WMDs IN SPACE

[Dangerious P. Cats]

For a otherwise realistic(ish) space campaign I'm trying to find ways to elimernate weapons of mass destruction. The campaign is based around a war between Earth's Empire and a mostly unknown alien speicies where battles are mainly conducted in space (nearly all human military recruits are trained as pilots except for special forces units and are hence pretty much storm troopers in a ground war), with some planatry ground fighting. Part of the campaign theme wise is that the Earth Empire is evil and the players are effectivly playing storm troopers meaning that there are few rational reasons why thye wouldn't used weapons of mass destruction if they had them, they just don't.

So far here's my thinking:

Nukes: One of the core bits of the setting is that earth's resources have been thougherly used up, including all it's urainium resources, making the manufacture of nuclear weapons unviable. Any remaining nukes (if they exist at all) would be kept in reserve of the defence of earth.

Bactiria and virus: The enemy is a realitivly unknown alien spcieies (o.k, the big surprise twist of the campaign is that the enemy they're fighting are humans from another planet far away who speak a compleatly different language, but the Earth Empire doesn't know that) and therefore presumably hard to develope a desease to kill since little about their biology is known, meaning bio-weapons are not viable.

I'm less sure about other weapons of mass destruction, any ideas are welcome, as a rae comments on the ideas above.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

Bactiria and virus: The enemy is a realitivly unknown alien spcieies (o.k, the big surprise twist of the campaign is that the enemy they're fighting are humans from another planet far away who speak a compleatly different language, but the Earth Empire doesn't know that) and therefore presumably hard to develope a desease to kill since little about their biology is known, meaning bio-weapons are not viable.

Same would go for nerve gas. Don't know about chlorine gas and stuff like that, though.

[David Johnston2]

Are you sure you want to? The use of WMDs would make it more explicable that they could be fighting a war and not know who they are fighting.

[Dangerious P. Cats]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Are you sure you want to? The use of WMDs would make it more explicable that they could be fighting a war and not know who they are fighting.

Yes. Weapons of mass destruction and a clear willingness to use them would ruin much of what I have planned for the campaign.

[Sam Baughn]

Have a historical event (or several events) where a military unit with access to WMDs destroyed valuable resources by being too keen to use them. For example, a nuclear weapon might have wrecked a valuable manufacturing facility and irradiated it's stocks of materials, a biological weapon could have mutated into a harmful form making a planet hazardous to human life or a chemical agent could have wiped out a vital keystone species and caused a cascading ecological catastrophe which greatly reduced a world's potential agricultural output.

After such disasters, the government may have made access to WMDs highly restricted even for military forces. A normal fleet wouldn't have access to anything which could really wreck a significant chunk of a planet and even if the goverment decides that the threat warrants using them, it will probably take the WMDs a long time to be authorised and deployed to where they are needed, by which time the issue will probably have been resolved.

Add layers of bureocracy, outdated procedures and neglected technology over a long enough period of time and the WMDs will probably be effectively impossible to use. 'Nuclear fusion weapons require approval by both houses of the Terran senate before they are used, but the lower house was disbanded in the electoral reforms twenty years ago. I'm afraid you will have to wait for the legislation to be revised before you can use them...'.

Alternatively (or additionally) you could make WMDs relatively ineffective compared to other options available. Advanced biotechnology or hyper-advanced NBC gear which is convenient to wear full time might make chemical weapons, germ warfare and radiation rather unimpressive threats. Nukes would still be useful for their explosive effects, but there might well be more impressive options available, such as precise bombardment with electromag cannons from orbit.

[David Johnston2]

There are two ways to discourage the use of WMDs. The first is a MAD strategy that requires both sides to have significant parts of the other side at risk from retaliation. This inevitably collapses if war turns into a fight to the finish. The second way to have effective countermeasures for any such weapon to the point where they are more trouble than they are worth.

[Apache]

If you have any sort of ground fighting going on it's not going to be a Big Surprise that the enemy are human. After the first firefight, anyway.

Also, if your players are part of The Evil Empire, the Empire can simply throw asteroids at enemy planets. It's why they're Evil. No nukes are required.

You might want to come up with a different reason as to why nukes are obsolete. If your players have any science background at all, they are going to find your explanation 'they ran out of fissile material' rather hard to believe, especially if your Evil Empire has colonies everywhere and ships galore. Easy way to nerf nukes is to make them obsolete in space/ground warfare. See Traveller's nuclear dampener fields for one way to do it.

[malloyd]

The traditional methods are an easy countermeasure (planetary nuclear dampers), risk of involvement of otherwise neutral parties (blow up a planet and the Intergalactic Association for the Appreciation of Starsystem Sculptures may magically evaporate your entire civilization), agreement with your enemies/mutual deterrence ("we won't if you don't". Works great where there are wars with limited goals, if it looks like one side or the other is going to be destroyed *anyway* the restraints will come off), and moral objections (and yes "evil empires" can have them, particularly if you add some bad experience on the receiving end in their history (compare chemical weapons now). They need not be particularly rational, Cf people who think tossing explosives in the general direction of enemy leaders is fine, but assassinating them isn't.)

[Zed]

The real question is what makes the empire so evil? The more realistic reply is that they do not think of themselves as evil and have some code of conduct they tend to respect.

Evil things have been done in history with the best of intentions (Crusades, African slavery, religious proselytizing, etc).

Ideas:
* The military has rules against use of WMD unless used on you. Military likes its rules and conventions because it means they aren't just a bunch of murderers, but professionals who defend democracy and local confectioneries. While the news clip watching arm-chair generals maybe gung-ho, military might not be, knowing they could A) be receiving same WMD. B) could later be held to account. War is civilized business, after all.

* Habitats are fragile things. Goals in war maybe to take habitable places, not destroy them. Plus, if moving entire populations between isn't practical, use of WMD on friendly territory, defensively, is not going to be popular. Even micro-habitats could be prized and fought over using boarding actions (mining facility on asteroid for example).

* WMD is not covered by insurance! In a future corporate dystopia, ruining corporate assets with messy WMD isn't what they're paying the politicians for. Even if those assets are currently being mismanaged by hostile foreign entities (perhaps even communists!). Lives on the other hand are underwritten and disposable. So go get that slimy alien, soldier!

~Z

[Darekun]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

Nukes:

These are even easier to get rid of. In the real world, it's hard to get a neutrino beam, but for the ones we've used in the lab, there's one thing they have a significant effect on: heavy nuclei. That effect is… meltdown.

So assume their tech includes handy neutrino beams, with massive useful range, and maybe a cone effect. These could even be normally used as radios. (I don't know if tachyon neutrinos would work.) But bathe an enemy ship in the energies, and all their fission nukes melt down.

Proton-proton fusion should be doable, and no resource shortage will stop that. So you need to take fusion from the other direction: no ballotechnic primers, so a fusion warhead requires a fission or antimatter primer.

Antimatter, however, is the hard one. It's all manufactured from loose hydrogen at this TL; it should be possible to build a small collider to reliably produce antiprotons at a higher ROF, and use a laser-based system to produce positrons. That will scale up to whatever energy you can give it. If you're using Space Stealth, however, it's easy to let antimatter punch through it — declare that there will never be a really good bottle, and the resulting trickle of emissions, even from an antimatter primer for a fusion warhead, is enough to ruin Space Stealth.

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

Bactiria and virus:

Biological weapons are also somewhat difficult when your opponent is in a spacecraft. Vacuum generally has more stopping power than any pathogen, and any damage control team that shows up to deal with air escaping to vacuum will be suited up, and they'll need to be in an area with working life support before they take the suits off.



Chemical weapons come in two varieties: A) pretty generic caustics, and B) biochemical counters, which are defeated by not knowing your enemy's biology. (It might be amusing if they go different directions with personal thermal stealth, so one side guesses they're facing ammonia life and the other side guesses they're facing sulfuric acid life.)

The spacecraft also makes the generic caustics usually more effective against hull than crew, and even then, not that effective. The targets need NBC-level protection just to keep the air in and fresh.