Hans Rancke-Madsen:
>You can spend money you don't have, but only to get ressources on
>credit. You can't use ressources you can't get. I won't belabour this
>point though, because it's obvious that the Imperium could afford a lot
>more than it curently does (_Striker_ talks of 3% of GNP (rising to 15%
>in wartime) and we've examples of far more than that in history). What
>we have to stick to is that the 3% represents the amount that is
>politically feasible to use (and as I've written earlier, I'm working
>on a way to reduce that for high-population worlds). So the problem is:
>Given a fixed budget, how can we reduce the size of the Imperial Fleet
>to something that will allow pirates to survive on frontier worlds?
I admit that you cannot buy what does not exist. However, deficit
spending is not just a matter of buying things on credit. It is a
matter of creating money where none existed before. Look at economic
history.
The surest way to destroy piracy, uncer the conditions you aim for, is
to let Navy ships operate far from TL15 worlds. As it stands now,
piracy should be a major problem in Jewell Subsector (FAR form the Navy,
so few patrols, and CLOSE to the Zhos, so a safe haven nearby), and Five
Sisters, for similar reasons. I know the Zhos won't want pirates in
their systems, but as long as you are a good boy in Zho space, they
probably won't bother fixing an Impy problem, and sure the Imperium
isn't going to start the Sixth Frontier War just to chase a few
moth-eaten pirates.
If you want piracy to flourish, keep the Impy ships close to home, and
far from the frontier. Shorten the maintenance cycle, rather than
lengthening it. Keep a lot of Navy ships in yards being upgraded to
state-of-the-art. That way they are on Glisten/Mora/Rhylanor/Trin as
opposed to the frontiers.
>Ah, but in TCS my century-old ships dose not become decrepit. That's
>what I mean when I write that it is ostensible the same ships, but that
>it can't really be. I repeat: TCS assumes both things.
TCS ignores the question of ship aging, and MT and TCS both ignore the
question of technological advancement. These are defects in the
system. They do NOT assume both things, they merely ignore certain
CRUCIAL elements of reality.
>Inflation happens because you CAN'T do things like that, but
>governments think you can ;-).
A better way of phrasing that is that you can't but Governments do
anyway.
>Seriously, if you look behind the GNP to the actual ressources that are
>there, you will run into a genuine limit. Unfortunately not enough to
>solve our problem though, so I have to fall back on a political
>explanation: The 3% spent on military forces represents what it's
>politically feasible to spend. If that's insufficient to provide a
>fleet that can supress piracy totally, then that's just too bad ;-)
I do not believe in ANY resource limit to TL15 cultures. One lousy
asteroid can provide all the steel you'll need for any normal usage.
The total complement of an asteroid belt will provide for ANY
concievable fleet production. Robots can be built without limit, so
fleets can be as big as you want them to be. BUT, the money question,
while meaningless, can be played up if the powers-that-be want to do
so. Unfortunately, that provides for a fleet that can deal with any
problem short of government-sponsered piracy. And it can probably deal
with them, too.
How about this as a solution? Someone (who knows who? the Shadow?)
drops an asteroid on Ruie (no-one will care that it is missing, it has
no effect on any campaign I have ever seen), and destroys civilization
there. The governments of the Imperial worlds decide that that is a
danger, and insist that the Imperium keep enough hardware in each system
to deal with the potential threat. The Navy sets up skywatches in all
Hi Pop systems, but has insufficent forces to do so throughout the
Imperium. Too bad. The remaining unprotected worlds make up less than
3% of the population, so their protests are drowned out by the sighs of
relief from the Hi Pop systems. Piracy flourishes, frontiers become a
little wilder. All them good GMs and players are happy.
PS. It was, in fact, a cosmic coincidence that this happened, and it
will never happen again in the course of the next 50,000 game years.
Later...
- -- Via DLG Pro v0.985b
[email removed]
I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
--W. von Braun