Someone pointed out that the "low-tech" colonial systems of the future
for metalwork might easily churn out military designs of today. Let me put it
this way, the 2185 Newest AutoFactory from UberZaibatsu might well manufacture
a state of the art grav tank from scratch in about 2 hours, without any human
intervention, and might also be capable of building passenger cars, trucks,
LTA vehicles, etc. all without anything but a setting switch. The Colonial
Model may feature half as many designs (only 5000 as opposed to 10000), not be
capable of producing the advanced electronics or stealth systems, not produce
luxury models, and may take 4 hours to build a 2160s Tracklayer tank without
bells and whistles, just as it produces Tractors, Threshers, Mining machines,
etc....
Would they have the designs? Probably 100 year old designs
de-classified would be easily available. 50 year old designs would
probably be common. 20 year old designs might need permission. new designs
would not be. But if computer memory has increased say 1000 fold in the last
two decades, and it keeps going, we'll have many many orders of magnitude more
data storage for a neglibible cost so sure... I'd load up every conceivable
design into my AutoFactory Colonial (2180 edition... we couldn't afford the
new one...we're a poor colony)
and some of them would be military - just as a precaution.
And as for cranking out Arty, I'm sure a relatively mid-cost CAD/CAM
system could crank out the parts here on Earth Today, and 200 years means a
child's KiddieMechanoHomeLab(tm) could probably do it. The one thing you won't
have a shortage of in some colonies is raw materials. You might need the
OreProcessorInABox(tm) to turn it into steel for artillery, but again by 2183,
this is probably trivial.
Surely, everyone can see the necessity for isolated communities to have this
type of technology, and the argument for why progress will inevitably make it
affordable and feasible. There is little reason I can see why even a 10K
colony starter couldn't churn out serviceable rifles and light artillery. In
small quantities. And if they want state of the art stuff, they order it from
either FEDEX by the GWW
(Galaxy-Wide Web) or from some local area scumbag gun-runners - as Los
pointed out, there will always be someone willing to provide arms to the
natives.
> Someone pointed out that the "low-tech" colonial systems of the
(snipple)
> Would they have the designs? Probably 100 year old designs
And how many AutoFacs will you have? If they're cheap and every village will
have one, then every insurgency will also have one. If they're expensive and
each colony only has a few, then a) you'll hit production bottlenecks, and b)
sabotage becomes a serious threat.
In the Alarishi view, having cheap autofacs is a good thing, because if you
have an insurgency, then you probably deserve it. But you might expect some
governments to be stressed by that sort of thing.
Hey, at the risk of defending Drake, he takes great pains in many of teh
Slammers books to emphasise the problems with the momentum and inertia of 150
tonnes of steel slewing around teh battlefield.
I think you need to take some of his descriptions in context (you know, he
plays up the 'hero's skill in the blower) as well as well as give a little
writer's license.
For Grav you get a good feel from the Renegade Legion books. But they give
rise to a completely different style of conflict than that to which Drake is
trying to portray in his Vietnam inspired novels.
They're both good fun reading and give plenty of insipration for scenarios!
Owen G
> -----Original Message-----
This stuff about robot factories is interesting. They show up alot in
H.
Beam Piper's work - among my favorite sci-fi writers (check out Space
Viking
or the Cosmic Computer - lousy titles, but it was the 1950's)
Even today some decidedly non-first rate economies are cranking out some
astonishing amounts/bits of military equipment. I may be mistaken, but
aren't the Egyptians building M1A1's (granted a lot of the components are
imported)?
I find the arguments about shipping capacity/costs interesting as well.
There's little said about any difficulty in interface transport in FT or
Dirtside as compared to a game like Traveller 2300 with it's pre-grav
assortment of spaceplanes, old-fashioned rocket-ridin' shuttles and
beanstalks (somehow I always had trouble wrapping my mind that concept).
Landing a tank division on a planet may be no big thing (or the 1st Guards
Tank Army for that matter). Ultimately boils down to the sort of game you want
to play (which I recall was once the GZG mantra). I mean I've followed the
Grav vs. GEV argument and the MD versus CPR threads among others and somehow
arguing the "technical parameters" and power weight ratios of something as PSB
as a grav drive (or FTL for that matter) stikes me as a bit like the old
angels vs. head of a pin arguement. But then I'm an armchair General and
historian not an armchair physicist.
-M
Oh, and speaking of 2300 check out:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/9292/UK.htm
An exhaustively detailed site with TOE's etc. for Britain in the 2300 universe
(including some colonial forces and all nicely based on current and
past British practice - imagine the Coldstream Guards with power walkers
or the Desert Rats with hovertanks). All very easily adaptable to the NAC in
the Tuffleyverse (even includes some Dirtside 2300 conversions)
> BTW, can any naval types tell me what "caliber" refers to on the big
i.e. 5"/54 It's obvious that it's a 5in gun, but I don't know what the
54 refers to.<<<
The length of the barrel. A 5"/54 would have a barrel length 54 times
its bore (ie: 22 feet)
-M