Intergalactic Summit

Yes, killing people means that Sansha can't kidnap them and make them his slaves. Got to keep the biomass banks full, right Thessalonia?

You would be surprised at how little interest I have in biomass these days, as an engineer.

Here's my reasoning, sans moral pleas so as to better slot into the capsuleer mentality.

Wars, historically, have tended to work upon the concept of escalations. The famous phrase "they send one of yours to the hospital? You send one of theirs to the morgue" fits quite well for this. These escalations are not unreversable, and history is also full of events where presented with the option to take an eye for an eye, the offended party has instead taken a lesser, but still worthwhile step.

The Serpentis have elites and non-elites, same as anyone else. On the planets controlled by serpentis, there are many human beings who worth under the Serpentis, technically count as employees of the Serpentis, and yet had absolutely no say in, or knowledge of, the events that took place above Rilnais.

To take a few ships for purposes of intelligence gathering? Fine. To kill the leaders who planned the assaults? Sure. Hell, if you are of a particularly retributive mindset, an argument could be made that the leaders who planned the attack need to suffer rather than just be removed.

But to glass an entire planet because of the actions of those elites? Unacceptable. Those people, given the option of a different way, are entirely likely to turn their back on their Serpentis masters, and so glassing them along with the planet is needless, and wasteful.

You're assuming that the criminal, in this case, cares more about the people under their command then themselves. If you take a planet, it will be recorded merely as a financial loss.

However, since the federation considers Rilnais to be more than a financial loss, the simple arithmetic of the matter is that the Serpentis will have come out ahead in such an exchange. They will be temporarily set back, whereas the federation will have failed in one of its basic duties.

In short, traditional power dynamics fails to encompass the mindset of the non-state actor. Catch the heads. Punish the heads. Leave the civilians alone.

If you want to join them just to spite me instead of protecting yourself and your colleagues right to mine, you got bigger issues than me (and that's saying a lot).

Congrats to I-Red to a job well done.

The point is that mass destruction doesn't solve problems unless you are in a position to make it complete. The last time the Gallente people seriously contemplated this solution to a problem it resulted in a civil war in the Federation, a long and expensive conflict and the creation of a hostile super-power right next door to Federation space.

Counter productive.

And so the cycle continues, until someone steps in to stop it.

On this, I think we don't need the qualification. One thing that Nation supporters and supporters of the Caldari state have in common is that we both have within our immediately accessable memories the horrors of planetary bombardment.

I'd advise those who think it is a wise answer to the Serpentis Problem to experience one themselves before they go advocating death from orbit.

So then what would you moral paragons of justice suggest as retaliation against the Serpentis? Threaten them with words? Waggle our fingers?

Someone suggested going after the leaders specifically. Do you think more leaders will not simply fill the vacuum and facilitate another raid against a city? Or perhaps an entire planet?

When do we have the right to strike back? Do we need to wait for one of our own worlds to be destroyed? Perhaps a station cracked from within by some criminal organization as a reminder that we are to kowtow to them or else. This isn't a sovereign nation we're talking about. It's a criminal organization.

Retribution must be delivered in some form, swiftly, and ruthlessly.

To be honest, he has a point. Serpentis aren't stupid enough to make the same mistake again if they see the **** others got for it. Even their most brazen leaders wouldn't pull a stunt like that if they saw the guy before him get the Anvent Eturrer treatment...

Eh, the more I think about it, the less acceptable wiping a planet out looks...