From: Tom B <kaladorn@g...>
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:54:02 -0500
Subject: Was: More future history questions - but wandered off into another thought
textfilter: chose text/plain from a multipart/alternative The star-gazin' rock-hoppin one said: Which is what I thought way back when I proposed the Hawai'ian Free State 9 or 10 years ago. I wrote up a thing for the GZGPedia, but it never made it in. And some folks on the list insisted that Hawai'i was the province of the OU instead. -- [Tomb] Here we run across the difference between a game and reality. In games, people like to assemble factions. Those factions/political blocs generally tend to be limited to 3-5 major and maybe a handful of minor. The real world *could* at times have been looked at this way if your glasses were particularly coke-bottle-ish. Looking a bit more deeply, even in the Cold War, there was the Soviet Union, the NATO powers, and let's say China as well, although it wasn't the power it is today. But the world had boatloads of independent countries with their own agendas and even within the two major blocs, there were a fair few differences in objectives and outlook. Now, in the post-911 era (which in theory now covers from then until the end of time, right?), there are a lot of factions. NATO isn't as tight as it once was, Europe looked like it might form its own power bloc, now that seems in some jeopardy. The Russians aren't what they once were and Eastern Europe may emerge as a part of a strong NATO and/or Eurozone and/or its own thing. China IS big. Africa may get its act together. The Middle East... who knows? Some large pan-ME islamist movement is not impossible. I guess the real world just has lots more shades of grey than games want to try to enumerate in a published setting. And people want 'their' faction to have more stuff too (in many cases). -- further afield along the same line of thought -- Beyond that, we see this trend towards homogeneity in miniatures sculpting. "The ESU tends to use this design using these weapons systems...." Why? So that a gamer can look at an SSD or a tank model and get some idea it is the ESU and it has flavour. How does this map to reality? Not at all. You will find most major equivalent combat vessels or vehicles across differing nations have significantly similar systemic capabilities. Sure, tanks differ a bit in the speed/weight/main gun levels. A bit. They still have to be able to fulfill the MBT role. And any really major military power covers way more of the specialized niches than any game represents. If the ESU were real, it would have almost every type of infantry or tank in the game and every type of weapons system in space, as would the NAC. The mix might differ from ship to ship, but it is unlikely huge nations/political blocs would be not fielding similar capabilities generally. You need to be able to match the capabilities of your foe. Sure, there may be specific examples of difference, but they'll be more the oddity than the norm. NATO (via the USA) may have had more carriers than the Russians and the Russians may have made more use of ballistic missile subs, but if there were ever to be any fleet engagements, both would need missile cruisers and air cover and protection for any carrier present. Both would need systems capable of engaging at distance and closer in. Nobody is going to bring a DFFG to a HEL fight. Weapons systems designers don't go for an aesthetic generally (except insofar as that aesthetic is dictated by a real world issue like economics or maintenance concerns). There's no attempt to make all Russian vehicles fit a certain design aesthetic, unlike say, the Tau in the GWverse or the IG. Not all Russian vehicles look like they come from a homogenous family (except perhaps for common parts shared here and there) and not all of them are painted in the same colour scheme. Games, on the other hand, cater to an aesthetic and to a play flavour where we want to test the agile guy with autoshotgun and high movement rate versus the guy with the sniper rifle who can't take a hit. Or the fleet armed nearly exclusively with SMs that has shields versus the fleet with beams and armour. (Okay, enough rambling....) T.