Re: Planetary Infrastructure/Invasion/etc

At 02:23 PM 6/15/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Counterpoint - much of our infrastructure exists to build more 
>infrastructure and support itself and is not a producting element. 
>The problem of scale.... 

Right.	I think of a planetary economy as sort of like a "food chain"
pyramid.  The most advanced technological industries have a whole
infrastructure of lower tech industries which support them.

Beginning colonies only have the population and resources to build and
maintain the lowest level industries.  Sure, they can import things they
would be unable to produce domestically, but there are lots of factors
which can complicate that.

>Counterpoint - nothing says I can't build an easy to maintain, rugged 
>vehicle or tool much more simply than an overfeatured, pork barrelled 
>one produced by our infrastructure (whose goal is to grow its own 
>existence as much as it is to provide a workable end product). I may 
>not have the maximum electronics, or the newest tech gizmos, but it 
>can still be quite deadly, even with a smaller infrastructure.

Absolutely right.  And it will roll a d4 in combat.  :)

>Further, a colony, by def'n, has a focused structure in many cases 
>- because it doesn't have population or resources, it has to make up 
>for it by doing the things it needs to (and I'd assume this to 
>include machining things one can't get shipped, building new things 
>required in the new environment that would cost too much and take too 
>long to design and ship from civilization, etc.) very well, if on a 
>small scale. I think a small 10K person colony might well have  the 
>resources (in terms of fabricating some stuff) of a 250K city back 
>home, plus some specialized stuff that the city wouldn't have. It 
>would lack in luxuries, and some things may have to be imported due 
>to lack of local resources, but for sheer transport costs, most 
>things would be done locally or not at all.

Look at any human community.  In a really small town, what do you have? 
A
few essential businesses/stores/industries.  As the community grows,
more
people become involved in producing "supporting" services which do not
directly contribute to the major local industries.  Only in the largest
communities will you find the most advanced industries, but you will
also
find that only the smallest fraction of that community's labor force is
directly involved in it.  The rest are plumbers and fast food workers
and
morticians.  The same is true on a larger scale for colony worlds.

>... A big HEL might not 
>be as complex to build as you suspect or even that expensive - except 
>for the fact that on civilized worlds they are trying to control 
>proliferation and on civilized worlds production costs are orders of 
>magnitude more (labour rates, specialization, unions, restrictive 
>laws, tarrifs, trade regulations, etc. all factor in). 

Agreed.  I'd also imagine the homeworld wants to maintain a favorable
balance of trade with its colonies, so imports will be expensive.  A
small
colony on a tight budget just can't afford to import a billion credits
worth of top of the line weapons.  Not when they could be importing
machine
tools, tractors, industrial equipment, medical supplies and so forth
instead.

And the homeworld won't sell 'em the really good stuff just in case they
decide to declare independence.

But that can't stop them from mounting a mining laser on the back of a
farm
truck.

>> Colonies are going to be exporters of raw materials, I'd think, but
>> importers of almost anything else - the neccesary depth of
infrastructure
>> will take time to develop. And if a war or something disrupts the
whole
>> infrastructure, add years to the time needed.

Agreed.

>>... It would take a very mature colony to produce & maintain an
aerospace
>> fighter, and an even older one to produce any sort of starship.

I think the old Traveller system had something like this (probably in
the
section on running a merchant ship)...all the various commodities and
tech
gizmos where rated according to their availability; some things could
only
be purchased at industrial worlds with a given tech base, population and
law level.  Tech base and law level kinda falls out of the equation in
the
FT/DS universe and especially for this discussion, but I think that a
simple system of rating planets on their level of development would be
useful.  For example for DS II:

Industry:	Can Produce
Level 0 - No heavy industry: Imported or converted vehicles only
Level 1 - Wheeled vehicles, Tracked vehicles, Helicopters, Jets 
Level 2 - GEVs, VTOLs
Level 3 - Walkers
Level 4 - Aerospace Vehicles
Level 5 - Grav vehicles

Or whatever.  This is just off the top of my head.  If your
interpretation
of the universe says walkers are harder to produce than aerospace
fighters,
then change it to suit you.  The scale could also be condensed to as few
as
3 levels or expanded to however many you like.	Make up a similar chart
for
weapons as well.

Each level of industry should require a population an order of magnitude
larger to support it; for example it might correspond to:

Industry:	Population
Level 0 - Tens of Thousands
Level 1 - Hundreds of Thousands
Level 2 - Millions
Level 3 - Tens of millions
Level 4 - Hundreds of millions
Level 5 - Billions

Or whatever scale you like.  The basic idea being not that you can't
build
a grav tank from prefab parts with a small team of trained people, but
that
you have to have all the supporting infrastructure to design and build
all
the component parts and this will only occur on a core world.

Jeff Lyon