Nuclear weapons IN SPACE!

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

The other issue is how do you stop campaign bad guys from nuking everything, or explain to the players why they havn't.

The Nazi's had nerve gas in World War II. Never used it. Didn't dare because they knew the British could and would respond in spades.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

The other issue is how do you stop campaign bad guys from nuking everything, or explain to the players why they havn't.

Don't build campaign settings where bad guys with nukes can achieve their goals just by using them. Those settings logically should only exist for a couple of minutes before becoming post-apocalyptic.

If you must have to have lunatics who just want to blow things up, and setting elements argue for nukes being available to them, there will be institutions in place to thwart the threat. Depending on the nature of the threat and environment, this might be missile defense batteries, border control precautions, specialist civil-defense negotiators (as seen in Iron Sunrise), delocalized value to avoid providing targets, a surveillance/police state, or superscience. Make sure whatever it is is justifies the world not already being a ball of cinders!

In tactical terms, avoiding getting themselves nuked really should be the players' problem. Unless their tactics on that level are directed by an NPC, making it your problem again. In which case, try to always have at least one of:
-sufficient defenses against nuclear attack
-all enemy nuclear forces already suppressed, eliminated, or otherwise occupied
-extreme proximity to something the enemy isn't willing to nuke

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The Nazi's had nerve gas in World War II. Never used it. Didn't dare because they knew the British could and would respond in spades.

Because that exact sequence played out in WW I.

One reason there could be an aversion to the use of nukes (and comparable weapons) would be that they were used in some previous war, and the outcome was so horrible as to leave a deeply-ingrained societal aversion to their use.

[Frost]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

The other issue is how do you stop campaign bad guys from nuking everything, or explain to the players why they havn't.

Exactly the same reasons as as you use to prevent the PC's side from doing it, as others have sugested, lack of capibility, fear of retaliation or a need to preserve assets in the target area should be quite sufficent. The same considerations should also provide a suitible restraint for things like redirected asteroids.

[Flyndaran]

War has never really been an anything goes government sanctioned mass murder. Every society has rules and lines they won't cross without justified (to them) reasons.

[thrash]

Article IV
States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.

Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (aka The Outer Space Treaty of 1967)

It may well be the case that everyone suspects everyone else of having nukes in space, but it's a moot point if nothing ever comes up during the campaign that is important enough for someone to take the diplomatic flak for first use.

[Joseph Paul]

Setting assumptions preclude the use of weapons of mass destruction. Examples:

1) Real estate that a carbon based life form can live on is scarce. The "bad guys" are not going to nuke a perfectly good planet because they don't want to live on a planet that has been nuked.

2) The last polity that went all out bringing the nuclear heat isn't here anymore and you can't set foot on their planet because every other polity got it's licks in punishing them in a fit of eco-righteousness. Hypocritical? Yes but a damn good lesson to everyone else.

Personally I like the idea that future sophonts will have a better sense of stewardship as part of their culture much as in Brin's Uplift books.

[Refplace]

In our world after the US used its two nukes no one has ever done so since.
That lends a lot of credibility to a hard science game not doing so as well.
Nukes require rare materials and special installations to refine them and these are likely to be strictly watched and controlled. Its also possible that in a prolonged war all such installations and stockpiles have been destroyed and probably at the earliest possible point in the war.
So nukes may just be very very hard to come by.
Even if they are still around its likely major governments have them and are afraid to use them for fear the others will counter with the same. We have had many opportunities for several nuclear powers to use nukes in war but it hasn't happened for fear of the consequences.
MAD kept us out of WWW3 until finances finally caved in the situation.
Societal pressure really can have a significant effect.

[David Johnston2]

To be sure, nukes (and the more likely orbital strikes) seem like less of a big deal the bigger your universe gets. If it's a serious war situation, then the characters may always have to worry about getting a message telling them to get underground or out of the blast radius because there's an incoming strike. They aren't necessarily dead just because the bad guys decided to pull out the big guns, any more than they were necessarily dead in World War II, when a fleet of thousands of bombers was carpet bombing the area.

[sn0wball]

Several good reasons to explain the unavailability of nuclear weapons have already been mentioned.

What about these :

I
Even characters not scared by the Patrols enforcement of the Imperial Ban might be kept in check by the threat of Corporate Patent Law Lawyers ...

58 years ago Galactech registered a patent for explosive devices that derive their destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion with the Confederate Patent Authority and have successfully defended it in court ever since. There is much speculation about why they have sold not a single nuke, though. The most plausible is that they want to boost the sales of the others weapons of their sortiment.

II
Or what about Union Enforcers ?

Of course every free federal citizen enjoys the libertery to possess whatever weapon his heart desires, provided this doesn´t endanger the wellfare of other citizens. Therefore you need a proof of your qualification to handle nukes. As things go, the only NGO issuing these certificates is the Stellar Miners Guild, the union of space prospectors, which is notoriously restricting them for a select number of trusted union members. So, do you have your union card at hand ?

III

Or military doctrine, for members of a military service. No interstellar power issues nuclear weapons to their forces. They are not part of the tactical doctrine - for whatever reasons, stupid or sensible. You want to file a complaint ?

In the end, one has to keep in mind that these are in-game-universe reasons. They do not have to make sense to the players. And if they don´t make sense to the characters and they care and weant to know more - now there is a hell of a plot hook! Why are the authorities conspiring to keep nuclear weapons out of our hands ?!