Planetary Defenses

Ref: digitally remastered KHs pages 95-96<br /><br />Item 1 They quote the old maxim that shore batteries have the advantage over ships cause they cant be sunk and because any weapon that can be put on a ship can be built bigger for a shore battery.<br /><br />Planetary batteries can destroy a ship at the edge of its atmosphere but not beyond. <br /><br />What if the planetary battery is built on an airless moon? would it not have the same reach as a laser weapons for ships? so isn't the atmosphere's limit a bit too limiting?<br /><br />The book suggests that they are bigger and more powerful and that ship based lazer weapons cannot hurt ground tragets since their area of effect is so small. <br /><br />The book also suggest that Planetary defenses include missiles, which weapon would you say these are? With the ability to launch ships into space why would a missile cease to function beyond the atmosphere?<br /><br />I understand that the writers didn't want to let PCs be able to bombard and hold whole planets hostage from space, in fact the book says this explicitly, however some of these limitations seem all wrong?<br /><br />If the UPF could build big cannons (of the like seem in Empire Strikes Back ) that could shoot beyond the edge of the atmosphere and you combined that with mine fields around a planet, you could run planetary seige scenarios. the beseigers must first clear the mine fields and snipe at other orbital defenses from beyond effect range of the planetary defenses before commiting the landing shuttle wave.<br /><br />I'm thinking that atmosphere should have some sort of a range diffusion effect that prevents shooting beyond 6 hexes for battery weapons and 4 hexes for cannon weapons.<br /><br />Not sure what to do with the missile weapons suggested in that section.<br />