Wings Over the Pyre

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: Helloween - High Live (Disc One) - Time Of The Oath, The (Squid's Redoubt)

Bit of a reply to the post someone else made on the Sins of a Solar Empire forum yesterday:

……if the only way to conquer a planet is by genocide. I know, I know, its only a game, but am I the only one who doesn’t like bombarding the entire surface of a planet with nuclear weaponry? The concept of nuking a planet’s entire civilian population makes me a little uneasy, even if its just a game. How about a forced evacuation or some kind of surrender if you coordinate a successful siege for a certain length of time? Is there no other option except planetary extinction? If there is anything I would ask of a future release it would be the ability to wage war with some code of honor. (OK, I’ll get off my soap box now, lol)

This caused an endless cascade, but there came a time even I had to weigh in:

It’s probably worth noting that the Advent have an entire interstellar cannon that fires PURE F’IN LOVE across massive distances, impacts a target gravity well, and causes the people on the planet in question to swoon and think happy thoughts about them.

If it’s any help, play the Advent and imagine the bolts of psychic energy descending from the heavens over the besieged worlds is made of Pink Ponies and Pure Rainbows, convincing the populace that you’re In The Right. And there you go. Tilt your head just so and it kind of looks that way, too.

Me, I’m blowing merry Hell out of the homes of politicians, pacificists, and other undesirables to free the poor downtrodden masses to toil in my space-mines in freedom.

As much as I gripe about the twitch-reaction speed of 12-year olds in Call of Duty 4 and how frequently they shoot me in the face while chatting amiably about the rampant faggotry, at least they’re keen enough to know there are some people that just have to be shot in the face to properly be dealt with. It’s been an inviolate and understood tool of statecraft since there were three guys standing around and two of them started reaching for a rock because the third was trying to take their women. (This is differentiated from the alternative case, the origin of government, where the two reached for rocks to take the third’s woman. And so began the organized taking perfectly good things from good people that they’d collectively get less use out of than if they’d simply left it alone in private ownership.)

My personal feeling is that if you want to hand-wring about the kind of lives you’re taking on poor planetary environments, perhaps you ought not to be playing games that involve hundreds to thousands of ships populated by abstract tens of thousands being blown to shite every hour. You know, just a feeling. There is no Amish faction in Sins.

And thank Hades for that.