single entity has the only super weapons for any prolonged period.
Checks and balances, like.
Gosh I sound like an Ender's Game fanboi with all the mentions I've given it in the last few days, but I think it's excellent source material, as it discusses this very thing in interesting detail:
I'm fine with planetary annihilation as a super weapon. I think the programming required for the others you suggest precludes the likelihood of their inclusion. But a weapon that turns any planet into a lava planet (or some planet category that can't be colonized - eg Dust Cloud)? That sounds feasible.
Planet cracking for resources à la Dead Space would definitely be awesome. Perhaps it slowly destroys the planet or reduces it to a husk or asteroid, but it takes a long time and is incredibly lucrative. Just don't try to do it to inhabited worlds
As nice as it is to see the nod to the guy behind the Atomic Rockets website - not to mention hard science - the odds of hitting an inhabited planet are still astronomically low, if not indistinguishable from zero.You need a lecture about firing big weapons in space.
First of course, it must be noted that 99.999% of space is... empty space. So unless your railgun shell or w/e hits something in the same solar system, it will be a long time before it gets anywhere else.
Now, it will not of course diminish much in velocity, although over astronomical timescales the interstellar wind may affect it. More important however is gravity: massive objects will tend to attract the shell, sending it off its original course. Habitable planets, as far as we know, have quite weak gravity compared to things like stars and gas giants. The longer it spends getting anywhere, the more gravity etc will have time to act upon it. Now consider that our own planet Jupiter tends to act as a kind of asteroid vacuum cleaner, protecting the inner planets from asteroid bombardment...
Next, solar systems tend to have lots of junk lying around in them, particularly near planets (our own asteroid field is on the order of one asteroid every few tens of thousands of kilometres, so get the idea of the Hoth asteroid belt out of your heads). A railgun shell that hits an asteroid or moon won't be hitting a planet. It may impart enough momentum to cause collateral damage (eg the asteroid is sent tumbling, and a million years later hits a planet), but again, the size of space makes it unlikely.
Then you have to consider the chance of a habitable planet actually being inhabited, then of it being inhabited by anyone who will give a damn (ie, not dinosaurs).
Finally... don't forget the atmosphere. Whilst a sufficiently fast and massive railgun shell will do Bad Things even if it burns up in an atmosphere, the fact is that Earth is hit by god-only-knows how many rocks from space every year, and the only people who notice are NASA types who want funding for giant asteroid killing death rays.
Asteroids and comets are the best way to weaken a civilization on a given habitable planet. I mean, if the earth hit by an 10 km large comet (70 km/s), we will be back in the bronze age, if we are extreme lucky.
But there are bad aftermaths of this star/planet destroying, if you blow a sun away, the sun (if big enough) will end in a supernova, so all systems near the one with the supernova will get roasted by the emitted x-rays and gamma-rays, say bye to all neighbours of this system.
If you could blow up a planet in a system, you will change the balance of gravity in this system, after a few hundred or thousand years the other planets will change their orbits, same for comets and asteroids.
Starsystems are fragile like the ecosystems of our homeplanet, it may take much time, but it will response to our actions.
But there are bad aftermaths of this star/planet destroying, if you blow a sun away, the sun (if big enough) will end in a supernova, so all systems near the one with the supernova will get roasted by the emitted x-rays and gamma-rays, say bye to all neighbours of this system.
If you could blow up a planet in a system, you will change the balance of gravity in this system, after a few hundred or thousand years the other planets will change their orbits, same for comets and asteroids.
Starsystems are fragile like the ecosystems of our homeplanet, it may take much time, but it will response to our actions.