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Sabin Stargem -> RE: When, How and Why to use 'Bombard' type weapons... (1/18/2011 3:13:50 AM)
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What is weird to me is how just about how most weapons could be used in space and still be able to affect planets in real life. For example, a "rod of god" is basically a shaft of metal with rockets. Just throw it at a planet, let it get up to a fairly high speed, and momentum will take care of the rest. Using a combination of mass and speed generally results in sizable explosions, such as what annihilated the dinosaurs and those many craters on the moon. Heck, Mars might have lost the ability to be a life-sustaining world due to such an impact. Here is a list of weapons and how they might affect planets in my opinion. To me, Bombard Weapons shouldn't be if weapons can destroy planets, but about removing resistance without ruining the planet in the process.
Rod of God
A metal shaft with rockets, it just runs into things at high speed to make them go boom. Very destructive, messy, but simple and cheap.
Missiles
Unlike a Rod of God, these contain explosive, chemical, radioactive, or some other kind of attribute in the form of warheads. They usually can perform evasive manuevering and can be precisely guided to a location, and be armed with 'the right stuff' to take out a target. This translates doing more damage to the people of a planet, but less ecological damage depending on the type of warhead, provided the missile is detonated before impacting something at extreme speeds.
Lasers
These are actually rather terrible when it comes to attacking some planets. A planet with an atmosphere has a significant level of resistance due to cloud cover and magnetism, which can really screw up a laser by changing it's general direction and making it lose cohesion. While a large amount of lasers would still do something to an atmospheric planet, they would be fairly inaccurate and less powerful. However, a planet without an atmosphere wouldn't pose such issues.
Anti-Matter
Possibly one of the most destructive and rare things in the universe, an anti-matter bomb uses a strong gravity field to contain an amount of anti-matter while ensuring that regular matter doesn't make contact. This bomb is directed towards a target, and simply has to touch something to begin an reaction. Matter and Anti-Matter are so compatible, that they basically try to run into each other at high speeds. Nuclear explosions basically have two atoms smashing into each other forcibly, but the speed at which it is done and the effectiveness pales to Matter. There is essentially a 100% conversion rate of Matter into energy once it meets Anti-Matter, compared to an Nuclear weapon's 2% or so. Probably the best way to reduce a planet, or any other physical object, into energy.
Plasma Weapons
The combination of ionized gas and using a laser to superheat it, an plasma weapon can be used to create extreme heat, exceeding the skin of the sun. Furthermore, a plasma weapon could potentially be applied for anti-electronic usage, which may offer applications in non-lethal takeover of a planet. However, plasma weaponry tends to disappear rapidly, due to radiating light and generally exploding. Theoretically, finding means of magnetic confinement that extends beyond the gun barrel would significantly increase the range of plasma weaponry, due to keeping most of the energy in one place. A planet with a strong magnetic would probably disrupt plasma weaponry, due to damaging the "magnetic bottle" field that is likely to used for making plasma weaponry practical.
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