Post by: Steve Walmsley on August 08, 2009, 02:05:48 PM
1) European Union: Existing EU countries plus Turkey, which is likely to be a member before 2025.
2) United States (plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand). The three other countries all have strong military and cultural ties to the US and the US seems their most likely partner. I am open to persuasion if any inhabitants of those countries on the list believe they would join up with someone else or perhaps go it alone.
3) People's Republic of China
4) Commonwealth of Independent States (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). Ukraine might actually be a member of the EU by 2025 but I have left it with the CIS countries to give the CIS a little more economic power.
5) Japan
6) India (India plus nearby countries such as Sri Lanka and Nepal)
7) Union of South American Nations. This is a proto-EU body formed in May 2008 by all of the South American States. There is background on wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_S ... an_Nations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_South_American_Nations). I am assuming by 2025 it will be capable of mounting a joint economic/research effort. By then I am also assuming that Mexico and some central American countries would join. It's possible Mexico might team up with the US or go it alone but I thought this option was more likely.
8) ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillipines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Brunei). ASEAN, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, was formed in 1967 and is primarily an economic organization. I am working on the assumption that closer political ties will develop over the next 15 years and that with the race into space, the countries will be pushed closer together out of mutual self-interest. One point of interest is that the official language of ASEAN is English.
9) Arab League (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Kuwait, Algeria, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Mauritania, Somalia, Palestine, Djibouti, Comoros, Iraq?). The Arab League was formed in 1945 and has steadily grown in size since then. Although the Arab countries don't always see eye-to-eye, they do have a lot of historial and cultural ties. This organization is primarily political rather than economic so I am assuming some economic integeration by the start of the campaign.
10) African Union (minus those African countries already in the Arab League). I am not sure of whether this organization is capable of operating as a whole given the fairly wide cultural, political and economic differences spanning the whole African continent. However, the alternative is to break it down further into units such as the Southern African Development Community, which would have very minor economic power. Even as a whole, this is the weakest of the ten power blocs by some margin.
That leaves a number of countries which don't fit neatly into one of the above blocs. I am obviously not going to worry about states such as the Maldives or the Cape Verde Islands (apologies to anyone on the list from those very pleasant but not economically significant areas of the world) but there are several countries I would like to cover.
South Korea: Doesn't really fit neatly anywhere. Can't see them allying with Japan given the history or China. The US is a useful military ally but doesn't really share any cultural identity. I have read up a little on South Korean foreign relations (yes, I am a geek) and nothing springs to mind. They do have some economic agreement with ASEAN so I guess that might be a possibility.
Republic of China (Taiwan). A similar situation to South Korea.
Israel: The US is the obvious choice but it's also possible Israel could eventually join the EU at some point. A third possibility is to go it alone. It would be interesting to explore the possibility of a Israeli-settled planet that could attract colonization from the Jewish populations of other countries. Not sure how I would handle that in-game, although with this campaign I am considering the option of 'passive races'. These would be races with no economic impact in the game and no TN capability but they would provide a pool of additional colonists for other governments.
Iran: The Islamic Republic of Iran doen't really have any significant allies and is not a member of any major economic or political power blocs. It has some shared earthly interests with the Arab League with regard to Israel but once the human race expands into space, that may cease to be a factor. Despite it's limited economic power in relation to the major power blocs, I am inclined to believe Iran would try to go it alone.
Pakistan: Pakistan does have ties with China and some links to the countries within the Arab league but I am not sure they are strong enough for Pakistan to join with them. Possibly another go it alone country, or perhaps if Islamic groups gained the upper hand within the country it would find common ground with its neighbour Iran.
North Korea. While a threat to regional stability, North Korea has minimal economic power so I will probably include it with China. I don't think it warrants inclusion as a separate power.
Any comments and/or suggestions regarding the above are very welcome.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on August 08, 2009, 02:46:47 PM
1) Are you thinking of alliances here (e.g. NATO) or actual political entities (e.g. EU)? I think the odds of significant political consolidation over the next 15 years are low and trying to justify it would knock readers' out of "suspension of disbelief" mode. Alliance structures, OTOH, are much more volatile, and easier to put together because they don't trounce peoples' cultural identity so much. Note that in my first reading of your mail, I parsed it in terms of political union (probably because you led with EU). If you were talking 2050 or 2075 I'd have a different reaction here, but 2025 is just too soon for significant political consolidation IMHO.
2) US/Canada/Aus/NZ - For political union, I think Aus and NZ are too far away from the US for it to be realistic. As for the Canada/US political dynamic, I think it's very similar to the Scotland/England dynamic, i.e. Canada is a significantly smaller population that doesn't want to be culturally absorbed. In other words, I don't see a lot of potential for a US/Canada political union in the next 15 years.
All of the above changes if we're talking alliance, however. Canada and the US (and arguably Britain) are VERY tightly coupled in terms of military policy; and I think we're pretty strongly aligned with Australia as well. Note that there's been tension between US and NZ in the past over nukes/militarism - my recollection is that the NZ government has opposed the US in the past on these sorts of things, i.e. they're much more pacifist (a potential point of conflict in "switching" decisions - see below).
The other possibility (especially for Australia) would be to put them in ASEAN.
3) How about CIS for Iran? I was going to agree with them going it alone, but realized that they have fairly close ties with Russia. Or they might be a "switcher" (see below).
4) For political union, I would put South Korea and Taiwan into ASEAN (actually, I thought that South Korea already was in it), unless you decide that Chinese reunification has taken place in which case Taiwan goes to China (of course). For alliances, I'd add the possibility of either of them being in the US bloc. Again, both of these make good candidates for switchers.
5) From a dramatic point of view, having Israel go it alone is very appealing. You'd have to figure out a way to give them a significant "edge" (such as a corner on some mineral), though, otherwise they'll be swamped by larger populations. Again, the US makes sense from an alliance point of view, but not from a political union point of view.
6) I agree on North Korea and Pakistan.
A few random game mechanics thoughts:
1) How about individual mineral reserves for the various Aurora populations on the same world? This would allow a small, isolated country (such as Iran) to have economic leverage if they had e.g. 75% of the world's duranium reserves.
2) If you go down the "alliance" route for power blocs (which I think you should), then it might be interesting to put "bloc-switching" into the role playing. For example Britain might switch back and forth between the US bloc and the EU; similarly for Australia - they might start in the US bloc but switch to ASEAN due to immigration from Indonesia. Similarly Iran could move between blocs. The trick here from a mechanics point of view would be to keep some record of the initial % of the economy of the bloc that the member countries represent, and what the initial econ rating was. For example, take China (low initial econ rating), Taiwan, (medium) and US (high). Taiwan might start in the US block, then switch to China if unification takes place. At that point, you'd want to extract some percentage of the US block capital and population, and recalculate the average econ efficiency (it would go up, since Taiwan was lower efficiency than US) then add the capital and population to China and recalculate efficiency (it would again go up, since Taiwan was higher than US). Note that this doesn't have to be tracked by Aurora - you could do it with a spreadsheet or write a little program that queries the Aurora DB and does the appropriate calculations.
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on August 08, 2009, 04:14:45 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
A few random comments:Thanks for the comments. I am assuming the power blocs are economic and military alliances rather than political unions so within the fiction I would still refer to units built in different countries within an alliance. My first inclination was to have all the countries individually and use the new diplomatic rules to allow them to share survey data and tech. Unfortunately, once I started looking at that more closely I realised it would lead to a huge number of countries.
1) Are you thinking of alliances here (e.g. NATO) or actual political entities (e.g. EU)? I think the odds of significant political consolidation over the next 15 years are low and trying to justify it would knock readers' out of "suspension of disbelief" mode. Alliance structures, OTOH, are much more volatile, and easier to put together because they don't trounce peoples' cultural identity so much. Note that in my first reading of your mail, I parsed it in terms of political union (probably because you led with EU). If you were talking 2050 or 2075 I'd have a different reaction here, but 2025 is just too soon for significant political consolidation IMHO.
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2) US/Canada/Aus/NZ - For political union, I think Aus and NZ are too far away from the US for it to be realistic. As for the Canada/US political dynamic, I think it's very similar to the Scotland/England dynamic, i.e. Canada is a significantly smaller population that doesn't want to be culturally absorbed. In other words, I don't see a lot of potential for a US/Canada political union in the next 15 years.It is in terms of Alliance rather than political union and I did seriously consider including the UK within the USA power bloc. The UK is more tied to the US in terms of security but tied into the EU in terms of economics. However, in the last European elections, the UK Independence Party came second behind the euro-sceptic Conservatives and pushed the ruling Labour Party into 3rd place. The UK is generally a euro-sceptic country so it wouldn't be too unreaslistic if the UK decided to link up with a US-led coalition for what would be a new industrial revolution
All of the above changes if we're talking alliance, however. Canada and the US (and arguably Britain) are VERY tightly coupled in terms of military policy; and I think we're pretty strongly aligned with Australia as well. Note that there's been tension between US and NZ in the past over nukes/militarism - my recollection is that the NZ government has opposed the US in the past on these sorts of things, i.e. they're much more pacifist (a potential point of conflict in "switching" decisions - see below).
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The other possibility (especially for Australia) would be to put them in ASEAN.Yes, I did consider that. I read up on Australian foreign relations and they seem closer to the US than their neighbours.
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3) How about CIS for Iran? I was going to agree with them going it alone, but realized that they have fairly close ties with Russia. Or they might be a "switcher" (see below).CIS is an interesting suggestion, especially if Iran moved to a less confrontational attitude over time.
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4) For political union, I would put South Korea and Taiwan into ASEAN (actually, I thought that South Korea already was in it), unless you decide that Chinese reunification has taken place in which case Taiwan goes to China (of course). For alliances, I'd add the possibility of either of them being in the US bloc. Again, both of these make good candidates for switchers.ROK has a free trade agreement with ASEAN but isn't actually a member. ROC would like to be more involved with ASEAN but there are diplomatic objections from the PRC. It probably wouldn't be a huge leap to assume that both countries become members in the next 15 years or so.
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5) From a dramatic point of view, having Israel go it alone is very appealing. You'd have to figure out a way to give them a significant "edge" (such as a corner on some mineral), though, otherwise they'll be swamped by larger populations. Again, the US makes sense from an alliance point of view, but not from a political union point of view.Even without a significant edge, there could potentially be a simialr situation to the one that exists now. The US would provide technical and military aid, giving a small Israel planetary population a significant military capability. As long as the Israel population was able to maintain the ships, they would have a capability beyond that which their pop size would suggest. PDCs in particular would be useful due to their lack of a maintenace requirement. It would fascinating to see how capable you could make a population of maybe ten million (assuming a general exodus from Israel and some jewish immigration from other countries). Building up an Israel merchant marine would also be a way to boost their capability.
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1) How about individual mineral reserves for the various Aurora populations on the same world? This would allow a small, isolated country (such as Iran) to have economic leverage if they had e.g. 75% of the world's duranium reserves.I have considered this in the past but there are a lot of problems. For example, if one state has a colony and a second state lands on the same planet, how much of the minerals reserves move to the second state. Obviously it gets more complex with more states. How does changing population affect the balance? I think for this to work, each planet would have to have a certain number of 'planetary locations' and each population would occupy one or more locations. This would be tied into ground combat so that different locations could be fought over. It adds a lot of complexity though, especially as I would have to hold mineral records for every location on every planet with minerals and also display that information. When I eventually get around to planetary surfaces I will probably get into this in more detail.
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2) If you go down the "alliance" route for power blocs (which I think you should), then it might be interesting to put "bloc-switching" into the role playing. For example Britain might switch back and forth between the US bloc and the EU; similarly for Australia - they might start in the US bloc but switch to ASEAN due to immigration from Indonesia. Similarly Iran could move between blocs. The trick here from a mechanics point of view would be to keep some record of the initial % of the economy of the bloc that the member countries represent, and what the initial econ rating was. For example, take China (low initial econ rating), Taiwan, (medium) and US (high). Taiwan might start in the US block, then switch to China if unification takes place. At that point, you'd want to extract some percentage of the US block capital and population, and recalculate the average econ efficiency (it would go up, since Taiwan was lower efficiency than US) then add the capital and population to China and recalculate efficiency (it would again go up, since Taiwan was higher than US). Note that this doesn't have to be tracked by Aurora - you could do it with a spreadsheet or write a little program that queries the Aurora DB and does the appropriate calculations.Maybe I could find someway to have sub-groups within a population. Hmm! I can already have populations of different species within the same Empire, so if I made each country a species I could have a population for each country on Earth but grouped into Empires for all other purposes. Transfering pops within Empires is already setup within the game. In fact, I wouldn't do it for every country because some wouldn't make that much difference if they switched but I could do it for every country over a certain population or economic strength.
Even so, I am not sure if that would work because some things are better when the pops are grouped into one, such as maintenance facilities or research. It would also mean I would have to specify individual groups for colonization and it would result in every individual pop having it's own trade. As you suggest, perhaps the simplest thing is just to maintain a record of the percentage that each country provides to the overall economy. I'll give it some thought.
Steve
Post by: welchbloke on August 08, 2009, 04:42:42 PM
I agree that the North Koreans are a conundrum, in terms of alliances you could be really contentious and join the NK's with Iran. They appear to already share ballistic missile technology. Aside form tweaking the US's nose they don't have much in common however and I would guess a real alliance would not last long.
The Israelis and the South Koreans are even more of an issue to my mind. Both are extremely independent and unlikely to enter into established alliances. You could create some kind of external threat to force them to join with the US/EU/ASEAN etc.
My 5p anyway.
Post by: sloanjh on August 08, 2009, 06:04:32 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Even so, I am not sure if that would work because some things are better when the pops are grouped into one, such as maintenance facilities or research. It would also mean I would have to specify individual groups for colonization and it would result in every individual pop having it's own trade. As you suggest, perhaps the simplest thing is just to maintain a record of the percentage that each country provides to the overall economy. I'll give it some thought.
I was actually suggesting a hair more sophistication than this. I was mainly thinking of the starting economic economic efficiency, i.e. the concept you put in to differentiate between e.g. China and the US so that wealth production isn't tied to pure population, and so that countries that start out wealthy get a bigger bang for the same economic expansion research. The idea would be to track initial percentages of population and installations independently (hmmm - and maybe even relative tech levels), along with base economic efficiency modifier (presumably the number that you enter in the start-up screen). When a country switched, you could then use these to calculate the portion of each sector that "belongs" to that country. Not a big difference, but individual tracking would allow a country like Israel to specialize in economic productivity and research, for example, while not having many mines.
John
Post by: mavikfelna on August 08, 2009, 10:24:02 PM
North Korea should either go to the RoK or China. I have a feeling once Kim Jon Il and his son are out of the picture they will merge with the South pretty readily. Or, Kim's son will ally himself with China and become little more than a puppet for them.
Israel is likely best left as an independent entity using the US as it's military shield in exchange for tech and economic cooperation.
I like the idea of Iran joining the CIS but it would require the current revolution there to have seen enough success to replace the current leadership by that time.
South America and Africa are best grouped into the super continental nations as you've outlined.
Taiwan will likely be reunified with China in exchange for limited democratic reforms in China itself. There is already movement in this direction by some members of the Taiwanese government though I don't know how popular the movement is nor how well their negotiations have been going with China. I could see a more moderate Chinese premiere coming to power in the near future that would be willing to enable the reforms that would bring the Taiwanese back. This sort of situation would be a huge boost for the Chinese economy and might make them a larger and more vibrant economy than the US.
South Korea would either join with the US or ASEAN, most likely with the US, if the above Chinese situation happened simply to save themselves from the Chinese. Particularly if the Australian/NZ/US alliance was in place to compete with the same situation.
--Mav
Post by: ShadoCat on August 09, 2009, 06:19:46 PM
Mexico: Their government will likely collapse soon. There are two possibilities from this: they will be taken over by criminal interests (part of the Columbia to US channel) and become a non-participant or they will end up with a US puppet government. If the government doesn't collapse, it will be because of strong external support (US or... ...Russian?). If Russia is the supporter, Mexico will likely join the South American league. If Mexico were to go into the Russian camp, the US would interfere enough to take them out of the picture.
If Turkey becomes part of the EU, Russia is likely to get very friendly with Iran to put pressure on Turkey.
Israel is likely to be very loosely tied to the US. They like their independence but they will need access to space. Given their funding pf political campaigns in the US, they are likely to get US assistance no mater how little benefit they actually provide the US.
If the Asian league appears strong enough, South Korea might join them. Otherwise, they will join a US coalition simply to protect themselves from Japan and China. If US ties to Japan weaken, SK will be even more likely to join the US.
North Korea, if it survives, will likely join SK unless it does something suicidal. In which case, we might see the first US-China alliance since WWII.
For Taiwan, I only see two likely outcomes: US alliance or being pulled back to China. The pull back to China is the likely outcome if they break ties with the US and join the Asian alliance.
Pakistan is the real odd case. If the Muslims overthrow the government, they will likely try to join the Islamic alliance. If that happens, India may or may not intervene. If Pakistan does not go Islamic, Russia and China are likely to court Pakistan (and the US, not one for learning from mistakes, will continue to do so) to protect them from India and the Islamic alliance.
I can't see the African nations cooperating enough to be anything but a minor distraction to anyone.
Post by: ZimRathbone on August 09, 2009, 10:28:03 PM
Both have recently (in the last two years or so) changed governments, Australia from Liberal & Nationalist Coalition (read Conservative from a UK standpoint) to Labor (more or less like New Labour) and NZ the other way around from Labour to Nationals. Accordingly I think that you'll find the Kiwis a little less in conflict with US interests than before, and the Aussies not quite as supportive as previous administrations - the changes are pretty mild tho, I dont really see OZ prefering ASEAN to the US yet. While there is the same Scotland/England dynamic between NZ & OZ, I think that they too are both much closer to each other than anyone else.
I cant really speak about NZ militarilly, but Australia is very closely coupled to the US in military terms (much more so than the UK is, I think), and likely to be so for the foreseeable future. There are still very significant links to UK military forces as well, I regularly attended lectures given by RAF & RN personnel, but not so much that I think it likely that there would ever be much movement towards a Commonwealth based alliance. Australia is far more likely to ditch the links with the Crown, and formally become a Republic (especially if Charlie succeeds), if we can ever agree on how to select the Head of State. Of course the Australians will continue to hold more important links with England (like the recent events at Headingley).
All in all while the ANZAC nations *might* go it alone, they re MUCH more likely to join in with the US in a military (if not political) sense.
Post by: Sotak246 on August 10, 2009, 12:35:10 PM
ShadoCat wrote:
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Mexico: Their government will likely collapse soon.
ShadoCat is on the mark here from what I have seen and heard. Open sources give the Mexican Govt. 1-5 years before it collapses, unless something drasticaly changes. They are facing the Cartels in the North, which are increadibly well trained and armed, they are on equal footing with the Mexican army in every department except heavy armor. It even looks like the Cartels are strarting to form their own alliance and if they do who doesn't think that a multibillion dollar(U.S.) criminal orgaization can't buy or steal even heavy armor, if you have doubts go to Northern Mexico and notice the Cartels are commonly more heavly armed then the regular army patrols. In the south Mexico is faced with a rebel movement by the native Mexicans. This movement is becoming a bigger and bigger thorn in Mexico's side every year and they can't put it down, even using some very heavy handed methods. As too what camp they could end up in the most likely canadite is the U.S. The U.S. sends hundreds of millions of dollars every year to Mexico just to keep their govt running and fighting the Cartels. If it does collapse someone will have to move in or face a country run by drug Cartels. You can expect the U.S. to be in the running to be that someone if for no other reason then to protect itself from the rampant crime and violence that will flow north from a lawless neighbor and too keep some unfriendly govt. from setting up shop next door.
Post by: Randy on August 13, 2009, 10:40:52 AM
To make it interesting, you might want to consider it as "Canada (plus US, Australia, NZ)"
putting Canada as the senior member. Why? It won't be too much longer before the US is resource starved for many of the resources that are available aplenty in Canada. You could also argue that a lot of the TNEs will be found in the mountains/artic regions further increasing the value of Canada...
Of course, this is my unbiased opinion...
Post by: Beersatron on August 13, 2009, 04:45:08 PM
You can then play it out that the North American block have to court the Anzacs into an alliance/merger as the game progresses.
Post by: Thorgarth on August 14, 2009, 05:15:06 PM
I could see Isreal allied with countries that border with her-Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan. Syria may be more of a stretch. Some incident to be the motive for the close cooperation and alliance. While Ethiopia is far, there is a strong attachment to Isreal within certain segments. Turkey, even more of a stretch.
It would give a better population base and education starting point.
Post by: IanD on August 19, 2009, 05:39:54 AM
How do you plan to rationalise the Outer Space Treaty (1967) that bans nuclear weapons in space and is still in force.
I have rationalised the world (to me
) into some 17 factions would anyone be interested in seeing it and if so where would I post it?A final plea can we have non-nuclear AMMs? This is purely due to above treaty. Otherwise when my alliances finally leave Sol they will have no AMMs to counter an NPR using missiles. So both precursors and NPRs may just eat the unlucky alliance that develops torpedos alive. I know that just having AAMs is no sure defence, since in my 4.1 game my PD fire control refuses to lock onto incoming (Star Dragon) missiles.
Regards
Post by: SteveAlt on August 20, 2009, 09:25:48 AM
Quote from: "IanD"
How do you plan to rationalise the Outer Space Treaty (1967) that bans nuclear weapons in space and is still in force.So far I have successfuly ignored it :D ) into some 17 factions would anyone be interested in seeing it and if so where would I post it?[/quote]
I would be interested. As to where to post it, that is a good question. Erik, how about a Scenario forum for players to suggest possible Aurora scenarios or post useful setup information.
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A final plea can we have non-nuclear AMMs? This is purely due to above treaty. Otherwise when my alliances finally leave Sol they will have no AMMs to counter an NPR using missiles. So both precursors and NPRs may just eat the unlucky alliance that develops torpedos alive. I know that just having AAMs is no sure defence, since in my 4.1 game my PD fire control refuses to lock onto incoming (Star Dragon) missiles.I think within the game, you could just assume they were non-nuclear. Even if I created a non-nuclear version, it probably would be no different in game mechanics terms.
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on August 20, 2009, 09:49:10 AM
1) The UK will ally with the US instead of the EU, mainly on the basis that when national survival is at stake the UK is more likely to trust the US than Europe. The US-led Coalition and the EU will still be close allies anyway.
2) South Korea and Taiwan will ally with ASEAN, making it one of the most powerful blocs in the game.
3) The Islamic countries will be split into two separate blocs. The Islamic Alliance, which will be Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq and the Gulf States, and the Arab League, which will be all of the Arab states that are not in the Islamic Alliance. This assumes that the Islamic fundamentalist forces in Saudi and Pakistan gain power and that support of Iraq by the West becomes untenable in that situation. The Gulf States would have little choice but to join.
4) Israel will go it alone, stongly supported by the US.
So the twelve starting powers are:
1) European Union: Existing EU countries minus the UK but plus Turkey, which is likely to be a member before 2025.
2) Coalition: United States, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
3) People's Republic of China
4) Commonwealth of Independent States: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
5) Japan
6) India: India plus nearby countries such as Sri Lanka and Nepal
7) Union of South American Nations: All South and Central American countries
8) ASEAN: South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillipines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Brunei.
9) Islamic Alliance: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Gulf States.
10) Arab League: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, Somalia, Palestine, Djibouti, Comoros.
11) African Union: All of Africa minus those African countries already in the Arab League.
12) Israel:
I have setup the various starting treaties as shown below:
N: Neutral relationship.
T: Neutral relationship plus trade access
FT: Friendly relationship plus trade access
All: Allied and all treaties in force (including geo, grav and tech)
The strong alliances are Coalition - EU, Coalition - Israel, CIS - India and Islamic Alliance - Arab League.
Japan has friendly relations with the West and with ASEAN.
[attachment=0:2tb3lxir]Diplomacy.GIF[/attachment:2tb3lxir]
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on August 20, 2009, 09:55:16 AM
vexillology
Commonwealth of Independent States
[attachment=2:3u3wzrp6]flag0325.jpg[/attachment:3u3wzrp6]
Union of South American Nations
[attachment=1:3u3wzrp6]flag0327.jpg[/attachment:3u3wzrp6]
Association of South-East Asian Nations
[attachment=0:3u3wzrp6]flag0361.JPG[/attachment:3u3wzrp6]
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on August 20, 2009, 12:17:09 PM
This gives:
Coalition: 18
EU: 14
China: 8
USAN: 5
ASEAN: 5
Japan: 4
India: 3
Russia/CIS: 3
Islamic Alliance: 2
Arab League: 1
African Union: 1
Israel: 1
This doesn't really look right in the middle. Based on where modern scientific breakthoughs tend to happen, I think Russia and Japan should be higher and USAN lower. Israel produces high tech weapons by itself as well. I looked on the net for a measure of a country's scientific output and found something callled Essential Science Indicators, which goes by the number of papers published and the number of citations. The league table is below sorted by the number of citations and the second one by the number of papers. As you can see, the US is top and the UK second (England is second by itself but Scotland has a very impressive fifteenth as well). Canada and Australia are also in the top ten, which suggests the Coalition would have the most research facilities followed by the EU, Japan, China and Russia, which sounds more reasonable than a GDP-based meaure. Then, using both tables as a guide, Asean, India and USAN.
[attachment=1:39nl9cq7]Science.GIF[/attachment:39nl9cq7]
[attachment=0:39nl9cq7]Science2.GIF[/attachment:39nl9cq7]
So using the above as a guide, how does the following sound? The coalition probably should have more like 30+ on this scale but I am trying to keep it competitive.
Coalition: 20
EU: 16
Japan: 12
China: 10
Russia: 8
ASEAN: 6
India: 5
USAN: 4
Israel: 3
Islamic Alliance: 2
Arab League: 1
African Union: 1
Steve
Post by: IanD on August 20, 2009, 03:46:34 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
India: 3
This appears a little low perhaps; they have nukes, missiles, satellites etc. I get the feeling they are much nearer China.
Regards
Post by: welchbloke on August 20, 2009, 06:45:17 PM
Quote from: "IanD"
I agree maybe 7 or 8 would be more representative. A lot of Indian tech is now indigenous.Quote from: "SteveAlt"India: 3
This appears a little low perhaps; they have nukes, missiles, satellites etc. I get the feeling they are much nearer China.
Regards
Post by: SteveAlt on August 20, 2009, 08:23:52 PM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
The 3 for India was from the list at the top of the post, which was based on GDP and I mentioned I wasn't happy with. At the bottom of the post is the suggested list for the campaign where India has five research facilities. That is the list on which I would like feedback, both on the ordering in terms of which countries have more facilities and also on the actual numbers.Quote from: "IanD"I agree maybe 7 or 8 would be more representative. A lot of Indian tech is now indigenous.Quote from: "SteveAlt"India: 3
This appears a little low perhaps; they have nukes, missiles, satellites etc. I get the feeling they are much nearer China.
Regards
Steve
Post by: welchbloke on August 20, 2009, 09:25:35 PM
Post by: SteveAlt on August 20, 2009, 10:04:16 PM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Sorry, wasn't clear, I actually meant increase India from 5 to 7 or 8. That'll teach me for not reading the previous post properlyThat would make India equal to Russia in terms of tech development and 33% better than ASEAN, which includes South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. I may be misreading India's abilities but that doesn't seem right.
Steve
Post by: IanD on August 21, 2009, 05:22:09 AM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
That'll teach me for not reading the previous post properly
Ditto!
Perhaps the problem is that China is too high? I tend to equate India with China in terms of development with China slightly ahead, but not much. A gap of 5 seems way too large. I would also rate Russia above China, but that’s today, not necessarily in the future.
Regards
Post by: Paul M on August 21, 2009, 06:15:51 AM
USSR has old facilities with good people but very little money for any new development work. This results in them being great in theory but reliant on foreign contracts/collaborations when it comes to new development work. Their research facilities are slowly decaying, but at the same time they are still capable of doing first rate work. They have a good education system that puts out well trained researchers.
China has a lot of facilities and funding is ok-ish. A lot of their work is derivative though. But they are starting to get more involved in new inovative research. If their cultural changes continue and they continue to roll in cash you would expect they would get more and more first rate research facilities. Largely it is as question of mentality, inertia, and inexperience that is holding them back. But they are agressive at sending their people out of country for that experience. China at the moment has a lot of other peoples older technology (ASDEX tokamak, old russian tokamak) that they are using and gaining experience with.
India has a lot of new researchers, new labs and new projects. They are serious about investments in R&D. They have a major investment in education and a big population plus they also aggressively send their people out of country.
I would say all three of these groups would end up much the same in terms of research potential if for different reasons. The key issue is funding at the end of the day. Cutting edge science doesn't usually come cheap (there are rare and notable exceptions). If you had multipliers for theory and practical (like the HOI3 system) you could probably model the situation fairly good. Or else give research modifiers to the various groups. The russians and chinese would then end up with a large number of facilities but each facility would not be very efficient and India would have less facilities but each would be at base efficiency. Hard to say how things go in the future but in terms of future potential I would go India, China and then the Russians. Unless the Russian economy rebounds then they would take the lead of these three. The Russians have a huge investment in a R&D infrastructure (which is decaying but still impressive).
Post by: Charlie Beeler on August 21, 2009, 07:09:03 AM
Post by: IanD on August 21, 2009, 07:19:59 AM
Quote from: "Paul M"
Current situation as it stands based on personal experience:
This appears a reasonable assessment. In my own field there is little between the US and Europe, with the Europeans just ahead in application.
One note of caution is that when looking at citation indices, French scientists still publish in a number of French language journals that makes them less accessible to the English-speaking world, so the contribution of the French could be underestimated.
Regards
Post by: welchbloke on August 21, 2009, 07:11:30 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
I'm within Ian on this I would equate China and India. I have to say that from my perspective Russia is currently living on past glories they don't appear to be spending much R&D money at present whilst India and China are. Having spoken to a couple of senior Indian AF guys the impression I get is that they see China as the real regional threat (not Pakistan) and need to gain some sort of parity with them. I'm unsure as to where I'd place the ASEAN group probably slightly higher than China/India and Russia for R&D.Quote from: "welchbloke"Sorry, wasn't clear, I actually meant increase India from 5 to 7 or 8. That'll teach me for not reading the previous post properlyThat would make India equal to Russia in terms of tech development and 33% better than ASEAN, which includes South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. I may be misreading India's abilities but that doesn't seem right.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on August 21, 2009, 08:09:03 PM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Quote from: "SteveAlt"I'm within Ian on this I would equate China and India. I have to say that from my perspective Russia is currently living on past glories they don't appear to be spending much R&D money at present whilst India and China are. Having spoken to a couple of senior Indian AF guys the impression I get is that they see China as the real regional threat (not Pakistan) and need to gain some sort of parity with them. I'm unsure as to where I'd place the ASEAN group probably slightly higher than China/India and Russia for R&D.Quote from: "welchbloke"Sorry, wasn't clear, I actually meant increase India from 5 to 7 or 8. That'll teach me for not reading the previous post properlyThat would make India equal to Russia in terms of tech development and 33% better than ASEAN, which includes South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. I may be misreading India's abilities but that doesn't seem right.
Steve
This might be a "past glories" attitude, but putting Russia behind India and/or China doesn't feel right to me. I left physics 10 years ago, and haven't paid a lot of attention to military hardware recently, but it still seems to me that in terms of space programs (in a year or two they'll be the only country launching frequent regular manned flights), high-end military aircraft, and (possibly) high-end naval forces they still are a source of technology. One indicator of this might be to look at military aviation, missile, and ship export sales - I suspect Russia would be ahead of both India and China. I guess that puts me with Ian in thinking that China is too high relative to India and Russia.
Something that occurred to me when looking at the list of labs. I thought "gee, a country with no labs but big economy could just build a lot of labs and close the gap". It sounds like Charlie suggested a good solution to this - do the same thing for research that you did for wealth, where each empire starts at a (potentially different) base level of RP/lab, and the tech levels grow that rate by e.g. 20%. Then you could give e.g. China a larger number of labs that produced fewer RP each.
John
Post by: welchbloke on August 21, 2009, 08:38:19 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
*SNIP*I guess my issue is that Russia are using technology that they developed 10plus yrs ago to launch their regular manned flights. It works, it's reasonably safe and it's still in use for the foreseeable future. The difference with the Chinese and Indians is that both of those nations are actively investing in developing their space programmes; look at the number of different types of satellites they are both launching, both have designs on lunar programmes and both are increasing their astronaut(taikonaut) corps. The Russians want to develop a new launcher (Angara) but there is no money for it. In terms of military hardware the Russians have great SAM systems that they continue to develop but their aviation industry is starved of funds and not really producing much in the way of real R&D effort. If you look at exports I suspect that the Chinese are close to the Russians for selling military hardware (a lot of which is actually license (or not) produced russian equipment). The Chinese are very good at copying and reverse engineering tech and, in areas where they can't buy the tech, they seem to have a very good R&D effort. How you actually translate that into labs in Aurora is probably open to a great deal of subjectivity and I would suggest that Steve has a great deal of room for manoeuvre. Anyway, I'm enjoying the discussion that this thread has generated.
This might be a "past glories" attitude, but putting Russia behind India and/or China doesn't feel right to me. I left physics 10 years ago, and haven't paid a lot of attention to military hardware recently, but it still seems to me that in terms of space programs (in a year or two they'll be the only country launching frequent regular manned flights), high-end military aircraft, and (possibly) high-end naval forces they still are a source of technology. One indicator of this might be to look at military aviation, missile, and ship export sales - I suspect Russia would be ahead of both India and China. I guess that puts me with Ian in thinking that China is too high relative to India and Russia.
John
Post by: sloanjh on August 22, 2009, 09:47:28 AM
I just thought of something based on my own conventional campaign - you'll probably want to look into a "tech offset" in NPR generation for your conventional campaign.
In my campaign, it took me roughly 15 years to get out of the solar system. This was with "hacked" (50%) costs for construction factories and mines; I suspect that a normal campaign would take closer to 20 years. In addition, I focused pretty heavily on economic development and military, plus I had plenty of minerals. I suspect that your campaign will focus more on military (leading to an even longer "exit time"), plus you might have a mineral crash before you get out-of-system. So it's not unreasonable to believe that your campaign will take 25 years to begin exploring the neighborhood of Sol.
As you explained in 4.0b, the tech points available to an NPR at generation is proportional to the time since the game's start. My first NPR was encountered only two jumps from Sol, and they are vastly ahead of me in terms of technology. For example, they're using MHD engines while I'm still on Nuclear Pulse. I expect that all the other races I encounter are going to be similarly advanced. At present, the only way I can think of to avoid being squashed like a bug is to make friends with them and try to get them to give me technology (I don't remember if this happens at high levels of alliance or not).
I have two thoughts on how to avoid this situation:
1) During startup, allow a tech offset to be specified, e.g. 20 years. This offset would be added to the start date for the purposes of NPR generation.
2) For each starting race (player or NPR), remember the date of 1st jump. When a race discovers a new NPR, use this date as the start date when generating that NPR, and pass the date along to the new NPR as that race's 1st jump date.
One more thing I'm having trouble with on the NPR AI front - I don't know how to declare ownership of a system or body to a neutral NPR with whom I've established communications. After discovering the NPR 2 jumps out, I withdrew to the middle system and picketed the WP with a scout with active sensors blasting away. This system had a habitable world on it; I was going to put a colony on it, but realized that that would hurt my public's opinion of the aliens if/when they came through the WP. Eventually they did come through the WP, and were picked up by my active sensors blasting away. Rather than recognizing this as a claimed system, however, they sent through a bunch (7) of colony ships and proceeded to colonize the habitable world. (BTW, they didn't have to geo-survey it before colonizing! I understand that this makes life simpler for you, but it seems a bit unfair.) I suspect that this is what's always going to happen - when they discover my home world they're going to charge into it as well and start grabbing territory. The thing I'm concerned about is that I suspect that this is the only behavior NPR will exhibit - I would rather have them make a random decision as to whether they're going to ignore existing claims to a system or avoid contact and leave (or at least not colonize) if they discover an alien presence in a system. From a game mechanics point of view, it feels like there's always going to be a war, since they'll eventually colonize my home system (or even home world) then get all paranoid when they detect my fleet.
OTOH, this dynamic of them barging into systems that I consider mine and me being concerned about their territory grabs is certainly exactly the way a lot of historical wars have started - if the tech differential weren't so big I suspect I'd be a lot less concerned about it.
One thing I haven't tried (didn't think of it) is declaring an exclusion zone. I don't know if these are still active or if aliens will pay attention to them.
Thanks,
John
Post by: IanD on August 24, 2009, 03:57:39 AM
Quote
Steve wrote
I would be interested. As to where to post it, that is a good question
I have posted the pre-TN campaign start in Fiction/Stories forum, not real the right place for it but at least you can see it
Regards
Post by: Paul M on August 24, 2009, 11:26:52 AM
But a conventional start from 500 Million with 800 conv. Industry and 10 research stations takes you at least a good 15-18 years to become fully TN and develope the majority of the "basic" techs you will need. I have a few splurge techs for the Draak (internal armour, hardened electronics, and suppression systems) but still I find it matters more what you leaders tech skill is.
Post by: schroeam on August 24, 2009, 05:05:00 PM
Adam.
Post by: IanD on August 25, 2009, 02:36:09 AM
Now 4.26 is out I think you need a civilian source of Presidents, and governors. While officers of rank R6-8 may run for office it’s usually not until they have retired. To have your senior military commander running the whole planet means you always have to have a coup. I always replace my top rank with president or prime minister etc for “democratic” alliances, but still not ideal, especially when you intend it for extended role-play.
All
it needs is for a screen similar to the current officers screen you only need two or three “ranks” – President/Prime Minister, Minister/ Officers of State and senators/influential party members. I am sure you can come up with more inventive names. From this pool you would select your planetary governors, while you get a president selected on a random basis from the entire pool, perhaps modified by their attributes. If you wanted you could even add ministerial positions e.g. minister of R&D, but it’s not necessary. Regards
Post by: welchbloke on August 25, 2009, 04:42:15 PM
Quote from: "IanD"
Hi SteveWhilst I agree ith the reasoning and I would love to see something like this in Aurora I think that we are opening a huge can of worms. Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies so that means you have 2 pools that would have be available for use as governors (mil and civ). I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.
Now 4.26 is out I think you need a civilian source of Presidents, and governors. While officers of rank R6-8 may run for office it’s usually not until they have retired. To have your senior military commander running the whole planet means you always have to have a coup. I always replace my top rank with president or prime minister etc for “democratic” alliances, but still not ideal, especially when you intend it for extended role-play.
All
Regards
Post by: IanD on August 26, 2009, 02:37:13 AM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies
I agree, but even dictatorships of whatever colour can use an able civil governor. It just seems strange for the "democratic " alliances to be headed up by a Skymarshal. For other types of Government with little or no civilian rulers you could just ignore it. But “former” generals run many dictatorships. Personally I would only want three slots, Governors and President and Sector Governors, when that slot opens. It also gives you an excuse for that coup you were planning
.Quote from: "welchbloke"
I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.I don't have a clue about that, but hoped it could be a variant of the F4 Screen.
Regards
Post by: Father Tim on August 26, 2009, 01:07:54 PM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Whilst I agree with the reasoning and I would love to see something like this in Aurora I think that we are opening a huge can of worms. Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies so that means you have 2 pools that would have be available for use as governors (mil and civ). I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.
I think what you call your officers and how you pick "leaders" is entirely a role-playing decision and should be beyond the scope of the software. What I would very much like to see is a division of personnel like that in MoO2 - Ships' Officers and Colony Leaders. I think the training that makes a good (space) navy officer is very different from that which makes a good planetary governor, and therefore there should be two pools: The Research/Mining/Factory Prod folks should be separate from the Initiative/Communications/Ground Combat folks, with very little (if any) overlap between the two skill sets.
Post by: Laurence on August 26, 2009, 04:20:36 PM
Post by: Erik L on August 26, 2009, 04:35:49 PM
Quote from: "IanD"
QuoteSteve wrote
I would be interested. As to where to post it, that is a good question
I have posted the pre-TN campaign start in Fiction/Stories forum, not real the right place for it but at least you can see it
Regards
I created a Scenarios group and subforums, and moved Ian's post there. Ian - You might want to edit it and give it a better subject as the current is "Ian's Scenario"
Post by: Erik L on August 26, 2009, 04:41:43 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
Quote from: "welchbloke"Whilst I agree with the reasoning and I would love to see something like this in Aurora I think that we are opening a huge can of worms. Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies so that means you have 2 pools that would have be available for use as governors (mil and civ). I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.
I think what you call your officers and how you pick "leaders" is entirely a role-playing decision and should be beyond the scope of the software. What I would very much like to see is a division of personnel like that in MoO2 - Ships' Officers and Colony Leaders. I think the training that makes a good (space) navy officer is very different from that which makes a good planetary governor, and therefore there should be two pools: The Research/Mining/Factory Prod folks should be separate from the Initiative/Communications/Ground Combat folks, with very little (if any) overlap between the two skill sets.
I like this idea combined with Laurence's suggestion. The Research/Mining/et al skills are "civilian", the Commo/Survey/et al are "naval", and Ground Combat would be "army/marine". There might be some overlap. Diplomacy could be all three (and probably should), Initiative I'd see as both naval and army.
That brings up an idea of having ranks be allocated to each pool. R1 Lieutenant Commander (Navy), R1 Captain (Army), R1 Administrator (Civilian). You might also want something that says Civilian takes precedence over military ranks and vice versa. Or Naval ranks take precedence over Army.
Of course, this might (will be) a bitch and a half to code.
Post by: Kurt on August 26, 2009, 05:21:25 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Quote from: "Father Tim"Quote from: "welchbloke"Whilst I agree with the reasoning and I would love to see something like this in Aurora I think that we are opening a huge can of worms. Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies so that means you have 2 pools that would have be available for use as governors (mil and civ). I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.
I think what you call your officers and how you pick "leaders" is entirely a role-playing decision and should be beyond the scope of the software. What I would very much like to see is a division of personnel like that in MoO2 - Ships' Officers and Colony Leaders. I think the training that makes a good (space) navy officer is very different from that which makes a good planetary governor, and therefore there should be two pools: The Research/Mining/Factory Prod folks should be separate from the Initiative/Communications/Ground Combat folks, with very little (if any) overlap between the two skill sets.
I like this idea combined with Laurence's suggestion. The Research/Mining/et al skills are "civilian", the Commo/Survey/et al are "naval", and Ground Combat would be "army/marine". There might be some overlap. Diplomacy could be all three (and probably should), Initiative I'd see as both naval and army.
That brings up an idea of having ranks be allocated to each pool. R1 Lieutenant Commander (Navy), R1 Captain (Army), R1 Administrator (Civilian). You might also want something that says Civilian takes precedence over military ranks and vice versa. Or Naval ranks take precedence over Army.
Of course, this might (will be) a bitch and a half to code.
I like the idea of having 3-5 user definable "Officer Corps". The player could name them Navy, Marine, Political, and so on. All new officers could go into a pool until assigned to one area, and officers could jump between Corps, in certain circumstances. I have mentioned this to Steve, but IIRC, he thought that it added too much complexity, or was too hard to code, for the added value.
I still struggle to justify (or explain) why the "governor" of my civilian/democratic planet is a serving admiral.
Kurt
Post by: Paul M on August 27, 2009, 04:15:48 AM
I use R1&R2 Retire if (fitness<good) or (age>40), R3 Retire if (fitness<good) or (age>45), R4 Retire if (fitness<fair) or (age>50), R5 Retire if (fitness<fair) or (age>55), R6+ Retire if only if a combination of health, fitness and performance is not acceptable. I have a lot of "Granted time in service discharge." or "Due to poor fitness reviews granted a discharge." or "Due to poor health granted a medical discharge." in my retired officer pool. The time in service people would then give you a pool of civillians you could place in civillian leadership roles by granting them the title Ret. rather than Retiring them. You could also make the top 3 ranks somewhat political rather than military. Basically the Hamish Alexander position from the Herringswine books. So they aren't still serving on the front line officers.
Post by: IanD on August 27, 2009, 06:18:20 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
I created a Scenarios group and subforums, and moved Ian's post there. Ian - You might want to edit it and give it a better subject as the current is "Ian's Scenario"
Many Thanks Eric
Regards
Post by: IanD on August 27, 2009, 06:25:11 AM
Quote from: "Laurence"
To avoid having "naval" guys commanding ground divisions. :D
Regards
Post by: IanD on August 27, 2009, 06:34:05 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
I like this idea combined with Laurence's suggestion. The Research/Mining/et al skills are "civilian", the Commo/Survey/et al are "naval", and Ground Combat would be "army/marine". There might be some overlap. Diplomacy could be all three (and probably should), Initiative I'd see as both naval and army.
I also like this idea, but am less concerned with having "Naval" officers commanding Troops, read too many books in which the captain of marines is subordinate to captain of the ship.
Another reason for a civilian "corp" would be a risk that if you posted a governor with a low political reliability score to a colony then he just might foment rebellion. This could also be influenced by your Government type. Shame I will probably have to wait until v8.1 to see this
Regards
Post by: sloanjh on August 29, 2009, 09:37:53 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
This might be a "past glories" attitude, but putting Russia behind India and/or China doesn't feel right to me. I left physics 10 years ago, and haven't paid a lot of attention to military hardware recently, but it still seems to me that in terms of space programs (in a year or two they'll be the only country launching frequent regular manned flights), high-end military aircraft, and (possibly) high-end naval forces they still are a source of technology. One indicator of this might be to look at military aviation, missile, and ship export sales - I suspect Russia would be ahead of both India and China. I guess that puts me with Ian in thinking that China is too high relative to India and Russia.
Ok, so it seems Russia has fallen further than I thought http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090826/ts_afp/russiafrancedefencemilitary_20090826193440 - looks like they want to buy a helicopter carrier from France.
John
Post by: welchbloke on August 29, 2009, 03:19:55 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Very interesting. I wonder how the ship will be fitted out? I would be very surprised if at least some of the C2 systems and comms gear aren't covered by some sort of ITAR limitation.Quote from: "sloanjh"This might be a "past glories" attitude, but putting Russia behind India and/or China doesn't feel right to me. I left physics 10 years ago, and haven't paid a lot of attention to military hardware recently, but it still seems to me that in terms of space programs (in a year or two they'll be the only country launching frequent regular manned flights), high-end military aircraft, and (possibly) high-end naval forces they still are a source of technology. One indicator of this might be to look at military aviation, missile, and ship export sales - I suspect Russia would be ahead of both India and China. I guess that puts me with Ian in thinking that China is too high relative to India and Russia.
Ok, so it seems Russia has fallen further than I thought http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090826/ts_afp/russiafrancedefencemilitary_20090826193440 - looks like they want to buy a helicopter carrier from France.
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on September 14, 2009, 06:33:12 PM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Thanks for everyone's contribution to this discussion. It gave me plenty to think about.Quote from: "sloanjh"*SNIP*I guess my issue is that Russia are using technology that they developed 10plus yrs ago to launch their regular manned flights. It works, it's reasonably safe and it's still in use for the foreseeable future. The difference with the Chinese and Indians is that both of those nations are actively investing in developing their space programmes; look at the number of different types of satellites they are both launching, both have designs on lunar programmes and both are increasing their astronaut(taikonaut) corps. The Russians want to develop a new launcher (Angara) but there is no money for it. In terms of military hardware the Russians have great SAM systems that they continue to develop but their aviation industry is starved of funds and not really producing much in the way of real R&D effort. If you look at exports I suspect that the Chinese are close to the Russians for selling military hardware (a lot of which is actually license (or not) produced russian equipment). The Chinese are very good at copying and reverse engineering tech and, in areas where they can't buy the tech, they seem to have a very good R&D effort. How you actually translate that into labs in Aurora is probably open to a great deal of subjectivity and I would suggest that Steve has a great deal of room for manoeuvre. Anyway, I'm enjoying the discussion that this thread has generated.
This might be a "past glories" attitude, but putting Russia behind India and/or China doesn't feel right to me. I left physics 10 years ago, and haven't paid a lot of attention to military hardware recently, but it still seems to me that in terms of space programs (in a year or two they'll be the only country launching frequent regular manned flights), high-end military aircraft, and (possibly) high-end naval forces they still are a source of technology. One indicator of this might be to look at military aviation, missile, and ship export sales - I suspect Russia would be ahead of both India and China. I guess that puts me with Ian in thinking that China is too high relative to India and Russia.
John
I am going to restart this campaign with the new 'real' star system model so based on everyone's comments I think I am going to assign the following research labs. Further comments welcome.
Coalition (US/UK, etc.) 24
European Union: 18
Japan: 15
China / India/ Russia: 12 each
ASEAN: 10
USAN: 6
Israel: 4
Islamic Alliance: 2
African Union / Arab League: 1
As an aside, my research into Star Names reminded me how much the Arabs/Islam kept science alive while the West was going through the Dark Ages. I am concerned I am being a little prejudiced in my estimate of the likely scientific capabilities of the Arabic/Islamic power blocs so I would especially welcome comments in that area.
Steve
Post by: IanD on September 16, 2009, 10:01:13 AM
It looks good, if I have any doubts its giving Israel 4 not 3, but I really don't have a great feel for Israel’s blue skies research as opposed to their development abilities and only giving the African Union 1 if it includes South Africa based purely on their successful nuclear programme (in collaboration with Israel).
Regards
Post by: Steve Walmsley on September 16, 2009, 10:53:06 AM
Quote from: "IanD"
SteveThat's a good point about South Africa. For some reason I don't think about modern South Africa as the having the same military development capabilities as it did during apartheid. Probably because before majority rule South Africa was often in the news due to the conflicts against the frontline states and because it was forced to develop its own capabilities due to sanctions. I just had a look at the entry on Wiki regarding the SADF (now SANDF)
It looks good, if I have any doubts its giving Israel 4 not 3, but I really don't have a great feel for Israel’s blue skies research as opposed to their development abilities and only giving the African Union 1 if it includes South Africa based purely on their successful nuclear programme (in collaboration with Israel).
"Recently a large-scale programme was launched to re-equip the SANDF with warships and submarines being purchased in Germany and fighter jets being purchased in Sweden and the United Kingdom. This has been controversial due to the great cost and reports of corruption in the awarding of contracts. Issues that face the SANDF include a severe shortage of pilots and naval combat officers, due to the replacement of white officers from the former SADF with appointments from the old liberation forces. The loss of trained personnel and the decommissioning of much needed equipment due to funding issues, high HIV-rates amongst personnel and the fact that SANDF infantry soldiers are some of the oldest in the world, all raise questions regarding the current fighting efficiency of the SANDF. Some of these issues are being addressed with the introduction of the Military Skills Development (MDC) programme, as well as aggressive recruitment and training by the Reserve Force Regiments."
So it appears the SADF is a shadow of its former self. The fact South Africa is trying to buy abroad would suggest that much of it's capability to produce indigneous equipment has also been lost. It sounds like politics with an strong element of anti-white feeling (understandable though that may be) has completely overriden the desire for an efficient military.
Israel on the other hand produces a lot of its own equipment including tanks, fighter aircraft, missiles, FACs, submarines, radar and a nuclear deterrent. Even military lasers in conjunction with the US. Pretty remarkable when you consider its population. Also, Einstein, Oppenheimer and Teller were all Jewish
. On the other hand I can't think of much outside the military sphere where Israel is a world leader but Aurora does tend toward military-related systems.Steve
Post by: welchbloke on September 16, 2009, 05:01:29 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "IanD"SteveThat's a good point about South Africa. For some reason I don't think about modern South Africa as the having the same military development capabilities as it did during apartheid. Probably because before majority rule South Africa was often in the news due to the conflicts against the frontline states and because it was forced to develop its own capabilities due to sanctions. I just had a look at the entry on Wiki regarding the SADF (now SANDF)
It looks good, if I have any doubts its giving Israel 4 not 3, but I really don't have a great feel for Israel’s blue skies research as opposed to their development abilities and only giving the African Union 1 if it includes South Africa based purely on their successful nuclear programme (in collaboration with Israel).
"Recently a large-scale programme was launched to re-equip the SANDF with warships and submarines being purchased in Germany and fighter jets being purchased in Sweden and the United Kingdom. This has been controversial due to the great cost and reports of corruption in the awarding of contracts. Issues that face the SANDF include a severe shortage of pilots and naval combat officers, due to the replacement of white officers from the former SADF with appointments from the old liberation forces. The loss of trained personnel and the decommissioning of much needed equipment due to funding issues, high HIV-rates amongst personnel and the fact that SANDF infantry soldiers are some of the oldest in the world, all raise questions regarding the current fighting efficiency of the SANDF. Some of these issues are being addressed with the introduction of the Military Skills Development (MDC) programme, as well as aggressive recruitment and training by the Reserve Force Regiments."
So it appears the SADF is a shadow of its former self. The fact South Africa is trying to buy abroad would suggest that much of it's capability to produce indigneous equipment has also been lost. It sounds like politics with an strong element of anti-white feeling (understandable though that may be) has completely overriden the desire for an efficient military.
Israel on the other hand produces a lot of its own equipment including tanks, fighter aircraft, missiles, FACs, submarines, radar and a nuclear deterrent. Even military lasers in conjunction with the US. Pretty remarkable when you consider its population. Also, Einstein, Oppenheimer and Teller were all Jewish :D
Post by: IanD on September 17, 2009, 02:56:22 AM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
The Israelis are the most difficult to judge in my book, they have good R&D (according to friends of mine who've been lucky enough to see some of their facilities) but they also get a significant amount of technology from the US. You'll find a significant proportion of their 'home-grown' tech has US components. Anyway that's my take. I have to say that Steve has done far more extensive research ocross the broad spectrum of this subject than I have been exposed to due to my employment; so a big thumbs up from me
Which is why I tried to separate research from development. While I am aware of some excellent work being done by the Weizmann Institute of Science I really have no feel for the overall level of innovation. On the whole I think Steve has made a good distribution of labs.
Regards
Post by: Steve Walmsley on September 18, 2009, 02:53:42 PM
Steve