Why Earth? (Spoilers!)

people say that ingame, and you can guess that if the planet wouldn't have been destroyed they would say that. it would be even less believable if earth survived and no one noticed it.

 

Maybe it’s sentient? We all know that the protectorate lives on earth so why wouldn’t it attack the center of the most powerful military in the galaxy?

 

Did anyone know how the ruin infects planets? Are the ruin moving around the universe and send his tentacles to the targetted planet? I mean, how long it's tentacles? It shouldn't 10 - 50 million kilometers!

 

Well, it could be argued that "Covered in tentacles to the point of being impossible to live on" and "destroyed" aren't very far apart.

 

I asked that same question myself. I mean, why would Asra Nox destroy the home planet of humans if her goal was a universe for just humans? I actually liked that sentiment, battling for things that aren't just human, but it really makes you ask why she'd do that in the first place.

I mean maybe she was upset that Earth was becoming a hub for all species through the Protectorate, but...it doesn't make sense. That's kind of like throwing a grenade at one of your own tanks, your lead tank, your best tank, to defeat an army of opposing tanks.

 

For the same reason people used to execute heretics. Humanity was the seat of the Protectorate, and represented everything Occasus despised about integrated society. Destroying Earth is a powerful symbolic blow against interspecies society, and anyone who was killed in the event obviously deserved what they got from the cultists' point of view. They think Occasus is some special, divinely chosen people, and thus that they're the only ones that matter.

None of this is stated in-game, but it comes standard with cults like Occasus.

A lot of things about Starbound's story are shallow or don't really make sense, but this is one of the few things that actually works in my opinion.

 

That assumes Occasus had any control over the Ruin, even through the game implies that Occasus is pretty much brainwashed.
If anything, it makes more sense to assume that the Ruin realized that it would be best to attack the planet that houses the organization with the highest possibility of either defeating the Ruin of figuring out what it is and rallying the other races against it (Which, as the Protectorate is implied to have good reputation, would make it more likely to be trusted about the Ruin being a real, concrete threat towards everyone else).

 

Well, it works whether they have control or not (they almost certainly don't). You still need that bit of psychology in order for the cult to continue being devoted to the Ruin after it destroys Earth. Without that rationale, they almost certainly would go "Dude, this thing we were trying to use to conquer the galaxy for humanity just destroyed Earth. It's probably not going to help us if we let it loose."

Maybe I'm missing something, but I never got the impression that the cult is being brainwashed by the Ruin. Nothing I've seen about the Ruin makes me think it's intelligent enough to brainwash people. My take is that the cult has convinced themselves that the Ruin is coming to make humanity supreme, but that's just their own wishful thinking, and the Ruin is just an animal-level intelligence that lashes out as it has the opportunity.

 

Well, Esther's diary has Asra Nox suddenly jump to the Ruin wanting to wipe out all the races but humanity, even through none of the ruins hint at that, so it indicates mind control, or at least the capability to influence the thoughts of sapient species.

 

Why Earth? Earth First... you can <censored> up the other planets later. Well the Earth got wiped out at the very start of the game... so you can loot the rest of the planets with aplomb.