What are the general boundries of what a script can and can't do?

Could you theoretically build a thermonuclear bomb and the strategic missle to deliver it?

Yes, no and maybe ... but not in that order.

You can build a missile.

What do you mean by a thermonuclear bomb?

You can not destroy objects or buildings (unless you add a script to them specifically to explode when hit with a specific bomb or some variation thereof).

What I'm asking is, essentially, what is to stop someone from creating a device that could kill everyone in the outlands in a single pass?

Anything that does damage dies as soon as it hits anything.

I take it that means a nuclear explosion could only kill one person before disapearing?

That's something I'm running into right now trying to create splash damage on my in-progress rocket launcher...

The only way an item does damage is by the llSetDamage() command. If Damage is set, then upon collision with an avatar, the object will deal the damage and promptly delete itself. The deletion is a mandatory part of the process.

There are logical workarounds, but I'll leave them to your devices. Let me say, though, that a capable explosion on the level you're devising would probably kill the server before it touched any players...

Yah that's an interesting question, there is no concept of "blast force" from what I've been able to see. An object must actually hit the avatar (so it must be smart enough to go around everything else in the way), after which it dies. This would be as easy to avoid as rezzing a box around yourself for a few seconds if you knew it was coming, or just putting up some clear shields around your work area.

Yep, shields can work, but remember they can't be attached! So that makes it interesting.

I am waiting to see the first good scripted floating shields... this will make play very interesting.

Another factor you may be less aware of is that the physical size of the scripted object limits things like the creation rate of objects, etc. So there is balance and cleverness in devising efficient scripts for doing different things.

I expect that the arms race is SL will be EXTREMELY interesting to watch. We will tune, etc, as we see things develop.

Theoretically For splash you coudl just make on hit the object spurt out a whole tones of little Orbjects ina cluster fashion.

PS im not a WWIIean I jsut never post Oo

For there to be an arms race there would have to be a way to counter potential defenses as well as offenses.

That there won't be much of an Arm's Race if people can just throw up a shield and be done with it.

So would it be possible to script some kind of shield penetrating weapon, or maybe a device that can deactive shields?

Shield penetrating weapons are possible. I will say no more without a hefty sum of money being deposited into my account.