"Pauli's Hammer" Kamikaze Ship (In progress)

[Concerto]

Honestly, if we're going to be tossing large objects at a planet why not just use an asteroid, or the planet's own moon (if it has one)? I mean, the difficulties of pushing a moon out of orbit aside it's the most surefire way to ensure that nobody uses the planet anytime soon.

 

[Xerena]

The problem with an RKV is that it travels rather slowly, too slowly in fact to b useful for anything but a terror weapon or a MAD system - it may be nigh impossible to stop, but it travels so slowly that the war that launched it will probably have ended decdes or centuries ago by the time it hits its target.

The solution to this problem is to use a wormhole. While the wormhole could be used to send the RKV directly to the target, it really only needs to bring the RKV into the system on course for its target, which it will then hit in a matter of hours (up to a day or two). A wormhole could also be used to "hop" it right past its target (think Stargate: SG-1 episode "Fail Safe"), or redirect it somewhere else - either into a sun or a star or a black hole or deep space, or at a new target. So if SAY fired one of these things at Elysia or Elysia Nova, it wouldn't reach its target, and may well end up hitting Yamatai.

 

[Strangelove]

With RKVs, since they don't use FTL technology, they won't create the same sort of active signature a FTL version would. Maybe you could go so far is use stealth technology to make a terror/strategic weapon.

The whole wormhole this is a neat idea, but then we're back to square one. If you could pop open a wormhole in close proximity to a planet without alerting it, you could simply use the wormhole itself as a weapon for atmosphere deprivation and such, and would need a RVK.

That whole wormhole thing got me thinking that the real issue here is balance, not theory. In theory, at their current technology level the SA should already have a hundred different ways of killing a planet (anti-matter, RKVs, hyperspace shunt, hyperspace kamikaze, bioweapons, chemical weapons, aether weapons, wormholes, etc), yet none are actually used. I think due to the whole worry about turning SA into a giant Cold War revolving around strategic weapons, while ships and armor become essentially obsolete.

 

[Fred]

You know, it's nice and all that you are bringing up concepts for doomsday weapons... but given that, would you actually like to have those kinds of weaponry be used liberally when roleplaying in-character?

No one wants his plotship to go down because of the ZOMG-INSTA-DEATH WEAPON... or to see a epic conflict be ended in just one shot. It's just very anti-climatic ^_^;

 

[Xerena]

I'm thinking that doomsday weapons would, and probably already do (though nobody's really paid it much thought), exist, and their main role is to deter the enemy from using theirs. Aside from the unspoken understanding that "If you start busting my planets, I'm gonna start busting yours" and neither side wanting their planets to get busted, it seems to me that conquering a planet gives so many more benefits to the conqueror than simplly blasting that planet out of the sky (when you conquer a planet, you get a victory dance, but when you destroy a planet, you get defeated by a farmboy in a starfighter or a ragtag militia shouting "Remember Korhal!" as their battle cry; also, conquering a planet gives you a shiny new planet to play with). Lastly, as the Elysians have shown us with their defense satellites, there are ways to protect a planet.

What I was suggesting with wormholes is that you open the wormhole somewhere in the outskirts of the target's system and send the RKV on through, reducing the travel time from years-to-centuries to weeks-to-hours.

You forgot to metion making a planet's sun go supernova. Not that I expect to see that happen too often, but a GM might blow up a star or two by the end of his or her career.

Other uses of wormholes include sending torpedoes into the ships that launched them, and CFS penetration (wormholes can easily connect two universes). The use of an underpowered hyperdrive (a la Stargate: SG-1 episode "Fallen", where a fighter uses its tiny hyperdrive to get inside an enemy mothership's shield envelope and take out a key system) to nanojump past shields is also a possibility - ideal for Uriko torpedo bombers and similar craft. Just watch out for point-defense guns.

 

[Cora]

No one wants his plotship to go down because of the ZOMG-INSTA-DEATH WEAPON... or to see a epic conflict be ended in just one shot. It's just very anti-climatic ^_^;

...I am compleatly agast that you said this, Mr. PlayerKiller. You've taken part in JPs where ships (like taskforces of Sakura's, the ZOMG UNKILLABLE SHIPS with their stat best armor and shields) have been blown up by single shot weapons right through they're three different shields (I think, there are so many different things packed into the ships in the sarp it's hard to keep count. Like three different FTL engines along with Sub-light and thrusters.).

 

[Fred]

So, you just necroed a thread to say you were aghast and state how you mistook the Sakura's single CFS shielding for three different shields?