On 21 Sep 2016 at 15:31, Grimmund wrote:

> (It would be pretty cool for an SDB to paint something in orbit with
> LIDAR, and 30 seconds later, the target disappears in an expanding
> cloud of rapidly decaying subatomic particles.  LIDAR in this case
> mostly for theatrical effect; passive sensors should give you an
> excellent firing solution already.)

This reminds me of the idea mentioned decades back.

Somebody decides to invade this backwater system. Maybe after the
Long Night, or maybe it's a minor human race or an alien race.

Anyway, they're still using reaction drives, and don't have
contragravity nor standard manuever drives.

This has been determined by observation from a distance and maybe
capturing some isolated asteroid miners or the like.

the one unusual bit is that there's *lot* of ground to orbit traffic.

So the bad guys assume orbit and transmit demands. And start taking
*heavy* fire.

Y'see, all that ground to orbit traffic is done using laser launch
systems. individual lasrs in the array at ny given launch site are
decent weapons.

But working together like when they launch something, they are a
*nasty* weapon.

Forget missile attacks, or landing smaller vessels. They'll be shot
out of the sky without much effect on the"main weapon" effect of a
launch site.

It's going to take *heavy* ortillery, massively armored ships, and
major weapons.

Sure, they can get knocked out and the planet taken. But it's gonna
be costly.

Of course, no GM would ever do this to the PCs, right?

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com