Temorarily Lifting the Ban on Superweapons?

The conversation came up in chat about temporarily lifting the superweapon rule for the Mandolorian Holy War in favor of a higher stakes SL with the possibility of blowing up a few planets. While I agree that it would be more interesting, please keep in mind that his is not something that the players, or even the council could do without the expressed support of the Whills. And this should be treated as hypothetical.

Now obviously this would raise the bar high on the storyline and would certainly make things more dark. The rules would obviously be that planets must be volunteered by their stewards in order to be a possible target and should a planet be targeted it would make a great excuse for a battle, destroy the superweapon or the planet gets destroyed. I think this would bring much more of the original trilogy feel to things and there would be actual danger involved.

The overlying SL could be that one side has created a superweapon, used it, and the goal now is to destroy it before things just get worse. This opens a new possibilities for fleet battles, boarding assaults, and spy/infiltration storylines. It also would be a great way to trim some of the fat around JvS by offing some underused and unappreciated planets by giving them a meaningful exit, and of course you some of the planets listed as possibilities could be saved by strong and organized opposition. Then once the superweapon is destroyed the ban is reinstated and all goes on as normal.

So what do you think JvS'ers? Yay or Nay?

Again please remember that this is a hypothetical question and should in no way be taken as an attempt to undermine the Whills or the Natural Laws, it is simply a question of your opinion on the matter. Comments obviously are not required but encouraged in either viewpoint. Please keep things civilized and courteous. The "I don't care" option was considered but removed for a clean vote, sorry fence sitters lol.

I am a fan of superweapons and using them as an apocalyptic plot device. Mcguffin or not, a faction can never be taken seriously until they blow up a planet.. >:}

Tough call...on one hand, it's fun to blow up planets and do high stakes trench runs. Which is kinda what made Star Wars so fun. I still friggin' love the Battle of Yavin in ANH. I'll watch that a million times in a row!

On the flipside, do you really think anyone's gonna volunteer a world with a lot of RP traffic to get blown up? I can't see Yavin or Corellia or Korriban or any other major Jedi/Sith/Imperial/Republic/any other faction putting forth their main worlds for consideration. I can only see people volunteering planets that aren't used and that no one would miss. Which is fine, but that's not very high stakes. Also, if a major world does get blown, what do we do about ongoing RP's there?

Awesome, but impractical.

That's not entirely true, I would volunteer Thyferra for it. And with the leading producer of Bacta out of the picture there would be much more trouble with wounds and even death. I think that makes for a very high stakes world, even if there isn't much RP on it.

yeah i'm gonna have to go with lifting the ban for an SL of this nature. It just feels right ya know?

Canon was supposed to be the point of JvS, it even says it in the Natural Laws, I'd be against anyone permantly removing any planets as that changes canon significantly. A few people may think its great fun, but I don't think most people want to change canon that much. Plus it kind of takes away the "no one is forced to take part" rule of this rp if you start removing worlds that have meaning or rp locations for those that are staying out of it.

Well i share those sympathiesbut do you really think we'd actually torch a world? I don't think either the Council nor the Whills would really let a world explode for the sake of an RP... I mean, I was under the assumption that it would play out as either a temporary world, a large asteroid base or evenjust same random that is not on the boards gets destroyed, not in actual RP but as backstory. If that happens then the superweapon will never be used on a planet on our boards and everyone will be able to talk about it's power and scariness

Just to add I have no issue with the superweapons part, just the destroying canon locations part.

[quote="Amaranth":1eucd7w0]Canon was supposed to be the point of JvS, it even says it in the Natural Laws, I'd be against anyone permantly removing any planets as that changes canon significantly. A few people may think its great fun, but I don't
think most people want to change canon that much. [/quote:1eucd7w0]

I agree with this. It could be an interesting plot device to have a weapon capable of destroying worlds since it would add a neat element of impending doom needing to be averted, but I wouldn't want to actually have a canon world destroyed. It already seems silly enough that Alderaan is still around to me ;p

Yes to the weapons, no to destroying canon worlds.

I volunteer Froz. Let's blow our favorite little multi-jointed aliens out of the verse!

I support the superweapons ban lift for a major plot and I would even suggest that a planet that is due for archival gets the axe.

I like Jabiim, I have RP'ed there but it is not used very much unless I decide to have a war there. Garqi is the same boat. I would let a superweapon devastate either of them. Dark Tide would be out for blood. It would be great.

The superweapon doesn't have to be something like the Death Star. Why can't it be something that destroys the atmosphere and kills the life on the planet so that after the war, it needs to be massively terraformed and repopulated? That way if someone wants to have it unarchived or saved, we can "rebuild" it.

Bottom line, while I am a massive fan of sticking close to canon, there is canon evidence to support the idea. Plus, we're not a museum of preservation of canon. We're a fanon RP site. Let's blow something up.

Hell...I'd throw in Kuat if you're looking for high stakes.

Total support on this as well. If the planet is going to be destroyed death star style then yes I agree with the archival part (Or any planet but for the sake of keeping the general populace happy that would suffice)

As our beautiful Sin has stated it could be something else. There are countless bioweapons that could do the job. I myself have always wanted to go and drop a 5km asteroid on Mannan which is large enough to burn up to atmosphere, kill all life blot out the sun and totally kriff the planet up. Hell that isnt even a super weapon and it could do happen any day due to randomness of stuff.

Bottom line, lift the ban for a short while but regulate it so that not everyone and their dog have a superweapon.

Steal some YV tech and smash a moon into a planet's surface... it could be salvageable

Wow I thought this would be a landslide one way or the other but it's dead even. Nice, though I wish more people would have commented when they voted. The opinions are the best part about opinion polls.

Anyway there are easy answers to some of the concerns here, for example inactive planets would be a great place to have a "deathstar" threat, while they don't mean much to us OOC they could have some significance IC and if no one is using them then they're going to be archived anyway.

The term superweapon isn't exclusive to things that can blow up a planet in my mind, it could be a biological virus like the one used on Firrerre or something similar that happened at Malachor V or Katarr. Or even Taris is an example of what could happen (I know bombardment and superweapon are different, I was just kind of lumping them together) when a superpower sets it mind to something.

It could get pretty creative when you think about possible ways we could up the ante on the war.

Mimics Adriens comment. I thought having a death star was like illegal although it would be really fun to RP attacking being attacked etc, etc, etc.

Tricky question.

Personally, I - like always - am up for shaking up the status quo. Folks are very much complacent with how things are, which to me is why nothing ever changes and why RP on the site has gotten stagnant. So a superweapon? I'm all for that. And not just some dinky backwater planet, either. I'm of the opinion that each major faction should be willing to offer up one of their major planets (Yavin, Mandalore, and Korriban for example) to really up the ante. If that doesn't cause some widespread character development and major shifts in paradigms, I don't know what will.

Now, that said, I can't help but think it's only fair that there be some chance for limited reintegration of whatever world did get asploded. Say Coruscant is on the table. Obviously, nobody in their right mind is going to let Coruscant remain a lifeless husk of a world after the war ends. But reconstruction of a planet should take time, on the scale of RL months, with scars that could be indelible (for instance, Yavin is largely able to be rebuild, but the land around the former Praxeum isn't salvageable and the Praxeum itself is beyond repair) altogether. After all, if the damage from a superweapon could be cleaned up in a matter of days or ignored altogether, it's not a very good superweapon. And, perhaps more to the point, having the thing is pointless in the long run. A superweapon that never fires, or has a negligible effect? Ooh. Scary.

On the whole, I'm on board with taking this to its logical extreme (and I know how unpopular that idea can be, believe me).

So, to sum up; if we're going to have a superweapon, the only two options that matter are to fold or go all-in.

Personally I'd love to have to go blow up some "Mando Beskar super attack cube" but I do agree that if we are going to destroy something the only thing that would be fully agreed on would be something that's going to be archived, although personally I wouldn't mind seeing a well known location obliterated in some life destroying virus attack and then requires rebuilding. Or maybe just get some planet devastator type things and only destroy parts of a planet or two.

I say we blow some Sithspit up. As long as the folks RPing on the planet don't mind, it shouldn't be a problem. And hey, there's the terraforming project to look forward to afterwords.

Base Delta Zero for the win.

eeeehhhh...... i am kinda against i...

[quote="Diamonte":2vs29pxc]eeeehhhh...... i am kinda against i...[/quote:2vs29pxc]

Care to elaborate on that? Just curious. I mean, is it because of the whole changing canon thing, like Sheeps' argument, or just because you don't like the idea of letting someone have a superweapon? Which is ok, but why? Why you no like the idea?

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Look, as I have a planet that I am looking after, Froz, that has no RP on it, except for what I do with it, the idea of a superweapon plot to boost RP there sounds pretty cool. And while Froz is not high stakes, it is a part of the Republic, and the Republic is a high stakes kind of faction. Lets say if someone took the time to destroy Froz as an example of their power, this could very likely unlock some fabulous RP for the rest of the universe as well as archive a location that sees absolutely no RP and seems to have little significance in the, I would say grand plot of JvS, but there really isn't one, so I will stick with: NO ONE IS RPING ON MY PLANET, LET"S kriff GET BLOW IT UP.