what is an Eradani Edict what is not?

Lord Skimper wrote:Makes me wonder what the yield of the Kew was, said it was a low yield, yet in CoG low yield damaged but didn't destroy an ordinary apartment building, rather than a military government hardened building.

Cauldron of Ghosts eARC wrote:
Whoever designed this place wasn’t concerned with the sort of minimal amenities that go into full citizens’ housing. They just wanted something they could pack people into, and atriums and air shafts use valuable space. They didn’t feel like wasting any of that on you people, and that means your tower here is really one solid gridwork of ceramacrete walls and floors. Taking it down with a single KEW would require them to write off a lot of other real estate in the process.

Lord Skimper wrote:Makes me wonder what the yield of the Kew was, said it was a low yield, yet in CoG low yield damaged but didn't destroy an ordinary apartment building, rather than a military government hardened building.

dreamrider wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:Makes me wonder what the yield of the Kew was, said it was a low yield, yet in CoG low yield damaged but didn't destroy an ordinary apartment building, rather than a military government hardened building.

According to DW, kew, at least Manticoran kew, and presumably others in major navies since it is a mature tech, are not just "high" vs "low". They come in several base sizes, but more importantly are dial-able, across a range of yields from about the scale of a very small tac nuke up to mile-wide glassy crater stuff. Presumably this is controlled largely via launch/re-entry speed adjustments.

dreamrider

The Mark 87 “Damocles” Kinetic Strike Package was a containerized weapon system designed to fit into any standard shipboard magazine and sized to deploy through a counter-missile launch tube. The KSP could be configured with several different types of payloads, but the most common variant—like the one which had been deployed from Quentin Saint-James number three CM tube shortly after she’d entered orbit—carried a rack of six of the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps’ M412 kinetic penetrators. Each penetrator was a six hundred and fifty kilogram dart fitted with its own small, short-lived but powerful impeller drive, a capacitor ring for onboard power, and a guidance package. By controlling acceleration rates and times, the M412 could produce an effective yield of up to one megaton…but this particular application called for a slightly smaller sledgehammer than that.

The projectile impacted at barely one tenth of a percent of light speed. The tower was enormous, the projectile wasn’t all that huge, and its velocity might seem positively snail-like compared to the eighty percent of light speed a Mark 23 could attain, but it was sufficient. In fact, its produced an effective yield of just over sixty-seven kilotons as it struck dead center on the tower’s roof at an angle of exactly ninety degrees and punched straight down, pithing it with a spike of plasma that vaporized everything in its path.

Admittedly, the results were positively anemic compared to those of the far heavier strikes Yucel had used to obliterate “rebellious towns” as object lessons, but that suited Aivars Terekhov just fine. The structure’s massive ceramacrete walls confined and channeled the blast, and the towers around the impact point acted as cofferdams, further confining the blast and restricting the damage. Yet the explosion still reached out to obliterate the Presidential Palace and everything else (including the residential towers in which the System Unity and Progress Party’s leadership and the majority of the transtellars’ off-world personnel had been quartered) in a three-block radius. Within the primary zone of destruction virtually nothing survived; outside it, except for shock damage, there was remarkably little devastation.

Lord Skimper wrote:Technically it wouldn't cause mass death to anyone who would leave. Whether it could be done or not is another matter. Particular in a universe where everything has a basis in real science. Like compensators and wedges. Directional artificial gravity plating, life extension that only works on kids. Hyperspace, terminus gravity waves ... Real science?

Weird Harold wrote:<sigh>

The Mark 87 “Damocles” Kinetic Strike Package was a containerized weapon system designed to fit into any standard shipboard magazine and sized to deploy through a counter-missile launch tube. The KSP could be configured with several different types of payloads, but the most common variant—like the one which had been deployed from Quentin Saint-James number three CM tube shortly after she’d entered orbit—carried a rack of six of the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps’ M412 kinetic penetrators. Each penetrator was a six hundred and fifty kilogram dart fitted with its own small, short-lived but powerful impeller drive, a capacitor ring for onboard power, and a guidance package. By controlling acceleration rates and times, the M412 could produce an effective yield of up to one megaton…but this particular application called for a slightly smaller sledgehammer than that.

The projectile impacted at barely one tenth of a percent of light speed. The tower was enormous, the projectile wasn’t all that huge, and its velocity might seem positively snail-like compared to the eighty percent of light speed a Mark 23 could attain, but it was sufficient. In fact, its produced an effective yield of just over sixty-seven kilotons as it struck dead center on the tower’s roof at an angle of exactly ninety degrees and punched straight down, pithing it with a spike of plasma that vaporized everything in its path.

Admittedly, the results were positively anemic compared to those of the far heavier strikes Yucel had used to obliterate “rebellious towns” as object lessons, but that suited Aivars Terekhov just fine. The structure’s massive ceramacrete walls confined and channeled the blast, and the towers around the impact point acted as cofferdams, further confining the blast and restricting the damage. Yet the explosion still reached out to obliterate the Presidential Palace and everything else (including the residential towers in which the System Unity and Progress Party’s leadership and the majority of the transtellars’ off-world personnel had been quartered) in a three-block radius. Within the primary zone of destruction virtually nothing survived; outside it, except for shock damage, there was remarkably little devastation.

Presumably, the bottom end of the range is simply dropping the KEW with no acceleration except gravity or decelerating the warhead below even terminal velocity so the effect is similar to dropping a 600Kg concrete bomb on a pick-up truck from 200-1000 meters altitude.

Jonathan_S wrote: That passage always bothered me, from the moment I read it in the eARC; specifically the parenthetical "(including the residential towers in which the System Unity and Progress Party’s leadership and the majority of the transtellars’ off-world personnel had been quartered)"

That he vaporized Yucel and the Solarian gendarmes; fine. That the Presidential Palace was collateral damage; ok (the President and at least senior staff were involved in the war crimes Yucel had committed). But all the transtellars’ off-world personnel (and any family that lived with them)?? Most of them wouldn't have deserved a death sentence.


Admittedly (and I said at the time) that use of the past tense is ambiguous. Had they ceased to be quartered there at some point before the 67 kt explosion obliterated the towers? (for example if the transtellers evacuated because of the planetary unrest that led to the orbital destruction of several towns)

I'd hoped that the wording would have been clarified in the final version; but it wasn't.

(And I assume that Terekhov could have caused even less collateral damage if he wanted; for example by using multiple less powerful perpetrators. Or at least a couple to break a path into the tower interior before dropping the 67 kt one; so the tower would contain, or at least focus upwards, more of the blast)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:<sigh>

Quote From Shadow of Freedom

The Mark 87 “Damocles” Kinetic Strike Package was a containerized weapon system designed to fit into any standard shipboard magazine and sized to deploy through a counter-missile launch tube. The KSP could be configured with several different types of payloads, but the most common variant—like the one which had been deployed from Quentin Saint-James number three CM tube shortly after she’d entered orbit—carried a rack of six of the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps’ M412 kinetic penetrators. Each penetrator was a six hundred and fifty kilogram dart fitted with its own small, short-lived but powerful impeller drive, a capacitor ring for onboard power, and a guidance package. By controlling acceleration rates and times, the M412 could produce an effective yield of up to one megaton…but this particular application called for a slightly smaller sledgehammer than that.

The projectile impacted at barely one tenth of a percent of light speed. The tower was enormous, the projectile wasn’t all that huge, and its velocity might seem positively snail-like compared to the eighty percent of light speed a Mark 23 could attain, but it was sufficient. In fact, its produced an effective yield of just over sixty-seven kilotons as it struck dead center on the tower’s roof at an angle of exactly ninety degrees and punched straight down, pithing it with a spike of plasma that vaporized everything in its path.

Admittedly, the results were positively anemic compared to those of the far heavier strikes Yucel had used to obliterate “rebellious towns” as object lessons, but that suited Aivars Terekhov just fine. The structure’s massive ceramacrete walls confined and channeled the blast, and the towers around the impact point acted as cofferdams, further confining the blast and restricting the damage. Yet the explosion still reached out to obliterate the Presidential Palace and everything else (including the residential towers in which the System Unity and Progress Party’s leadership and the majority of the transtellars’ off-world personnel had been quartered) in a three-block radius. Within the primary zone of destruction virtually nothing survived; outside it, except for shock damage, there was remarkably little devastation.

End Quote

Presumably, the bottom end of the range is simply dropping the KEW with no acceleration except gravity or decelerating the warhead below even terminal velocity so the effect is similar to dropping a 600Kg concrete bomb on a pick-up truck from 200-1000 meters altitude.

That passage always bothered me, from the moment I read it in the eARC; specifically the parenthetical "(including the residential towers in which the System Unity and Progress Party’s leadership and the majority of the transtellars’ off-world personnel had been quartered)"

That he vaporized Yucel and the Solarian gendarmes; fine. That the Presidential Palace was collateral damage; ok (the President and at least senior staff were involved in the war crimes Yucel had committed). But all the transtellars’ off-world personnel (and any family that lived with them)?? Most of them wouldn't have deserved a death sentence.


Admittedly (and I said at the time) that use of the past tense is ambiguous. Had they ceased to be quartered there at some point before the 67 kt explosion obliterated the towers? (for example if the transtellers evacuated because of the planetary unrest that led to the orbital destruction of several towns)

I'd hoped that the wording would have been clarified in the final version; but it wasn't.

(And I assume that Terekhov could have caused even less collateral damage if he wanted; for example by using multiple less powerful perpetrators. Or at least a couple to break a path into the tower interior before dropping the 67 kt one; so the tower would contain, or at least focus upwards, more of the blast)

pokermind wrote:Hmm. what is an Eradani Edict violation, and what isn't?

Basically whatever the Solaran League says, or more realistically whatever the vile corrupt mandarins say is or is not

Poker

Vince wrote:I suggest reading Expanding upon the Eridani Edict. Essentially, the use of human shields by the side being called to surrender does not automatically make the actions of the side that is demanding the surrender a violation of the Eridani Edict, the side being called on to surrender has the responsibility NOT to attempt the use of human shielding in an attempt to prevent military action against it.