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[Flying Carcass]

Destroying planets is a waste of resources anyway though. Much better to just engineer some super virus that quickly kills the alien sophists that live there, and then take the planet for yourself when they're dead.

It should still be an option though, especially if mineral resources could then be extracted from the debris.

[gimli]

Genociding pops will be possible to do, so who knows. Maybe it will be included in the vanilla version. It should be an option if you have the techs and stuff for it. [It should be optional @ MP, since "rushing" techs to be able to destroy planets won't be fun.]

[Sirus]

You'd think so, but so many devs seem to have completely forgotten this.

Just off the top of my head, Stardrive and Stardrive 2 don't have any way to obliterate a planet. Star Ruler 2 didn't have it (but I heard it got added into as a patch). Endless Space completely lacks this ability, which added exponentially to why I dislike that game. I'm pretty sure you couldn't destroy planets in Sins of a Solar Empire too, but they added it in as an expansion.

Star Ruler didn't need it, really. With enough firepower, you can destroy planets, stars, whatever you wanted. What SR2 lacked was a dedicated planet-buster.

[forsaken1111]

What SR2 lacked was a dedicated planet-buster.

Eh? SR2 had a weapon specifically designed to destroy planets and stars. There is even a special where you can revive an ancient planetbuster.

[gimli]

What SR2 lacked was a dedicated planet-buster.

Eh? SR2 had a weapon specifically designed to destroy planets and stars. There is even a special where you can revive an ancient planetbuster.

Graviton Condenser

[Majestic7]

Constructing Dyson swarms/spheres would require dismantling planetary masses for material. Presumably such technology could be weaponized as well. Of course, Dyson stuff and FTL travel are not a logical combination. If you have the whole universe at your fingertips, why would you bother with turtling in a single solar system? So I'd mainly see Dyson things as something a Fallen Empire would construct after turning inwards and giving up star travel.

[Leyic]

Constructing Dyson swarms/spheres would require dismantling planetary masses for material. Presumably such technology could be weaponized as well. Of course, Dyson stuff and FTL travel are not a logical combination. If you have the whole universe at your fingertips, why would you bother with turtling in a single solar system? So I'd mainly see Dyson things as something a Fallen Empire would construct after turning inwards and giving up star travel.

The point of a Dyson sphere is to capture 100% of the energy produced by a star, not to turtle inside it. A galaxy-spanning empire that doesn't build Dyson spheres is being inefficient, presuming there are no better fantasy energy sources that could be harnessed.

[Majestic7]

What do they need the energy for, though? FTL allows spreading civilization and resources widely, reducing the needs for energy locally. Unless there is supremely efficient way to store and transport energy, Dyson constructions seem quite useless for someone able to hop between the stars.

[Rolan7]

You can never have too much energy!  Unless you lack proper storage mechanisms.  But if you're making dyson spheres, you can fabricate all the batteries you want (and they'll probably be a damn sight better than ours).  From thin air, if need be, though using raw materials is probably more efficient.

With energy you can power weapons, shields, terraforming, hive planets, whatever you want.  Once FTL is cracked, energy is basically the last limiting factor.  There's a reason it's the currency of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and can win the game once you have enough.

[Dutrius]

There are several major problems of building a structure that large:

• Materials required. You'd need to completely extract the metals from several planets and moons to get enough raw materials.
• Comets and asteroids (or any other body on an elliptical/parabolic/hyperbolic trajectory). If you don't spot and stop these things in time, they are going to make life miserable for the repair crews.
• Finally, and this is the biggest problem, Gravity. It will be a major pain to prevent tidal forces from messing with the structure during construction. Even worse, as soon as the structure completely surrounds the star, the net force of gravitational attraction from the star becomes zero, causing the structure to start to drift. What do you think happens if/when the structure drifts into the star it was built around?

[Majestic7]

If a civilization has sufficient technology and unity of purpose/politics to dismantle planets for Dyson structures, I doubt those points would be much of a problem.

...and if they were, that equals !!FUN!! which is the right thing to desire! I find the idea of a Dyson sphere falling to a fate similar to the Swedish warship Vasa hilarious.

[Descan]

Though none of those are unknown problems. In fiction, they're either glossed over, or they're acknowledged and the fictional fuck-huge star-blanket is instead a swarm, literally trillions of satellites/hab-orbitals with solar sails capturing the energy. Looking like a giant billowing cloud, moving with the stellar wind.

[forsaken1111]

Just a few close orbiting solar sats beaming energy back to earth could take care of our energy needs, and we could build such things right now.

But big microwave energy beams are scary/bad and also potential weapons

[Leyic]

Though none of those are unknown problems. In fiction, they're either glossed over, or they're acknowledged and the fictional fuck-huge star-blanket is instead a swarm, literally trillions of satellites/hab-orbitals with solar sails capturing the energy. Looking like a giant billowing cloud, moving with the stellar wind.

Solar radiation pressure, not solar wind, and you want the satellites in a circular orbit or hover as it won't do you any good if they're pushed away from the star.

Just a few close orbiting solar sats beaming energy back to earth could take care of our energy needs, and we could build such things right now.

But big microwave energy beams are scary/bad and also potential weapons

We could build such things right now only if sufficient funds were appropriated for the necessary research and development required for flight qualification. As a safety mechanism, the transmitters listen for a directional signal from the receiver so they shut off if they point the wrong direction by even a slight amount. Besides which, the frequency used is not the one that excites water molecules. The problem is that a sufficiently powerful microwave source would interfere with all the other microwave signals used for satellite communication in that part of the sky.

Anyhow, the conversation was about a galactic empire, not present day energy needs. Could you imagine the diesel-equivalent mpg you'd get from a military-grade FTL drive?

[forsaken1111]

Oh I know, I just meant it's well within the realm of our current understand and materials science. With sufficient resources dedicated to it, we could have all the energy we'd need.

Unfortunately it's not quick or cheap so nobody likes it.