Re: Merc Guild

> 
> I gave this a little thought, and while I certainly can't predict the 
> future any better than the next bloke...
> 
> Take a look at mercenaries today vs. even as little as 200 years ago. 
> The units are smaller, more independent, and in many cases as little
as 
> 1 man, a situation which never would have come to pass in earlier
times. 
> It would seem to me that technology has shrunken their organizational 
> size.

The resent hay day was the 50s and 60s where units became rather large
This was a direct result of the vacuum of colonies come governments and
of course the cold war.When I look at the Tuffleyverse I see cold war in
spades! With a Alien threat bolted on, and with the vastness we are 
playing with there is lots of room to do about anything.

> 
> There is no reason, as you point out, that this might not reverse due
to 
> increased demand in the future. However, deniability would become less

> and less of a factor as size increased. The payment would become 
> correspondingly larger and easier to trace as the unit's size
increased. 
> Likewise, payment by equipment would also be fairly easy to trace.
> 
All governments lie deniability is a must that will never change.As for
the
equipment who is to say you supply them with your own. I can think of
a few scenarios where say a NAC hired unit supplied with ESU arms 
attacks an FSE outpost, ensuring some get away.....Where did they get
this equipment you ask? Off the battlefield or from third parties ect.

> It's possible that mercenary companies could be supported by a 
> government and become valuable for their skill, as has been suggested
by 
> many sci-fi authors, but I can't imagine that they would be allowed to

> grow too large, as then they would clearly be seen as a threat to the 
> major powers and eventually eliminated of subsumed.
> 
I would think that also, that has always been the risk of being a merc.