Re: RFACS

sorry this is so long. i was waiting for the laundry to finish.

On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 adrian.johnson@sympatico.ca wrote:

> However, a couple of comments re Tom's last post:
> 
> >** I'm arguing the basic
> >firecontrol must be relative to the time - 2183 basic would of course
be
> >considered ultra advanced by today's standards.
>
> Tom is advocating [snip] a "basic" FC system in the GZGverse will make
> our advanced stuff look like bubble gum and rubber bands, and their
> "superior" FC systems would look like magic to us.
> 
> I'm not so sure about this.

i'm more on Tom B's side (why is it i always end up siding with Barclay?
maybe he slipped some sort of subliminal message into an email somewhere
...), but with some reservations.

> Maybe the weapon producers of the GZGverse, particularly those of the
> further-flung areas of human space (ie out on distant or small
> colonies) will use tried and true systems that do not require a heavy
> industrial infrastructure - or perhaps I should say a really high tech
> infrastructure...

who's to say that more advanced kit will require heavy infrastructure? i
see most of the key improvements being in the intelligence of the
equipment; the sensors, software and automatic control of the gun. now,
today this is high-tech, and there's not that much robotic kit in use in
general technology (cars, washing machines, etc), but i suspect that by
2150, everyday things will have a lot of roboticism, making it easy to
build a swish FC - processing power is Too Cheap To Meter (tm), you can
pull an imager out of the digital camera you take holiday snaps with,
and
take some actuators from the car, washing machine, etc. these bits of
tech
aren't hard-to-come-by military-specific items, they're general-purpose
consumer components cranked out in their millions by Panasonic,
Phillips,
General Electric, etc.

> Who's to say that they don't use weapon systems
> that are remarkably similar to what is around today, simply 'cause
> they know it works and it is easy to make and maintain in the field.

why on earth would 2150-era people consider 2000-era kit to be 'tried
and
true', something 'they know works'? why wouldn't they use 2100-era kit?
you're suggesting that they would see *one-hundred and fifty*-year-old
kit
as acceptable battlefield equipment! this strikes me as rather daft.

> We
> could go on arguing ad nauseum about the possible directions that
> industrial production might take,

and you know, i suspect we will. maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow,
but
soon, and for the rest of the list :).

> but the fact of the matter is, the GZG books themselves suggest that
> though there is technology of a sophistication that we can only dream
> about (FTL, Gravitic tech, etc), in most cases they're still using
> rifles that use explosives to propel a slug at the enemy, and still
> using wheeled or tracked armoured vehicles with big guns,

it's interesting you should say that. since we're talking about ground
combat, we're talking DS/SG. now, i don't have SG, but DS2, whilst it
*has* rules for HVCs (which are still supposed to me lots more advanced
than our modern cannons), says nothing about whether Tuffleyverse forces
use them. is the HVC a front-line weapon? something only used by lesser
powers? something only used on seriously primitive colony worlds?
something only found in obsolete vehicles? we have no idea. the same
goes
for tracked vs GEV vs grav (sort of).

> carting PBIs around the battlefield to take and hold the important
> spots.

i don't see that the existence of infantry implies primitive technology;
the existence of discernible infantry, cavalry, artillery (and engineer,
pace the spirit of John A :) ) branches in armies has been, afaik,
pretty
constant over history.

> It just isn't THAT different from today, and I believe that was by
> intention on the part of the designers.

the organisation of forces (apart from the chain of command in DS2, ie
there isn't one) is the same, the details of the tech aren't.

> The game system is designed to be
> generic, and to enable fun play of squad and platoon level infantry
combat.
> The GZG Canon universe is not that different from ours today, with
some
> advances in technology to give it sci-fi flavour and enable it to be
set
> out among the stars.

i don't think we really know enough about the Tuffleyverse to say that;
we
have no idea what everyday domestic life is like - we only see the
battlefield.

> But it isn't so far gone from today as to be
> completely unrecognizable and pure fantasy...  Like I said, it still
comes
> down to a PBI with a rifle taking a hill away from another PBI with a
rifle
> sitting on the hill...

but if those PBI have immersive data-management suites linked to
pervasive
battlefield imaging systems, and their rifles fire 4 mm hyper-kinetic
diamond needles, and have virtual-image holographic target resolution, a
laser rangefinder, a thermal imager and integrated electrict toothbrush
(on guns: see The Gun in 'the star fraction', Ken McLeod - start with a
Kalashnikov (one of the 2025 ones with a microprocessor) and keep adding
electronics until it's self-aware 8) ), is their situation really 'not
that different from ours today'?

> The same might be said for the technology.  Sure there is some stuff
that's
> "far future wonderous" relative to us.  But is ALL of it that way? 
Why
> should it be?  Is it necessary to humanity that we give up on stuff
that
> works well simply because we MUST advance beyond what we have right
now?

of course it is.

> Of course not.

look, it's like this: i have an integrated-electric-toothbrush gun, and
a
helmet display which is so advanced i can get channel 5 *without snow*,
and you have an SA80 and a pair of sunglasses. there are ten of each of
us, and we're equally competent and well-led. we fight. who wins? the
guys
who can see and kill the enemy in any conditions, at range. it's like
pitting the SA80/sunglasses guy against a Napoleonic rifleman (not
Sharpe
:) ).

thus, if one side has uber-tech, then any side which does not have at
least comparable tech will lose hard. i'm not saying everyone has to
have
the electric toothbrush attachment - some forces may only have a
dental-floss dispenser, and just the thermal imager, laser designator,
etc; maybe a rule-based expert system rather than a neural net in the
squad computer; maybe sensor fusion from radar and IR, but not optical
or
magnetic-pulse. these guys have basic tech - waay ahead of ours, but
still
behind the guys with the electric toothbrushes.

> There are many examples of technology that we use today
> that has not fundamentally changed in centuries, just because it works
> well.  Will we replace a steel kitchen knife with a "electro vibro
sonic
> wave motion monomolecular matter destabilizer device"?  Why would we?
Steel
> knives have worked perfectly well for centuries,

we used to use worked steel. the industrial revolution brought us
mechanically-forged high-quality mild steel. advances in metallurgy
brought stainless steel to the kitchen, and now we don't have to dry
knives straight after we wash them, plus they need sharpening far less
often (we still have a couple of steel knives at home, and they're
fairly
nastily blackened and pitted). i got a new kitchen knife for valentine's
day - it's stainless steel, but has a tungsten carbide edge which it
claims will never need sharpening.

> are cheap to produce with
> very limited technology and do not require mass industrial
infrastructure.
> And in that kind of case, we're lazy.  We don't need to replace the
knife,
> 'cause whether it is 1750, 1950, or 2250, a steel knife is still going
to
> cut a steak or carve a turkey (if we're still eating that kind of food
in
> 2250 and not ingesting pills a-la the Jetsons cartoon...).

today's knives cut better and are easier to take care of, thanks to the
march of progress.

> There's no
> indication that we will abandon all of our technology of today in the
> GZGverse.  Infact, I would suggest that a critical reading of their
> histories and their weapon/vehicle designs/descriptions suggests that
much
> of what they have then is similar to what we have now.  Yes there are
all
> kinds of examples of stuff that is WAY more advanced than today. 

there are waaaay more advanced things out there (ftl, grav,
massdrivers),
but it's not in common use - i agree entirely. however, i do not agree
that the common stuff is the same as today - it's more advanced, but way
more rather than waaaay more.

> But what I'm boiling down to at the end here, is that (to put it
> prosiacally) an armoured vehicle build on a fringe colony world, using
> Petrochem or some other relatively simple power system,

burning it quitely and efficiently in a fuel cell, rather than
inefficiently in a turbine or reciprocating engine. personally, i'd back
alcohol as a fuel source - you can make it from surplus biomass with
some
real simple biotech :).

> riding on tires
> made from locally grown rubber or some kind of synthetic,

probably some advanced polymer - take rubber, mash in water, add bugs,
wait for poly(isomethylterpenoic amide) to precipitate.

> and mounting a
> 25mm auto cannon - might have a mounting system that is not much more
> complicated than a series of hydraulic or electric servos to move it
> around, some simple sighting systems, and a guy behind it not trained
too
> differently from my friends who serve in the Canadian reserves
today...

i suspect the servoes will be controlled by a computer, which will in
turn
be controlled by the Canadian-trained gentleman. probably a digital
imager
and image-processor in there too; all these things are as commonplace as
pencil and paper in the future.

> It
> is a "basic" fire control system in the GZGverse/Stargrunt sense...
and it
> may indeed be quite basic.  Because that is all they need, and can
> economically produce and maintain, in that kind of environment...

i should imagine that by 2150, anywhere that cannot maintain basic
electronics (based on highly modular, encapsulated and reliable
components) would have a tiny number of colonists, and would certainly
not
be able to sustain an armed force. i would imagine an electronics
workshop
would be a higher priority than a steel mill to a colony.

> If we assume that their "basic" firecontrol systems are all fully
> stabilized with radar motion trackers, inertial guidance and having
full
> spectrum scanners with UV, IR, etc etc capability, how does the game
system
> then accound for the colony world that has a converted agricultural
> transport mounting a simple mechanism for it's heavy autocannon, and
> carring a squad of troops in the back.

by explaining how even the simplest colony world will have access to
electronics that today look like magic, but in 2150 will look like part
of
the background.

> I suggest that a Stargrunt Basic fire control system is exactly that. 
Basic.

i agree. i just think that 'basic' will shift over the next 150 years.

> Just some food for thought, on this cold, blustery and snowy Sunday
> evening.  And curses to all you Ozzies who are sitting around in your
nice
> warm summer.	I just scraped 5 or 6 cm of snow off my car... <g>

it's getting close to spring here - a mild snap, plus i saw some flowers
poking their way out of the ground this morning. of course, UK spring is
still cold enough to liquefy carbon dioxide :-/.

tom