[GZG] System Diversity

I found it interesting with John and Eric talking about their large
custom fleet experiences that they talked about the fear that one
design or system might predominate.

>From a game perspective, that's a bit boring. Point.

But, from a real world perspective, in the age of battleships,
everyone built them. They built gun platforms with armour. There
weren't a lot of flavours of them beyond what the local tech limits
imposed. There were destroyers too. Both were pretty common at the
time.

In WWII, and for a while in the early days after, Aircraft Carriers
were the big thing. They still are, but now they are so expensive only
a few select nations have them and only one or two have several of
them (real CVN style carriers anyway). In WWII, Canada, Britain, USA,
Japan, and possibly someone else had them.

In the cold war, NATO and the Soviet Block built lots of tanks, APCs,
fighters, bombers, and ground attack craft. With a few particular
notable exceptions, each side built classes of the same role because
they needed to fill that role.

I guess where I'm going with this as it applies to FT or SG or DS: We
often design for flavour in races. Life doesn't seem to match that
quite as much - technologically, once something is out there, if
there's a war on, you develop a counter. If its a good offense, you
copy it. You try to come up with your own, but chances are the enemy
is watching you and has some whiff of what your doing to duplicate it.
And roles follow evolving doctrine and the march of time, so those
tend to have some similarity too.

So, I expect any major power in the GZG verse that could make MDC/5
armed tanks probably would for their MBTs. There would be uses for
other tanks (mostly economic ones where you might want to deploy a
crappy tank for cheap bucks) but you'd have the big one for mainline
tank on mainline tank clashes with the other side.

Similarly, if (for instance) K-guns turn out to be pretty spiffy, soon
everyone would begin using them. It might take a bit of time, but
eventually you'd see it and the time window is faster by far in
wartime. If missiles proved to be slayers for fleets, no fleet would
show up without lots of PDS and ADFC. It would be pointless and bloody
otherwise. If fighters have a critical point where they crush line
ships, you know that people would bring at least that many to a fight
and the other side would compensate.

I guess what I'm getting at is that successful (good value for the
dollar/pound) systems in the real world that fulfill a commonly
understood role (which is probably 75% of all military systems for the
big powers) would exist in some for or another in the other guys
arsenal. Now sure, Brits have more focus on armour and US perhaps on
speed in MBTs. Maybe a Russian DD looks different than a US DD built
at the same period, although they probably are more similar than
different.

We worry about flavour. Real procurement systems worry about efficacy
and economics. If they can deliver the good system the enemy is using
(or a refined one!), then they will. If not, they'll find a way to
counter it. But no one, for instance, deploys an MBT with zero armour
value. It just isn't done. So flavour doesn't substitute for efficacy.

I say this because I've seen some fleets built without a particular
role of ship while other fleets focus intently on it and neither
strikes me as the way it would actually be (unless the design is
clearly superior and everyone would then build it or unless it sucks
entirely then no one would). There will be cases where one side builds
something unique or particular to their odd needs, but I'd say that's
less than 25% of designs. (S-Tank, I'm looking at you...)

So, if you are trying to model the real world, as soon as the humans
could reverse engineer (or even just copy) an alien system with
moderate cost effectiveness, they'd do it. And vice versa. We'd see
human ships with K-guns or KV with Grasers (as an example) in short
order.

Of course, that's more boring for a 'game flavour' but I used to play
a lot of microarmour and it never occured to me to be bored with
soviets versus NATO just because both sides had tanks, APCs, strike
planes, and infantry. The fun was in what you did with them and how
doctrine suggested you fight them.

Tom
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