cthia wrote:Something else that occurs to me. In a series, like Dahak, where there is this sort of massssss extinction, how does a series continue? For instance, in the Honorverse, if Haven and Manticore destroyed each other's planets then game over.
Even the League wouldn't last long if a few key planets are obliterated.
Trying, oh trying, to avoid getting into League death conditions....
Anyway. You can wreck planets and carry on when you have a lot of planets, or when one side or the other is unable or unwilling to finish the other off entirely. The Achuultani in the Dahak series tend to miss some planets in their sweeps of this section of the galaxy. There's a reason for that that I leave you to read and find out. Meanwhile, for the last several hundred million years, the residents of this part of the galaxy have not, planetoid class starships notwithstanding, have not been able to locate and destroy the Achuultani bases or home system(s).
Also, it seems that with that kind of an energy budget, conventional warfare and ships would be pointless.
Nuclear weapons haven't made conventional forces pointless. Stupendous destruction isn't a solution for all problems, certainly not a cost-effective or ethically satisfactory one. Those planetoid ships, for instance, carry sublight parasite craft including "battleships" and fighters, along with ground combat troops and armored vehicles. They're built to cover the whole combat scale spectrum and it all gets some use.
Also - why not fort up in a single system sphere? Mostly for having many star systems, and that kind of massive defense of each of them wasn't practical as a matter of resources - material and human, initial and ongoing. And the usual problems with fixed defenses apply: they invite defeat in detail since they cannot cover one another, cover other threatened spots or flee when they aren't up to winning here and now.
One system in the Dahak universe got a practically impervious defense, just because of its centrality. It wasn't a plan for every system.