Re: [GZG] [OT] The myth of inevitable victory. (Was: [OT] Books (Weber/White/Meier) )

At 1:15 PM +0300 7/22/08, John Atkinson wrote:
>
>There are some exceptions:  The Starfire universe which began this
>conversation is purely attritional, with little or no room for
>tactical innovation.  All combat essentially boils down to overcoming
>warp point defenses, which due to the game mechanics, generally boils
>down to throwing enough ships through it to do enough damage, and
>having enough of a reserve to defeat the enemy's remaining forces in
>the system.  It's a Weber-ism to ignore political consequences of
>casualties measured in the millions or billions.  It is also a
>Weberism to ignore questions of morale, or will.  And Weber's
>universes tend towards massive shipbuilding programs and recruit
>training programs happening off-screen and via handwaving.  In
>reality, navies which are forced to replace massive casulties have a
>significant decrease in capability due to loss of trained cadre.  See
>Japanese Naval Aviation in WWII.  So given a Starfire universe, with
>all questions simplified down to putting hulls into space as fast as
>possible, the purely economic argument makes sense and is demonstrated
over and over in the four novels set in that universe.

John, I'm going to miss you at Dragon Con for 
Round two of arguing with Sci Fi Authors. Now 
that Krautman and others know who you are, Ringo 
would have his hands full keeping the peace. :-)
-- 
--
Ryan Gill	       rmgill@SPAMmindspring.com
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'60 Daimler Ferret '42 Daimler Dingo '42 Humber MkIV (1/3)
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