[GZG] [OT] Books (Weber/White/Meier)

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anyone read White & Meier's "Exodus"? Or Weber & White's "Stars At War
II"?

Mk

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Is Stars At War just a retitling of In Death
Ground/The Shiva Option?

Read those quite awhile ago...

If no one knows about Exodus, any experience with Shirley Meier's writing at
all? I consider Stephen White a good leavening agent to Weber's prose, though
I haven't read anything by just him.

The_Beast

Indy wrote on 07/18/2008 07:42:37 AM:

> Has anyone read White & Meier's "Exodus"? Or Weber & White's "Stars At

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> Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 9:52 AM, Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> wrote:

> Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Is Stars At War just a retitling of In

In Death Ground and Shiva Option I read, yes. I saw Exodus in the book store
yesterday, and saw on the inside jacket mentioned "also in this series" both
Stars At War and Stars At War II. Wondered if they were different/new
stories.

Mk

> In Death Ground and Shiva Option I read, yes. I saw Exodus in the book
both
> Stars At War and Stars At War II. Wondered if they were different/new

The Stars At War books are just the other Weber/White Starfire universe
books re-released as 2 volumes instead of 4.

I picked up Exodus in hardcover months ago but have not read it yet. Those who
have read it say it is by far not as good as the others and it is frustrating
because it is just half a story so there has to be a sequel coming.

> On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 08:52:33AM -0500, Doug Evans wrote:

More or less. (TSAW I is Crusade and In Death Ground; TSAW II is The Shiva
Option and Insurrection.)

I started _Exodus_ but got very bogged down in long passages of "we have
to misunderstand each other comprehensively even though we're all smart and
pleasant people, or we won't have the war that the readers insist on". It's
also only book one of a series.

All these are available as free etext from Baen, by the way - CD9 and
CD12 will get you all the books that have been mentioned. If anyone's having
trouble finding them, give me a shout (but expect delays).

R

Roger wrote on 07/18/2008 10:01:36 AM:

> On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 08:52:33AM -0500, Doug Evans wrote:

Huge thanks! I could tell by the snippets that the bug war was split between
the two volumes, so Dean's comment that these were the four books in two
volumes confused me. Not sure it's what I would have wanted, as I always felt
the bug war was one book, though a monster in one jacket...

Reminds me of the last two Pirates of the Caribbean.

> I started _Exodus_ but got very bogged down in long passages of "we

All smart and pleasant people? That'll be a change!

I prefer the 'flawed in different ways' conflicts, but heroic vs. slime is
more dramatic.

> All these are available as free etext from Baen, by the way - CD9 and

I was there trying to figure out the above, and hadn't actually found the
downloads. I was concerned with Mr.Baen's passing that they might have changed
the business model. Truly, it's an honor to his memory.

And, yes, I purchased all four Weber/White Starfire collaborations, one
hard bound (ouch). ;->=

I'll eventually give Exodus a look, though, I fear, I'll prefer to wait on the
reader's digest version of the series.

Was that cover really necessary, i.e., related to book reality?

Also, did you get the same see-saw narrative (They came in force, though
they knew they were out-numbered, but they were prepared and resolute,
but the final result was obvious, but... but... but... but...)? The first time
I saw it, it was interesting in a curious, archaic way. By the third time in
the same book, merely tedious and annoying. By the fourth book, I could almost
ignore it.

The_Beast

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Eric,

I found all 'preachy', but have to admit, I couldn't finish Insurrection,
while I couldn't put Crusade or the bug wars down.

Still, it would be neat to see Alkeda Dawn and Gorm-Khanate War
generated into stories. It would be interesting to see how they'd develop
without the crutch of cardboard duplicitous human politicians and
industrialists.
;->=

The_Beast

> Eric Foley wrote:

> Further comments below Indy's original message with spoiler warning

> Centauri, and they portrayed it as a desperate fight in In Death

> nuking Home Hives into glowing cinders and yet the

You have to get to the planets before you can nuke them, though. The Bugs
*did* nuke every Alliance planet they could reach, but in Alpha Centauri

their WP was around five light-hours away from the nearest inhabited
planet. (Not sure if it says so anywhere in the books, but the star system
data is available in the scenario module the books were based on.) The
Bugs' longest-ranged missiles only had a range of at best 20
light-*seconds*, and during the follow-up battle at the end of In Death
Ground the Bugs never managed to get more than a few light-seconds away
from the WP.

Stray missiles, well... one interesting feature with the StarFire inertialess
drives is that any stray missile would come to a full stop once
its engine burned out, so only the star's gravity field - very weak, at
that distance - would pull it in towards the orbits of the inhabited
planets... and that'd take quite a while. (Indy, how long? Would a hundred
years suffice? Not soon enough to affect the war, anyway.)

(Couldn't Weber have put the Centauri WP closer to the planets in order to
make it a more useful plot device? No, because if he had done that the Bug
scouting force would've been detected on their initial transit instead of
during their attempt to scout the system :-( )

As for why the Bugs became a paper tiger after Pesthouse, it is quite simple:
the entire Hegemony consisted of around thirty inhabited star systems, against
the Alliance's many hundreds of systems. Once the Bugs had run out of
mothballed SDNs to reactivate and send into battle, their only reinforcements
were new production units... and even though the five Home Hives could easily
outproduce any *five* Alliance systems, they had no chance in hell against the
top five *hundred* Alliance systems.

Put in a different way, ISW4 was essentially modelled after the European

part of WW2 with the Bugs in the role of Italy and Nazi Germany. (The
Pacific part of WW2 had already been copied - Pearl Harbour, Midway and
all
- in ISW3, against the equally genocidal Rigellians.) After the
invasions
of Sicily and Normandy, the end *was* a foregone conclusion - the only
question being how many more Allied troops would have to die before that

conclusion was finally realized :-(

> ...the bugs never got portrayed as a serious threat to anything but far

> outlying systems after Pesthouse, and they never followed up with any

For the Bugs, the war had been them-or-us from the very first skirmish -

that was the only kind of war they ever fought. They still had the *will* to
kill after Pesthouse; but they lacked the means to do so.

Regards,

[quoted original message omitted]

> Roger Burton West wrote:

Baen has the free library and snippets of books:

http://www.baen.com

http://www.baen.com/library/

And you can find the CDs here:

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

(Put up with the full permission of the publisher, so you're not committing
any foul sins by grabbing a bunch of CDs. Just do Baen a favour and pick up
your favourites on Amazon or something afterwards.  (8-) )

JGH

> Eric Foley wrote:

> >>Further comments below Indy's original message with spoiler warning

Oh, I certainly agree with that! The ISW4 books are basically a
fleshed-out
report from a StarFire campaign, where one side gets the upper hand and the
snowball starts to roll. Once that happens in a campaign, everyone can see
the writing on the wall - the only way such a campaign will survive is
if some of the other players change sides (ie., if the Alliance was to break
up) - and with the Bugs attempting genocide against both the primary
partners of the Alliance, there was literally no way that would happen in
ISW4.

(FWIW W&W wrote the ISW4 scenario module first, and later on used it as the
synopsis for the novels; same with Crusade. A pity they didn't follow up

with a novelization of the original Stars at War scenarios though, covering
ISW1-3 and the GKW. OK, ISW3 played out pretty much the same as ISW4,
but the other three wars all ended in negotiated treaties and would've made
for a far more interesting read than either ISW4 or Crusade...)

> The Home Hives were described as star systems so heavily industrialized

> that any _one_ of the planets in those systems could outproduce Old

Er... not exactly. That was the *estimate* of the survey crew that first

discovered Home Hive V, but it wasn't entirely accurate - partly because

they based their estimate on humanity's more advanced tech base, and partly
because they didn't have that much time to do a thorough survey of the system.

> and between the five Home Hives there were about fifteen planets to

The Home Hives had a total of sixteen inhabited planets, but not all of them
were equally massively populated or industrialized.

> Old Terra was supposed to be the most industrially developed world of

No other *planet* in the Alliance came close, but Sol only has a single easily
inhabitable planet. Proxima Centauri for example has *two* garden

worlds, and even though neither of its two worlds by itself can match Old
Terra the pair of them together does come within shouting distance. FWIW

the Proxima system as a whole was more productive than either of the two

weakest Home Hives (III and IV).

> Maybe all the frontier worlds supposedly made up for this,

Not so much the *frontier* worlds (eg. Golan, Indra, Erebor, Merriweather
to name just a few) as the several dozens of second-tier old colony
systems
like Epsilon Eridani or Rehfrak that rated from one-third to half of
Proxima economically (or between two-thirds and five-sixths of HH3) and
the myriad of smaller but still substantial colonies like Remus or the other

systems of that cluster. Sure, Sol was about an order of magnitude more
productive than Remus - but the Alliance had hundreds of systems like
Remus.

The Hegemony OTOH was tiny. I mis-counted the inhabited Bug systems in
my previous post BTW (sorry for that); they had in fact only settled *ten*
systems aside from the Home Hives (although they controlled another
twenty-odd systems) - and those ten systems combined only roughly
matched HH IV economically, providing about 10% of the Hegemony's total
income. (Home Hive II provided a staggering 36% of the Hegemony's total
income; HH I and V just under 20% each, and HH III 6% of the total.)

> and I suppose it was described as a situation where the Arachnids were

It wouldn't have hurt for the books, but how? Once the landings in Sicily and
Normandy had succeeded, what doubt was there left about the eventual

outcome of WW2? Even the Bulge was really just a minor setback in the greater
perspective...

Regards,

[quoted original message omitted]

> Eric Foley wrote:

Not spoilering speculation.

Once infestations start popping up behind the lines or formerly empty sectors
you have a much richer wargaming environment. For starters you get a lot of
battles that have to be fought on shoestring budgets with extreme urgency.
Random patrols in backwater regions would run into *small* Bug forces so you
have an excuse to write scenarios on a smaller

scale with more interesting force mixes. Planetary assaults are always
interesting, but on the front lines you're running into stacking limits on the
orbital defenses <grin> and lets not get started on the "First Day on the
Somme" warp point assaults into an industrialized system. Stamping out an
infestation would involve the nearest mobile units that can be scratched
together.

Mini campaign and scenario-generator ideas practically write themselves.

I'd play this.

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Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 8:53 AM, Oerjan Ariander <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se>
wrote:

> It wouldn't have hurt for the books, but how? Once the landings in
In many ways the issue was never in doubt for WWII. Once the USA was involved,
it was merely a matter of expending the resources. In other ways there was
some room. The allies were totally in the dark about nerve
gas.   The reason that the nazis never used it was partly due to DDT
also

> On 7/21/08, Richard Bell <rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com> wrote:

> In many ways the issue was never in doubt for WWII. Once the USA was

That is some serious 20/20 hindsight.

And also buys into the myth of 'overwhelming economic resources' being the
decisive factor.

I never saw anyone killed with a chunk of GNP. Theories that take the fighting
out of an analysis of warfare are worthless on the face of it.

Germany was outfought. The German armies in the West outnumbered their
opponents for most of the period from June 1944, and some units (3rd Army, for
instance) inflicted more casualties on the Germans than they had troops on
their strength at any time. In the East, the Russians never had more than a
2:1 overall numerical superiority taken across the entire Eastern Front. They
used their resources far better
than the Germans, and out-generalled them in every way.  And they
would have been knocked out of the war long before that mattered if not for
hard fighting in front of Moscow in 1941. The myth of Russian hordes (and for
that matter, the myth of American hordes) comes from German autobiographies by
generals who wanted to pin defeat on every factor except better generalship.

Combat is the ultimate argument of nations, economics only sets the parameters
of the combat. Good fighting overcomes economics frequently. Having all the
resources in the world is useless without fighting men capable of turning that
into effective combat results.
Look at the American Civil War--until the Federal army could develop
into a capable force under fighting generals who could use it effectively, all
the numbers of bodies and cannons and supplies couldn't beat Bobbie Lee.

> Eric Foley wrote:

> >> >>Further comments below Indy's original message with spoiler

> Bugs had

It doesn't work very well for the game either, which is ultimately why Weber
lost control of the StarFire game design...

> In Death Ground suggested a lot of interesting suspense and possibility

> that the Arachnids could have theoretically eaten everyone in

I don't need to imagine the "nuke 'Stan" debate; it is already raging on

plenty of web sites... and in the StarFire universe, about half of the Crusade
novel is about that issue, too. As is the upcoming Exodus one, it
seems - though possibly with a new twist on it... fortunately Weber
isn't
involved in that one, so maybe the end will be different this time :-)

> >>and I suppose it was described as a situation where the Arachnids

I suspect that that would only prolong the agony. StarFire FTL travel is

restricted to the WP choke points, and because it is StarFire combat is
extremely attritional. That's the core of the StarFire background, so if

you change that... it is no longer StarFire.

(Of course that would most likely make for a better novel, which I suspect is
why Weber *did* come up with new concepts for interstellar travel in the HH
series, but since W&W wanted to write novels set in their own gaming
universe it is kinda difficult to circumvent in the StarFire novels :-(
)

Given StarFire's attrition-style warfare, once one side - whether the
Alliance or the Bugs, doesn't really matter - gets the upper hand it
will almost inevitably *retain* the upper hand. There is only suspense to be
had as long as it is uncertain who really has the advantage; once the reader

knows that, the suspense is gone - and from that point onwards, the only

real effect of having a bigger losing empire is that the mop-up phase
will take even longer than it did in TSO.

Or you could allow the Bugs to win and eat us all. *That* would keep the

suspense up <g> I'd love to see the early part of the Telik/Franos/Star
Union story line (Crucians discover Telik and Franos via a closed WP, allowing
the three races to escape the Bugs even though both Telik and Franos were
lost) turned into a novel, too.

> 1. Narrow the initial tech and industrial gap. [...]

See above. These might drag out the suspense phase a bit, but will
definitely drag out the genocidal mop-up phase since there's now so much

more to mop up :-(

> Screw this "oh no, they ate a frontier colony" overblown pathos and

Agreed about agonizing over minor rocks like Indra or Golan, though Kliean was
a fairly major world for the Khanate... 'course, Klean was a *Khanate* world,
not a human one, so the emotional effect isn't quite as big as if

Proxima had been eaten :-/

> 3. Give the Bugs better stealth.

This would only help them on the defense though, unless they also get a lot
more extra closed WPs into Allied space - or if their Stealth allows
them
to stay hidden at point-blank range, which would allow them to go
anywhere and kill anything with impunity (not that good for the plot!).
Considering that all but one of the contact points described in the novels are
just closed WPs (and that one exception only features very briefly in the
novels since it is on the Star Union front), they had already played that card
quite heavily. It'd lead to yet more Kliean-style campaigns: "Bugs boil
into yet another unprepared sector, desperate defenders get mangled at first
but finally manage to stop the Bugs after losing worlds X, Y and Z to be
eaten, then fight them to a stalemate..."

> Now here comes the part where we start breaking Starfire rules, but in

> nukes"...

> levels, quicker and more inventive at turning a planet around from

None of this breaks any game rules. The Bugs already had advantages 5 and 6,
and 4 wouldn't be a major change either...

> Visualize this: an Arachnid "egg infestation" fleet sneaks into a star

> system that the Alliance has generally not cared about because they

Again we run into a problem with StarFire's WP travel: if it is a system

inside surveyed Alliance space, "sneak in" means "using a closed WP" since the
open WPs are already covered by comm relay stations. Given the Alliance's
policies of settling every habitable piece of dirt and then some, the only
"useless" systems inside Alliance space would be the ones

having no planets with breathable atmospheres - but that would be an
even bigger issue for the Bugs, since they'd have to build an atmospheric
environment to hatch their eggs in before they could do any serious swarming,
and then it is no longer just a few crates of stuff.

Allowing the Bugs to rapidly turn newly conquered worlds like Indra or
Golan into productive colonies could be interesting - but even if they
breed like flies, it'll take them time to set up an effective industry. It is
all very well having a million mining bugs using their claws as
pick-axes in a thousand primitive mines, but if you want to ship the ore

they dig up somewhere off-planet you still need a fairly advanced
transportation system to collect it. (Not to mention the effort needed to feed
the miners, and so on.)

All in all: it wouldn't be hard to come up with a more interesting setting for
novels than the StarFire universe... but such a setting wouldn't
*be*
the StarFire universe. More specifically, it wouldn't be Weber&White's old
gaming universe where they wanted to set their novels.

Later,

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> John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@gmail.com> wrote:
Combat is the ultimate argument of nations, economics only sets the parameters
of the combat. Good fighting overcomes economics frequently. Having all the
resources in the world is useless without fighting men capable of turning that
into effective combat results.
Look at the American Civil War--until the Federal army could develop
into a capable force under fighting generals who could use it effectively, all
the numbers of bodies and cannons and supplies couldn't beat Bobbie Lee.

John

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> Oerjan Ariander <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se> wrote:
I suspect that that would only prolong the agony. StarFire FTL travel is

restricted to the WP choke points, and because it is StarFire combat is
extremely attritional. That's the core of the StarFire background, so if

you change that... it is no longer StarFire.

(snip)

Given StarFire's attrition-style warfare, once one side - whether the
Alliance or the Bugs, doesn't really matter - gets the upper hand it
will almost inevitably *retain* the upper hand.

(snip)

Later,

Oerjan orjan.ariander1@comhem.se

"Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it, depends on what you put into
it."
-Hen3ry

It's been a long time since I read JFC Fuller's tanke on Grant and Lee.

> On 7/21/08, Ken Hall <khall39@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Oerjan Ariander wrote:

<snippage>

> Or you could allow the Bugs to win and eat us all. *That* would keep

> Franos were lost) turned into a novel, too.

Then you may be in luck. The below was posted by Fred Burton to the
Starfire discussion list around mid-June.
Stephen

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A New Project Announcement Today, Starfire Design Studio is pleased to
announce the start of a major new project. This project will be lead by
myself, Fred Burton, with the blessings and close assistance of SDS owner
Marvin Lamb. The goal of this project will be nothing less than to revive,
recreate, and
re-imagine the 3rd edition of Starfire. In order to make a clean break
from the past, I have chosen a bold, new name for this bold new project:

Cosmic Starfire While I cannot release any details of Cosmic Starfire at this
time, I will state upfront and for the record that this project will *not* be
an

attempt to pull together all of the old 3rd edition rules from the various
original source documents into a single merged document. Instead, Cosmic
Starfire will be a nearly entirely new product that will

draw on the lessons learned from all editions of Starfire, but will not skimp
in the slightest on the history and flavor of the Starfire Universe.

Furthermore, this project will not simply be about producing a single set of
tactical and strategic rules. In addition to Cosmic Starfire's core rules, I
also plan to include a new historical conflict, the First
Crucian-Arachnid War. The 1st CAW takes place about 100 years prior to
the Fourth Interstellar War, but is much smaller in scale and (pretty
obviously) lower in tech level.

But the plan doesn't end there. It is my hope and desire to use Cosmic
Starfire as the foundation for a new series of historical modules that will
depict the events and conflicts of a new and ever dangerous region of the
galaxy known as The Expanse and the mysterious new races within, as well as
some familiar races, the Star Union and the Zarkolyan Empire.

For those who are concerned about how Cosmic Starfire will be true to the
spirit of 3rd edition if I am not working forward from all of the original
source material, never fear. Marvin and I have a plan that we are confident
will be able to produce a Cosmic Starfire product that can

proudly carry on the classic Starfire tradition. Will we be able to satisfy
everyone? Probably not. However, it is the goal of Cosmic
Starfire to satisfy the widest possible cross-section of the 3rd edition

fans and possibly … hopefully even fans of Galactic and Ultra.

Cosmic will include the vast majority of the weapons and tech systems with
which 3e fans are so familiar. I will not commit to "all" because
another of Cosmic's goals is the simplification and stream-lining of the

rules. (More on this below.) It is an accepted fact and operating
assumption of Cosmic that 3rd edition-style technical systems and
weapons do not and will not possess the same type of game balance as is
present in the tech systems and weapons of GSF and Ultra. This is not to

say that there won't be a modicum of balance. For example (an extreme
example), you shouldn't be expecting to see Capital Missiles doing 10 points
of damage at TL5. Furthermore, one can expect that some "revolutionary" weapon
systems will continue appear from time to time that can radically change the
balance of power in a campaign.

Additionally, new technical systems and weapons will be added to the overall
tech mix to widen the options available, that at times may mitigate the
feeling that some revolutionary weapons are the only path to victory. For
example, one not exactly new area of technology that will be included in
Cosmic is kinetics. Another area of new technology will be uncharged (as
opposed charged particle beam weapons, aka the Energy Beam) particle beam
weapons, starting right at TL1.

One of the primary goals of Cosmic will be some simplification and
stream-lining of the rules. Do not take this to mean "dumbing down" or
lowering Cosmic to the much lower level of detail present in the SDS product
Admiral's Challenge. What we mean is that there are places in the rules where
a high level of detail is "purchased" at the "cost" of a

level of complexity that is not justified by the "value-add" of the
detail. (If that sounds like mumbo-jumbo to anyone reading this, I'll
try to explain the concept in greater detail later.)

I know that R&D rules are a sore subject for 3e fans. It is my intention

to produce a clean new set of R&D rules that players will enjoy using.
However, don't bother asking me what those changes are at this time. I truly
do not know what those changes will look like at this point. (A mild word of
warning. You may have noted that I constantly use the old 3e nomenclature of
"TL". Do not take this as any sort of signal. It's nothing more than my 3e
inertia speaking. But on the flipside, also do not take this admission as any
sort of signal of intent in the other direction.)

For those of you who may not know me, my name is Fred Burton, and I was one of
Dave Weber's trusted minions during his time working on the 2nd and 3rd
editions of Starfire, and I suppose you might say, an uncredited

heavy contributor to ISW-4, as well as the creator of the Star Union and

Zarkolyan Empire, and numerous other contributions, such as the Laser Torpedo
and the 2nd Generation Standard Missile. I am an unabashed and unrepentant fan
of 3rd edition and its rich history and background. And it is my goal to bring
that rich and glorious history back to Starfire!

***

Also for the record, please do NOT consider this any sort of product release
announcement, or ask Marvin "Are we there yet?" This project will take some
time.

***

John Atkinson schrieb:
> And also buys into the myth of 'overwhelming economic resources' being

I would describe a tank or plane, a bullet or a nuke as a 'chunk of GNP'

You think they are produced by cargo cult magic?

> Theories that take the fighting out of an analysis of warfare are

Depends on the level you are looking at. Adam Tooze's 'The wages of
Destruction' is thorough discussion of the war against Germany at the economic
level. Recommended, though rather voluminous.

> Combat is the ultimate argument of nations, economics only sets the

That's what German and Japanese commanders believed. They got away with
it for a few years - until the allies got their act together to
outproduce AND outfight them.

Greetings Karl Heinz

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h, I'd have to say Good fighting only wins out over economy when the
differences in economies between the two parties is close or marginal at best.
When ou have a vast gap in economies, the economic giant can afford to throw
crappy soldiers and equipment against the enemy. I mean, both the Russians and
Americans in WW2 prove this and I invite anyone to try to wage a way against
the Chinese and see how goo your excellent fighting stands up to an army that
can be a billion strong if it needed to be.

-Eli

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "K.H.Ranitzsch" <kh.ranitzsch@t-online.de>

> John Atkinson schrieb:
being
> > the decisive factor.

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do you fight a country that can afford to lose a million people a year and
still have plenty left over?

-------------- Original message --------------
From: Eric Foley <stiltman@teleport.com>

My grandfather was a barber, among other things, during World War II. He
related once that a Chinese guy came into his shop for a haircut, and while
they were observing the progress of the war in east Asia going on at the same
time, made the following observation (although in considerably less polite
terms by modern politically correct standards): "Ten Chinese killed for every
Japanese?...Pretty soon, no more Japanese." E

[quoted original message omitted]

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http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lHow
do you fight a country that can afford to lose a million people a year and
still have plenty left over?

Sell them Coca-Cola, movies, and music videos....how else? lol

--NextPart_Webmail_9m3u9jl4l_3789_1216682048_2
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The Europeans used opium.

--Greg

> On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Don M wrote:

> How do you fight a country that can afford to lose a million people a

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would not count that China as the same thing as today's China, but I see the
point you are trying to make.

-Eli

-------------- Original message --------------
From: sax@soundingrocket.com

> The Europeans used opium.

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most beleivable and realistic answer I have ever heard. The only way to beat a
country like China is to make them your friend.

-Eli

I'm married to an Asian lady and I've learned.....bribery works.....)

Don

[quoted original message omitted]

> On 7/21/08, K.H.Ranitzsch <kh.ranitzsch@t-online.de> wrote:

> I never saw anyone killed with a chunk of GNP.

It's a paperweight without men to crew it, training to teach them to crew it
effectively, doctrine to govern its use in an effective manner, and leadership
capable of making the decision to use it effectively.

> Combat is the ultimate argument of nations, economics only sets the

Production would be useless without fighting. Did Germany have a
decisive production advantage against France?  No--they had superior
doctrine and leadership. Even French tanks were, by many standards,
technically advanced over the PzIIs and early-model IIIs that made up
the bulk of the German force in 1940.

Granted--the shorter a war, the less important this factor is.  But
production alone means nothing.

> On 7/22/08, emu2020@comcast.net <emu2020@comcast.net> wrote:

> Yeah, I'd have to say Good fighting only wins out over economy when

While the Russians were inferior on the tactical level, their operational and
strategic leadership was massively superior to the German's. Which is why
their production was able to be brought to
bear effectively.  The Germans were out-generalled.  At no time did
the Russians put more than twice the number of bodies the Germans had in the
front line. Which shouldn't be enough to steamroll over an allegedly superior
enemy with sheer weight of mindless untermensch. That image is taken directly
from Nazi autobiographies after the war.

As for the Americans, I would argue that they outfought the Germans in nearly
every engagement of the war after Kasserine. And had they fought as poorly as
they did at Kasserine, it wouldn't have mattered how many bodies they could
throw into the fight. You can attempt to
argue that this is weight of firepower--but that's superior combined
arms doctrine, not merely weight of numbers. We also, except for a handful of
categories, had better equipment. Hate to break it to you, but a Sherman that
works is better than a Panther or a King Tiger broken down on the side of the
road.

As for the Chinese, the one time they faced a Western army, they achieved
initial success due to strategic surprise, and then got their happy asses
beat. Quantity alone means nothing in the face of combined arms. The other
time the Chinese got froggy outside their national borders, they got their
asses beat by the Vietnamese like a redheaded stepchild. Compare relative
production figures for those economies, or compare population figures. What
you end up with is that chunks of GNP don't kill people, effective armies kill
people. And if you have a huge economy but do not build an army capable of
power projection with it, you can't project power. GNP is not magic, and it's
not terribly interchangable. The Chinese cannot currently project power beyond
their borders with much effectiveness, and
building a power projection army (which they are in the long-term
process of doing) is not a trivial endeavor. I will be retired long before the
Chinese are capable of fighting outside China. Doesn't mean invading China is
a real bright idea without serious use of nuclear weapons, but neither are the
Chinese a real threat to other countries that don't border them.

> On 7/22/08, emu2020@comcast.net <emu2020@comcast.net> wrote:

> How do you fight a country that can afford to lose a million people a

1) The British did beat the Chinese. Three times in the 19th century. With
relative ease. For that matter, in 1900, a combined expedition of Japanese,
Russians, Brits, Italians, Germans, and Americans fought their way to Peking
and dictated terms to the Imperial government. Not without some difficulty,
but but again superior training, doctrine, and understanding of technology
(not posession of superior
technology--many Chinese units had bought Mausers) won out over mass
numbers.

2) Speaking of the British, with an army smaller than today's NYPD, they
conquered the Indian Subcontinent, which (given that 'India' of that time
covers five nations today) actually totals more bodies than than the Chinese.
How did they do it? Not superior technology, many Indian states were buying
German and French artillery and hiring
mercenaries to use it--converting their GNP directly into combat
power, or so they thought. Superior discipline, training, and fighting spirit
won out in engagements where the British forces were outnumber 3 or 5 or 10 or
15 to one. Oh, and using internal divisions of the society and proxy actors
helped a great deal.

Everything has context. And the right context makes a mockery of purely
numerical calculations of economics.

> Ken Hall wrote:

> Wayne Hughes argues in Fleet Tactics (and the updated Fleet Tactics and

> Coastal Combat--I have the original, but not the updated edition) that

True, though not for the same reasons as in StarFire. In the StarFire
strategic environment every longer-distance naval movement has to pass
through a narrow channel - at best a strait of Gibraltar, at worst a
Suez
canal - and where most space battles are attempts to batter your way
through such a channel against enemy opposition. By sending enough ships

through you can, eventually, batter through just about any defence - but

the cost of doing so can be *extremely* high.

Regards,

> At 1:12 PM +0200 7/22/08, Oerjan Ariander wrote:

Which when you think about it, is turning what amounts to High Tech Space
combat into a battle of Thermopylae.

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Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 12:46 AM, John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> I never saw anyone killed with a chunk of GNP.

Best line I read all day.

D.

> Ryan Gill wrote:

> >...where most space battles are attempts to batter your way

Pretty much. Though quite often a Thermopylae fought with machineguns...