The volume of weapons

[Captain Jonah]

Bearing in mind that small ship weapons are, as a threat to a planet or highport, nothing compared to the mass kinetic potential of their ships!

True, but even legal 'civilian' weapons are pretty scary - sitting on the planetary surface, a ship with a couple of pulse lasers in a turret can waste every vehicle and building within direct line of sight disconcertingly quickly if it were to put its mind to it; the effective impact of a starship weapon is up there with pocket nukes....

The possibility always exists, same as the chance of terrorists taking over a LPG ship, heading close to a port city, blowing the cells to release the gas and setting off the worlds biggest FAE. Nuke level blast. Ships like this are offloaded away from the shore, people keep an eye on them for accidents never mind deliberate attacks.

Same with ship weapons. Downside ships should be parked in bays with berms and concrete/ferocrete buttressed walls around them in case they go bang or crash. Start burning through those walls and the local marines come knock on your hull will breaching charges or the starport drops a proper missile on your head or a meson crew gets some practice that week.

Anything you can do can be countered, you may get away with killing thousands by turing your ships lasers on the downport just as you take off but you will not survive to do it again and with EMS scanners you may not survve to even fore as your weapons powering up trigger all sorts of alarms then the meson crews get yet more practice that week.

 

[rinku]

That's why I suggested rocks. Pick a nice, low albedo asteroid and nudge it into a collision course a few months previously. More of a distraction tactic - but if one, why not dozens, or hundreds? Chances are they won't be picked up until relatively close to impact, at which point the defenders are going to have to scramble to address them... at which point your actual attack launches.

Ultra-tech version: Asteroid or suicide ship with a black globe generator. Or just a BGG ship pushing and hiding the asteroid. Turn off the globe and vector away shortly before projected impact...

 

[BP]

Bearing in mind that small ship weapons are, as a threat to a planet or highport, nothing compared to the mass kinetic potential of their ships!

True, but even legal 'civilian' weapons are pretty scary - sitting on the planetary surface, a ship with a couple of pulse lasers in a turret can waste every vehicle and building within direct line of sight disconcertingly quickly if it were to put its mind to it; the effective impact of a starship weapon is up there with pocket nukes....

Of course. Though not necessarily so much for facilities equivalent to starships (highports).

But more importantly, that threat can be neutralized. I.e., military scale weapons can effectively 'eliminate' this threat (if they are lacking, then the ability to enforce weapons laws is also lacking). As mentioned, practically eliminating the threat of a ship scale, powered cruise missile is another matter.

IMTU, space is like international waters (and, as in the RW, some governments make their own rules in this regard). When nearing 'territory', requirements range form - don't; arms must be accounted for and safed; its ok, since we can eliminate you if needed; to, we can't stop you (but we can whine about it).