I like it too, D.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:There wasn't much in the way of descriptions in Fin and my posts. About the UN.
Exactly. I'd be willing to put a little more detail out there, but not something that would require a big investment of my time.
Here's a tentative proposal:
For tradition's sake, let's say that the UN of SDNW4 has a "General Assembly." The member states of the General Assembly are planetary or sub-planetary in size. Many of them are former Earth and Nova Terra nations such as China, Shroomania, the European Union, the Byzantine Empire (of Nova Terra), and so on. Others, probably the majority of them by now, are off-planet authorities, which may be either planetary or sub-planetary governments, depending on the size and fractiousness of a given planet's population.
The population and influence of UN member states varies wildly, but in practice I doubt there is any member state with a population of more than, oh, a few billion- or less than a hundred million. Those are eyeball numbers, by the way, and are nonbinding.
The actual system of making laws and binding long-term treaties is no doubt very complicated, and probably involves a messy legal process that we would call "Byzantine" were it not for the fact that in 3400 "Byzantine" has become a term for all-out aggressive confrontation rather than for intricate subtlety, given the kind of Byzantines we've got around these days. You might have laws which have to be ratified by simple majorities in the General Assembly, or by supermajorities, or by a vote taken on the basis of population, or some bureaucratic process that completely bypasses the General Assembly. There's a good reason for this- it prevents any really important regulations from being laid down throughout the UN without the consent of virtually all of the member states and all classes of society.
Short-term governance is handled mostly through bureaucratic mechanisms and the actions of individual member states which take care of relatively small problems and then huff and puff about the rights of member states to stop anyone from doing anything about it afterwards. It is difficult to get the UN involved in a substantial way with anything outside its borders. It's easier to interact with one of the member states, but the individual member states have limits on what they can do about any really important matter without UN approval, which is normally hard to get.
Most of the 'farther-out' stellar nations have a single UN embassy plus a network of consulates. In some specific cases there may be member states which, by long tradition, have their own separate embassy in a given nation, but since the member states can't pursue really independent foreign policy that doesn't happen especially often.
The net effect is something like the Solarian League of David Weber's Honorverse, but without the expansionist frontier policy, the rampant corruption, or the social and technological ossification that turn them into punching bags for Our Heroes.
...
There. How does that sound?
Formless wrote:I could rattle off a list of sectors if need be- do you really want one?
More important would be some understanding of the structure of the UN's political system, how they meet, what kinds of resolutions they pass, what kind of councils comprise its organization, whether they meet in one place or holographically, you know the kind of stuff you would need to interact with them diplomatically.
This was never pinned down. Since many of our own PC nations don't have the structure of their government so extensively defined, I'm disinclined to try and fill in that many blanks.
Remember that the UN isn't supposed to be
used by the moderators except as an in-game tool by which mod decisions can be enforced against a hopelessly recalcitrant player. Mods don't get to 'play' the UN by virtue of being a mod, because I'm not supposed to be using it for my own entertainment. So sitting down and spending hours drawing up the structure of its government is not a prospect which enthuses me.
Much of this information is either noncritical (you don't need to know the parliamentary rules of the United States Senate to interact with the US), or stuff that can reasonably be made up on the spot without being binding on others. If you call the chief UN government official responsible for collective foreign policy the "Foreign Secretary," the "Administrator of External Affairs," or the "Talkymaster..." that's your concern. If you want to portray the UN's legislature meeting holographically, or in person, or both depending on circumstances, that's your concern. You're welcome to come up with answers to things like this, always with the caveat that other people aren't bound to adhere to them if they don't think it's sensible or appropriate.
...I simply do not understand what you are getting at.
This is a bit of a tangent on his part, so if he doesn't expand on what I'm about to say please understand. If
I don't expand on it, please understand that I too am uninterested in starting a tangental argument about a rule that (if I understand the direction of the thread) has not yet received the sanction from the other moderators you were looking for anyway.
What I was looking for was player opinions. My proposal received some support, some disapproval, and a lot of "ignores," so I've put it on the back burner because I have other things to worry about too.
Its Moderating by Needless Legislation, for one. But moreover, Defeat In Detail is a tactic he believes is complete horseshit that hasn't been relevant in fifty years, cannot overcome the facts of Attrition Warfare even where it is appropriate, and was never relevant in battles between technologically/militarily equal foes anyway.
Ah. Well, my assessment of military history and strategy is that he's flat wrong about that, but it's beside the point.
The idea that "Attrition Warfare" rules in SDNW4 is
not official; it is something Sorchus appears to have developed on his own initiative, which should not be expected to bind everyone else. In practice, wars between equal opponents tend to become attritional unless one side does something very clever and/or the other side screws up royally, but that's beside the point.
Points are a guideline for what
kinds of things can happen when armed forces encounter one another, and above all to enforce rough qualitative equality on the nations. We need that, because this is SDN with its grand tradition of "if X fought Y, what would happen?" Point exist so that we don't get into endless disputes about whose weapons throw more gigajoules or whether missile-heavy ships should beat laser-heavy ships.
Beyond that, there is no implied requirement to stick to "attritional warfare" or 1:1 exchange ratios in points lost by each side. In PC vs. PC actions, such a ratio is probably a good idea, if both players agree it's realistic. But that's recommended, not required.
But this isn't the Sci-Fi or History forum so he's not grinding your face in for advocating bullshit: in fact, it is precisely because he wants to avoid having that flamewar here (if anywhere) that he wants the spirit of Steve's ruling about point values (that is, All Tactics Are Story Fluff and Stop Your Bitching) to be followed. For the record, I don't want to have that argument here either, so don't try and goad me into it. This is his conversation, after all, I'm just here to facilitate.
You are free to "facilitate" by speaking on someone else's behalf. Correspondingly, I have freedom of speech.
Also, because if we do grant Defeat In Detail applies to these defensive militia points, the points granted by your proposed rule can't really be called points: more like Imaginary Points that stop being relevant in every situation where points would normally be relevant. Kinda like The Man Right Behind You who is only there as long as you aren't looking at him, but with numbers and bookkeeping and warships. In short, something he thinks should remain in the realms of fluff, not Legislation.
No, this still makes no sense to me. The idea that there are points "nailed to" a given inhabited star system which cannot move is very relevant when you attack an inhabited star system (which has happened, what... about ten times since the game began, give or take a few?)
The existence of those dispersed defense forces is relevant on the tactical level, and on the strategic level. They can put up a nasty fight against small forces tactically. Strategically, they place a lower bound on how much you can subdivide your forces and still take down a large number of targets without getting hammered- which, to me, is useful because it promotes a more 'stable' form of warfare in which you can't end the war in three days by launching a zillion little squadrons to do
chevauchées all over their territory.
That's bad for anyone who wants their space warfare to follow the patterns laid out by Douhet, where all wars are over in a week because the strategic forces have bombed the enemy's homeland so heavily that the government breaks down and the war ends by default. But that's good for anyone who doesn't specifically want Douhet's analysis to dominate the game. Since many of our key players remember the hijinks Shep got up to in SDNW1, I suspect we'd rather avoid the gospel of Douhet.
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