Re: [FT universe] was [URL] New Star and Campaign Maps

 ---- richard slattery wrote: 
> On 13 Sep 98, at 10:31, tom.anderson@altavista.net wrote:
> > well, bear in mind that only a small fraction of the discovered
systems
> > will have habitable planets
> > thus, the vast majority of stars can be ignored.
> Actually, in my mind this makes the problem worse.

well, it fixes one problem (sort of) and makes a different one worse.
that's engineering!

> If you don't 
> need to go via routes between stars then there is no need during 
> military campaign to bother attacking strategic gateway systems 
> that 'guard' routes to your core systems. You just go straight there 
> with your whole battlefleet bypassing anywhere else, and attack en-
> masse. It becomes stone-paper-scissors.

true. it is exactly like a planetary war fought entirely with aircraft.
from a gaming point of view, it would seem to suck.

otoh, it is like air wars. you need to detect the incoming strike fleet
and steer your fleet in on an intercept course. this is boring.

it also assumes that you have instantaneous communication. if your
communication is limited to the speed of ships, it becomes a much more
interesting (and difficult) problem.

> If you need to go via routes, and can only manage 'jumps' (for 
> instance) of a certain distance, then you get strategic bottlenecks, 
> which are great for wargaming.

exactly. i would go for such a system (a mote-like system, for
convenience's sake) every time. i just don't know how to simulate them
without computer assistance.

> Also, habitable planets? What 'are' they useful for? Room for 
> population, perhaps.
> Minerals? Hardly... once you get to earths 
> asteroid belt you have enough of almost any mineral for the 
> forseeable future, and it's nearby.
> Food production, perhaps. 
> Research, undoubtably, but that probably isn't of strategic 
> importance.

right, well now we get to question man's reasons for colonising outer
space, and we run up against a classic problem: basically, there aren't
any. we have to assume that human industry continues/starts to advance
at an exponential rate, and that within 100 years or so the resources in
the asteroids and the moons of jupiter, etc, are insufficient. we could
also assume that, even with genetically engineered crops, oceanic algae
farms, hydroponics, etc, the earth cannot feed itself. habitable planets
will then need to be colonised to grow crops, and asteroid belts and
mineral-rich planetoids for their resources. for this to be true, the
population and indutrialisation of the earth will have to reach
absolutely immense proportions; fifty bilion people, perhaps? i don't
know of any sf which describes a world of such proportions, although
there is a story by (i think) j g ballard called 'billennium' which gets
close, and asimov's descriptions of trantor are perhaps also
applicable..

such a situation might also suggest that we would be building fleets
bigger than half a dozen 5000-tonne battleships. perhaps more like
twenty million-tonne battleships.

Tom

----------------------------------------------------------------
Get your free email from AltaVista at http://altavista.iname.com