Re: [GZG] UNSC Workings

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Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 6:44 PM, Damo <damosan@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Dec 11, 2008, at 3:54 PM, emu2020@comcast.net wrote:
>
> > Renaming the topic to raise a new one based off the original. Has
> > there ever been any serious thought into what the UNSC is and how
> > it operates? I know some of the thread on the PMCs touched on this,
> > but from what I have seen the UNSC obviously has some resources or
> > backing.
> >
> > 1) They have equipment beyond the tech of other nations
>
> How would member nations handle the UN doing advanced weapons
> research today?  To me this is the interesting thing -- how did a non-
> governmental organization gather the funds to build a fleet of
> advanced vessels?  How come the member nations aren't getting a cut
> of this tech?

My thinking is that the UNSC postulated in the Tuffleyverse first came
about
as a cooperative agreement between the major powers to mutually sponsor
an
entity (the UNSC) so no one power could gain control of the core worlds.
With the major powers, as well as the minor powers, all contributing to
ensure they have some sort of holdings in the core worlds, and to make
sure
they are not taken over by another power (kinda like a safe deposit
box),
the UNSC could get substantial amounts of funding. In a short time they
would become a power to be reckoned with.

They could then segregate asteroids, moons, planets off for ship bases
and
research projects. They do send exploratory vessels out to the outer
worlds
(and likely beyond), so maybe somewhere along the way they stumbled upon
something or other of ancient alien tech that allowed them to develop
the
grazer and AMTs.

Or some braniac in their membership stumbled upon something that allowed
this sort of weapons development. <shrug>

>
>
> > 2) They have their own ship and equipment designs and so are not
> > getting equipment from member states.
>
> That's kind of a leap.  One can say the UNSC has their own fleet but
> can we say anything about numbers?  In the fleet books we get an idea
> of how many ships each Earth bound empire owns.

We do know (from piecing together various postings from Jon, the
timeline,
etc) that the UNSC is strong enough to keep the other major powers in
line
in the core worlds, and exercise some sort of jurisdiction in the inner
worlds. In the outer worlds, not so much (isolated excursions is all;
besides, their mandate is not to patrol the outer worlds anyway).

And if it is not strong enough to keep any two powers down in the core,
then
it is at least strong enough to go head-to-head with any one of them.
Besides, if any one power got uppity and thought they could do something
about taking out the UNSC (and thus opening up the core worlds to strife
and
being taken over), the other powers would jump all over them to ensure
they
kept their holdings intact. By the time the UNSC would be beaten, it
would
have weakened the aggressor power so much that the other powers would
have a
field day with them - and likely not just pummel them into a minor
power,
but take their core world holdings at the same time. So, it actually
behooves the major (and minor) powers to limit their conflict with the
UNSC
and in the core worlds.

 As an aside it's
> interesting to go through the FB1 and put the number of each class in
> a spreadsheet -- it really shows what each nation thought was
> important.  Anyway...
>

Hmmm. I'll have to try that.

Mk