Blowing Up a Planet

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Malenfant

Assuming you want to destroy your dwarf planet with meson guns. It's probably more effective to use the "near-c rock" approach (i.e. strap an M-Drive and power plant onto a small asteroid and accelerate until you can cause a sizeable impact) - you don't even need a particularly big rock to do it either.

Leaving the whole near c-rock debate aside its probably questionable to try to destroy the whole dwarf planet in the first place.

However, if, for the sake of drama, you wanted to just blow the thing apart, I suppose you might want to exploit any natural faults or such. If the planetoid had a good rotation on it, and it was small enought that it hadn't melted and differentiated, initiating an series of explosions at the joints of the conglomerate might cause it to fly apart. Many asteroids are just floating rubble piles, gravity barely holding them together. The target could be an intermediary between a rubble pile and a fully differentiated planetoid (that would be too solid to blow apart like this).

Thats a lot of ifs though. And it would be hard to explain why a base would be built on a body with such high angular momentum. It would be hard to land anywhere except at the poles - inconvenient at the least.

In fact, finding the exact weak spot, then aiming a meson blast powerful enough to destroy the planetoid would be akin to shooting a proton torpedo down a two meter wide heat shaft on some sort of giant space station. You'd probably need some sort of psionics to help you aim just right.

[Malenfant]

Originally Posted by Drifter

Many asteroids are just floating rubble piles, gravity barely holding them together.

Many small asteroids are (on the 10-100 metre scale), and a few larger ones may be. But Dwarf Planets are much bigger though, and among other things have to be big enough to pull themselves into a spherical shape - so they'd be solid bodies.

But at the end of the day even the OP's admitted that he doesn't want the whole dwarf planet blown up, just enough damage to destroy the primary target on the dwarf and anything nearby. Honestly, a big enough nuke or an antimatter charge would probably do the trick just as well.

[Toltrin]

Why?
Why blow up a planet other than an over the top introduction to a high science fiction adventure.
There is almost nothing there to move a plot forward. In an RPG game, it's much like a book or movie. You have a protagonist, a hook, an arc and a denouement.
The blowing up of a PLANET is having a hook, an arc and a denouement in ONE act.
Any thoughts?

[Malenfant]

Originally Posted by Toltrin

Why?
Why blow up a planet other than an over the top introduction to a high science fiction adventure.
There is almost nothing there to move a plot forward. In an RPG game, it's much like a book or movie. You have a protagonist, a hook, an arc and a denouement.
The blowing up of a PLANET is having a hook, an arc and a denouement in ONE act.
Any thoughts?

I'd say you're thinking too 'meta' about this - most entities wouldn't blow up a planet just because it makes for good drama ;)

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Toltrin

Why?
Why blow up a planet other than an over the top introduction to a high science fiction adventure.
There is almost nothing there to move a plot forward. In an RPG game, it's much like a book or movie. You have a protagonist, a hook, an arc and a denouement.
The blowing up of a PLANET is having a hook, an arc and a denouement in ONE act.
Any thoughts?

Its not a one act if your stage is subsector or sector. Multiple worlds in a wide ranging story means it will take a little more to demonstate Power. And Will.

To fall again on the Star Wars reference it DOES show those rebels you have the power to destroy them and will to do it. You are a Real Threat, not just a bad guy, or a series of bad guys to be evaded/shot at.

If that planet featured earlier in the story, and you had relatable characters there; trusted merhcants, faithful military, etc. Their deaths could be accomplished with a gun, or even a nuke. But to take out the entire planet is a much more.

It might be too much, come to think of it, dulling the impact of consequences of the act by its sheer size and scale.

It does move the story forward though, if the story is 'big' enough. And since many Traveller campaigns feature jumping from world to world, each just a glimpse of a startown and a merchant pickup, I'm surprised you don't see it more. Aside from the hokeyness of it :)

[Diomedes]

Originally Posted by Toltrin

Why?
Why blow up a planet other than an over the top introduction to a high science fiction adventure.
There is almost nothing there to move a plot forward.

No, but it does affect the actions of people both during and afterward.

I'm not planning on doing this in a campaign; I'm thinking of using it as part of the background of the campaign. The reason I brought it up in the first place was to see how possible – and plausible – it actually was. Turns out not very, so I'm rethinking, considering a scaled-back version.

[Toltrin]

Originally Posted by Diomedes

No, but it does affect the actions of people both during and afterward.

I'm not planning on doing this in a campaign; I'm thinking of using it as part of the background of the campaign. The reason I brought it up in the first place was to see how possible – and plausible – it actually was. Turns out not very, so I'm rethinking, considering a scaled-back version.

I think that the new Star Trek movie went completely over the top when they blew up Vulcan.
I think the original Star Wars show should get a pass because it was the best damn science fiction show ever (in my opinion).
Alderaan was not blown to bits with a giant superlaser fired from a Death Star just to show special effects, it was done to show the enormity of power of the Empire. Much like the opening shot of a New Hope, it symbolizes the Empires power.
The horrible prequels? Blowing up a planet would just be in the story to show how cool it would look to do with CGI.
Sometimes using symbolism in a RPG session makes more of a lasting impression than just 'blowing crap up' or throwing 1000s orcs at someone in an adventure. In the case of sci-fi, 1000s of useless and innocuous battle droids.