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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kesh" data-source="post: 2169385" data-attributes="member: 1308">I think everyone else has covered the ship names, so I'll stick to these two points:To wipe out all life on a planet, you've got a few options. It really comes down to one major consideration: does the planet have an atmosphere?If so, you can wreak havoc simply by disrupting the climate and/or destroying the atmosphere. For instance, introducing significant quantities of another material (such as nitrous oxide) to aid in burning oxygen, then dropping a single conventional bomb. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />On a more realistic scale, you mentioned mass drivers. That's useful since you simply drop a few asteroids from orbit and let the dust clouds blot out sunlight. Takes a while, but it would render the planet unlivable after a period of time. More large rocks would let you simply pummel the planet into the stone age.Nukes are the most direct way. Conventional damage, massive atmospheric disturbance, radiation fallout and nuclear winter.Without an atmosphere, it's difficult to affect the entire planet in a short time. All impact weapons will have a relatively small area of effect, and you can't spread gaseous or biological agents. Short of stressing the continental plates themselves to break the planet apart, it's difficult to do widespread damage.On a more magical note, drop a kind of artifact bomb that tears a rift between the Prime Material and another plane (such as the Negative Energy Plane, for killing off all life while leaving structures intact; or the Elemental Plane of Fire for torching the place).For a stranger technological end: rip off the Replicators from Stargate: SG-1. They're small, insect-like machines who only exist to process raw materials and turn them into more (and better) Replicators. Drop a small canister of Replicators into a major city on the planet, and watch them slowly devour everything as they multiply and spread across the planet. You can't kill them, since each individual "cell" of the machine is an independent nanomachine itself, all of them capable of rejoining with the others to form a new insect-body. An exponentially growing number of these little menaces could strip a planet bare in a matter of months/weeks, if placed strategically.Forget about sleeves and collars. You need one of two things: a pair of glasses or an implant in your brain.Either way, it gives you a computer display in your field of vision (either on the glass, or simple fake sensory information fed to your brain). When you go into a new store, advertisements could be tailored specifically to you... but, like those virtual ads on football & baseball fields, there's nothing physically to see. It's only fed via computer to your display.The computer itself would either simply be a connection to the global / interstellar network, or to your own computer at home / on the ship (both via some wireless connection). All your information can be stored elsewhere and displayed in your field of vision when you ask for it, appearing as a floating window in front of you, or as information laid overtop of real objects (a price tag hovering under a display, or a ? icon next to a painting so you can learn more about the artist's work).With the proper sensors, the glasses or implant can sense when you want to input data for, say, querying who manufactured this kitchen appliance. A voice command, or simply reaching out and tapping on a virtual keyboard could accomplish the job. See the movie Minority Report for a good example of that kind of interface (though they had physical screens for the most part).When you meet another person, your systems can query each other, pull up relevant information and you could then use it to search out more. Like finding a brief synopsis of this professor's latest published scientific paper, and quickly discovering reviews that say he's either a genius or a crackpot. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />An implant has advantages that it can also take into account other senses. You could have a phone conversation without the phone, "hearing" the voice sent directly into your brain, and then letting the implant pick up your own voice via your auditory nerves (as you hear yourself talk).The downside to all of this would be unwanted information, such as pop-up ads (Aqua Teen Hunger Force did a good job of parodying this problem. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) A virus could cause trouble, making it feed incorrect data to you, or overriding your own ID with someone else's (bad for telling those gun emplacements that you don't have the security clearance you should). Any system like this would need extremely good security, and local laws that prevent data hijacking.To steal a couple more ideas, there's the Smartgun system from Shadowrun, which displays a set of crosshairs in your vision when holding a properly equipped gun. Shooting from the hip is no longer as inaccurate! Not to mention getting range information and visual enhancements at the same time. From Ghost in the Shell, imagine pulling up live information about a car's whereabouts so you can plan an ambush.Hope those help give you some ideas. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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