Rakhasa Wrote:It's the principle of the thing -weapons in your city walls (even your flying city walls) are defensive; weapons in an armored ship are offensive. It's a show of trust on the part of the convention. "Trust", not stupidity: That's why the Space Patrol has Section 9, to check if the weapons are defensive. Well, or they would if Section 9 existed. Which it doesn't, just for the record.#I do not think it makes sense to distinguish between "offensive" and "defensive" placed weapons. Too many Fen have (semi-) mobile homes, which means that they either get punished for being mobile or the whole treaty doesn't make sense at all.
Yes, there are countless ways to take advantage of that loophole -but the kind of people to take such advantage would ignore the treaty anyway.
Another argument for limiting the total amount of "strategic" weapons (not only "offensive" ones) is that you do not need strategic weapons for defense. You can do fine with normal ones, because you have the advantage of the better armor (for example thick asteroids) and the attacker has not.
Quote:The main problem I find with the treaty and the inspections -which I agree in general- are that they seem to place the Factions a suspects as a starting point. Surprise inspections by foreign officers are the sort of thing you do to hostile nations under international sanctions, not to your allies. Your allies, you pretend to believe then when they claim they are following the rules (and use your spies to check it they are actually telling the truth)I think if you have some control who does this checks, it might be possible to persuade a lot of Fen to do it.
And better have open inspections than secret spies everywhere.