[GZG] FTverse colinies

The FT-universe colonies
I'd like to start this kind of topic: Who has got any ideas about the
population and economic power
of human colonies at the other stars in FT-universe? And what about
strength of their navies?

Here is my impression.
FTL flights started in Tuffley-verse in the year 2069. In 2165 (roughly
after a hundreed years of expansion) nations had enough fleets to start a full
scale war, where hundreeds of ships took part. So, the question is: How really
big were those colonies? I made this kind of estimation: in assumption that
the cost and technical possibility of moving
people among stars are about the same as they were in 1880-1890s of
moving people from Europe to America, we can conclude, that it was possible to
move about 40000 colonists in a year from the Solar system to a distant star.
Than, if we consider that in best circumstanses (best climate, social care,
enough living space etc) the "natural" population growth would be 6% a year,
we can say that the "ideal" colony would have about 20 mln population after a
century of fastest development. NAC's capital world Albion was founded in
2099, so, it's population
can't be bigger than 8-10 million.

Now, New Israel started their state in 2096, and they have only three systems.
To the moment of 2194 the oldest of their worlds had only a hundreed years
history, so, it cuoldn't have more than 20 million population. Let's add 10
million for each of the other main systems and, say, 3 million more for
"numerous outposts". It makes 43 million population in general at most. Than,
let's take there navy. They have 25 cruisers, 7 battleships, 3
superdreadnoughts, 1 carrier. Plus some amount smaller fighting ships. But
numbers of those "escorts" couldn't be bigger, than in IJN Navy (about 5 star
systems, territories on Earth, 44 Scouts, 25 Strikeboats, 22 Corvettes, 63
frigates, 32 destroyers, 44 cruisers, 5 battlecruisers, 4 battleships, 6
dreadnoughts, 28 carriers). And it's hard to me to understand how could New
Israel Navy (supported with 43 million population) be compared with, say ESU
navy, supported with at least 2,000 million population and this type of
industrial power. But, until now we talked mostly about big powers. But what
about little state, consisted with only
one star system, with not an ideal climate, populated, say, 50-40 years
before, and the colonisation hadn't had a powerfull sponsor who could move
dozens of thousand colonists. I suppose the
population of such an independent colony would be, somehow 1-3 million.
But if they have enough industry, technologies and infrastructure, they can
afford a small navy. How big can it be? My idea is like that. In the late 17th
century Sweden was a very industrial developed country. And it was a European
great power, so it had to spend much resourses for the navy. But it had only
one million population, so, we can use Sweden as a model for an industrial
developed but low populated colony.
Well, Swedish navy of that time consisted of 29-30 fighting ships. Among
them there were:
2 battleships, 7-8 frigates (at that time frigate-class was an analog of
cruiser-class in Tuffley
verse), 20 others.
So, that's my impression of the smaller power navy: 1-2 "First Class"
ships: battlecruisers
or battleships, or one "white elefant"-dreadnought; 5-10 cruisers of all
types; up to 8 destroyers; up to 20 lighter classes scouts, strikeboats,
corvettes, frigates.
Non-FTL in-system ships
are also included into this amount. I think "first classes" should be ships of
big power design, bought at "secondary market", the same should be most of the
cruisers (but some could be "lokally build"), and about one half of escorts.

Any ideas?

My feeling is that there are several parallel things going on. This email has
grown into an unreadable monster because the problem gets more and more
fascinating the more I think about it, so here's the executive summary.

* I love the idea of looking at these questions in the first place. * I think
that productivity is NOT tightly coupled to population or size. * Your
population numbers depend on your universe's approach to habitability. * Naval
composition is shaped to its mission rather than just its size.

Let's say that, broadly speaking, your population times your productivity is
your GDP (I'm talking generalities here). That GDP is
spent on a number of things (government/administration, commerce,
industry, agriculture, etc). Some of this stuff, like
commerce/industry, is an investment in higher GDP next year. Some are
overhead to maintaining a population. Some are boondoggles that don't buy you
anything. You'd be stunned how much is lost to inefficiencies like inventory
costs.

First, industrial capacity is only very loosely correlated to production.
Productivity relates to technology, infrastructure, organizational efficiency,
natural advantages like resources, morale, education, cultural factors and
more. OECD did a study of labor productivity (that is, GDP per hour worked)
and found that the variability even among industrialized nations can be nearly
an order
of magnitude. (http://stats.oecd.org/WBOS/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL)
Or look at GDP per capita, which varies by MANY orders of magnitude. So
population is only a useful proxy for productivity if you have nothing else to
go on. Even moreso for GDP per square kilometer. I calculated some numbers for
the middle east using wikipedia's figures,
and it varies from 36 thousand $/km^2 for Yemen to 21 MILLION $/km for
Bahrain. The numbers will probably be closer planet-vs-planet, since
you colonize ideal sites first, but I think even then size simply won't
matter.

Still looking at the Middle East in general (since you mentioned NI). Three
star systems is PLENTY, depending on what's in the system. A
couple resource-rich worlds of above-average habitability, a good
asteroid belt or three, resource-rich lunar atmospheres, etc. can
drastically boost productivity. I haven't run my own population numbers, but
yours sound good. World birth rates on Earth are leveling off so we can assume
the homeworld population will be roughly 12 billion (UN estimate). However,
unless we have way more colonies than
I'd think make sense, the entire off-world human population would
scarcely fill a single planet.

Big earthside empires like the ESU may have a gigantic population, but much of
their resources will be tied up in maintaining that population. It's their
industrial footprint in orbit (and the asteroids, etc) that will actually make
it to the shipyards to build their navy. Especially when you consider that
even big ships are relatively small compared to modern vessels. It's their
complexity and the fact that you're climbing up and down a gravity well to
build them that make them so pricey.

RESULT: The differences in productivity between sprawling
multi-stellar empires and single well-developed colonies are
surprisingly small. The other elements of productivity will be what's
important. NI, Japan, or Free Cal-Tex would be fools to take on a big
empire like the ESU or FSE, but those empires should think twice before moving
against these smaller players. It might also help to explain (along with long
latency and expense in transport and communication) the Balkanization of the
Tuffleyverse.

***********************************

This is also going to vary strongly by game universe. In the Rare Earth
scenario, you have a scenario like in Bruce Sterling's
Schizmatrix: mostly free fall habitats and few non-ideological motives
to expand into new systems while your own system is still mostly unexploited.

One of the requirements to habitability is having life already that
has converted the naturally organics-rich atmosphere to have a nice
balance of oxygen and co2, fix some of the dissolved
organics/salts/minerals, etc. We have to assume that if we're
colonizing planets that terraforming is cheap/fast, or that the life
we encounter is sufficiently biocompatible (or bio-INcompatible) that
we can supplant it. Is this a safe assumption? Possibly, if most worlds linger
in the prokaryotic phase.

If terraforming is hard/expensive, then you have far fewer colonies
that are utterly dependent on their home culture and expend almost all their
production simply keeping their population alive.

If not, then after a detailed science survey you can send a couple colony
ships and be done with it. You could even build and launch a fleet on spec;
the colonists stay in cold sleep and you simply keep exploring systems until
you find a world suitable for colonization, much like some strategy games for
the PC. It argues that the Great
Powers are NOT exporting population to pre-existing colonies as you
assumed, instead they're using those people for the land rush of grabbing
habitable worlds. Except for colonies like Albion, which have
strategic/political importance, your colonies would be mostly
self-supporting (and self-defending starting late in the Xeno War when
defenses against the Kra'Vak are pulled back to defend Earth).

***********************************

I think you make a really good point about purchasing capital ships on
the open market. If you're only going to have one, the build/buy
decision is pretty clear. Except that some cultures will build their ships
anyway. The Israelis (both current and future) have no confidence that even
their military allies will actually come to their
defense; they work on the assumption that they'll be betrayed and/or
abandoned and so try to make their military as autonomous as possible. It's
likely they'll build their own ships unless the economics are totally
untenable.

It also might drive some decisions about ship design. Consider this: the FSE's
reliance on salvo missiles is all fine and well, but requires a strong supply
line. Is this a tactical, strategic or political decision? Tactically, it's
great vs the FSE's human opponents. Strategically, it gives your ships shorter
"legs" and requires more expensive supply ships. Politically, it keeps your
admirals on a short leash and encourages them to be more conservative (ie NAC
and NSL captains don't constantly have to ask themselves, "Do I blow my
missile inventory on a fleet engagement now or avoid combat and keep my powder
dry?"). Most importantly for what you're talking about, you keep your client
states on a short leash, too, if they buy their navies from you.

As for fleet composition: I think it depends on the mission you envision for
your navy. Who's your most likely opponent? The outer colonies are most
worried about raiders, not invasion fleets. So they'll deploy greater numbers
of smaller patrol boats. The great powers, or countries most worried about
fighting a great power, will
have a more top-heavy line of battle, loaded with battleships. What
kind of country are you defending? If you're a single colony, with no interest
in or capability for expansion, then you'll load up on system ships rather
than bothering with FTL. If you orbit a small red sun, it
might even make sense to use FTL for in-system maneuver (build up a
head of speed outbound, then hop to the other side of the system so you're
suddenly INbound on a pursuit vector). If you're making good use of your
asteroids, lots of small ships to defend all the little habitats you have. If
you've focused on the planet, a couple big ships that stay parked in orbit.

In the case of NI (for example) you have three systems, so FTL is required.
Your principal threats are all major naval powers. So even though you're
small, you load up on whatever has the best bang for the
buck among the heavy-weight ships. Build if at all possible, buy if
absolutely necessary. That leaves you with a smaller budget for
defense vs raids, so you buy cost-effective, very fast cruisers in the
destroyer - light cruiser range to deal with raids and piracy. You
maximize their time out of spacedock by minimizing consumables like missiles.
They have to be fast because they each have to defend a larger volume of
space, and also to withdraw if confronted with a raid of middleweight ships
from a great power. Remember that production cost is directly proportional to
points value. They'll try to optimize for the missions they expect to run.

That's only a guess, but it illustrates the point.

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 4:15 AM, Тимофей Потапенко
> <potapenkoteo@mail.ru> wrote:
Among them there were:
> 2 battleships, 7-8 frigates (at that time frigate-class was an analog
ships: battlecruisers
> or battleships, or one "white elefant"-dreadnought; 5-10 cruisers of
Non-FTL in-system ships
> are also included into this amount.

> Robert Mayberry wrote:

I think with the Israelis it's not so much that other militaries won't come to
their aid as civilian governments might not sell them spare parts. The French
tried to do this with the Mirage fighter and also held

onto some patrol boats that the Israelis had actually paid for. (The Israelis
ended up stealing the boats and reverse engenineering the Mirage, with
improvements). Just as you were arguing that FSE ship design can keep the
small power buyers on a leash to the FSE, the small powers might decide to
take the risk and build their own ships to keep their independence. The
ability to supply and maintain a fleet would play a big part, perhaps bigger
than you have suggested, in determining
what sort of fleet a small power builds/buys.

Just my two bob's worth.

I was actually thinking of their efforts to build the Lavi, but the Mirage
applies too. I forgot about those patrol boats!:)

Yeah, I've actually spent much of this semester thinking about these
questions-- especially getting the political, organizational and
logistical elements straight and distilling them into rules. The military
stuff is fun, but I can't say I have a tenth of the knowledge
that some of the people on this board have; but on the macro-level
stuff, I might be able to add something to the conversation. I'll try to post
something to a web page when I get it into a manageable form.

If I create a "politician" unit, we'll all need more Green-3 counters.

Rob

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 7:39 PM, Tony Wilkinson <twilko@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> I think with the Israelis it's not so much that other militaries

> Tony Wilkinson wrote:
Domestic construction of military equipment may also turn into an export

industry capable of bringing in hard currency.

G'day guys,

For what its worth here is an old email containing rough population numbers,
from some simple population models (one sex, simple immigration and epidemic
model components with shifting carrying capacity tied to planet type, tech
level and infrastructure investment). Its possible to
refine them based on a two-sex model with metapopulation migration, but
despite that being on my "to-do list" for more than a year now I have
had a serious lack of time to get it up and going. Now if I could justify
giving the coding to my grad students as a class exercise it may well get done
before I retire;)

Cheers

Beth

[quoted original message omitted]

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> Michael Llaneza wrote:

Yeah it could but who do you sell to? More often than not it will be just for
domestic use. The big suppliers can offer better prices and have more leeway
to cut deals. Also there's the security thing. Israel won't sell to anyone
just it case technical info ends up in the hands of

their enemies. Australia hasn't been able to sell the Collins sub (very bad
press) and the Bushranger wheeled APC (damn Yanks, Canadians and Frenchmen).
The chance to on sell might be a consideration for major corporations in the
big nations, but for the small powers it's a benefit

rather than a deciding factor.

Tony.

> Tony Wilkinson wrote:

> come to their aid as civilian governments might not sell them spare
Hence the two FSE Battlecruisers in OU service, the "Prince Leonard" and

"Princess Shirley". They had their missile systems ripped out and
replaced with B-2s and armour when the FSE refused to supply spare
parts. There were other changes too, none of which would affect the SSD nor
model's external appearance.

The two BCs comprise the Hutt River Province Astronautical Navy, but
explaining why the HRP is an independent nation yet part of the OU would

Can I just chime in with a MAJOR caveat here?
While all this discussion about fleshing-out the GZG-verse is
fascinating (and please don't stop, I love reading this stuff....), I have to
state once and for all that I DID NOT work any of this out in any kind of
detail when the background was written! It was a piece of fluff to give a
framework in which to push lots of little toys around
the table - it was written to sound reasonably interesting (I hope)
and sometimes amusing (bits of it were done with tongue VERY firmly in
cheek...), and to give an excuse for all the different factions that we
planned to do minis for to be beating the crap out of each other. We didn't
work out any numbers!

So, please feel free to keep on working the little details out, but be aware
that a fair bit of RetConning will be needed, and PLEASE
don't ask me why some bits don't fit!!  ;-)

More power to your thrusters,

Jon (GZG)

> Tony Wilkinson wrote:
and
> "Princess Shirley". They had their missile systems ripped out and

Jon,

Half of the fun is knowing that the the thing wasn't intended for this, and
yet making it all work out anyway. I'm reminded of Larry
Niven's essay about creating the Mote in G-d's Eye (it's in either
Playgrounds of the Mind or N-Space), and how he extrapolated from a
model a whole series of assumptions about the underlying tech base and
society. In the same way, it's liberating to have some stake in the ground
that you can extrapolate out from. When you get to an inconsistency, they can
actually be revealing, because life is crazy, too, and the conceptual
gymnastics you go through to keep things together can produce some really cool
stuff.

I'm sure at some point we'll find a circle that can't be squared, but in the
meantime it's fun and may even produce something you can use!

Rob

> On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 6:13 AM, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:

Beth,

Great email! I never expected that someone of your caliber was working this
problem... I'm a bit intimidated.

I did have some questions about your model. (I also skimmed the archives also
so I could see the context.)

* First, you project a population of nearly 34 billion for Earth in 2188. The
UN population projections I saw when I was taking Human Geography as an
undergrad said that the current thinking is that the population would level
off at about 12 billion in the next couple decades and remain flat. In much of
the EU, they said the population is actually already declining. What kinds of
assumptions are they making that make their results come out so differently?

* Do you make allowances for differing start dates for interstellar expansion?
I'm a business student by trade, but your numbers look roughly like the
outcome of a compound interest expansion. Time becomes more important than
income in those scenarios, so I'm wondering if that applies to population
growth, too. If that is the case, then the question of how the NI competes
efficiently with the IF is pretty easy to answer: the NI's early work
developing FTL meant they were early in the space race. The IF, whether for
cultural, political, strategic, industrial or technological reasons, got into
the space game late.

* One area where I *might* have enough expertise to add something is in the
economics of migration. I've done a fair amount of business modeling, and we
know from FB1 how much a colony ship can hold, what it costs, and what a
typical ship's lifetime is. So with some assumptions about what the colonist:
infrastructure tonnage ratio might be and an estimate for operating costs, I
might be able to estimate how economically feasible the project is, which
could feed into your assumptions about ease of colonization. *(It might also
be useful for determining the volume of interstellar commerce and how
economically viable piracy is.)

Rob

> On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 10:47 PM, <Beth.Fulton@csiro.au> wrote:

> Ground Zero Games wrote:
That's OK, we'll do it for you, make it all internally consistent, all you
have to do is say "I like" or "Nah".

> So, please feel free to keep on working the little details out, but
That's OK, Jon.

Personally, I like the following PSB which makes the strategic and tactical
stuff a bit more logical:

First, "jump beacons" that allow the defender to jump in closer to large

masses than the attacker can. This means that you can have up to a week to get
nearby stuff into a defensive position near planets via hyper while the
attacker is still coming in from round the Oort cloud on thrust.

Secondly, a lot of ESM/ECM that's abstracted in the game. It means that
you only get to match frequencies  and de-jam well enough to get a
firing solution every 15 minutes or so, and means that some ships get to fire
before others. It also means that when they pass each other, they may not be
in a position to fire at close range, as they can't get
a lock-on.

That also means that you can get by with capacitors and bopamagilvies that
only give a firing rate of maybe once every 10 minutes. You could get ones
that could fire once every few seconds, but as you only get one

chance at a shot every 10-20 minutes or so against military targets,

> Robert Mayberry wrote:

From "Building the Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle,
collected in N-Space and A Step Farther Out.

Long ago we acquired a commercial model called “The Explorer Ship Leif

Ericsson,” a plastic spaceship of intriguing design. It is shaped something
like a flattened pint whiskey bottle with a long neck. The “Leif
Ericsson,” alas, was killed by general lack of interest in spacecraft by
model buyers; a
ghost of it is still marketed in hideous glow-in-the-dark color as some
kind of flying saucer.

It’s often easier to take a detailed construct and work within its limits
than it is to have too much flexibility. For fun we tried to make the Leif
Ericsson work as a model for an Empire naval vessel. The exercise proved
instructive.

First, the model is of a big ship, and is of the wrong shape ever to be
carried aboard another vessel. Second, it had fins, only useful for
at­mosphere flight: what purpose would be served in having atmosphere
capabilities on a large ship?

This dictated the class of ship: it must be a cruiser or battlecruiser.
Battleships and dreadnaughts wouldn’t ever land, and would be cylindrical or
spherical to reduce surface area. Our ship was too large to be a destroyer (an
expendable ship almost never employed on missions except as part of a
flotilla). Cruisers and battlecruisers can be sent on independent missions.

MacArthur, a General Class Battlecruiser, began to emerge. She can enter

atmosphere, but rarely does so, except when long independent assignments force
her to seek fuel on her own. She can do this in either of two ways: go to a
supply source, or fly into the hydrogen-rich at­mosphere of a gas giant
and scoop. There were scoops on the model, as it happens.

She has a large pair of doors in her hull, and a spacious compartment inside:
obviously a hangar deck for carrying auxiliary craft. Hangar deck is also the
only large compartment in her, and therefore would be the normal place of
assembly for the crew when she isn’t under battle con­ditions.

The tower on the model looked useless, and was almost ignored, until it
occurred to us that on long missions not under acceleration it would be useful
to have a high-gravity area. The ship is a bit thin to have much gravity
in the “neck” without spinning her far more rapidly than you’d like; but
with the tower, the forward area gets normal gravity without excessive spin
rates.

> At 10:36 AM -0400 5/4/08, Robert Mayberry wrote:

And probably with a few more fits and starts and mistakes in their
development. Kind of sets things back if you dump a significant portion of
your GDP into a colony ship and it goes boom as it leaves orbit and tries to
activate it's FTL drive. You can bet that the NI Mossad types will continue to
hamstring the IF program in places where "inshallah..." doesn't do enough.

Actually, I think he's trying to say he'll stay silent, so when he comes up
with something unexpected, and one of us is crying 'but that doesn't
fit!',
his reply can be 'what you mean is that it doesn't fit YOUR
assumptions...' ;->=

I think it's always been 'here's my world, please make it your own, but don't
expect me to follow your lead'.

The_Beast

PS Those waiting baited breath on the Imperium followup, I've discovered that
I haven't discovered how to post to my website from home, and will put the
images I've got there sometime later today, from w*rk.

Zoe wrote on 05/04/2008 09:46:35 AM:

***snippage***

> Now you may not like it at all, and as it's your Universe, you can say

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e like 9 billion circa 2050, possibly declining slowly thereafter. Current
birth rate trends don't support a larger estimate. Unless people
decide to start having kids again, and those kids survive at present-day
rates, I don't see it. I have little doubt that technology would increase the
carrying capacity of the rock to those levels, but I doubt there will be a
need.

Ken

Robert Mayberry <robert.mayberry@gmail.com> wrote: Beth,

Great email! I never expected that someone of your caliber was working this
problem... I'm a bit intimidated.

I did have some questions about your model. (I also skimmed the archives also
so I could see the context.)

* First, you project a population of nearly 34 billion for Earth in 2188. The
UN population projections I saw when I was taking Human Geography as an
undergrad said that the current thinking is that the population would level
off at about 12 billion in the next couple decades and remain flat. In much of
the EU, they said the population is actually already declining. What kinds of
assumptions are they making that make their results come out so differently?

> Tony Wilkinson wrote:

> Australia hasn't been able to sell the Collins sub (very bad press)

Um... the Collins was originally a *Swedish* design. What was that you said
about small countries being unable to sell military hardware, again? <g>

Regards,

> Someone (sorry, my computer can't display cyrillic letters) wrote:

> My idea is like that. In the late 17th century Sweden was a very

Um... no. It wasn't, unless you're talking a *very* alternative history to the
one that actually happened. We were reasonably good at casting cannon (though
we still bought or stole quite a lot of them) and we had imported several
hundred foreign mining experts, but that's about it. We didn't really get
industrialized until the late *19th* century.

> And it was a European great power, so it had to spend much resourses

Not a good analogy at all IMO, because Sweden was primarily a *land* power
during the 17th century. The navy was basically only a transport and courier
service for the army, and came a distant third after the army and
the army - yes, I'm counting the army twice. So did the various kings of

Sweden at the time.

It is no coincidence that Sweden only decisively defeated Denmark when the
Belts (the straits between Sealand and the European mainland) froze so the
Swedish army could get to Copenhagen (on Sealand) without interference from
the Danish navy. Our own navy could (mostly) keep the Danish fleet off the
army's lines of communication, but it was far too weak to actually land an
army on Sealand.

> Among them there were: 2 battleships, 7-8 frigates (at that time

IMO it would be far more useful to look at the Swedish navies towards the end
of the *18th* century, when we had *lost* our "great power" status (along with
most of our overseas possesions, and thus the tariffs from the Baltic trade).
Our population was a little bigger due to population growth in the homeland,
but not much (still under 2 million), and we had *far*
less money available - but the combined navies (high seas and
archipelago) was rather more numerous than in the previous century!

For example, at the battle of Vyborg in 1790 (where most but not all of the
Swedish warships were gathered), there were 20 ships of the line (or
"battleships") and 12 frigates of the high seas navy, and *242* lighter units
of the archipelago navy (gunboats and similar, suited for
short-range
coastal work - roughly corresponding to FT strikeboats and system
defence units up to destroyer size).

Why was it that our navy was so puny when we were a "great power", but grew so
numerous after we lost that status? Simple: while Sweden was at its peak, the
only
*enemy* navy we had to worry about was the Danish one - and that one
very rarely operated in the northern Baltic, since that was uncomfortably far

from its bases. Poland and Russia didn't have any Baltic coasts (because we
had taken them), and thus couldn't deploy any navies to threaten us. They
were land powers, and thus we needed armies to keep them at bay - not
navies.

Once Poland and particularly Russia regained their Baltic coastlines (and
stripped us of our "great power" status in the process), the number of enemy
navies we had to deal with proliferated, and the Russian navy in particular
was sitting right at our doorstep... which meant that Sweden had to build up a
much bigger navy for *defence* than it ever needed for *aggression*.

The strategic situation for the various Full Thrust powers is much closer
to that of 18th-C Sweden, with several enemy navies to deal with and
lots
of coastline to protect, than of 17th-C Sweden (or Imperial Rome, for
that matter) that controlled most or all of the coasts from which enemy navies
could be launched.

Regards,

G'day,

> * First, you project a population of nearly 34 billion for Earth in

Well for a start you picked on my high estimate and then compared it to the
real world which is more like midway between the low and medium estimates;)

The main difference is the implications of technology for growth, the high
estimate explicitly includes increasing carrying capacity and high
reproductive rates

"High estimate (you would have to be able to pack them into ships like
sardines, have fleets on constant turn around to garden planets and figure out
how to have artificial wombs or multiple births or huge support system to get
this one done)"

> * Do you make allowances for differing start dates for interstellar

Yes and different movement patterns when there is peace time vs interstellar
war.

> I'm a business student by trade, but your numbers look

Very much so. Google earth's population through history and you'll find a nice
example of a power curve;)

> If that is the

The coefficient of productivity: population will not be consistent across
nations (it isn't today, never has been in history so there is no reason to
think it will change in the future. Who is more productive than whom will no
doubt jump about as it has in the past, but that is a discussion for a
different thread). So it is a bit risky just assuming that y people => $x
consistently across nations. So I'm quite happy for nations with different
population bases to be competitive against each other fleet wise (or at least
game fleet wise).

> * One area where I *might* have enough expertise to add something is

Sounds good (my progress will be slow but if you send me some operating cost
functions (would you do the normal split of fixed, variable etc costs?), any
discount rates etc you want included I can build them in as I get moving on
the improved code for this). Would also fit my plans to hand the project to a
grad student as an example of metapopulation modelling as we are increasing
the sophistication of the social and economics modules we're considering in
the course too;)

Cheers

Thanks for the response to my questions!

I'm adapting my standard templates for this-- did a little work today.
Basically my approach is to do a pro forma income statement / balance
sheet for a "typical" colonization project, then use the DuPont Model as a
kind of dashboard for sanity checks. I realize that dupont has its
limitations, especially on projects with a long profit horizon, but it's great
when you're trying to untangle a mess. It's all in Excel, at least so far.
I'll have to do some research on shipping to firm up the numbers.

Currently, I'm thinking that since we have prices for fighters in both FT2.5
and DS2, it might be possible to generate a rough conversion from DS2 points
to FT2.5 points, which equate directly to Universal Credits. From that we can
get a ballpark for cost of labor, since DS2 has a points value for infantry. I
realize that there are major limitations to this approach, but it ought to be
enough to get costs to within an order of magnitude.

Of course, this will compete with my existing schoolwork (disclaimer: I'm only
beginning my graduate studies, so I have about a billionth of your knowledge)
so no idea how fast it will go. Would you mind if I emailed you with a couple
questions once in a while?

Rob

> > * One area where I *might* have enough expertise to add something

> Sounds good (my progress will be slow but if you send me some

Actually, smaller industrial nations have made quite a good living out of
selling weapons, slipping into the tactical, political and psychological
cracks. Look at Belgium (FN Herstal), Switzerland (MOWAG, SIG), Sweden (Saab,
Bofors, Oerlikon, Carl Gustav), Norway (Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace) etc.
etc.

> Robert Mayberry wrote:

> Currently, I'm thinking that since we have prices for fighters in both

You could convert between DS2 points and FT2.5 points, but FT2.5 points don't
really equate directly to Universal Credits. The Ucr values don't
change when the points values are revised -  the CPV system in
particular almost triples the points value of an individual fighter...

The reason for this is that the points values in both FT and DS are only

intended to balance *tactical one-off games*. In order to do this they
(attempt to) measure the respective units' *combat power* under the respective
rule sets; and combat power has virtually nothing to do with the
"real-world" (or "in-background") *cost* of anything (be it labour, raw
materials or whatever). Identical weapons, with identical capabilities, could
cost very different amounts to produce in societies with different

tech bases and production infrastructures - but since their
*capabilities*
(and thus combat powers) are identical, their game-balance *points
values* would be also identical regardless of who built them. Conversely a
certain
amount of money/resources/labour will buy you weapons or vehicles with a

rather different total combat power if you spend them in the US compared to
what you'd get if you spent them in Zimbabwe instead...

(It is also quite easy indeed to build crappy weapons or vehicles whose
game-balance points values would be rather low but which nevertheless
cost
huge amounts of money/time/resources to build, eg. due to stupid design
choices, poor production infrastructures and so on :-/)

To sum it up: Trying to estimate GZGverse labour costs from the GZG games'
points values is only marginally harder than measuring time in kilograms.
Sorry.

Regards,

"To sum it up: Trying to estimate GZGverse labour costs from the GZG games'
points values is only marginally harder than measuring time in kilograms.
Sorry.

Oerjan"

----

If you've ever tried to diet to lose weight, you should know that it is
entirely possible to measure time in kilograms....:0)

I understand why points in FT2.5 *shouldn't* convert to cash, but in the back
of FB1 it explicitly gives a points to credits conversion factor. It even
makes some sense, because if points and price didn't track with one another,
there would be a sweet spot for the
price/performance ratio and you'd see less variety in ship design by
the major nations.

Admittedly, this is treading on very thin ground. For one thing, it totally
discounts comparative advantage. But as a rough approximation, it would be a
useful guideline for relative costs.

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Oerjan Ariander
> <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:

> You could convert between DS2 points and FT2.5 points, but FT2.5

Hello,

arrived (again) on the list just in time to follow your interesting exchange.

Have been interested in FT for years (and frequented, essentially as a lurker,
several lists on the theme) and am now "expanding" to DS and SG... thought
this would be a good place to find ideas.

Just to add the proverbial 2 cents on the issue:

> Oerjan wrote:

but the comparison would not always be in favor of the USA, as the actual
global work division demonstrates... if a weapon system could be produced in
Zimbabwe (for example) and such a thing could be made with a labor intensive
procedure, it could be more convenient to make it there. You could even go for
a lower quality (accepting a loss of endurance if performance could remain
high enough), if the price was low enough, with the prevision of a faster
substitution or simply fielding far more than your enemy.

On a personal note: Hi Beth!!! It has been some time... how are the kids
going?:)

Best wishes

> Robert Mayberry wrote:

> I understand why points in FT2.5 *shouldn't* convert to cash, but in

I know it does. Jon has publicly regretted that off-the-cuff bit of PSB
fluff several times since FB1 was published :-/ And there is no
corresponding comment in DS2 - which means that even if you convert DS2
infantry points costs via DS2 and FT2 fighter points costs to Universal
Credits, you still only have a monetary value of the relative combat power of
an infantry team (since that's all that the infantry team's DS2 points cost
measures)... so you still don't know anything about how much *labour* costs in
any part of the GZGverse.

> It even makes some sense, because if points and price didn't

It would make sense IFF every GZGverse power paid exactly the same costs

for labour, raw materials and tech gadgets, not to mention having exactly the
same strategic and tactical needs. *If* that were true, then all of
them would have the same economic-technological-strategic "sweet spots"
and there'd be a lot less variety in warship design.

Unfortunately, if there's one thing we can be certain of is that it
*isn't*
true. The ESU's labour costs aren't the same as the FSE's or NSL's (heck,
labour costs aren't even the same in the western and eastern parts of the
ESU's Terran territories, much less in its off-Earth colonies!), nor are

the NI's cost for advanced electronics aren't the same as the IF's; the ORC's
strategic requirements aren't the same as the UNSC's, and so on.

Because these various factors aren't the same for all GZGverse powers, the
"sweet spots" aren't the same for the different powers either - which is

reflected in their different design choices. Each and every GZGverse power is
trying to build the ships that, given *its own* particular economy, tech base,
infrastructure and strategic and tactical needs, would give *it* the most bang
for the buck.

All in all, I'd say that you're treading on thin *air* rather than on thin
*ice*. Sorry.

Regards,

> Enzo de Ianni wrote:

> >Identical weapons, with identical capabilities,

Of course it won't. If it were, I'd be unemployed :-)

> as the actual global work division demonstrates... if a weapon system

Very much so. Though in the particular case of Zimbabwe, I suspect that
you'd mostly get cannon fodder with spears and machetes - thanks to Mr.
Mugabe & co. that country currently lacks virtually all kinds of
infrastructure needed for more advanced weapons... ('Course, cannon fodder
is quite labour intensive to produce too, at least for the mothers :-/ )

> You could even go for a lower quality (accepting a loss of

Certainly. As one of the South African defence companies used to advertise:
"80% of the capability for 60% of the cost" :-) (Which in itself is
refutation of Robert's idea that monetary costs and combat power are
proportional to one another...)

Regards,

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 5:15 PM, Oerjan Ariander
> <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:

> Certainly. As one of the South African defence companies used to

They are, but not linearly.:) The last couple percentage points are
hideously expensive.  Hence only cost-effective for countries with
more money than expendable manpower.

You also have to consider that no procurement decision is made in a vacuum.
Countries with the luxury of knowing precisely who they will fight and where
they will fight them have a different set of priorities than a country which
must project power across the globe against unpredictable adversaries. If your
opponent's air force is
flying MiG-21s and MiG-23s, is it more cost-effective to buy a single
squadron of top-of-the line-fighters, or a couple squadrons of a less
capable, but more easily maintained aircraft? There's also lifecycle
costs to consider--initial purchase price of a piece of military
equipment can be a relatively minor fraction of the cost of operating it over
a 10 or 20 year period.

Besides, most modern technology is less in the airframes and chassis than in
the electronics. And electronics are often upgradable over time.

> Oerjan wrote:

> ...

Like lot of people around the world:)

> ...if a weapon system could

And society too... you have to build them up for 9 months and 13-odd
years (if we think of recent terrible events in Africa):( Anyway, on lighter
notes (so to speak), what do you expects from a country where elections are
going to be repeated due to the fact that people chose the wrong party, and a
member of the Politburo of Mugabe just declared that people have better to
choose wisely or else a civil war will ensue...

> Certainly. As one of the South African defence companies used to

Right on point.

John added:

> You also have to consider that no procurement decision is made in a

That's right. But that's more a political/strategical decision than
an economical factor. And, as somebody wrote before during the recent
exchanges, there are other factors that warp military requirement decision,
like political convenience (internal and external)... the USA built systems
because of where, in the country, the plants producing them were sited, and
countries like Taiwan bought US "hand-me-down" vessels they didn't
need because US funds were going to pay for them and/or there were no
other competitor's offers.

> And Brendan wrote:

> Relating back to FTverse; the intent to project military power (through

That should definitely be considered in a "campaign" situation and in
evaluating the economical/military power of a country (stellar or
otherwise)... and things could get rough there, if our occasional
experience of "high-tech" war has a meaning (I'm referring to the
Israeli-Arab War of '73 and the logistical problems it caused in few
weeks of operations, that several among you probably know about).... big
numbers just to maintain troops in line...

On another line, I do not believe in the "elite myth"... I think our
experiences show that high quality forces (with both training and material
superiority) rule the battlefield, but are very limited when things move to
the "asymmetrical" war... want to destroy a planet's power grid? Having local
aerospace superiority is all you need! But if you want to occupy for any time
the main population centers against a motivated opposition, you'll need far
more than SAS or Delta Force or a few companies of powersuited infantry, or
they'll bleed to death through thousands small attacks from unarmored,
untrained militians, IMO.

Best wishes

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Independence_%28LCS-2%29

US Navy's LCS-2, designed for Naval "asymmetric" warfare...

Cheers / Robert> Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 01:17:40 +0200> To:
gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu> From: enzodeianni@tiscali.it> Subject:
[GZG] FTverse colinies> > Oerjan wrote:> > > >...> > >but the comparison
would not always be in favor of the USA,> >> >Of course it won't. If it
were, I'd be unemployed :-)> > Like lot of people around the world :)> >
> ...if a weapon system could> > >be produced in Zimbabwe (for example)
and such a thing could be made> > >with a labor intensive procedure, it could
be more convenient to make> > >it there.> >> >Very much so. Though in the
particular case of Zimbabwe, I suspect that> >you'd mostly get
cannon fodder with spears and machetes - thanks to Mr.> >Mugabe & co.
that country currently lacks virtually all kinds of> >infrastructure needed
for more advanced weapons... ('Course, cannon fodder> >is quite
labour intensive to produce too, at least for the mothers :-/ )> > And
society too... you have to build them up for 9 months and 13-odd > years
(if we think of recent terrible events in Africa):(> Anyway, on lighter notes
(so to speak), what do you expects from a > country where elections are going
to be repeated due to the fact that > people chose the wrong party, and a
member of the Politburo of Mugabe > just declared that people have better to
choose wisely or else a > civil war will ensue...> > >Certainly. As one of the
South African defence companies
used to advertise:> >"80% of the capability for 60% of the cost" :-)
(Which in itself is> >refutation of Robert's idea that monetary costs and
combat power are> >proportional to one another...)> > Right on point.> > John
added:> > >You also have to consider that no procurement decision is made in
a> >vacuum. Countries with the luxury of knowing precisely who they will>
>fight and where they will fight them have a different set of> >priorities
than a country which must project power across the globe> >against
unpredictable adversaries.> > That's right.
But that's more a political/strategical decision than > an economical
factor.> And, as somebody wrote before during the recent exchanges, there are
> other factors that warp military requirement decision, like political >
convenience (internal and external)... the USA built systems because > of
where, in the country, the plants producing them were
sited, and > countries like Taiwan bought US "hand-me-down" vessels they
didn't > need because US funds were going to pay for them and/or there
were no > other competitor's offers.> > And Brendan wrote:> > >Relating back
to FTverse; the intent to project military power (through> >FTL) is going to
impact "acceptable" costs. Transporting thousands of> >militia or a few elite
units is just logistics; replacing>
> casualties/ammo/equipment may be prohibitive with the travel times>
untrained militians, IMO.> > Best wishes> > > Enzo de Ianni > > >
_______________________________________________> Gzg-l mailing list>

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Enzo de Ianni <enzodeianni@tiscali.it> wrote:

> On another line, I do not believe in the "elite myth"... I think our

Cite an instance.

Seriously, let me know when you come up with a circumstance where untrained
militias managed to inflict a loss on an able enemy. You might be able to come
up with a handful of limited circumstances where tactical defeats of isolated
outposts occured due to failures on the
part of the high-tech opponent.  Name a campaign where this happened
with anything approaching regularity.

But if your point (and you confuse tactics with strategy here) is that by
avoiding confrontation an "asymmetrical" opponent can avoid loosing
decisively long enough for their high-tech opponent to decide it isn't
worth the cost, that might be a valid point. But that political consideration
in no way justifies your dismissal of good quality
troops (training and equipment-wise) as worthless.

And even when it does work out, it's damned hard on your thousands of
unarmored untrained militia boogers. We tend to stack them up like cordwood at
ratios of 10 or 20 to one, or better. Which may or may not be a commitment a
frontier colony can make.

> John Atkinson wrote:

> > On another line, I do not believe in the "elite myth"... I think our

Cite an instance where elite SF types - which is what Enzo was talking
above above - *by themselves* won a campaign, without any backup from
far more numerous "normal" ground forces or local militias.

What Enzo is saying is that the elite few can win any number of *battles*; but
you also need to be able to *hold* the areas you've won in those battles, and
the elite few simply aren't numerous enough to do that.

Contrary to what you seem to think, saying this is NOT the same thing as

"to dismiss good quality troops as worthless"...

Regards,

> --- Enzo de Ianni <enzodeianni@tiscali.it> wrote:

> ('Course, cannon fodder

At least the work can be done by an unskilled workforce.

"My precious sense of honor Just a shield of rusty wire, I stand against the
chaos
and the cross of holy fire' - N. Peart

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Sat, May 10, 2008 at 1:43 PM, John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Enzo de Ianni <enzodeianni@tiscali.it>

Hypothetical invasion of Canada by the US. As the canadians are incapable of
symmetrically opposing the US military, a campaign of guerrilla warfare
begins. Unlike radical muslims, Canada goes the Mandela route and attacks
infrastructure. Hunters with.50 BMG sport rifles start dropping powerlines
and, if the opportunity presents itself, put holes in transformers. Shaped
charges are used to blow open pipelines. Explosives are smuggled into
underground utility spaces.

American regulars do not bleed to death, they are seldom even shot at, but the
US economy bleeds profusely.

This is an admittedly contrived example, but probably explains why they just
give us money for our resources. 8-)

> But if your point (and you confuse tactics with strategy here) is that

It is not that the good quality troops are worthless, but that the superiority
of the occuppying troops means nothing if they are not where the insurgents
are carrying out an op.

> [quoted text omitted]

On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Richard Bell <rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hypothetical invasion of Canada by the US. As the canadians are
Shaped
> charges are used to blow open pipelines. Explosives are smuggled into

Hypothetical.

Unlikely.

And so far-fetched as to be difficult to discuss reasonably.  I was
actually requesting a historical instance. And I don't mean the
Italian invasion of Ethiopia either--since you've got possibly the
most incompetent army on historical record as the "high tech" force.

You also must realize that this scenario is likely to end up with a
LOT of dead Canadians--and most at the hands of other Canadians who
like being able to heat their homes in the winter. American forces will have
heat. Blowing transformers just means a lot of Canadians
freeze solid--urban Canadians are probably no more in touch with their
pioneer roots than their American counterparts.

> American regulars do not bleed to death, they are seldom even shot at,

You're making a lot of strange assumptions. For a US invasion of Canada to be
concievable, economic realities would have to have changed to the point that
Canada is (for whatever reason) no longer a major trading partner.

> And even when it does work out, it's damned hard on your thousands of

You kind of assume that the high-tech troops are static popup targets.
We tend to do a lot of very careful work looking for Bad Guys. Folks who
aren't as clever as they think they are tend to end up very, very dead when
playing this game.

My brigade's bag in Ramadi was over 3,000 insurgents killed and captured in
the space of nine months, for a cost of 94. Very few of the insurgent
casualties were from "standing and fighting" like you seem to imagine. Many
more of them were from trying to plant IEDs in places where snipers were
watching, or their neighbors deciding to rat them out because they are tired
of bombs exploding in the marketplace,
or all the other ways you can get a no-go at the Asymmetric Warfare
Game.  Do you hear about al-Anbar Province being a hotbed of violence
anymore?

You're getting to the point of trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 4:17 PM, Oerjan Ariander
> <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:

He being extremely vague in how he phrases, but I didn't take it as
"SF types" alone, but any small, high-tech, highly trained
expeditionary force would automatically be defeated by local militias. Which
flies in the face of a couple hundred years of historical evidence.

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Sat, May 10, 2008 at 8:59 PM, John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 4:41 PM, Richard Bell <rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com>

The North Vietnamese  were not precisely low tech, nor ill-trained, and
the americans did seem to do everything in their power to negate their own
advantages, but the americans were very high tech for the time. They failed
for many reasons but high among them was failure to occuppy where they had
searched and destroyed.

> You also must realize that this scenario is likely to end up with a

The canadian guerrillas are not blowing up infastructure in Canada, except for
the powerlines from Quebec and the transborder pipelines. That is part
of the contrived nature of the example-- most asymmetrical wars cannot
strike the high tech power where it lives.

> > American regulars do not bleed to death, they are seldom even shot

It is actually wierder than that. If the US is no longer Canada's major
trading partner, but still wants what we have, it can only be that someone
else was willing to pay more for it. The US economy would have to tank to the
point that canadian raw materials are all going to China for prices that the
US cannot afford to pay, yet still be healthy enough to mount the invasion.

> >> And even when it does work out, it's damned hard on your thousands
A
> > frontier colony engages in asymmetrical warfare by destroying what

In an interstellar setting, the low tech colonial militias are not going to be
that low tech. A truly low tech colony will have nothing worth taking. If
interstellar freight is cheap enough for the export of raw materials, frontier
colony only refers to location, not tech level.

Does the Soveit/afgan conflict. Make a fair example? I don't think it
does but that is as close as I can come after some thought.

[quoted original message omitted]

> On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 1:10 AM, Chris <sepplainer@gmail.com> wrote:

If you consider the fact that the Afghans made very little progress
before they started getting high-tech missiles shipped in, it kind of
skews it. The majority of the Russian troops were also exceedingly
ill-trained, and the doctrine they were working with was garbage too.

And you still can't point to a lot of "battlefield defeats" but to political
effects. In fact, the Sovs didn't actually pull out of Afghanistan until the
sequence of events that would lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union was
already in motion.

> John Atkinson wrote:

> >> > On another line, I do not believe in the "elite myth"... I think
But
> >> > if you want to occupy for any time the main population centers

I think his examples "SAS, Delta Force or a few companies of powersuited

infantry" were pretty clear: extremely competent, but also very small. He's
talking about forces up to *a few companies* in size; in your
counter-example you talk about your *brigade*. There's a slight
difference
in scale between a brigade and a few companies :-/

Considering that he started his post by noting that the high-quality
forces "rule the battlefield", I really don't think that he intended to
dismiss

those very same high-quality forces as "worthless" :-/

Regards,

Which begs the point, when the "Invader" controls Power, Water and
communications how much "spare" population does the colony have?

Michael Brown mwsaber6@msn

--------------------------------------------------
From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2008 1:43 PM
To: <gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: [GZG] FTverse colinies

> On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Enzo de Ianni <enzodeianni@tiscali.it>

> wrote:

On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 8:13 AM, Oerjan Ariander
> <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:

> I think his examples "SAS, Delta Force or a few companies of

I can't imagine trying to use SAS or Delta Force alone for any
operation, unless you are doing a 19th-century style "Butcher and
Bolt" punitive operation.  Which has its place in some settings--and a
few companies of powersuited infantry would probably be able to do so
on a low-tech world.  After all, how many stands of 'leg' infantry
would you feel was a fair matchup in DSII vs a short battalion of powered
armor?

On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 12:38 AM, Richard Bell <rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com> wrote:

> > And so far-fetched as to be difficult to discuss reasonably. I was

The insurgency failed utterly in 1968. After that, it was PAVN fighting the
US, and you'd have a hard time to argue them as poorly trained militia.:) And
while they weren't as sophisticated as the American forces, they were being
equipped with artillery and tanks by
the Chinese and Soviets, which kind of pitches the "ill-equipped" out
the window.

> > You're making a lot of strange assumptions. For a US invasion of

Those would seem to be mutually contradictory conditions. IMHO.

> > You kind of assume that the high-tech troops are static popup
Folks
> > who aren't as clever as they think they are tend to end up very,

Go ahead. Detonate a "fractional megaton" device in a population center. See
how that goes as far as winning hearts and minds. Remember that your
terrorists (and when you detonate that sort of device in a population center
OF YOUR OWN PEOPLE) are presumably
home-grown, and hence have maiden aunts and little sisters and aged
fathers living in population centers that MIGHT, presuming they aren't
outright death cultists like the Wahabbists and 1930s Japanese, give them
pause before wiping urban areas off the map. The terrorists need to swim in a
sea of the people, not eradicate them from the face of the planet. Start
blowing up the infrastructure people need to survive and killing civilians
indescriminately, and all of a sudden joining the occupying force's local
auxiliary police force and keeping the crazies out of your neighborhood starts
looking like a REAL good idea. Ask me how I know.

There are a couple different scenarios here. I can see some pretty extensive
resistance on a planet that has reason to believe a relief force is coming,
and it might last for years. See: Phillipines or Poland or Yugoslavia in WWII.
Absent that sort of "I will return" commitment, then the population has to
decide whether or not continued resistance, especially resistance that is
destroying vital infrastructure and killing civilians, is worth it. After all,
you are talking about a million or fewer people with a whole planet, and over
99% of it howling wilderness. It's too easy for the diehards to hold a little
Voortrek a couple hundred miles into the interior and forget the whole mess
for a century or two.

But the most critical piece of information for an insurgency is a question of
PSB. You have to determine how (relatively) easy or
difficult it is to smuggle off-planet weapons, ammunition, advisors,
etc. onto the planet. You can't just load a mule train or a truck and take off
through the back roads to smuggle onto a planet. This will make or break an
insurgency. I tend to believe that orbital reentry would be pretty
spectacular, and that the invading force SHOULD be patrolling the skies pretty
extensively.

> In an interstellar setting, the low tech colonial militias are not

Yeah, but how much of that high tech stuff can be maintained, repaired, or
replaced? The occupying power is going to put the (very
limited number) of manufacturing facilities on lock-down.  If your
background includes home nanotech forges that can produce anything the size of
an automobile or smaller in every toolshed, and a fusion plant on every
farmstead, that's one thing. But I've digressed from the initial point.

Arguing theory is masturbation. Without a specific scenario, you can 'what if'
it to death all day long and never resolve the issue.

This is an interesting question; I'd mention I read a short story decades ago
where a militaristic Earth was destroying a peaceful and far more advanced
Denebian civilization, and so they trained ONE soldier. Of course, denebians
could transfer knowledge and life
experience in minutes and reproduced full-grown adults daily, so
special situation.:)

> But the most critical piece of information for an insurgency is a

This is a VERY interesting question from a scenario point of view. One
possibility is an ultra low albedo cargo pod launched at high velocity
from the outskirts of a system, then left to free-fall (with some kind
of ablative re-entry shield) and release its cargo. I'd imagine that
the launching ship would accelerate to the appropriate vector, and then use
FTL drive to actually travel to the target system. You'd only be detectable
from your FTL drive usage (and maybe some final maneuvers with your grav
drive, though you could maybe use a railgun to adjust for error in your
position and avoid having any drive usage at all), and the cargo pod itself
(which would be stealthy and more or less inert).

You could use the same technique to scout out a system. Accelerate to some
insane velocity in your home system, then use FTL drive to go to
the target system, emerge well outside detection range and free-fall
through it.

> Yeah, but how much of that high tech stuff can be maintained,

I personally think that much of the industrial wealth of a system can
be found in its asteroids and low-gravity moons, but that's a matter
of taste, I suppose. I'm still working on my cost model for interstellar
transport, so there might be either a range of answers or
a few major categories of answers coming in. Or a blank-eyed shrug of
the shoulders. Stay tuned. Thanks to the several people who brought up
comparative advantage-- I'd thought of that but was looking for a way
to get a sanity check. I didn't realize that the MUcr values had been
disavowed, though.:)

Either way, the main reasons to capture interstellar colonies won't be
economic IMO. As John points out, the populations are so small that most of
any given colony world's resources are totally untapped. So taking a new world
gives you (extremely unhappy) new people, and raises your transportation
costs, but I'm not sure that your production would actually go up that much.
War for
political/cultural/religious reasons, of course, is unchanged. Maybe
even increased; if most of the fighting is on low-population worlds
away from your infrastructure, then where's the existential threat to drive a
peace deal? It would explain how the three Solar Wars dragged
on as long as they did if the fighting was well-removed from the
population and production infrastructure.

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> n Atkinson wrote:
True enough but then how often do "insurgents" not have outside help?

Don't forget too that the Soviets did deploy quite a few special forces units
(mostly if not entirely Spetznaz, possibly some interior ministry types) and
still lost numerous small engagements. Yes, the Soviet system

did collapse but whether the Afghanistan pull out is a cause or an effect of
that is still a major historical debate. The US pulled out of Vietnam but it
was in no way collapsing. And yes the irregulars were being backed by NVA, but
not to fight major engagements until the last year or two with one exception.
Insurgents, guerrilias, rebels, freedom fighters, assymetricals, whatever
don't win by fighting major battlefield engagements, they win by making it
politically untenable for

the major power to stay.

If you want a battlefield example then the early stages of the Tet offensive.
Yes the US "won" but it was touch and go for a while.

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you could say that while they won the battle at Tet, they did lose it on the
political side with the loss in public support and face I believe.

In modern war, the public opinion and politics is very important, I think some
conflicts which were winable were lost on the field of Public Opinion and
Political Debate.

Robyn
[quoted original message omitted]

On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 9:20 PM, Tony Wilkinson <twilko@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> True enough but then how often do "insurgents" not have outside help?

As far as I know, once in human history.

> Don't forget too that the Soviets did deploy quite a few special

Look, this is my impressed face.

Soviet Special Forces---when you absolutely, positively, have to kill
someone with a thrown hatchet backflip.

Their operational history makes me think of them as assclowns, don't mind me.

> that is still a major historical debate. The US pulled out of Vietnam

You're wrong on Vietnam, actually. NLF forces were not a factor after 1968,
and PAVN was heavily involved before then as well.

> If you want a battlefield example then the early stages of the Tet

Tactically, nope. Nowhere.

> On 12-May-08, at 4:04 AM, John Atkinson wrote:

> On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 9:20 PM, Tony Wilkinson

Where, in Haiti in the 1790s?

> John

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> On May10 08, at 22:38, Richard Bell wrote:

> The North Vietnamese were not precisely low tech, nor ill-trained,

Point of order, The North Vietnamese were and are BAD ASS.... They whacked the
Chinese after booting us out. But a lot of that is they were a strongly
nationalistic army in defense of their homeland and experience fighting larger
better equipped armies since the second world war. They had a very proficient
army, they fought their own "vietnam" successfully removing the Khmer Rouge
from power in Cambodia.

Eisenhower's made one big mistake in not recognizing Vietnam as a single
nation when the French got pasted, if he had there probably not be a communist
state there now.

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Tony Christney <tchristney@telus.net> wrote:

> >> True enough but then how often do "insurgents" not have outside

I was actually thinking, more recently, Eritrea.

Haiti does seem to qualify, however. There are a series of reasons WHY the
Hatians beat their former masters solidly but foreign support is, unusually,
not on the list.

Hello to all,

> John Atkinsons wrote:

> Seriously, let me know when you come up with a circumstance where

Vietnam?:) Both against line units and elite ones, on the move or in prepared
positions? I would rate the US armed forces as quite good as a "high tech
forces" (but I see RIchard Bell already thought of that example). I could go
to any length on that, if you prefere. And, without intention of being rude,
we could talk about Iraq, too.

> Oerjan wrote:

> Cite an instance where elite SF types - which is what Enzo was talking

And I would like to thank you for explaining my issue so clearly.

> Richard Bell wrote:

> It is not that the good quality troops are worthless, but that the

Exactly. Or, if trying to be there, they support endless attrition.

> If the unarmored, untrained militia boogers are meeting the advanced

Exact again! That's only an unbalanced scenario:)

> A

Or simply denying its use, even partially, or making it too costly...

> The iraqi insurgents do not score points for killing and wounding US

Again, I concur. Even if human losses in the current political reality are a
further bonus to them; such an issue would not be real in the kind of future
our game depicts, though.

And now, why I think that is relevant to the "colonies" issue: Such an
"asymmetrical" campaign could be waged in simpler ways if the invaded
population is relatively large. So, what do you think? What's your opinion?
(A) Are we looking to a universe "Star Trek"-like, in which any group
of 3-400 guys can claim a whole planet (couldn't they be happy with a
continent? Or, even, Belgium?:) or (B) Do you think colonization would rapidly
involve larger numbers? If (A), then elite units on relatively small
transports have a role! But we could, then, be confronted by a ""Honor
Harrington" scenario, in which you never hear about army forces and rarely
about marines: a cruiser reaches high orbit (or a small squadron fights a
battle and win local aerospace superiority) and, on the farspeaker, menaces to
nuke the settlement; one of those "cattle transport" follow closely and people
queue fast with little baggage to be transported to the nearest friendly
planet (or prisoner camp)... or, a different enemy could simply slaughter the
lot...

That would depend, also, on the reason why the colony was there in the first
place: resources, strategical importance, whatever...

That could bring a kind of ritualized, limited warfare in which powers
exchange planets and population with very little bloodshed... until an alien,
oblivious to the rules, hits the human sphere and start a real massacre
against the human forces, organized and deployed for a different kind of war.

Myself, I prefer (B): a more intensive development, such as seen in the
Pournelle "Falkenberg "series (that I like very much and, in the Spartan part
of the series, feel are a very good depiction of
low-level warfare), in which elite forces would be limited to a more
realistic role of support.

> At least the work can be done by an unskilled workforce.

:)
But skilled ones become popular, they tell me:)

Best wishes

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 5:43 PM, Enzo de Ianni <enzodeianni@tiscali.it> wrote:

> >Seriously, let me know when you come up with a circumstance where

Wrong.  Flat-out wrong.

1) At no time did any Vietnamese unit defeat any American unit on the
battlefield.
2) The PAVN was well-trained and equipped with artillery and armor by
the Soviets and the Chinese.

Besides which, the strategic and political failures in Vietnam had a myriad of
causes. The one thing we can definitely rule out is the idea that the US used
insufficient force for the job. It used a great deal of force very, very
badly.

> Both against line units and elite ones, on the move or in prepared

Name an instance.

> I would rate the US armed forces as quite good as a "high tech

Again, name an instance of a battlefield defeat. Come with date, designation
of unit involved, and place.

But like you said (and I snipped), the real questions behind it have a lot
more to do with asking what are the realities in your particular
universe of space travel/transportation.

Here's a novel one I doubt anyone's asked yet: Will the occupied populace even
care? More than a few European colonies changed hands without guerilla warfare
occuring, simply because the native populace could barely tell one set of
whites from another, and even the colonists really didn't notice much of a
difference beside the language of the tax collectors.

We are also presuming that the campaigns will be conducted in full media glare
rather like a modern campaign, and fought by democracies that deeply care
about things like world opinion and whether or not their populace is offended
by pictures of insurgents hung by the neck. Would international media be able
to influence a campaign quite as heavily? I suspect not, given travel times
that prohibit the 'near real time' coverage.

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can see colonies flipping sides a lot. Without any immediate and direct
contact with the homeland or founding nation. Space is big and even in a
universe with FTL travel it's seldom immediate.  In most sci-fi settings
you really are left with the realities of old school colonies in that it can
take weeks if not months to receive effective aid.

Now, this is going to vary by setting but I think as far as the "official" GZG
universe goes this would still apply. So, you would likely end up with a lot
of colonies rolling over until they could be "officially liberated unless the
occupying forces pushed the limits and abused the populace or the populace was
particularly fantatical. Now, it might come to pass that the parent nation
might insite a geurilla conflict by mandate which of course would present its
own political problems.

I really can't see most colonies being big enough to really resist a
government that really wanted to threaten it. Populations would be incredibly
centralized and vulnerable to bombardment and pinpoint invasion. In addition,
I don't imagine that most colonies would allow for the "flee to the hills"
approach all that well as many of them would likely be on marginal or even
hostile worlds with the colony being the only truely safe place.

But as has been said, it really depends on how you want to run it.

-Eli

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@gmail.com>

> On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 5:43 PM, Enzo de Ianni wrote:

> > >with anything approaching regularity.

> Again, name an instance of a battlefield defeat. Come with date,

> lot more to do with asking what are the realities in your particular

> Would international media be able to influence a campaign quite as

> At 8:13 PM -0500 5/12/08, John Atkinson wrote:

Good point, there will be times that the media is not there and the only
witnesses will be that of the soldiers. I know there are a number of cases of
ghastly incidents in African colonies. I believe the Germans and Belgians had
some serious incidents. The Japanese surely did. One wonders how the ESU or
NSL would handle certain problems in far flung areas given the tone of those
nation's peoples. I suspect behavior will generally depend on the comportment
of the soldiers and their culture as well as the divisions between that
culture and others.

> Enzo de Ianni wrote:

I think it will depend on both population size and settlement pattern. The
greater population you want to control, the more troops you need. Also the
more concentrated a population the fewer troops you'll need compared to a same
size population that is far more dispersed. Even if colonial populations are
quite large, how they are spread out will make a big difference to an
occupiers deployment.

> If (A), then elite units on relatively small transports have a role!
If you nuke the population from orbit then you are probably nuking the thing
you're after.
> That would depend, also, on the reason why the colony was there in

Also environment. On hostile worlds were people are depended on particular
infastructure (power station, atmosphere processors etc) then

by controlling those few structures you effectively, if not completely, compel
the population to do as you want. Dare I say the John rasied this

point when refuting the US vs Canada example.
> That could bring a kind of ritualized, limited warfare in which
I could really only see that happening where a majority of occupied worlds are
depended on some sort special infrastructure for survival, a domed city if you
like, where attacking that infrastructure might be considered "unlawful". If
terraforming is relatively easy then such limitations are unlikely. The
environment will be either robust enough to take what you can throw at it or
can be repaired afterward.
> :)
Is that a boast? ;-)

> [snip lots of other stuff]

> We are also presuming that the campaigns will be conducted in full

A very interesting point. If we're talking about just the GZG-verse
as written, with no FTL comms other than courier ships, then you'll have an
interesting mix of 21st and 19th Century paradigms. There may
well be international/Interstellar media about filming and reporting
on everything, but then even if they can smuggle the footage offworld (or
transmit it to a courier waiting to jump outsystem) it is still
going to be days/weeks/months before the public back home get to see
it. So there may well be plenty of firm evidence to court-martial
people after the event, but still no way of actually stopping seriously bad
stuff while it is happening. Local military commander and political leaders
will have to have almost complete autonomy on the spot, there will be no
bouncing decisions up the chain of command. If they screw up, they'll either
have to carry the can later
or make sure that the news never gets out....  ;-)

Ah yes GZG-verse Political officer's, or the three P's, pamphlet's,
propaganda and a pistol shot to the back of the head.
[quoted original message omitted]

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> y Wilkinson <twilko@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
Also environment. On hostile worlds were people are depended on particular
infastructure (power station, atmosphere processors etc) then

by controlling those few structures you effectively, if not completely, compel
the population to do as you want. Dare I say the John rasied this

point when refuting the US vs Canada example.

> That could bring a kind of ritualized, limited warfare in which
There's historical precedent for what Enzo suggested, in the post to
which Tony replied -- think about the "condottieri" era in Renaissance
Italy (even more so than the wars of maneuver of 18th Century Europe, an apple
cart upset only when first Marlborough, then Frederick the Great came along
and actually wanted to fight battles with those painstakingly assembled
armies).

The peculiar features of the condottieri era (and I confess I have not studied
it in detail) likely had something to do with a desire to avoid ravaging the
countryside, along with the fact that it was conducted with professionals on
both sides who calculated they got paid for showing up, and didn't get paid
any extra for dying (and no investment in a Greater Cause).

Best,

While you can capture your enemies colonies, I see many colonies if treated
fairly by the new ownership will for the most part just change money and
allainces until they are reliberated by there former owners. The best example
of this is to look to the CBT unverse where many border worlds, have changed
hands back and forth so the locals for the most part just deal with it. Not
that there won't be military who will resist the takever but once it is done
the civilians adjust to the new ownsership.

Of course with no FTL comms, all your news is limited to either the official
channels or what cargo ships come your way. Why the rock the boat until U know
it won't tip over and wipe you out.

In Memory of Russ Manduca 7/22/67-1/8/08

Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have
hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else
thereafter. Â Â Â Â ~ Ernest Hemmingway

Enzo de Ianni schrieb:
> Hello to all,

The Warsaw Ghetto 18 January 1943 - to 23.April 1943 and the Warsaw
Rising, 1.August 1944 to 2 October certainly qualify on the militia
side, though most of the German troops were not top-notch forces and the

irregulars lost in the end. But it took several months to subdue them in

severe urban fighting.

Greetings Karl Heinz

> Jon T. wrote:

> ...There may

How is that - no way of stopping seriously bad stuff while it is
happening
- different from today's situation...? Sure, we often get to see
seriously bad stuff happening almost in real time, but we still can't do
anything about it unless we happen to be *right* there *right* then...
Srebrenica, anyone? Rwanda?

Regards,

> John Atkinson wrote:

> >>> True enough but then how often do "insurgents" not have outside

Doesn't qualify. During at least some stages of the war, the Eritreans
recieved support from various Arab states including Syria and Iraq...

Regards,

John Atkinson schrieb:
> >> True enough but then how often do "insurgents" not have outside

Guess it depends on what you mean by "outside help". The Haitian slaves
themselves did win against the French local forces, but in 1791 (2 years

after the French revolution) France was not in a position to send in
significant reinforcements. It is not clear the Haitians would have prevailed
against France (either Royal or Napoleonic) at full capability.

Against the British intervention from 1794 the Haitians had already been

able to get somewhat organised. Again, they had more pressing issues
elsewhere.

By the way, wouldn't the French revolution qualify as a succesful insurgency
without outside help?

As to Eritrea, I am not really sure it qualifies as 'without outside help' if
you define this strictly. There was a substantial Eritrean diaspora in Europe
that supported the rebels politically, with money, etc. Plus, Ethiopia was
"Marxist" at the time, with support from the Soviets, and I vaguely remember
that Western clandestine help may have reached them through friendly (Arab?)
countries.

Greetings Karl Heinz

PS. I will have to leave this interesting discussion, because I am going

on holidays for a week.

Another issue is control.

Right now, we're making the costs of journalism so low that the best reporting
often comes from citizen journalists on the scene filing dispatches onto their
blogs. In the grim future of the Tuffleyverse, the situation has been
reversed.

On major planets, you'll have an internet with a pretty integrated,
globalized world-wide culture, lots of voices, and a very short news
cycle. However, news BETWEEN colonies could be tightly regulated, at least in
highly regulated states like the ESU. Distribution costs become enough of a
bottleneck that only a few large (possibly
state-owned, state-supported, or state-coddled) news organizations can
be supported by the market.

Plus the *expectation* of instant news isn't there. You have time even when a
ship docks to get the Official Story straight even if you know you can't keep
the information totally bottled. That means that overall control of
information would be pretty tight, certainly enough to place a politically
expedient spin on even bad news.

You couldn't keep the people from finding out about a massacre, for example,
but you could minimize it, create "context" for it, or surround it with "news
analysis" to justify it. Or even just manufacture some domestic story that
eats up all the air.

Yet another reason why GZG's universe is so balkanized.

> On 5/13/08, Oerjan Ariander <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:

> >...There may

> How is that - no way of stopping seriously bad stuff while it is
Srebrenica,
> anyone? Rwanda?

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:49 AM, K.H.Ranitzsch
> <kh.ranitzsch@t-online.de> wrote:

> >>Seriously, let me know when you come up with a circumstance where

Able enemy does NOT equal police and thugs led by an incompetent.

And a "moral victory" of losing more slowly than expected doesn't really fit
the intent of the original statement either.

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 12:21 PM, Oerjan Ariander
> <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:

> >I was actually thinking, more recently, Eritrea.

My understanding was that went more or less down the drain once the Imperial
government was overthrown by the Socialist Derg junta.

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 1:35 PM, K.H.Ranitzsch
> <kh.ranitzsch@t-online.de> wrote:

> > Haiti does seem to qualify, however. There are a series of reasons

Well, it did help France was at war with practically the entire world (except
the United States) at the time. But as for direct aid or intervention, the
Haitians got nothing I can find.

> By the way, wouldn't the French revolution qualify as a succesful

Wasn't much of an insurgency. It was simply a series of coups and instances of
civil unrest. Formed Army units operated on all sides.

> As to Eritrea, I am not really sure it qualifies as 'without outside

If so, not much of it.

> Robert Mayberry wrote:

Considering Marlborough did not achieve high command until 1702, won his last
major engagement in 1710 and had been dismissed, disgraced and driven into
exile by a grateful monarch by in January 1711, the
apple-cart was upset very *early* in the 18th century.

Charles XII of Sweden spilt a lot of apples in his turbulent career, and the
cart was kept upset by Prince Eugene at Peterwardein and Belgrade in 1716 and
1717, before passing the baton to de Saxe,
Ferdinand Of Brunswick, and of course Frederick through the 1740-50s.
Other notable apple-cart upsetters would include Clive and Wolfe in
India and Canada in 1759, not to mention Howe, Burgoyne and a chap named
George Washington from 1777 to 1781.

In fact the apple-cart spent so much time upside-down, that one
begins to wonder if there ever was one. One even begins to suspect that the
idea of 18th century warfare as sterile manoeuvring and the avoidance of
battle is just a construct of 19th century historians
and theorists who suffered from a bad case of Napoleon-worship.

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se are fair points, and I forgot completely about Charles XII.

Best,
  Ken

> Robert N Bryett <rbryett@gmail.com> wrote:
Considering Marlborough did not achieve high command until 1702, won his last
major engagement in 1710 and had been dismissed, disgraced and driven into
exile by a grateful monarch by in January 1711, the
apple-cart was upset very *early* in the 18th century.

Charles XII of Sweden spilt a lot of apples in his turbulent career, and the
cart was kept upset by Prince Eugene at Peterwardein and Belgrade in 1716 and
1717, before passing the baton to de Saxe,
Ferdinand Of Brunswick, and of course Frederick through the 1740-50s.
Other notable apple-cart upsetters would include Clive and Wolfe in
India and Canada in 1759, not to mention Howe, Burgoyne and a chap named
George Washington from 1777 to 1781.

In fact the apple-cart spent so much time upside-down, that one
begins to wonder if there ever was one. One even begins to suspect that the
idea of 18th century warfare as sterile manoeuvring and the avoidance of
battle is just a construct of 19th century historians
and theorists who suffered from a bad case of Napoleon-worship.

Best regards, Robert Bryett

> On 13/05/2008, at 22:36 , Ken Hall wrote:

> wars of maneuver of 18th Century Europe, an apple cart upset only

Sorry Ken, if I came off as having a go at you; that wasn't my intention. I
just have a problem with conventional interpretations of history that strike
me as being constructed by historians (or perhaps
I should say *historicists*) shoe-horning the facts into their pet
theories.