Terra and the Long Night

From: [email removed]
>> From: Hans Rancke-Madsen [email removed]>
>> I'd go for a Safe myself. Remember, The Long Night was a slow
>> decay, not a catastrophic event. Step 1 of Hard Times hits the
>> high-population, good starport worlds hardest, but that's
>> because they were specifically targeted.

>  I interpret the Hard Times rules as that they are to be applied on *all*
>worlds inside the bounds of the Imperium. Worlds that are in Safe areas never
>touched by the tiniest trace of the war get the same treatment, but without
>the Frontier, Outland, Wilds, Warzone, Intense and Black Warzone DM's.

That's where you're going wrong. Check HT page 19:

"Note the worlds in areas that have not been affected by the Rebellion (Safe
areas were not in a War Zone) do not experience UWP changes; for them, life
continues much as it did before the Rebellion."

Me:
>> Try working
>> out the defenses of Terra: 10 billion inhabitants @ 500 credits
>> gives a yearly budget of 5 trillion credits. The fleet is
>> equivalent to 10 times that. Even if you put 99% of those ships
>> in ordinary to reflect a depressed economy, you still wind up
>> with 500.000 MCr worth of ships. The fleet that can challenge that
>> is not a raider fleet, it's a 3rd Imperium fleet.

Bertil:
>  There is no need to go in the hard way with blazing lasers and all that.
>All that is needed is that the threat of piracy is so big that merchants
>fear to travel,

But that is a contradiction in terms. Think about the history of seafaring on
Earth. You can't have pirates without merchants to prey on, and you don't
have merchants unless trade is profitable. You only have pirates where trade
is profitable _in spite_ of the pirates. As long as they have a secure base
merchants will be out there trading. The problem comes if you have raiders
that can plunder and destroy the home community (in this case Terra). And as
I've shown, the fleet that can challenge Earth is not a pirate fleet. And note
that I supposed a cut in fleet size of 99%. That's actually silly. We know
from examples all through history, up to and including today, that politicians
will allow their fellow citizens to starve sooner than cut defense spending.
As long as the pirates exists, Earth will maintain their fleet. Even if
trading become unprofitable. You don't need profits to maintain a military
fleet, just a not totally ruined economy.

>leading to economic recession and lesser demand for starships from the yards
>at the starport, leading to more pirates competing for fewer merchants, lead-
>ing to more desperate pirates, leading to more afraid merchants and so on.

>  There is no need for this to happen close to Terra. Anywhere within their
>economic sphere would be ok. As the merchants begin to neglect high risk
>routes the pirates will follow them inwards.

But Earth by itself can maintain a fleet that can protect the first 10 or 20
worlds. And I'm in complete agreement with Steve Higginbotham who say:

>I see no reason why Terra should have lost ANY TLs during the Long Night.
>If merchant traffic continued, as implied in Supplement 10 (Solomani Rim),
>then that traffic would have been J2 (probably), and state-of-the-art would
>have been J3 (for the Navy, and possibly the pirates).
>Since Terra was a high pop world, and center of a polity in its own right,
>it probably used bulk carriers for MOST of it's off-world trade.  I cannot
>imagine the pirate willing to attack an ARMED 20,000 ton ship.  I cannot
>imagine the Terrans NOT arming their merchants in that situation.

>The TL losses in Hard Times seem to deal largely with the long term effects
>of nuclear bombardment of the planetary infrastructure.  Since none of that
>occurred on Terra during the Long Night, Hard Times provides no valid
>indicators of the effects of the Long Night on Terra.

Bertil:
>  I seem to remember from the COACC book that the defences of Terra when the
>Rule of Man set off on it's own were primarily in-system assets. It is of
>course possible to build jump-capable ships to patrol the spacelanes, but
>the instance the total costs from the trade (including militart escorts) is
>greater than the gain of the trade to either the government or the merchants
>the trade will cease. And the colonies will be in deep dodo.

Nope. Military ships are a response to (percieved) threats. Profits dosen't
come into it, except insofar as somebody has to pay for the warships. Thus
profits will be welcomed by the government as a source of revenue, and since
they have the warships anyway, they will use them to protect trade. But
they'd've build the ships in any case.

>  [Btw: I'll expect that most of the piracy will cease during a Night as soon
>as the trade collapses totally. No sheep ->> starving wolves. The time for
>this to happen is ofcourse dependent on the rate of decline. As the decline
>into the Long Night were rather slow, pirates could have held out hundreds
>of years.]

Held out where? The pirate ships needs maintenance as much as any. Judging
from Hard Times they would be history in 5 to 10 years. Unless they based
themselves on a world with the technology to support them. But now they are
no longer just agents of destruction. However much they plague their sur-
roundings, they must at least help maintain their base planet. Even if they
manage to reduce every other world in the universe below jump capacity, their
own base must retain it. So now _they_ begin trading and empire-building.

Predators that outnumber the prey makes no sort of sense whatsoever (Which
makes me wonder where in h... all those 50.000 T vargr corsairs that overran
Corridor came from).

>Here is, quoted condensed and paraphrazed what Rats&Cats say
>about the Long Night:

>  The Long Night were less hard on the worlds in the Rim than those in the
>former ROM. Terra and Friends had relatively self-sufficient economies. At
>the center of ROM piracy and plunder were rampant.

Yeah, right. for about 10 years. (Sorry, go ahead :-)

>Terra and the original confederation worlds (probably about 40 parsecs radius
>from Terra) organized into the Terran Mercantile Community which reformed
>into a government in -1690. They had to protect their trade from pirates and
>renegade naval units from the center of ROM.
>  As time passes trade dry up except on a subsector level.

The average subsector in 1116 could support 132 trillion credit squadron's
worth of warships (or more propably 44 Sqs system defense boats, 44 Sqs
reserve fleet and 44 Sqs regular fleet). The average world population during
the Long Night would propably be lower, but even so...
Who's for a spot of piracy? Count me out.

>The TMC fail and Terra and 'the local community' (say 5 pc radius)

The worlds from Barnard to Forlorn and from Sirius to Dismal. Meshan
and (strangely enough) Agidda isn't included. (Strange because Aggida
is only two jump-2s from Terra and relatively far from Dingir.)

>organize
>into the Old Earth Union in -1110. Now some of the other ex-confederation
>states in Dark Nebula, Alpha Crucis, Magyar and Reaver's Deep begin to raid
>their neighbours closer to the center (of the Terran Confederation).

This makes much more sense, and is in fact the way I'd interpret the Long
Night and implement Hard Times. The polities will not fade away. They will
become a multitude of tiny trade spheres surrounded by Outlands where pirates
roam. Inside the polities bulk trade will be possible. Luxury trade between
polities will exist, plagued by pirates but still profitable enough for
adventurous merchants to attempt. Pirates will be based in friendly polities.
Raiding of polity frontier planets may occur, but any high-population world
will be too tough to touch.

I'd really like to know how much of your paraphrase is your interpretation and
how much is GDW revisions. I found a second-hand _Alien Module 6: Solomani_
yesterday and bought it (there's been a mix-up with _Cats&Rats_ and I've no
guarantee that my shop will manage to get it before it's sold out. Sigh!). It
tells the following about The Terran Merchantile [sic] Community and the Old
Earth Union: The TMC was a loose trade association formed by Terra and her
closest colonies under The Rule of Man that later grew into a corporation.
Ostensibly a purely commercial organisation, it was actually a means of
circumventing RoM prohibitions against member planets having their own navies.
The TMC built a merchant fleet that toed a very fine line between commercial
ships and naval vessels. The ships carried enough armament to protect
themselves from pirates and raiders, but not enough to classify them as naval
vessels. Their merchant fleet made Terra and her fellow worlds in the TMC
a formidable commercial force.
    When the Rule of Man collapsed, The Terran Mercantile Community had a
space fleet to patrol it's systems and to replace the now gone Second
Empire fleets. The TMC's merchant fleet cushioned the blow of the Long
Night and made it possible for Terra to survive in relative comfort.
    Well into the Long Night, the Terran Mercantile Community took over
political responsibilities and became an interstellar government  -  the
Old Earth Union.

This seems to be contradicted by the dates given:

        -1776   Collapse of Rule of Man.
        -1690   TMC established.
        -1110   Old Earth Union created.

But I think I can reconcile them. -1776 is an arbitrary date. Obviously the
RoM Rim government on Dingir held on for several centuries after losing
contact with Hub, keeping the peace and enforcing RoM regulations regardless
(Incidentally, _Solomani_ states that the Rim lost contact with Hub about
80 years before -1776). Thus the TMC was established to circumvent RoM
regulations a century after the RoM is said to have collapsed. In fact,
the Dingir RoM must have survived (at least in name) until -1110 (this
fits with another statement in _Solomani_ to the effect that the Easter
Concord and the Dingir League emerged at about that time).

      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
        "Come all brother spacemen that travel along.
         Oh, pray come and tell me where the trade is all gone.
         Long time have I travelled, and I cannot find none."
         Ch: "And sing: All the hard times of the Empire.
              In the Empire are very hard times."
                                Traditional song.