Hi,
First, are we talking in general terms, or are you only interested in the
Official(tm) GZG-verse? Well, I'm not, and AFAIK very little hard data
exists on it anyway.
Roger:
> You can either have space colonies with intersteller trade and a profit
Yes. But the degree of trade can vary widely.
> So what I am really saying is your transport costs cannot be so
Why not? As Greg Costikyan pointed out in his article, interstellar trade
is likely to be exclusively in luxuries and hyper-rare materials.
E.g. "spice", vital to interstellar travel, can only be found on planet
Arrakis(sp? sorry Herbert-fans...) Thus it makes sense to import it,
because it can't be made locally at any cost.
But something like food can be made everywhere -- it makes no sense to
ship it across the sea of stars.
Thus it makes sense to fight over Arrakis, but not West Bumfuck the corn
world.
There are already such items: take clean water -- there are places
where a shortage exists, and places where it is found in abundance. But still,
it's not cost effective to fill a tanker with clean water in Helsinki and ship
it to Sahara.
> It looks to me like you need a better reason for the NAC to take
Well, I already talked about the political cost of body bags. It is an
important consideration. But travel cost is another.
I'm sorry, but "it just is" just doesn't hold water for me. If I can "just
assume" A, why can't I "just assume" B? There are no signs suggesting
interstellar travel would be cheap.
Heck, just getting off the ground is expensive! Let's assume aliens came to
visit us and placed an automatic jump gate in earth orbit. How many tank
divisions could Clinton send to Betelgeuse? Zilch. He can't get even one M1 in
orbit.
Forget FTL for a while -- just getting into orbit is bloody hard. About
the only way getting into orbit could become cheap is if energy was radically
cheaper. But abundant, cheap energy would make manufacturing things *here*
cheaper too. In the end, most economics boil down to energy expenditure...
To know what kind of force it is reasonable to send to another planet, one
must know what getting there would cost, per ton. This cost also determines
what kind of trade is likely to be made, the kind of planets likely to be
colonized and to what extent.
E.g. assume it's worthwhile to send kitty litter from West Bumfuck across the
galaxy to Earth. Bags of sand? The cost of travel must be very, very low.
Travel is energy expenditure. The cost of energy must be very, very,
very low. Manufacturing is, especially of hi vs. lo-tech items, is
essentially a question of energy expenditure. Since energy is sooooo cheap it
makes sense to import kitty litter from West Bumfuck, making
super-duper hi-tek tanks is also very, very, very, very cheap. Why would
you send anything else?
Assume the only reason there are people on West Bumfuck is that
ultra-rarium, vital to modern anti-matter reactors, is found there and
only there. Even with ultra-rarium, energy is expensive, especially in
levels required for interstellar travel. Thus travel is expensive. While
this does also make manufacturing those super-duper tanks more
expensive, it is still cheaper than going to West Bumfuck. How could you not
send the best you have?
Is there an equilibrium between these two extremes? Frankly, I don't know...
but I refuse to "just assume" there is.
There's a lot of fuzzy stuff and things we can only guess at, but the cost of
putting things in orbit is a good place to start.
Regarding shipping water around earth--aren't there plans to do just
that? I thought I came across a news articlew on that somewhere (now if I
could only remember where that was).
Not that I disagree with the basic hypothesis, but I get the impression that
transporting things into orbit is not a problem (or rather, not very costly)
in the GZG-verse. Why do I get that impression? Well, when you talk
about shipping a few regiments (including INFANTRY) and divisions between
planets (not to mention HORDES of colonists and their supplies) then the basic
premise almost MUST be rather cheap ground-to-orbit costs. I'm assuming
some mythical anti-grav system here (since I assume, perhaps wrongly,
that
most places won't have a ground-to-space elevator).
Just my 2 pennies worth.
Rob
[quoted original message omitted]
> Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:
Absolutely. Then you have other oddities, like SPI's STARFORCE.
> On Fri, 5 May 2000, Robert W. Hofrichter wrote:
> Well, when you talk about shipping a few regiments (including
there is a widely (if not *that* widely) accepted model of combat in the
Tuffleyverse which doesn't have all that much in the way of large forces
being transported - forces in the majority of campaigns consist of lots
of local planetary troops with heavy equipment, but not super tech or
training, and smaller numbers of interstellar troops (marines, basically),
with super tech and training, but lacking hordes of tanks. the key exceptions
come in times of intense interstellar war, when big powers start slapping
divisions all over the place, and things get rather messy and expensive. of
course, this is only a minority view.
tom
> At 8:28 PM +0100 5/6/00, Tom Anderson wrote:
The Tuffleyverse has grav vehicles. They aren't as advanced as Renegade Legion
(would use VTOL movement rules) or Traveller (where the distinction between
small orbital craft and tanks blurs and vanishes).
> there is a widely (if not *that* widely) accepted model of combat in
This would tend to make FT scenarios involving troop transports rather bloody
affairs. The attacker can buy months or years of time by taking out a troop
convoy, or even cripple the other sides war effort if a major troop movement
is lost.
> Rob wrote:
I thought I came across a news article on that somewhere (now if I could only
remember where that was).
A few years back there was plans to pump fresh water from the fjords of New
Zealand into a supertanker and sell the water to Saudia Arabia. The plan fell
through, not through costs, but because sailing a tanker through the fjords
would degrade the natural ecosystem. Unfortunately, I can't recall the date or
what paper it was in.
I'll buy that, except how did all those "local planetary troops" get there?
Once again, this points to relatively low transportation costs.
Rob
[quoted original message omitted]
> I'll buy that, except how did all those "local planetary troops" get
Manufactured in nine months by unskilled labour.... ;-)
Jon (GZG)
> ----- Original Message -----
> I'll buy that, except how did all those "local planetary troops" get
> Manufactured in nine months by unskilled labour.... ;-)
Which begs the question, how did the unskilled labour get there? It takes a
long time for population to double by natural increase rather than
immigration.
e.g. Australia has 20 million people, but has been settled by literate groups
for over 200 years. The US has 300 million, but has been settled for 400. Of
Canada I know not.
(I tried "civilised" - meaning "builders of cities" - but it seems that
there was a culture around St Louis that built cities, big ones. I tried
"technologically
Just to reiterate the end of Bob's point, A close examination of combat in the
official GZG universe will see some very large scale combat operations of up
to Corps and higher being conducted throughout the period. (Tom and I went
round this in private a few months back prior to GZG ECC3.) While I admittedly
don't have any of the info with me at work. It wouldn't be too hard for any of
you to pick up the timeline out of the DS2 manual and you will see very large
actions taking place. SO juts like nowadays where small
(bn-Bde deployemnst are teh norm, teh occasioanl all out war sytill
crops
up and has to be dealt with. In fact a prudent large-class military
plans for those worse case scenarios (logisticaly) and works down from there
rather than betting that they'll never have to deal with anything but brush
fire stuff.
Los
> At 08:28 PM 5/6/00 +0100, you wrote: