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[Andres]

So what's to stop us from getting another carrier, initiating its FTL sequence, getting out of the ship immediately, and then letting it go off to Exterminatus the Uark homeworld (besides distance)?

Because war is fine but genocide is bad.

How is it genocide at all? It's not like we're killing all the Uarks. Possibly not even a majority of them. Think of it as a large-scale Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

[Parsely]

How is it genocide at all? It's not like we're killing all the Uarks. Possibly not even a majority of them. Think of it as a large-scale Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

Good lord man that's not one town, that's an entire planet. I don't think you fully appreciate what you're suggesting here. Destroying an entire planet along with all it's people and natural life isn't even on the scale of modern nuclear warfare, at a modern best we could hope to destroy the entire surface of the Earth with nuclear weapons but not the entire world.

It would take approximately 800,000,000 kilotons of power to destroy all of the Earth.

Here is Tsar Bomba:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A weapon with a yield of 50,000 kilotons. It would take 16,000 of these weapons to destroy the entire world. Nukes are not planet busting weapons, my point being that this type of destruction is on an entirely new and incomparable level to the devastation seen at Hiroshima.

The deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.

We'd be killing an entire PLANET covered in UARKS. Depending on how big their actual planet was you'd be killing anywhere from millions to billions of people, nearly all of them would be innocents. This is where they originated so not only are you killing their people, their culture (the worst possible thing you could do to any living people), their history would be largely erased, along with the literal ground they've lived on for generations and all the living creatures that have evolved with them over that time. No one can condone that kind of destruction, UEF wouldn't approve and if we did it on our own there's no nation in the galaxy who would take us in after that.

[10ebbor10]

Note: Kiloton is not an appropriate unit of power. Kiloton TNT is an appropriate unit of energy however.

The problem with ships appearing inside other matter is that theoretically, you could have a mass to energy conversion. And that gets ridiculous quite fast. Thanks to good old E= MC², 1 kg of material equals 90 Petajoules of energy.  Our ship will presumable weight in excess of 42 ton, so it could blow up a planet.

However I doubt that mass energy conversion happens in FTL.

[Andres]

@GUNINANRUNIN

First of all, there's nothing wrong with blowing up the Uark homeworld. Killing all life certainly is but destroying the planet afterwards is about as bad as destroying any other barren space rock in the galaxy.

I still fail to see how this would be anything but a large-scale Hiroshima. The Uark homeworld is presumably their centre of government, the location of a large amount of their military forces, and it's probably an important strategic asset in terms of production and economy and such. So long as there are Uarks living in other parts of the galaxy, it's not genocide. The only difference here is the scale of life lost (if it's not greater than 50%, it's fine) and the fact that the planet would get destroyed. Of course, destroying the planet would merely add insult to injury since even if the planet didn't blow up, all life would be destroyed and it would just be a generic floating space rock. There's nothing wrong with blowing up generic floating space rocks.

[Chiefwaffles]

The two corvettes turn around for another attack as the Telemachus begins evasive maneuvers. The first ship attacking hits the tail end of the ship, just barely hitting it. (Critical Failure!) The shot is completely absorbed by the shield. You can hear Hensen laughing in the background.
The next corvette starts its gun, which promptly fires a round of shots  away from you.
Just as they start coming around for yet another attack, the hyperdrive activates and the ship slips into hyperspace.
"And to think I was worried."

Hyperspace will last the equivalent of a turn, so you have a chance to order engineers around or talk to anyone on the ship. Don't go outside, though. That'd be very bad.

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

F.S. Telamachus, U.E.F. Tertiary Support Fleet
Quick Mini-Carrier Corvette
Escaped enemy engagement
Shields at 70%
FTL activated
Minor damage:
Patchwork Engine Room hull
Patchwork Reactor Containment


Armament
Dual Energy Cannons - Moderate sized dual energy cannons that work by overcharging a special crystal, creating what's essentially a ball of pure energy, which can melt through regular non-armor materials.
-Regular Aim, Moderate Damage, Short(-ish) range
-Moderate size
10 Heat Clips - 60 rounds total

Crew

Security Officer Hensen
Engineering Officer Donnely
Bridge Officer ? ? ?
 
4 Trained Engineers
3 Trained Marines

2 Trained Pilots

Vehicles
3 Dart class Small Fighters - A small interceptor used to destroy other fighters or harass smaller ships. Does not have any shields.
-Good speed, Miniscule damage
-Does not require heat clips

Storage
78u Regular Alloy
19u Advanced Alloy
17u Crystal Wiring

Utility Slicer

[Andres]

Ask Engineering Officer Donnely if we have the required parts needed to fix the ship completely.

[Sheb]

Use the time to look in our address book for that stereotypical retired fighter ace that taught us at boot camp. Time to get him out of retirement.

[Andres]

Use the time to look in our address book for that stereotypical retired fighter ace that taught us at boot camp. Time to get him out of retirement.

+1

[Parsely]

Use the time to look in our address book for that stereotypical retired fighter ace that taught us at boot camp. Time to get him out of retirement.

+1

+1

First of all, there's nothing wrong with blowing up the Uark homeworld. Killing all life certainly is but destroying the planet afterwards is about as bad as destroying any other barren space rock in the galaxy.

I still fail to see how this would be anything but a large-scale Hiroshima. The Uark homeworld is presumably their centre of government, the location of a large amount of their military forces, and it's probably an important strategic asset in terms of production and economy and such. So long as there are Uarks living in other parts of the galaxy, it's not genocide. The only difference here is the scale of life lost (if it's not greater than 50%, it's fine) and the fact that the planet would get destroyed. Of course, destroying the planet would merely add insult to injury since even if the planet didn't blow up, all life would be destroyed and it would just be a generic floating space rock. There's nothing wrong with blowing up generic floating space rocks.

Except you're not destroying a space rock, you're blowing up an inhabited space rock with tons of living people on it. There is everything wrong with blowing up their homeworld. Not to mention it's probably an earthlike planet which is a big deal.

That's more like blowing up all of mainland Japan just to get their islands to surrender. If you wanted to send a message similar to Hiroshima you'd atomize one of their colony worlds, not the home planet. Either way that's a crime against humanity and an overall shitty thing to do, blowing up a planet full of innocent people. Not to mention that you forget that they would be totally justified in doing the exact same thing do us if we did it to them. That'd just end in massive slaughter for both sides.

[Andres]

Except you're not destroying a space rock, you're blowing up an inhabited space rock with tons of living people on it. There is everything wrong with blowing up their homeworld. Not to mention it's probably an earthlike planet which is a big deal.

The point is that destroying a planet isn't bad - it's destroying all life on the planet that's bad.

=That's more like blowing up all of mainland Japan just to get their islands to surrender.

Good point. We should find some kind of military base planet and blow that up instead.

[Parsely]

The point is that destroying a planet isn't bad - it's destroying all life on the planet that's bad.

Good point. We should find some kind of military base planet and blow that up instead.

No shit. You can't exactly destroy the planet without killing everything living on it. >_>

* GUNINANRUNIN shrugs.

Why not. As long as UEF-com is okay with us destroying valuable celestial real estate and we have ships with FTL to throw away. :v

[Chiefwaffles]

Ask Engineering Officer Donnely if we have the required parts needed to fix the ship completely.

"Engineering in a ship like this is really only meant for hotfixes. We'd need much better tools or a dedicated facility to completely fix the ship."

Use the time to look in our address book for that stereotypical retired fighter ace that taught us at boot camp. Time to get him out of retirement.

There aren't really address books in space. You do remember about a retired Captain you looked up to back in the day, though. Last you heard, he bought a penthouse somewhere in Alpha-79018.
...
Welcome to Foxtrot-795! Home to the moon colony of Troth!
Troth was originally a mining colony after a deposit of Pearls was found deep inside the moon. After it was depleted, the mining companies packed up and left, but lots of workers stayed behind. Some of the population lives inside pressurized domes, but the rest live inside cities outside of a dome with passage ways between the buildings. There are three spaceports on Troth, and one shipyard orbiting the moon. The first spaceport is at Environment, a dome city of about 40,000 citizens and Troth's extensive hydroponics operation. The next one is at, well, Troth, which is more commonly known by the citizens as "Prime". It's an un-domed city housing 2 million citizens with a bustling economy. The next spaceport is at the Horizons Mining Colony, which is a series of unpressurized mines mining some miscellaneous materials for the city, and a bit of alloys for ships. The HMC also has a series of pressurized housing units to house its 1,000 workers.

Troth does not have a sensor relay, or any other patrol station. It does however have short-range sensors and a Planetary Defense system at Prime, so you really shouldn't be within a close distance of Prime in your ship unless you want to get cut in half by a giant beam. Visual feeds and some intelligence gathering indicates that a Uark patrol bus comes weekly to swap the garrisoned Uark soldiers. There are patrols around the planet, but they consist of a single Uark corvette.

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

F.S. Telamachus, U.E.F. Tertiary Support Fleet
Quick Mini-Carrier Corvette
Not engaged
Shields at 80%
FTL cooling down - 4 rounds
Minor damage:
Patchwork Engine Room hull
Patchwork Reactor Containment


Armament
Dual Energy Cannons - Moderate sized dual energy cannons that work by overcharging a special crystal, creating what's essentially a ball of pure energy, which can melt through regular non-armor materials.
-Regular Aim, Moderate Damage, Short(-ish) range
-Moderate size
10 Heat Clips - 60 rounds total

Crew

Security Officer Hensen
Engineering Officer Donnely
Bridge Officer ? ? ?
 
4 Trained Engineers
3 Trained Marines

2 Trained Pilots

Vehicles
3 Dart class Small Fighters - A small interceptor used to destroy other fighters or harass smaller ships. Does not have any shields.
-Good speed, Miniscule damage
-Does not require heat clips

Storage
78u Regular Alloy
19u Advanced Alloy
17u Crystal Wiring

Utility Slicer

[Parsely]

To clarify: all three of the spaceports along with the sensor station, giant laser defense array and the mines are on the planet's surface, nothing is on the actual moon, and there is a spaceport that orbits the moon. Is that right?

[Chiefwaffles]

Everything's on the moon, which is orbiting a gas giant. Moon is a bit bigger version of Earth's moon, more or less.

[Parsely]

Oh I see. Are those mines big enough to land the ship in?