RE: [FH] FCT founding talk

G'day,

>      It would not be logical for the UK to not make
> use of the facilities/people of the former U.S.
> when going into space.   The NAC fleet would 
> consist of a reasonably large number of former U.S.
> citizens that would in time achieve positions of 
> responsibility, I.E. squadron/fleet command.

Yep.

>      The breakup would be peaceful, simply because 
> the number of warships under control of the FCT types
> would, if combat ensued, cause the NAC to be
> vulnerable to the third party, read as ESU.

I guess that depends on whether you see crews as integrated or as being
manned from specific locales. We don't have "state" run frigates etc
here. A
ship will contain bods from all the states and I guess that coloured my
view
of how the spaceships would be crewed. At the time of the creation of
the
NAC I could envisage nation based forces as the majority would've
probably
just have been brought straight across from the individual constituent
nations. However, the FCT is formed in 2159 and so I had assumed crews
would
be more integrated - why segregate when you either speak the same
language
or wouldn't really want ships manned by all "former Brazilians" as there
is
a risk of them "defecting" to the LLAR. As a result I didn't see great
swags
of ships naturally falling to FCT control. Though you may have a point
about
internal tensions weakening the NAC's position vs other powers and my
view
of NAC stuffing is probably just some much $%@#* anyway ;)

> Or more precisely, since a major power had
> 150 warships per colonized system, I had a hard time
> keeping the FCT fleet small enough to be believable
> and large enough for a second/third rate power.

I know that feeling I had similar troubles when visualising/playing with
the
IAS, OU structure etc.

> This was a few years and a few computers ago,
> so the material is lost to me, there is some in
> the E-mails of the time, if that can be found?

I can probably dig through the archives if that's what you're referring
to.

Thanks

Beth