Re: Air Power was: REALITY CHECK TIME!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Siebold" <gamers@ameritech.net>

> Now if all you want in your game is to blow worlds to bits then I
> suggest you play "nucular distruction"
> from Flying Buffalo in which the last player on the world with some
> population wins. I stoped playing this
> game due to the number of  tie games (no players have  surviving
> populations).

Well, what it comes down to is, this is all theory warfare that doesn't
even
have a real basis in any one game system.  To my way of thinking,
fortifying
a planet to this degree just isn't worth it.  You can't move the
weapons.
That's a huge issue by itself.	Not only does that mean that the weapons
have no offensive usefulness at all, but more importantly, if the planet
is
presented with a situation where it just can't win (and with only one
planet's resources against interstellar empires, that situation _will_
come
up), those weapons have no way of escaping when they're in trouble.  So
sure, you can spend most of your empire's resources on fortifying
planets
beyond all reason to a degree that I can't even throw a milk carton out
of
my starship's waste disposal without it getting vaporized on the way
down,
but that means your defenses in space to keep me from the planet will be
lighter, and once I get to it with enough hardware and/or troops to take
it
or blow it out of the stars altogether... guess what, you lose all those
weapons without being able to save a single one of them.  Genius move.

Then there's the issue of how you're going to supply all these defenses.
You have one, repeat, one, planet's resources to maintain this stuff. 
If an
interstellar starfleet is coming at you, almost by definition you're
going
to be out-gunned on materiel just by virtue of the fact that they'll be
able
to throw more at the planet than the planet can maintain on its own for
any
length of time.  Which means that if you're going to expect to stand off
that whole fleet with just the one planet, you're going to have to put a
lot
more weapons on the planet than the planet can maintain on its own
resources.  Which, in turn, leaves the enemy with the beautiful option
of
just interdicting the star system, making sure no supply ships at all
get to
the planet, and then come in when their recon drones tell them that the
defenses have rusted to a degree that they're no longer such a big
threat.

Or, if they don't have time to do that, then I guess they'll just have
to
blow the entire planet away and move on.

Either way, it just doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint to
fortify a planet to this degree in the first place, unless it's presumed
that the tech level for planetside weapons is just radically more
advanced
than the stuff you can get in from space.  If the technology supports
spaceborne weapons to any near-parity degree, the mobility (both for
offense
and to allow for escape) is way too much of a benefit, to say nothing of
the
fact that you give your enemy the _choice_ of destroying your military
without also blowing away the civilians in the process.

E