Was: More future history questions - but wandered off into another thought

textfilter: chose text/plain from a multipart/alternative

The star-gazin' rock-hoppin one said:

Which is what I thought way back when I proposed the Hawai'ian Free
State 9
or 10 years ago. I wrote up a thing for the GZGPedia, but it never made
it
in. And some folks on the list insisted that Hawai'i was the province of
the OU instead.

--

[Tomb] Here we run across the difference between a game and reality. In
games, people like to assemble factions. Those factions/political blocs
generally tend to be limited to 3-5 major and maybe a handful of minor.
The
real world *could* at times have been looked at this way if your glasses
were particularly coke-bottle-ish.

Looking a bit more deeply, even in the Cold War, there was the Soviet
Union, the NATO powers, and let's say China as well, although it wasn't
the
power it is today. But the world had boatloads of independent countries
with their own agendas and even within the two major blocs, there were a
fair few differences in objectives and outlook.

Now, in the post-911 era (which in theory now covers from then until the
end of time, right?), there are a lot of factions. NATO isn't as tight
as
it once was, Europe looked like it might form its own power bloc, now
that
seems in some jeopardy. The Russians aren't what they once were and
Eastern
Europe may emerge as a part of a strong NATO and/or Eurozone and/or its
own
thing. China IS big. Africa may get its act together. The Middle East...
who knows? Some large pan-ME islamist movement is not impossible.

I guess the real world just has lots more shades of grey than games want
to
try to enumerate in a published setting. And people want 'their' faction
to
have more stuff too (in many cases).

-- further afield along the same line of thought --

Beyond that, we see this trend towards homogeneity in miniatures
sculpting.
"The ESU tends to use this design using these weapons systems...."  Why?
So
that a gamer can look at an SSD or a tank model and get some idea it is
the
ESU and it has flavour. How does this map to reality? Not at all. You
will
find most major equivalent combat vessels or vehicles across differing
nations have significantly similar systemic capabilities.

Sure, tanks differ a bit in the speed/weight/main gun levels. A bit.
They
still have to be able to fulfill the MBT role. And any really major
military power covers way more of the specialized niches than any game
represents.

If the ESU were real, it would have almost every type of infantry or
tank
in the game and every type of weapons system in space, as would the NAC.
The mix might differ from ship to ship, but it is unlikely huge
nations/political blocs would be not fielding similar capabilities
generally. You need to be able to match the capabilities of your foe.
Sure,
there may be specific examples of difference, but they'll be more the
oddity than the norm.

NATO (via the USA) may have had more carriers than the Russians and the
Russians may have made more use of ballistic missile subs, but if there
were ever to be any fleet engagements, both would need missile cruisers
and
air cover and protection for any carrier present. Both would need
systems
capable of engaging at distance and closer in. Nobody is going to bring
a
DFFG to a HEL fight.

Weapons systems designers don't go for an aesthetic generally (except
insofar as that aesthetic is dictated by a real world issue like
economics
or maintenance concerns). There's no attempt to make all Russian
vehicles
fit a certain design aesthetic, unlike say, the Tau in the GWverse or
the
IG. Not all Russian vehicles look like they come from a homogenous
family
(except perhaps for common parts shared here and there) and not all of
them
are painted in the same colour scheme.

Games, on the other hand, cater to an aesthetic and to a play flavour
where
we want to test the agile guy with autoshotgun and high movement rate
versus the guy with the sniper rifle who can't take a hit. Or the fleet
armed nearly exclusively with SMs that has shields versus the fleet with
beams and armour.

(Okay, enough rambling....)

T.