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Hotfoot wrote:

Adrian Laguna wrote:No, it's strategic bombardment. It's also legal, de facto if not necessarily de jure.

So you're saying that there weren't nukes pointed at major civilian population centers?

No, I'm saying that major civilian population centres can be valid military targets. If a city exists that somehow holds no military value then it's wrong to bomb it, but no such thing exist. The nuclear plans of both the US and USSR did not specifically target civilians, it's just that vital industry and infrastructure that a nation requires to wage war resides within major population centres. It also happens to be a fact that the most sure fire way to ensure target destruction is to nuke it, repeatedly.

Of course, it's also FALSE according to the Geneva Conventions, but why let a little thing like that get in the way of your argument.

What that says is you can't target civilians. I'm not advocating doing so.

So there is no argument here. Unless you want to argue that strategic bombardment constitutes genocide, that would require a different thread.

It is when you include EVERY CIVILIAN POPULATION CENTER.

Depends entirely on why you are targeting them. There are valid military reasons to attack towns and cities, and then there are invalid reasons to attack towns and cities.

Attacking civilian populations has always been a tactic of terror.

Of course, but I'm not advocating attacking the population, I'm advocating attacking targets of military value. If the population evacuated to the countryside, then the city would still be blasted.

It says you're willing to kill anyone and everyone that stands in your way. You can handwave it away and try to justify it, but the simple fact remains that you're saying that wiping out civilians is justifiable in any given war for any reason.

It's justifiable when waging total war. I never said it was acceptable for any war and any reason. Also, if the city agrees to stop helping the enemy war effort, by surrendering, then it is spared.

Never mind that in the case of conquest you're killing the majority of your trained workforce, you're killing millions, if not billions of sentient beings.

The point not conquest. The point is to deny industry and resources to the enemy without having to spend your own resources blockading or occupying the planet. That's what strategic bombardment is all about, destroying the enemy's ability to wage war. It is not about killing the civilian population, they're just collateral damage. If it was possible to wipe-out a city without killing anyone in it, then it would be done.

Now it's clear that you are really stretching the definition of a military target by including civilian population centers, but hey, that's okay. That gives us all a clearer picture of what you consider to be right and wrong. Clearly, you think it's just fine to kill civilians until they're all gone or they give up. It's an interesting philosophy, but it's not necessarily "right" or even "legal".

Population centres are military targets. They have industry, they have supply depots, they have transportation infrastructure. All of this aides the enemy war effort, therefore under total war it's a target.

Since you seem to like the letter of the law so much

You may have noticed I said it was legally de facto if not necessarily de jure. It means that it is legal in practice even if the letter of the law disagrees. I don't know of anyone ever being prosecuted for planning or executing indiscriminate bombardment, do you?

but the fact of the matter remains that what you consider to be an absolute certainty is in fact not. Granted, it's up to the players to see if they will bother getting upset about someone bombarding a city into rubble from orbit, but that's the gambit you make when you do general bombardment. In some cases, you can get away with it pretty easy. Other times, well, not so much.

I don't consider anything an absolute certainty. In practical terms it might be accepted as a fact of life or everyone could decided to get their panties in a bunch about it all at once. I was just saying that destroying most structures on a planet out of military necessity is not genocide even if between one half and two thirds of the population bites it. War on an interplanetary scale will carry horrendous casualties even if you're playing with the kid gloves on.

Adrian Laguna wrote:

Hotfoot wrote:

Adrian Laguna wrote:No, it's strategic bombardment. It's also legal, de facto if not necessarily de jure.

So you're saying that there weren't nukes pointed at major civilian population centers?

No, I'm saying that major civilian population centres can be valid military targets. If a city exists that somehow holds no military value then it's wrong to bomb it, but no such thing exist. The nuclear plans of both the US and USSR did not specifically target civilians, it's just that vital industry and infrastructure that a nation requires to wage war resides within major population centres. It also happens to be a fact that the most sure fire way to ensure target destruction is to nuke it, repeatedly.

Of course, it's also FALSE according to the Geneva Conventions, but why let a little thing like that get in the way of your argument.

What that says is you can't target civilians. I'm not advocating doing so.

The doublespeak here is phenomenal. In one breath you say you're not advocating targeting civilians, but in another you say there's no such thing as "targeting civilians" since any civilian population can be classified as a military objective, and any military objective is fair game.

Just grow some balls and admit you advocate killing civilians in order to end a war, even if doing so results in the total annihilation of a race. At least that way you'd be an honest asshole. I mean seriously. You're hemming and hawing by starting off with "Well gosh, civilians CAN be military targets" to going on to "there's no such thing as a civilian that couldn't be considered a military asset."

But it's all okay, because you're not advocating the destruction of the people in the city, just the city they happen to be in. That makes it all okay.

For all your hemming and hawing, it's clear that this is key to your argument:

If a city exists that somehow holds no military value then it's wrong to bomb it, but no such thing exist.

All the garbage you posted that you wrote to try and make yourself sound more reasonable is completely undone by the fact that you rely on that one line to justify the annihilation of a planetary population.

In EVERY serious war since the advent of strategic bombing, there have been constant and heavy attacks on "civilian" targets such as factory towns and cities. The way I see it, ground combat in an environment such as this will see extensive usage of tactical and strategic weapons- many of which, due to the tech level involved, will be "clean," as in non-radioactive. As a matter of fact, I think my own divisions will be organized along the lines of Cold War-era Pentomic units.

Massed nuclear or whatever bombardment from orbit will be an international incident. Measured use of strategic bombardment, including the nuking of industrial targets, spaceports, transport hubs, supply depots, and most importantly, enemy troop concentrations will be a common occurance in this sort of war.

By the way, for those who are unfamiliar with a Guarantee of Independence: it is a diplomatic stance in which a nation promises to take military steps in defense of another nation in any situation where that nation's independence is threatened. Sort of like a 1-way defensive alliance with no military co-operation.

Can we have three volunteers to sabotage the first three attempts to build the embassy station please? The fourth one will of course disappear in a time warp.

This exchange between Third and myself is on an open broadcast right next to Earth, by the way. No reason for the two of us to hog all the fun.

PS, how much firepower do you have in that shuttle, PS?

Holy powergaming, batman. When a heavy battleship says 'no, you don't board,' your next post isn't the docking clamps slamming onto the ship.

you let it get that close. It hasn't burned through yet; I'm sure you can swat it like a fly.

-edit- I.E, this is your last chance to surrender or open fire, tex.

Huh... two observations. One, the gestalt psychic groups tend to be absolute dicks who can't comprehend why they're pissing everyone else off. Two, living on Earth seems to be not worth it as every seems to go bugfuck insane when they get there.

It's certainly been interesting.

I have a mothership and a frigate near you two. Can I blow some pykers up, or should I wait for you two to scan me?

I can't speak for the Wanderers, but the League isn't so much a gestalt setup as it is a nation made up of weapons-grade psykers that have more or less all killed and/or survived attempted killings from other uncontrolled pubescent psykers before they reach their majority. And the League military isn't called Murderous Rage for no reason, they take the pissiest ones.

Redleader34 wrote:I have a mothership and a frigate near you two. Can I blow some pykers up, or should I wait for you two to scan me?

The Polish 1st Fleet Corps is on station, and the enemy vessel is what I would classify as a dreadnought. It would take time to integrate command and control, and this close to Katowica and Earth I'd prefer to be the only one shooting. However, I hope we can get through this without any shooting happening.

Academia Nut wrote:Huh... two observations. One, the gestalt psychic groups tend to be absolute dicks who can't comprehend why they're pissing everyone else off.

Well, there's many reasons for this, number one being the concept of 'individual' is almost entirely lost on the Wanderers. There is no individual within their own race. There is just The Gestalt, a single hivemind. Of course, the slave races they freed are still individuals, but that's a wierd relationship.

Hotfoot wrote:The doublespeak here is phenomenal. In one breath you say you're not advocating targeting civilians, but in another you say there's no such thing as "targeting civilians" since any civilian population can be classified as a military objective, and any military objective is fair game.

A "civilian population centre" and the civilian population itself are two distinct things. The first is just a long-winded way of saying "town or city", the second refers to the actual people. You can target a town without targeting the people in it. As illustrate by my example that evacuated cities still get nuked. Not that I'm realistically expecting such a thing to happen. If you live in a big city, and your planet/region/city isn't surrendering, you're fucked should the enemy decide to engage in massed bombardment.

Just grow some balls and admit you advocate killing civilians in order to end a war, even if doing so results in the total annihilation of a race. At least that way you'd be an honest asshole. I mean seriously. You're hemming and hawing by starting off with "Well gosh, civilians CAN be military targets" to going on to "there's no such thing as a civilian that couldn't be considered a military asset."

Again, I'm advocating attacking structures that generally have civilians in them. Said structures aid the enemy war effort. If you are waging total war then said structures are valid military targets. The people in them are not, and I never said they were.

But it's all okay, because you're not advocating the destruction of the people in the city, just the city they happen to be in. That makes it all okay.

It matters a lot both to the letter of the law and the general reaction to one's actions.

For all your hemming and hawing, it's clear that this is key to your argument:

If a city exists that somehow holds no military value then it's wrong to bomb it, but no such thing exist.

All the garbage you posted that you wrote to try and make yourself sound more reasonable is completely undone by the fact that you rely on that one line to justify the annihilation of a planetary population.

At least one third would survive by my reckoning.

If the bombardment fleet decides to take the extra time to carefully identify targets and hit them individually with relatively low yield weapons, then the great majority would survive. To use a real-life target as an example, instead of a spread of nukes all over New York City, it would be a low kiloton bomb blasting the financial district, and 1-3 blasting the port. Not sure what the death toll would be, but certainly no more than a few hundreds of thousands (I'm expecting several tens, but I might be underestimating). This is down from several million. The only problem is this takes time, so if the fleet is in a hurry the planet is probably SOL. Unless they surrender, but that can be difficult.

OK, I have an important point to make here on the topic of Adrian and Hotfoot's debate. The BIG mistake both of you are making is in claiming absolutely what the international community will or will not accept. The answer is, the acceptable level of collateral damage and civilian death is exactly as much collateral damage and civilian death the international community chooses to accept. If you bomb a planet into the dust and someone raises a huge stink, then you've clearly bombarded too much. If you manipulate the politics carefully, make the right friends, and speak the right words, and then launch a bombing of the exact same scope and destruction on another world and no body complains or sends their fleets to stop you, then you have clearly NOT bombarded too much.

There will be no mod-appointed morality in this game (unless my august two co-mods disagree, in which case we will converse at length and come to a conclusion on the matter.) Rather, the players will decide what is a horrible war-crime and what isn't. Historically, that's precisely how these things were decided.

-edit-

Oh, and PS: Did anyone hear that clattering sound just now in the Game Thread? I think it might have been a gauntlet being dropped...

Thirdfain wrote:OK, I have an important point to make here on the topic of Adrian and Hotfoot's debate. The BIG mistake both of you are making is in claiming absolutely what the international community will or will not accept. The answer is, the acceptable level of collateral damage and civilian death is exactly as much collateral damage and civilian death the international community chooses to accept. If you bomb a planet into the dust and someone raises a huge stink, then you've clearly bombarded too much. If you manipulate the politics carefully, make the right friends, and speak the right words, and then launch a bombing of the exact same scope and destruction on another world and no body complains or sends their fleets to stop you, then you have clearly NOT bombarded too much.

Yeah, I kind of made that point already Thirdfain.

I suppose we can end the discussion with Thirdfain's post.

Gauntlets dropping? Of course not. Please excuse the alien object about to impact with Sol.

Man, if my nation was in the Sol system, I'd be really nervous right now. Good thing I'm not. Alien powers ftw!

On an entirely unrelated note, I'm having fun with this whole freighter incident. The plot thickens!

Indeed, let it be said I am VERY glad that I removed my ambassadors from earth. Up yours Humans!

What the heck is a custodian? I couldn't find it in the OOB...

I am betting that it is a mass extractor egg.

Dark Hellion wrote:I am betting that it is a mass extractor egg.

Is that somehow dangerous? It sounded like it was supposed to be dangerous...