Atrocities?

[Lazerus]

yeah, they're not too good as beach balls

[Commy]

Well, if everyone is dead, and you pretty much represent the whole council, try to use the solar shade or something...or is it too early in the game?

[Lazerus]

too early, huge map aswell so nobody is dead ... yet

[dojoboy]

I'll use PB's and nerve-gas only in retaliation for like usage by the enemy. I've never nerve-stapled drones, likely never will.

[Lazerus]

Once you try it, you'll never go back !

[Commy]

That's right kids, it will addict you, so make sure never to start the habit...remember, use "positive" peer pressure on your friends...

[Mr. President]

I won't nuke until I have quantum planet busters, and only then if my enemies are being especially recalcitrant and refusing to be conquered normally. Usually they're just a deterrent, though it does look neat when they blow away an entire continent.

[Tommar]

I'm a builder type. If I survive to the time I CAN use PB's, there is no need for me to use them

[Sikander]

I don't recall ever doing an attrocity except for one inadvertent nerve stapling when I first got the game.

[Chaos Theory]

Atrocities are for using upon the deserving

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Lazerus
the russians once had the schematics for a H-bomb that would have been strong enough to wipe out most of the US during the cold war didnt they ? or am i imagining again ... sure i heard something like that in a documentary

see straybow, a fission PB doesn't exactly destroy that much as chaos has shown

"doesn't destroy that much"

The bomb Stalin didn't build was likely not more than 100MT. Powerful, yes, but since no subterranean facility can withstand a much smaller warhead it is a waste. Plus, it would've been too big for the bombers of the day to carry.

At the height of the Cold War we wouldn't be able to make a 1 km deep crater the equivalent of a one tile area (224k km² = 267 km radius) with every nuke on the planet! The K-T impactor crater is about that scale.

Maybe if you could arrange all the nukes into a perfect spherical pattern around a million gallon tritium/deuterium gas tank and detonate them simultaneously you might create a thermonuclear explosion one tenth of that scale... still not a hundredth of a PB...

[Nabvrimn]

If the charter was ever discarded I'd use nerve gas since I don't consider it an atrocity. (dead is dead whether by VX or funny raygun) I would also use planet busters against certain opponents or commit genocide if it was a strategic necessity. What I would never do is nerve staple. Nerve stapling is the ultimate abomination.

[Lazerus]

Managing to get a ship to alpha centauri would be a bigger challenge then making that weapon

[CEO Aaron]

I voted 'Buster Away' because I certainly have used atrocities amply in the past, and have no compunction about using them, but upon reflection, I really can't say I use them that often.

First of all, they're a very good way to get every faction on the board pissed off at you, unless you revoke the charter first. And if you're able to do that, odds are you don't really need to resort to such shenanigans anyway.

Second, most of them aren't that much more effective than normal 'ethical' play. Exceptions for PB's on concentrated enemy defences and gas on pesky aliens. Stapling, for example, usually doesn't wind up being THAT much more effective that using a couple of doctors, rushing a rec-commons, bringing in police, etc. And wiping out bases is just idiotic. If you're really dead-set on moving a base, having it crank out CPs faster than it can replenish pop works just fine. If you don't think you can hold the base very long, sell off the improvements and grant it to an allied or neutral faction. First, it makes them like you, second, it pisses them off at the recapturing faction.

Being a devout Morganite and unrepentant Free Marketeer, I find it's very important to keep at least some of the AI factions on your good side, the trade income is more than worth the trouble.

[cal_01]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
I voted 'Buster Away' because I certainly have used atrocities amply in the past, and have no compunction about using them, but upon reflection, I really can't say I use them that often.

First of all, they're a very good way to get every faction on the board pissed off at you, unless you revoke the charter first. And if you're able to do that, odds are you don't really need to resort to such shenanigans anyway.

Second, most of them aren't that much more effective than normal 'ethical' play. Exceptions for PB's on concentrated enemy defences and gas on pesky aliens. Stapling, for example, usually doesn't wind up being THAT much more effective that using a couple of doctors, rushing a rec-commons, bringing in police, etc. And wiping out bases is just idiotic. If you're really dead-set on moving a base, having it crank out CPs faster than it can replenish pop works just fine. If you don't think you can hold the base very long, sell off the improvements and grant it to an allied or neutral faction. First, it makes them like you, second, it pisses them off at the recapturing faction.

Being a devout Morganite and unrepentant Free Marketeer, I find it's very important to keep at least some of the AI factions on your good side, the trade income is more than worth the trouble.

Actually, obliterating a base is quite useful, imo. Most of the time, you don't plan on holding enemy bases in the offensive meta-game unless it has a bunch of good facilities already built; it just takes too much time to rebuild the social net and you're better off just using a few key bases as "command points." Besides, conquering one or two civs tends to add quite a bit of drones to your colonies.

And I think I posted something else about obliterating bases with key SPs that the enemy was in danger of getting (whether it was you or another faction that had it); it's better to just take the trade hit than to see them get the SP.