nth Rate Powers, Ratings, and John's Weapons

1) John's Weapons (my suggested adds)
I'd say the weapon carried by the NSL figure as 
a rapid fire plasma cannon is more like a small 
plasma saw than a rapid fire version of the 
larger bore storm canon. It looks like a gauss 
saw would perhaps appear (which is what I 
thought it was before reading the catalog 
page). I'd say automatic plasma canon would 
be a good a good name - anyone help with the 
German? 

2) KHR comments:

a) KH, I didn't take offense. You didn't mean 
any (your one dimensional comment was strictly 
accurate, not prejorative) and I didn't take any. 
Any appearance to that direction is just my 
poor communications - sorry. 

b) I believe logistics and other aspects like 
budget and technology rate into personal 
soldier quality because having the logistics to 
afford to shoot on the range regularly, to have 
every trooper fire live AT weapons, etc. really 
does make a difference to individual soldierly 
skills. This is a direct function of logistics, though 
not obvious unless you think about it or have 
experienced what a lack of such support can do 
to formation (having met people who 
supposedly know anti-armour weapons but 
have never fired a real one or even worked with 
an expensive simulator). 

c) Yes, my list of possible factors was long. You 
complain about it being one dimensional, then 
you're suprised when I hit the other extreme? :) 
I guess we differ in one respect: I'm interested 
in this as a "background piece" rather than 
anything practical. When I write scenarios, I 
select the units involved. So I don't usually need 
any kind of "random chart". Given that any 
nation can have good or bad units, and that is 
what SG and DS manifest, all you might 
reasonably do is affect the distributions a little 
bit. The truth is, you can argue for all veteran 
PAU units, or all green NAC units at that scale. 
So I see this mostly as a FH excercise, rather 
than any sort of game-interfacing activity.

d) 80 years is a long time to get over a defeat 
(re LLAR). OTOH, none of the examples you've 
cited were booted out of their home territory, 
moved somewhere else, setup shop there, 
rebuilt their whole national structure, and then 
reached a level where they could challenge the 
big guy on the block. The fact the PAU have 
NOT been kicked off earth, and the fact that the 
PAU have maintained some semblance of a 
power block as a star spanning earth based 
nation suggests they might be a bit more 
together than the once-great LLAR. 

3) More generally

An averaged rating from a poll would give us 
an impression (especially from an anonymous 
poll) of what the average GZG listers opinion is. 
If we tracked modality, we'd also get some idea 
of whether the opinions are very similar or very 
diverse - the average representing two 
extremes of thought. 

Myself, I'm interested in such a project, but 
busy enough to eschew management of it. And 
I'm (very much like John) going to do "my own 
thing" in defining my version of the GZGverse. 
It's based on how I interpret GZG canon. I'm 
not trying to sell it to anyone, other than those 
I game with, and even then only as one possible 
interpretation used to develop scenarios. 
Someone has to suck. I could have picked the 
NAC, but I just don't get that impression from 
reading the timelines. I rank the PAU in the 
lower half of the "power blocks" because I see 
their fleet as mostly hand me downs, their 
supranation as having many internal division 
factors relating to languages, history, etc, and I 
figure their "fleet" is mostly in less than great 
repair and that their army tends towards less 
than effective operations. Can they maintain a 
space empire? If none of the big 4 decide to 
take them on directly when they have no other 
allies, then yes. Is it the same kind of the space 
empire as the NAC runs? Nosiree Karl-Heinz. 
But that's just my take on things. And because I 
base it on trends I see (rather than ones I 
make up under the "200 years is a long time" 
mantra), people can say I'm in error or even (if 
they're ignorant) bigoted. The truth is I could 
make the PAU a 1st rate power, but the 
amount I'd have to alter their current path is 
larger than making them lower ranked. And I 
prefer that things distort how I actually see the 
world going today less. That doesn't make it a 
correct view, but then so what? If it suits me, 
amuses me, and I develop my version of the 
GZGverse around it, people can disagree freely 
and do their own thing. Or not play in it. That's 
the great thing about GZG games and probably 
why Jon issues few clarifications - he lets people 
do their own thing. 

So, I could go around rating everyone about 
the same. But I choose not to. My world won't 
look like Beth's, nor Chris' world, nor John's. 
But if it did, it would (by virtue of similarity) be 
less interesting as an offering because it would 
offer much the same as Beth, Chris or John 
would. So I think this difference of outlook on 
the common Future History is actually an asset 
rather than a liability. 

4) Laserlight, that comment about a plague of 
Celts in Space has you on another list..... ! 

<There is only a plague because the Celts are 
interesting enough to generate many 
interpretations!>

So, in my best Auld Scots "Hud Yer Weesht."

:) Tomb Raider
Not short of thoughts, nor wind ;)
---------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site

No Battle Plan Survives Contact With Dice.
-- Mark 'Indy' Kochte