Why Earth? (Spoilers!)

Yes. It most likely would have been a threat to the Ruin, judging by how the PC alone ends up killing it.

 

Well a single newby protectorate member defeated the Ruin, so I'd argue that the protectorate housed the heroes that were a threat to it.
Or in more mythical words: The chosen hero that would stop the Ruin was on Earth, so the Ruin destroyed Earth. But in doing so, the Ruin only started the chain of events that would lead to the destruction of the Ruin. Classic prophecy.

 

Isn't the PC a "chosen one" type? It's a pretty obtuse way that the single person goes about killing the ruin though, completely unrelated to their existence as part of the protectorate

A way better plan would just have been to destroy one of the planets the artefacts were on, thus forever preventing the enemy from stopping you

 

wouldn't make sense, as it is said the seal slowly breaks anyways and therefore opening it wound't care much. so preventing it to be opened wouldn't have helped much as it soon would be open anyways.

 

The Ruin probabily didn't know where the Artifacts were, and it still needed them to fully break the seal.
As for the PC being a "Chosen One", it's only in the sense of "Being picked by Esther Bright in order to help her stop the Ruin".

 

IF the ruin didn't know that, theres quite a lot coincedence involved that evil granny is there at 2 other orbs right the moments when you are too.

 

I said "The Ruin", not "Asra Nox". It's implied tha tthe latter is partially brainwashed but is still capable of thinking on her own.

 

I still think the ruin can communicate with her otherwise even less thing would make sense and the ruin would attack her too but only starts acting right the moment she is defeated (for the 3rd time).

 

One thing is "Communicate". A different one is that the Ruin found the location of the Artifacts. Another possibility is that it couldn't CHOOSE where the Ruin would emerge first.

 

On another note, I am actually curious why exactly Earth was destroyed. Was it Ruin's choice? Was it Occasus that set it up? If Occasus managed to circumvent Ark's defences, then how?
I would certainly like to know the answers to those.

 

Who says the Earth was destroyed or that no other planet has suffered the same fate yet? Maybe all those scorched worlds are the other victims...spooooky...but seriously we already have plenty of plot holes, might as well chalk this up to another one

 

Scorched world remain intact, unlike Earth. Whatever happened on them, it wasn't a planet-destroying cataclysm.

 

We don't need to be called the bad guys, so much as dealing with the ramifications of offing a living planet in its own extradimensional space, it attempts to explain why it wasn't observed on the campaign of destruction post-earth like Occassus had hoped(still puts the onus on Occassus for loosing the thing in the first place, but extends The Ruin to the point that no one truly understands what it is...). It also gives a purpose for the Tentacomet, possibly making it a MacGuffin to save the Extra-dimensional space. I thought it was a great read.

 

well there might be planets, or rather, absence of them, destroyed by the ruin long ago, you see no remains of them anymore
you can't find it anywhere because it might be just floating in the emptiness between galaxies warping the dimensions around it so no one can reach by any means, except the portal to it

 

To make you invested in the story cause the Ruin destroyed the human planet and you then reply "holy shit! I live on the human planet!"

 

It would have been interesting to see the ruin crush other planets as well, it shows the stakes as it demonstrates its reputation in the legends as a destroyer of life.

 

The problem with that is every planet is procedurally generated, meaning we're about as attached to a planet as a mosquito and with roughly the same impact on it.

 

the lore reason: the Protectorate was probably the only faction in the galaxy capable of dealing with the Occasus Cult. since Earth was its HQ and it was barely defended it made sense that they would use the Ruin's power (or even the Tentacomet) to get an advantage.

the development reason: from the days of the kickstarter era and even before it was said that Earth was destroyed by tentacles. that was the starting story for human in Starbound, other races had a much more developed lore. humanity was just "our planned got blown up and shit". the developers scrapped the personal story for each race and just made a single introductory story which is the one of the Protectorate and the Ruin.

TLR the old human start story became the main introduction story and was changed to give an actual reason of why Earth was destroyed (allthought i still dont understand why would the Cult destroy their own home planet to fulfill their plans but its the only hypothesis that makes sense taking in account the storyline)...

 

Well to be fair they could have made short introductory quests for each species involving the ruin and/or the Ocassus Cult and then make it all go the same direction it did anyway, and maybe do similar things with the racial quests, involving more Ruin outbursts instead of just recicled mooks. Fair enough, it would be a glaring asspull but at least it would have made more sense than "The ruin 'splodes the Earth and then goes patiently take a nap till you go fight it on the Ark".

 

The game says nothing about Occasus having freed the Ruin. They're trying, but the most they can do is to prevent the PC from killing the Ruin (And failing), as they're implied to be unable to obtain all the artifacts (The only 2 they're shown to be trying to find are in either an ancient nearly-defenseless library, and a remote Glitch keep, which should be a pushover in relation to non-Glitch fortifications due to the Glitch's technological disadvantage. Apart from a couple cultist found in the Great Sovereign Temple, they don't appear at all in the other missions).
Even if they did, Occasus' thoughts would be something like "The Earth humans deserved to be destroyed for letting aliens live in Earth and not treating them as the inferior vermin that they are", or something similar.