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Post by ultravires on Mar 8, 2017 5:56:04 GMT
get into the station and release gas, you want the structure not the people. Disabling their life support systems would have a very similar effect with out necessitating gas carriers. Disable life support how? Blow up all the air vents/CO2 filters on the Station/Base? Send a Secret Agent in to poke holes in all the space suits? Use Incendiary Pigs against their walls? (that's a Total War joke ) There isn't just 1 module/system that you can blow up to completely disable a major system like that, and the bigger the base, the harder it would be. Who would be stupid enough to build a life support system that can be destroyed by one failure? Same problem with Gas, why would you build a space station/asteroid base with no airtight compartments? Admittedly, you might get some of the civilian population with Gas, but any Military Defenders (and anyone with a space suit) would be immune, even without airtight compartments.
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Post by RiftandRend on Mar 8, 2017 6:01:50 GMT
Disabling their life support systems would have a very similar effect with out necessitating gas carriers. Disable life support how? Blow up all the air vents/CO2 filters on the Station/Base? Send a Secret Agent in to poke holes in all the space suits? Use Incendiary Pigs against their walls? (that's a Total War joke ) There isn't just 1 module/system that you can blow up to completely disable a major system like that, and the bigger the base, the harder it would be. Who would be stupid enough to build a life support system that can be destroyed by one failure? Same problem with Gas, why would you build a space station/asteroid base with no airtight compartments? Admittedly, you might get some of the civilian population with Gas, but any Military Defenders (and anyone with a space suit) would be immune, even without airtight compartments. Shooting off low temperature radiators would be a nice place to start.
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Post by David367th on Mar 8, 2017 6:04:35 GMT
Depending on the kind of station and how self-sufficient it is, you could blockade it until the crew starve or give up.
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Post by ultravires on Mar 8, 2017 6:39:57 GMT
Well you got me with the radiators RiftandRend, that would work like a charm on a Station- especially a big one like an O'Neil Cylinder. I guess I was thinking more of something along the lines of Vesta from the game. Take the "Vesta Overkill" mission from the game as an example: The Whole reason for the mission is that the USTA intends to "invade" Vesta. Vesta is large enough that it wouldn't really need radiators for thermal regulation. David367th is right that you could do the old fashioned Medieval Siege, in some ways that might be the most effective tactic. But as he suggested, it won't really work on a very self sufficient base. I guess the question of how hard easy/hard it is to capture a base, is how much of it are you willing to blow up?
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Post by Bard on Mar 8, 2017 9:56:08 GMT
Well you got me with the radiators RiftandRend , that would work like a charm on a Station- especially a big one like an O'Neil Cylinder. I guess I was thinking more of something along the lines of Vesta from the game. Take the "Vesta Overkill" mission from the game as an example: The Whole reason for the mission is that the USTA intends to "invade" Vesta. Vesta is large enough that it wouldn't really need radiators for thermal regulation. David367th is right that you could do the old fashioned Medieval Siege, in some ways that might be the most effective tactic. But as he suggested, it won't really work on a very self sufficient base. I guess the question of how hard easy/hard it is to capture a base, is how much of it are you willing to blow up? O'Neill Cylinders. Huge mirrors radiate heat, no radiators. Laser resistant. Use plants to provide life support, plus huge volume of air, even w/ holes, very slow leakage. Bunkers in inner core. Would have to board or completely destroy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder
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Post by argonbalt on Mar 9, 2017 20:11:12 GMT
get into the station and release gas, you want the structure not the people. That sounds oddly familiar.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 9, 2017 20:27:00 GMT
people are indoctrinated into their country from birth, its not worth it to reeducate then which would take to long, a fast gas (cyanide in gas form?) so that they don't have time to break the station would be needed. then a week or so later after venting and cleaning the station and its computers you ship out civvies to your new space station
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Post by bigbombr on Mar 9, 2017 20:40:14 GMT
people are indoctrinated into their country from birth, its not worth it to reeducate then which would take to long, a fast gas (cyanide in gas form?) so that they don't have time to break the station would be needed. then a week or so later after venting and cleaning the station and its computers you ship out civvies to your new space station I believe Zyklon B was a cyanide gas. Poisonous gas is not as effective as people often imagine, especially when spacesuits and redundant life support are present.
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Post by Easy on Mar 17, 2017 2:57:02 GMT
Fundamentally at some point there will be peace again. If you murdered whatever subfaction without quarter the other remaining factions will be somewhat upset. Your faction will get a reputation " Does not play nice with others." Unless you have assured supremacy, I can't imagine it is a healthy long term strategy. Collateral damage can be understood, but cold murder of noncombatants? Yikes. An entire space habitat of thousands or millions plus? However, if we captured a space habitat that decided to be belligerent, we might attempt to smoke them out but you're trying to convince the holdouts to surrender and evacuate anyone who surrenders to a safe area where they are searched for weapons and guarded securely until your security and engineering teams have sanitized the station of weapons or other threats. After which the captive population might be allowed to return to their homes. But you wouldn't want to rule over a hostile population for very long, I'll reference Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It is more about getting the leaders to capitulate and negotiate beneficial (for you) terms that are realistic enough to be enforced. Don't start any wars without a plan to get to the peace afterwards.
As for "Does not play nice with others." it means the other factions might decide to team up against you, and to use extreme measures like relativistic bombardment or any means effective to remove your ruling class and perhaps entire faction from existence.
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Post by gedzilla on Mar 17, 2017 11:07:26 GMT
I think one thing you guys are forgetting is that the thing of value might not be inside the ship, it might be the ship itself. Assuming you have shot of all the important external modules, and the main body of the ship is relitivly intact (a common scenerio when employing lasers), the salvage could be worth a TON of money. All that armor, especially if they have something exotic like Liquid Crystal Polymer Fiber, or Arimid Fiber, the fuel tanks, which could probably be easily patched, and NTRs, could be worth a pretty penny.
sending in cost effective drones to eliminate internal modules (like reactors, or poking holes in crew compartments) might be better than simply burning, or firing your way thru the entire ship to get to the reactors.
consider this scenerio: the enemy ship has one of those optimal long thin pointed nose shapes and your lasers/railguns burned off/shot off the prodruding turrets and radiators. the pointed tip of the ship is pointed at you of course, and your shots will be deflected greatly and the crew is not surrendering. now, you can keep ripping through the ship to get to the back, or you can simply send these small drones which will approach the disabled ship. these drones simply deccelerate when they get to the ship, and stop when they reach the end of the disabled ship. theses drones attach to the armor of the ship, burn through the armor. then they disable any internal modules and make there way into the crew compartments. its highly unlikely the crew will be suciudeal enough to self destruct the ship, considering there isnt even the benifit of "ha, at least i'll take some of the bastards with me"; all your doing by self dustructing is costing the enemy some hardware, not taking lives.
that being said, of course they have to be cost effective, after a certian cost, its simply better to rip up the armor and or wait a while for the crew to die.
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Post by deltav on Mar 17, 2017 11:46:35 GMT
I think one thing you guys are forgetting is that the thing of value might not be inside the ship, it might be the ship itself. Sounds like Space Pirates....
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 17, 2017 12:03:39 GMT
I think one thing you guys are forgetting is that the thing of value might not be inside the ship, it might be the ship itself. Assuming you have shot of all the important external modules, and the main body of the ship is relitivly intact (a common scenerio when employing lasers), the salvage could be worth a TON of money. All that armor, especially if they have something exotic like Liquid Crystal Polymer Fiber, or Arimid Fiber, the fuel tanks, which could probably be easily patched, and NTRs, could be worth a pretty penny. sending in cost effective drones to eliminate internal modules (like reactors, or poking holes in crew compartments) might be better than simply burning, or firing your way thru the entire ship to get to the reactors. consider this scenerio: the enemy ship has one of those optimal long thin pointed nose shapes and your lasers/railguns burned off/shot off the prodruding turrets and radiators. the pointed tip of the ship is pointed at you of course, and your shots will be deflected greatly and the crew is not surrendering. now, you can keep ripping through the ship to get to the back, or you can simply send these small drones which will approach the disabled ship. these drones simply deccelerate when they get to the ship, and stop when they reach the end of the disabled ship. theses drones attach to the armor of the ship, burn through the armor. then they disable any internal modules and make there way into the crew compartments. its highly unlikely the crew will be suciudeal enough to self destruct the ship, considering there isnt even the benifit of "ha, at least i'll take some of the bastards with me"; all your doing by self dustructing is costing the enemy some hardware, not taking lives. that being said, of course they have to be cost effective, after a certian cost, its simply better to rip up the armor and or wait a while for the crew to die. I have a giant forge for melting ships now,
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Post by nerd1000 on Mar 17, 2017 13:21:56 GMT
Fundamentally at some point there will be peace again. If you murdered whatever subfaction without quarter the other remaining factions will be somewhat upset. Your faction will get a reputation " Does not play nice with others." Unless you have assured supremacy, I can't imagine it is a healthy long term strategy. Collateral damage can be understood, but cold murder of noncombatants? Yikes. An entire space habitat of thousands or millions plus? However, if we captured a space habitat that decided to be belligerent, we might attempt to smoke them out but you're trying to convince the holdouts to surrender and evacuate anyone who surrenders to a safe area where they are searched for weapons and guarded securely until your security and engineering teams have sanitized the station of weapons or other threats. After which the captive population might be allowed to return to their homes. But you wouldn't want to rule over a hostile population for very long, I'll reference Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It is more about getting the leaders to capitulate and negotiate beneficial (for you) terms that are realistic enough to be enforced. Don't start any wars without a plan to get to the peace afterwards.
As for "Does not play nice with others." it means the other factions might decide to team up against you, and to use extreme measures like relativistic bombardment or any means effective to remove your ruling class and perhaps entire faction from existence. Alongside the political implications and moral bankruptcy in gassing a station, it's worth noting that any large orbital habitat will necessarily be an ecosystem with plants providing food and oxygen, scavengers and microbes breaking down the dead to fertilize the soil, organisms of various types treating the water, predators to keep pests under control (you know those damn bugs will somehow get aboard to eat your crops) and so forth. Kill everyone and you're guaranteed to screw up that nicely balanced system and undo the decades of work needed to get it running properly.
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Post by argonbalt on Mar 17, 2017 13:56:32 GMT
Alongside the political implications and moral bankruptcy in gassing a station, it's worth noting that any large orbital habitat will necessarily be an ecosystem with plants providing food and oxygen, scavengers and microbes breaking down the dead to fertilize the soil, organisms of various types treating the water, predators to keep pests under control (you know those damn bugs will somehow get aboard to eat your crops) and so forth. Kill everyone and you're guaranteed to screw up that nicely balanced system and undo the decades of work needed to get it running properly. At last i remember those that did use gassing's were all to concerned with internal ecosystems vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/gundam/images/d/d3/1321920117950.png/revision/latest?cb=20111204074441
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Post by thorneel on Mar 17, 2017 15:33:11 GMT
Then again, that's the same universe where an eco-extremist decides that the best way to heal Earth from human presence is to throw two asteroids at it in order to cause a giant ice age. If he had turned physician instead of eco-ranger, he would have recommended two bullets in the head for a migraine cure. And of course he aims the two asteroids at two major historical and cultural population centres, because that's tradition at this point.
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