Prev: RE: Military Police Next: RE: Military Police

Re: SG-Ortillary

From: Richard and Emily Bell <rlbell@s...>
Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2002 18:44:39 -0500
Subject: Re: SG-Ortillary



Eric Foley wrote:

> I agree that ortillery seems way underpowered.  I mean, judging from
the
> scale used in FT, a plasma bolt could potentially cover most of the
surface
> area of a continent if someone wanted to be indiscriminate enough to
use it
> on an inhabited world.  Missiles are supposed to be nuclear-scale
warheads.
> Ships actually _survive_ getting hit by these things.  Yet these
weapons are
> considered worse for planetary bombardment than ortillery is... which
leads
> me to wonder just what sort of specialized horror ortillery really
ought to
> be portrayed as, when ships capable of surviving medium-scale nuclear
> exchanges would prefer to use this rather than their normal weapons. 
I
> mean, it would start to seem evident that having an ortillery
satellite in
> stationary orbit would be a huge advantage in a ground war, based on
the
> scale involved.

It is not that ortillery is underpowered, it is merely appropriately
powered.
If you are bothering to fight for a planet, the last thing you want is
to
destroy the real estate.  It is not that PB's and SM's are inneffective
at
blowing things up, it is that they are useless for supporting ground
combat.


Prev: RE: Military Police Next: RE: Military Police