[Jetmech Jr.]

...about how much energy it would have taken to do what the Lucifer supposedly did to Vasuda Prime, as well as what other ships took place in the bombardment?

[NGTM-1R]

I'm fairly sure the Lucifer was the only ship with orbit-to-surface capable weaponry in the Shivan fleet.

As for the energy: less then you think, probably. The Shivans didn't actually glass the planet, just rendered it unable to support life. Possibly they boiled away the oceans or something similar. They didn't actually have to level everything, so they didn't. There were survivors, after all.

[pyro-manic]

I think it was just the Lucifer that bombarded Vasuda Prime. As for energy, it depends. The cmdbrief just says "the surface was rendered uninhabitable" IIRC. That doesn't say much about what actually happened. There's the ani showing a city getting hit by a beam, but the Lucifer could also have used nuclear weapons or something similar - something like a Harbinger (or the Unknown Megabomb Shivan equivalent) would do an immense amount of damage to a planet - you'd get a blast radius of hundreds of km, and the heat, fallout and radiation blast would devastate a very large area. Something like the firestorm on Hiigara at the beginning of Homeworld is what I'd imagine Vasuda would be like after the attack.

As for energy, I don't know - perhaps a few hundred fusion bombs, at 250 Megatonnes each? That'd devastate Earth, so I'd imagine the same would apply to Vasuda.

Note: this is pure conjecture on my part - there isn't very much info about the razing of Vasuda...

[Jetmech Jr.]

Also, what range would you guess the Lucifer carried out the attack from?

[Carl]

a mass extinction would require about 100,000,000 megatons. that would render the planet uninhabitable for a short period of time.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Carl
a mass extinction would require about 100,000,000 megatons. that would render the planet uninhabitable for a short period of time.

That's assuming a single impact though (i.e a dinosaur killer). You could probably do the same over the 13 hour period the Lucifer had with many much smaller impacts.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by High Max
If you would get a blast radius of 100's of km then why does a Harbinger only have a blast radius of about 500m? 100's of km does not equal 500m. Are you saying that the blast radius is bigger if it explodes in an environment filled with oxygen?

Basically yes. Superheating of the air causes a shockwave that does much more damage in an atmosphere. It doesn't have to be oxygen. Any atmosphere will do.

[aldo_14]

Worth noting that Vasuda Prime wasn't particularly habitable in the first place, of course.......

[Corsair]

Yeah, wasn't it a lot of desert and such already?

[MatthewPapa]

It wouldnt be that hard to do for the shivans I bet. Theoretically humanity could do it to earth right now..... All the shivans did was probably nuke (or blast as both would leave hazardous radiactive elements) the major cities thus irradiating a large part of the planet so it was uninhabitable.

[pyro-manic]

The optimum range for a bombardment would be a fairly low orbit, within 1000km I'd say. Given that the Lucy was invulnerable, planetary defence batteries could be ignored, so it could close to whatever distance it liked to best attack. That's a good point about Vasuda being mostly desert as well - only the temperate zones and cities (I'm assuming a species that is as advanced as the Vasudans can build a city in a desert location) would need to be hit. Perhaps a more hospitable planet like Earth would take longer to destroy.

An interesting point to note is that the Lucy didn't use it's primary beams to attack Vasuda. If you look at the ani, it fires a large white beam from a point under it's hull (possibly where that spike hangs down). It may be a cock-up, or the Lucifer might have had weapons we didn't see it use against the Galatea or installations...

[Jetmech Jr.]

I didn't think the Lucifer could hit targets from that far away...

And I remember from one of the CB_Ani's that the Lucifer was firing from somewhere in what looked like a fairly high orbit.

I don't have that ani, pyro. Would like to see it...

[pyro-manic]

Ah. Looking at it again, I'm spouting pure crap. We don't actually see the Lucifer fire at all. But the angle of the ship compared to the planet is decidedly odd - it's facing away from the surface. It is a very large, white beam that hits the city though, so I wasn't wholly inaccurate...

Here's the ani though: www.freewebs.com/pyro-manic/cb_vprime.rar

Hmmm. Am I the only one who thinks the FS1 anis and movies kick the living **** out of the FS2 ones? That flyby of the Lucifer as it launches a swarm of fighters is a great example....

[Jetmech Jr.]

Oh, n/m, I have THAT one....

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by pyro-manic


Hmmm. Am I the only one who thinks the FS1 anis and movies kick the living **** out of the FS2 ones? That flyby of the Lucifer as it launches a swarm of fighters is a great example....

Yeah, they do; of course, FS2 had a different cinematic artist (the FS1 guy works in TV/movies now, such as Ice Age)

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by pyro-manic
Ah. Looking at it again, I'm spouting pure crap. We don't actually see the Lucifer fire at all. But the angle of the ship compared to the planet is decidedly odd - it's facing away from the surface. It is a very large, white beam that hits the city though, so I wasn't wholly inaccurate...
 

Not if that spiky thing on the side (as in the FS2 intro) is the actual beam weapon though; in that case it's an ok angle (depending on the exact target).