Commanders are required to take reasonable precautions against inadvertent planetary bombardment, but provided you have taken those precautions you are off the hook even if you do whack a planet lightly. The kicker is that 'reasonable precautions' is at the whim of whatever Solly admiral is sent out to look things over - and it turns out that if the other side puts in a higher bid, lo and behold! your precautions weren't reasonable
Clearly, not letting the question come up was regarded as the better part of valour, at least in the Haven Sector. Still, it's not something you should ever take for granted, and as Yawata Crossing should suggest even genuinely reasonable precautions can leave you with an unholy mess.
TenakaFurey wrote:Hi!
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In his pearls of wisdom, David Weber also says...
"(and the Edict has always recognized that accidental hits, not targeted on the planet but on legitimate military targets, do not constitute a genocidal attack and hence do not trigger the Edict)."
My problem is this seems to directly contradict other information from the books which states such accidents DO constitute a breach. That it is the attackers responsibility to avoid them. Several times in the books, captains are very worried about accidentally infringing upon the Edict when targetting near planetary targets.
In context, this aspect of Kuzaks decision wrt pods doesn't make sense. Second Fleet wasn't likely to fire on the planet regardless of Kuzaks decision to use pods or not because its CO wasn't likely to take the chance of breaking the Eridani Edict.
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