>>96226292
>Could earth deal with 1 (one) grand cruiser of any faction willing to do orbital bombardment? No

Sci-fi ships are by default not supposed work in perpetuity like that without being repaired, rearmed & recrewed.

Sci-fi if it isn’t trying to be la-de-da about its hardness defaults to treating planets as islands and space as the ocean separating them. Blockading or pounding away at a planet isn’t something that just passively happens, an imperial task force that is up there in space is eating up their food and supplies and taking on wear and tear, limited payloads, a navigator or geller dudes die of sepsis and they’re short on spares.

Imagine if all planets in the imperium disappeared, the ship side remnant would slowly fizzle out and die.

A ship that doesn’t get it’s tlc will inevitably turn into a space hulk. 1 ship would eventually lose vs most any planet exception granted that it could be the delivery method for some super weapon that could kill us all ala virus bomb but then were not really talking about the ship(s) itself being what destroyed us.

‘Maybe’ Necron stuff can go and be fully autonomous but it’s damn for sure not the same that imperial stuff can do that.