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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 9300551" data-attributes="member: 63">So yeah, there could be lots of worlds that are kinda inconsequential. People colonized them to look for resources, and you might have thousands of millions living there, and no one bothers to invest in major defensive weaponry because no one has a reason to attack. Most places would just do their own thing, maybe try to cater to rich off-worlders as tourism destinations in order to get, like, various biological things that are hard to grow natively.Chocolate, or coffee, or whatever.But if they find deposits of minerals that are valuable, suddenly different moneyed groups have a reason to want to control and protect the planet. Nuking a civilian area would elicit interstellar sanctions and consequences, so nobody does that, which creates maybe a perverse incentive for defensive forces to set up inside cities. Maybe the planet Deyemji finds some germanium, and so now the Capellan Confederation and the Federated Suns both want to bring the planet to their side. A civilized option would be to see who can pay the most or whatever, but these big nations have hammers, and they're gonna swing 'em. The most important installations on the planet would be the germanium mine and the spaceport - dropships can land and leave on their own, but bringing your own fuel with you is just expensive enough that it makes controlling the spaceport vital. So the Capellans land a battalion of mechs - three companies of twelve mechs each, one at the mine, one at the spaceport, and one on rotation in a major city. The Capellans want to hold the place long enough to build up the necessary infrastructure to build orbital defensive platforms and maybe a pair of fort stations above the poles of the local star.Bombarding the planetary sites is counter-productive, but the Feds want control of the planet before the defenses go up, so they send in forces of their own, and try to seize the important sites. Once they do, they'll try to bring in more materiel - like anti-ship batteries - after which they hope the Capellans won't want to keep wasting resources on the fight. But maybe the conflict keeps escalating over time.That could make sense, yeah? At least as justification? Now I need to ponder how the actual combat would go.</blockquote>

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