You probably wouldn't see many fights where you are firing at the resource itself.
No, but if you can control travel to and from the resource, then you can park your forces there, and say, shut off the population's air supply. Better yet, threaten to do so, unless they all get onboard a shuttle.
A far more likely scenario would be to simply drive your competitor out of business. If they keep getting sabotaged, it becomes unprofitable for them to operate (it becomes a 'cursed' outpost, wages go up, you have to make repairs). Then you can easily take their stuff (or buy it on the cheap when they are going out of business).
Plenty of precedent for this tactic. It's been used by labor unions and informal groups of workers for nearly a couple of centuries now.
Maybe someone can weaponize psychological disorders or sociological pathologies this way? It's harder to make a group work well together than it is to make a group that is dysfunctional. Maybe this is already happening?
No, but if you can control travel to and from the resource, then you can park your forces there, and say, shut off the population's air supply. Better yet, threaten to do so, unless they all get onboard a shuttle.
Sure, but the important part is perfect visibility. You and your opponent know exactly where each other are at all times. If you blockade, you will be a sitting duck for surface to ship weapons. You have to maintain a high velocity to avoid this. The alternative then is to intercept their transports, and even if you do that, you still have to refuel somewhere. (It seems like it might be better sending unmanned missiles to 'intercept' the transports anyway). And the refueling platform or space ship or missile platform will probably be a sitting duck at some point.
Maybe someone can weaponize psychological disorders or sociological pathologies this way? It's harder to make a group work well together than it is to make a group that is dysfunctional. Maybe this is already happening?
I think this is quite likely, you could even engineer people who are simply annoying and send them to cause trouble within in a small mining colony. For example, a person who chews loudly, has bad breath and terrible BO would put a huge strain on a group if you had to share sparse quarters and limited oxygen.
Throw in a sociopath with a strong will to power and you've at least got an 8 part miniseries.
If you are to try a blockade, I'd have to assume you'll bring enough matte with you to start dropping relatively heavy chunks of matter onto anything you see missiles being launched from.
Send a squadron of cheap robot ships that are painted in EM-absorbing materials, operate at cryogenic temperatures, communicate only on tight-beam lasers, and beam all of their minuscule waste heat in one direction. These ships would make a final course correction by ejecting cold mass, and take up station near the resource. When an enemy transport comes nearby, I'd send a command to activate one of my robot ships and have it launch a missile. Heck, since at that point it would be disposable, I'd have it spin-up to high-temp torchship mode and have it be the missile.
The enemy won't know how many of these things I have. However, the real purpose would be to get them to react and maneuver resources in place to detect my hidden ships, so that I could detect the energies of those maneuvers to set up the real attack.
No, but if you can control travel to and from the resource, then you can park your forces there, and say, shut off the population's air supply. Better yet, threaten to do so, unless they all get onboard a shuttle.
A far more likely scenario would be to simply drive your competitor out of business. If they keep getting sabotaged, it becomes unprofitable for them to operate (it becomes a 'cursed' outpost, wages go up, you have to make repairs). Then you can easily take their stuff (or buy it on the cheap when they are going out of business).
Plenty of precedent for this tactic. It's been used by labor unions and informal groups of workers for nearly a couple of centuries now.
Maybe someone can weaponize psychological disorders or sociological pathologies this way? It's harder to make a group work well together than it is to make a group that is dysfunctional. Maybe this is already happening?