SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread III

[Shroom Man 777]

Man. Malachuschus. You terribel persons!

[Ilya Muromets]

I prefer horribel, thank you.

[Simon_Jester]

Just out of curiosity, what do you get when you ring a horribel?

[Ilya Muromets]

WHORES, of course.

[Simon_Jester]

So that's what happened to our immigration records for Shroomania!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

So that's what happened to our immigration records for Shroomania!

I haven't gotten around to deal with Shroomanian Space Marines that turned out to be incredibly wrong.

[Simon_Jester]

It's that, or Cyborg Dolphin Shroomy and the uncannily prescient Heraclius IV got together in the 21st century and concluded that 1400 years in the future, the Shroomanian immigrants to Umeria would wind up having their personal information shared with a bunch of robot zombies. Thus, Cyborg Dolphin Shroomy decided he had to act, to protect his people from posthumous robot zombie identity theft, and hacked our immigration files!

I haven't gotten around to deal with Shroomanian Space Marines that turned out to be incredibly wrong.

They might not be large-C Chaos Marines, but I strongly suspect they were small-c chaos Marines.

[Shroom Man 777]

Gay Knights

[Zor]

Oh, i have just found out some delicious irony involving the Byzantine Empire being in the Koprulu Sector.




Zor

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe the Byzantinians who discovered the Koprulu Zone were a family called Koprulu, and then they got themselves eaten by Karlacks or mauled by Bragulans.

EDIT:

Holy shit I did some maths and found out that Byzon is actually around 700 years old or some such! And that Bragulan paleocruisers are at least a 600 year old design! AWESOME!

[Steve]

New Toutaine post up.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh man. Good post. Very tragic.

[Simon_Jester]

Man, that is a nice touch. In honor of their friend-of-Bragule status, they get missiles with their names on them!

Wait...

[Force Lord]

Looks like everyone's busy.

And I have writer's block. Again.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh man, the Feelipeenis. Steve, you do it great justice!

The only thing you missed was fishermen resorting to dynamite fishing. But yeah. Good one. I totally forgot how the foreign mining would totally fuck over the environment. Social issues!

Feelipeeni soldiers are a superstitious cowardly lot!

[KlavoHunter]

The Ork broke your ship, not me!

[Steve]

Oh man, the Feelipeenis. Steve, you do it great justice!

The only thing you missed was fishermen resorting to dynamite fishing. But yeah. Good one. I totally forgot how the foreign mining would totally fuck over the environment. Social issues!

Feelipeeni soldiers are a superstitious cowardly lot!

Glad you liked it. But could you please cut that final scene? Zara's not even in Maynilad anymore and my next update will follow-up on the local police captain's shenanigans.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, it's a parody. Maybe he can come up with some way to adapt it.

[Shroom Man 777]

It's not an important scene, but I mean it to be set in GODDAMN UNREAL TIME, in that the dynamite fishing and puffer fish-kicking actually happen BEFORE Steve's Zara scene, and the scene where the girls ask Zara if her foot will grow back happens immediately AFTER the Zara scene when she is leaving the scene with the wounded and recently-orphaned child.

Think of it as Pulp Fiction-style sequence of events.

[Ilya Muromets]

Well, the wiki article for my faction is mostly complete except for the "Social Organization" section. If anyone's interested, you're welcome to have a look. I've also completed a somewhat detailed (with pictures, even) of the composition of the R'nish fleet. Since the R'nish Aggregate is supposed to be a nomadic fleet which took up station in two sectors, most of its infrastructure goes to the ships. As such, I spent 75% of the GDP on the shipbuilding and the ground forces (but mostly shipbuilding). This is not because the R'nish are especially militaristic, but because a nomadic fleet needs to be adequately armed to defend itself even if nearly all of the vessels are not primarily war ships.

If I miscalculated or anything, please tell me so I can rectify it accordingly.

[Simon_Jester]

Spending 75% of GDP on ship construction? As opposed to having a fleet equal to 75% of GDP at game start?

That's problematic for a lot of reasons.

For one, because of game balance. Other people aren't doing it and don't plan to.

For two, because you're already supposed to have a pretty hefty fleet for self-defense at game start. Your starting fleet is equal in value to 100% of GDP, yes, but you're supposed to have built it over a period of many years.

For three, because in a quasirealistic setting, the sheer scale of that military buildup would make your neighbors want to squish you now while they still can, as soon as they are even vaguely aware of your existence. Nobody wants to have to fight a Bug War against overwhelmingly superior forces and lose. For crying out loud, you're talking about your armed forces nearly doubling in the first year alone.

For four, because that implies that everything else about your civilization's maintenance and upkeep can be done when three quarters of your civilization's resources are being devoted to the construction of armed ships (and only armed ships). That's not just feeding everyone, that's every civilian activity including the construction of cargo transports and the like. While I can imagine far-future civilizations for which this is true, I don't like it in the context of this setting.

That said, dogpiling Ilya would be unfair, since he's in the Philippines and isn't going to be able to respond to this for another eight to twelve hours in all probability.

[Shroom Man 777]

The standard percentage limit on military buildup is up to 20% of the GDP Malachuschus. I mean, sure, they are a space people, but I can't see how the military budget takes up 75% and leaves only 25% for the civilian populace of these guys. Are they super-Space Korea?

[Ilya Muromets]

Perhaps I need to explain myself better. I structured the Aggregate that way because, well, they're originally a nomadic fleet. For all intents and purposes, they still are. They may occupy two sectors, but they've barely touched the planets and worlds they have. Their home sector is only claimed as such because most of the fleet are in orbit over the worlds. The only stuff they have on the ground are very few structures. Half a third world country probably has more buildings than an entire R'nish home sector world.

Nearly everything the Aggregate has is in the ships. What they have outside the ships they can mostly do without. The R'nish fleet is the R'nish Aggregate. So I had to calculate each ship as I would a military vessel because of the limits of the Ruleset. And, well, because each R'nish ship is also armed because, if you're almost completely spaceborne, your ships have to be capable of serving as warships if needed, but they are not primarily warships save the Fighter and Defender drones.

[Shroom Man 777]

Hurm... but does this mean, by R'nish fleet acquisition figures, the Aggregate as a whole expands at a geometric rate?

I think we are having a misunderstanding. Do you mean the total military force of the R'nish aggregate in your OOB amounts to 75% of the GDP? Or do you mean that your future procurements, like your fleet budget for year 3400, is 75% of the GDP?

[Ilya Muromets]

Hurm... but does this mean, by R'nish fleet acquisition figures, the Aggregate as a whole expands at a geometric rate?

I think we are having a misunderstanding. Do you mean the total military force of the R'nish aggregate in your OOB amounts to 75% of the GDP? Or do you mean that your future procurements, like your fleet budget for year 3400, is 75% of the GDP?

Well, the R'nish are only occupying the two sectors for material mining to make the fleet grow. They'd grow at the rate the Ruleset limits the production of each class of ships. The figures I set down are what they have in in year 3400.

No, I mean the 75% goes into the fleet (by fleet, I mean all the R'nish ships) and the dedicated military ground force, but most of that percentage still goes to the building and maintenance of ships. But, to emphasize the point, this isn't a war fleet. This is an entire mobile civilization, with armament on the ships purely so that said civilization isn't a massive sitting duck.