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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 9301589" data-attributes="member: 710">I feel like some "problems" start if you assume anyone has the ability to achieve relativistic speeds. What if they don't? Battletech jump ships are actually perfect for that, as are Stargates. You have a mobility cheat code, basically. None of these ships achieve relativistic speeds in any conventional way, using thrusters and reaching high percentages of c. They just blink from A to B without passing the space in-between. So you can't make orbital bombardments with relativistic kill projectiles. You don't have the tech for making things go that fast.You can't drop asteroids from orbit, because either the gate isn't in orbit, or your jump ship cannot jump into orbit, the asteroid must be moved with rockets from weeks away from your intended target, giving plenty of time to destroy or deflect it.Even Star Trek warp drive or Star Wars hyperdrive kinda suggests you're cheating with subspace or hyperdrive and the kinetic energy of these ships might not be in any way related to what they'd be by relativistic or newtonian mechanics. So flying at Warp 9 into a planet might actually only hit as hard as flying at it at Mach 9 might. Ouch, but not "please spare my civilization" (well, for Star Trek, the antimatter stored aboard these ships still pose a problem. Even at speed 0.)Okay, that cares of all the orbital trickery of devestating a planet "easily", or threatening to do so. So even if you don't actually care about what's down there, it takes a lot of effort to do so, because you need to protect your killer asteroids. The defender has the disadvantage of needing to shoot its defensive measures upwards against the gravity well, but the advantage of a huge surface it can launch from.The real problem remains probably is - what is worth fighting for if you have an entire planet or star system at your disposal in the first place, and there are plenty of them that aren't in use right now?One thing that's obviously valuable is habitable worlds. It will take us a long time to actually build self-sustainable space habitats, if it's possibe at first place at scales smaller than a full planet. Terraforming is super-hard. But if the habitable planet is the source of conflict, sounds like it will really mean a lot of genocide in the setting, every planet being overpopulated? Harsh. And maybe nothing where just "honor fights" would be used, it's a fight for survival..Or is it actually about the people themself? Do you want them alive, but for some reason under your control? Like you want everyone to be your religion? (Maybe a sci-fi psionic religion, where if everyone learns a particular way of thinking, a psychic power awakens that can do things, like piercing the veil of our existence into a new form of existence?) Maybe strictly regulated "honorable" warfare is required, because you don't want to lose too many people, and the goal is to prove your way of thinking is the proper way?</blockquote>

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