[headdie]

It is better to delay your comment than to post something bogus.

Except for those countless times when you waste around half an hour crafting a thoroughly well-thought and well-fundamented reply just to find that for some stupid and inane reason they locked the thread just when you were getting ready to post.

never had that problem and probably because such threads tend to be flame/troll bait so I try to avoid replying to them

[Klaustrophobia]

Actual quote :

"Amazing. Your ships truly are as beautiful as Iwakura has told."
"You can thank the Vasudans for that. They've been instrumental in designing our current generation of ships since the Second Shivan Incursion."

I'd like people to stop doing vague quoting from memory alone and actually look into the files for accuracy.

and i'd like people to stop getting angry over idiotic things.  the rest of us aren't obsessed enough to spend that much effort to get the exact wording when we know the overall message already. 

[crizza]

So, back to topic...
The zod fleet is two times the size of the Tevs...
Would they still use something like fusion mortars?
Maybe...gattling fusion mortars

[An4ximandros]

Matt, I can't believe you are that kind of fan. *sigh*

As for this topic: How could we go about re-texturing Vasudans and giving them new schemes? Maybe something based on the skins of animals of Egypt or it's mythology?
And how about making the Vasudan armor have an electrum or polished Limestone look in some parts?

[Colonol Dekker]

Maybe, more neon orange / green trim?

[headdie]

Maybe, more neon orange / green trim?

let loose the boy racers

[SaltyWaffles]

The Vasudans developed their own next-gen ships and have a fleet that's twice the size of the Tevs'

Awesome . Confusion cleared up.

Actually, I think he just told you what you wanted to hear.

I thought he was just giving a 'sure, why not' kind of answer. My bad.

Look, if the actual answer is more along the lines of 'the zods have truly made some big military gains, even in proportion to the Tevs, but we don't really want to give details about it at this time', that's fine; I'd just like to clear up a small, general ambiguity that was on my mind. Really not trying to make a big deal about this...

and i'd like people to stop getting angry over idiotic things.  the rest of us aren't obsessed enough to spend that much effort to get the exact wording when we know the overall message already.

Just to clarify, the reason I brought this up in the first place is because it seemed to me like there was a little confusion in the overall message, not the exact wording. If the big picture was 'Tevs focused on Sol Gate project, Zods focused on building up military and preparing for Shivan Incursion 3, Zods criticizing Tevs for dumping massive resources and effort into going home rather than better military preparations', then what--even in general terms--did the Vasudans do better to prepare/build up their military? While the Tevs show off an entire new generation of awesome ships, fighters, and weapons, all we see or hear about is Khonsu reforming the Medjai (which we don't really know much about in the first place) and a handful of older Vasudan ships (except for a single Vasudan counterpart to a logistics ship already fielded by the Tevs, which nearly blew up from collateral damage of a failed boarding attempt). The Shepsakaf crash-jumps out of dodge the moment a few wings of Scimitars show up, and in Sunglare the only Vasudan cruiser seen is an Aten class.

This, again, does not do anything wrong; just in the context of lacking any info or demonstration of Vasudan military development (sans Tarawet) beyond 'they did stuff' it can get a little perplexing.

[The E]

We haven't shown new Vasudan units because we didn't have to. As was pointed out, we prefer to leave things open for as long as possible; if we had introduced some new units that were found to be insufficient for our needs, we'd have to retcon them or something. So we decided to just intro one new ship, and not worry about what kind of new fighters, Corvettes or Destroyers the zods have built until we have to feature them in the story.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

You do realise that the war in Sol is still, at this point, a mostly Terran war, yes? The Vasudans provide support but, perhaps at the order of Khonsu II, are probably not permitted to make themselves very prominent in the Sol theatre.

[-Norbert-]

Yes we all know that, but that doesn't stop us from being curious

[Luis Dias]

The Sol jump gate was enormously expensive, and the project combined with the Capella refugee situation sent the Terran half of the GTVA spiraling into a depression that by many indications could have been entirely avoided with some more prudent use of resources.  That'd get a wag of my finger toward the Terran half of the GTVA if I were the Vasudans, most definitely.

EDIT: expensive, not effective.

So I take it that the authors of the BP canon are anything but Keynesians .

I'm somewhat with Krugman on this issue. Making a huge investment on the Sol jump gate actually avoids a depression, not the other way around. What you could argue is that by investing in guns and not "butter", that the quality of life is not being developed and researched when it could (should) be.

EDIT: However, the canonized argument that the destruction of Cappella and a number of very important jump nodes brought down the human economy to shambles is very realistic. The Sol Gate should be thus viewed as an economic medicine, a way to bring the economy up to speed again (see World War 2 and how it stopped the Great Depression).

[-Norbert-]

To exaggerage a picture, imagine it this way:
The GTVA had a limited amount of building material. Instead of using those materials for building houses and infrastructure for the refugees, they hogged it all up and build the sol gate with it, leaving the capella survivours sitting in the street reduced to begging.

Or on a more serious note, instead of first taking care of the ruined economy and integrating the refugees, the GTVA immediately pumped everything that wasn't used for rebuilding the fleet into the portal project, almost completely ignoring the economic troubles and trying (and succeding) to make the people forget about the troubles as well, by copious amounts of propaganda promising utopia once the portal was finished and opened.

[headdie]

the problem with the gate project is that only creates significant jobs while it is under construction, where as a shipyard will employ a similar number until such time as that yard is no longer viable and between the fleet rebuild and the TEI that will be a long time indeed.  Basically the Terrans were relying on a "quick fix" cultural and economic revival provided by the return to Earth and the system's manufacturing base which is a questionable decission in the cold light of day and proven to a certain extent by the UEF war, when investing in larger shipyards, new ships, rebuilt infrastructure (which I accept is needed for the gate project as well) and public services, while would have a less dramatic effect would be more likely to work both short and long term.  Also now the Terrans not only are behind the Vasudans in ship numbers but they will also be hampered by rebuilding the Sol infrastructure, civil discontent from the radically different policies compared to the UEF and rebuilding the Sol fleet into something that fits into the GTVA order of battle.

[Luis Dias]

@Norbert

That's not really a realistical portrayal of a military spending spree. The economy of a whole economic system does not play like a domestic economy. There's no such thing as "limited amount of building material" in the GTVA universe. The economy is mostly one of people (usage of work hours in exactly *what*). If the economy needs more material, you put more people mining it up. Those people get paid, those people will spend what they earned, the economy booms.

Again, there's a lot of misinformation on how economies work. An amazing historical example of how this works is exactly Germany in the 1930s. An economy deeply in shambles (hyperinflation anyone?), rises up in few years to become the most powerful economy in the world, threatening every other nation worldwide. If your idea had any resemblance to reality, it should have been the other way around: the military investments made by the nazis should have tanked, not boomed, their economy.

Same thing happened with the US. The great depression ended in 1938-1940.

@headdie,

That idea is much better. However, as a "fix", the sol jump gate was a very long term one. According to Keynes (and I am not saying he's "definitely" right), once you kickstart the economy it goes on its own. The problem right now is a political one, an ideological one. A problem of a system being confronted with a much more pleasant system in Sol but one also that you deem as *wrong*.

A very interesting setup. I like BP's setup quite a lot.

[headdie]

@Norbert

That's not really a realistical portrayal of a military spending spree. The economy of a whole economic system does not play like a domestic economy. There's no such thing as "limited amount of building material" in the GTVA universe. The economy is mostly one of people (usage of work hours in exactly *what*). If the economy needs more material, you put more people mining it up. Those people get paid, those people will spend what they earned, the economy booms.

Again, there's a lot of misinformation on how economies work. An amazing historical example of how this works is exactly Germany in the 1930s. An economy deeply in shambles (hyperinflation anyone?), rises up in few years to become the most powerful economy in the world, threatening every other nation worldwide. If your idea had any resemblance to reality, it should have been the other way around: the military investments made by the nazis should have tanked, not boomed, their economy.

Same thing happened with the US. The great depression ended in 1938-1940.

@headdie,

That idea is much better. However, as a "fix", the sol jump gate was a very long term one. According to Keynes (and I am not saying he's "definitely" right), once you kickstart the economy it goes on its own. The problem right now is a political one, an ideological one. A problem of a system being confronted with a much more pleasant system in Sol but one also that you deem as *wrong*.

A very interesting setup. I like BP's setup quite a lot.

The issue with put more people on mining is that to our knowlage the FS universe is not all that different to the here and now with private companies running virtualy everything so yes there might be demand for resources but if the extra can't be obtained economicaly then it wont happen, also it takes physical infrastructure to gather, transport and process materials, all of which takes time to build up, usually in the order of months or more, then there is the training for the new workers.  Also have you have to have the money to pay the person at the coal face for them to dig the coal, it might be worth asking the Russians about that one.

[Luis Dias]

Again, we are talking past each other. The problem of a Depression is one of extreme unemployment, which creates poverty, lack of demand, further unemployment, finantial instability, deflation and so on. If you are the political leader and just say "Look, we are in bad shape, so I'm just gonna take command of the economy and tell you to get all your **** together and make this Sol Jump Gate work", then you will end the problem of unemployment in one go. People won't waste their time watching the clocks go by and instead make themselves into the economic system.

Then, you will have more people demanding more goods (because they are paid), and the whole economy booms.

This is very clean and well known economics. The very basic problem of all of this is the "command economy" status of it. It becomes "fascistic" and dictatorial. The culture is currupted into a very simplistic system of hierarchy instead of one of anarchical liberalism where anyone can do whatever the hell they want. The Sol system is one version of the latter. It is thus very appealing to the masses behind the iron curtain of the jump gate.

[-Norbert-]

I think you underestimate just how terrible the 2nd incursion was.
Capella was one of the major economies in the GTVA. With it gone, many other systems would have suffered greatly, because they can no longer import from and export to Capella. Companies ago out of business and jobs are lost en-mass. On top of that you have millions of refugees evacuated from Capella.

The costs from getting from one end of the GTVA to the other have also increased, due to the lost major trafic artery through Capella, raising the prices of the transported goods, putting even more preassure on the faltering economy and very likely costing even more people their jobs.

The fleet buildup and the portal project might be able to catch a part of those factors, but that by itself just isn't enough to turn the tide, even with the necessary support infrastructure for the project.

[crizza]

Just a fancy option about the increased time in travel: Since all nodes of Capella are gone, including the one to Gamma Draconis and pretending there was enough money to built two more gates...would it help somehow if ships can travel through Capella, plus you have a Nebula to work with and an empty system in case the Shivans waltz in once again?

I know...won't happen but still...

[Luis Dias]

I think you underestimate just how terrible the 2nd incursion was.
Capella was one of the major economies in the GTVA. With it gone, many other systems would have suffered greatly, because they can no longer import from and export to Capella. Companies ago out of business and jobs are lost en-mass. On top of that you have millions of refugees evacuated from Capella.

Why are you repeating what I said? Look all this is very good material, but you are missing the point. After World War 1, Germany was devastated. And still they were asked to make reparations that were, for all purposes, a call to make Germans complete slaves to the rest of the world.

After the huge hyperinflation in the 30s, the german economy was basically "resetted". That's how bad it was.

Are you underestimating the status of the Europe post WW1?

The fleet buildup and the portal project might be able to catch a part of those factors, but that by itself just isn't enough to turn the tide, even with the necessary support infrastructure for the project.

The misunderstanding is not one of saying that the economy post-Cappella is worse than before. Of course it is, and for many many years. The misunderstanding is in the statement that the Sol Jump Gate created an economic problem. No, it did not. It was the medicine for the huge depression. Could have it been better? Yes of course. "Public works" could have been better, but we are dismissing here the human factor. For these things to work they have to be very consensual and inspiring. World Wars work. Lacking those, you can use the longing for your lost home to build a massive huge gate, and in the process boom the economy.

As I see it, that was an amazing insightful decision that saved the human's economy. And probably, the Vasudan's economy as well.

[headdie]

I actually find it quite interesting that we are talking about this considering that the global economy is currently in recovery from a recession, which while not a brutal as what we have witnessed in 20th century it was still bad enough that in the UK at least it perminantly reshape the banking sector with a significant number of the big players either going bust or being bought out by rivals and many bailed out by the government, not to mention high profile national companies going down as well, and this is nothing compared to what the GTVA would be facing, the recent wars in the real world have not contributed like the NTF rebellion would have which decemated the economies of at least 3 star systems and damaged others, not to mention the impact of the total loss of Capella would have brough.  Bringing up Germany is useful a point of comparison, when the Berlin wall came down, Germany was reunited which caused a serious problem in that East Germany was economicaly mauled in the process of comunism and the region reverting to capitalism to the point that even today the region is still struggling to recover decades later and that is an area of one of the most prosperous nations in Europe.

The misunderstanding is not one of saying that the economy post-Cappella is worse than before. Of course it is, and for many many years. The misunderstanding is in the statement that the Sol Jump Gate created an economic problem. No, it did not. It was the medicine for the huge depression. Could have it been better? Yes of course. "Public works" could have been better, but we are dismissing here the human factor. For these things to work they have to be very consensual and inspiring. World Wars work. Lacking those, you can use the longing for your lost home to build a massive huge gate, and in the process boom the economy.

As I see it, that was an amazing insightful decision that saved the human's economy. And probably, the Vasudan's economy as well.

We are not saying the Gate caused a problem just that it has hampered recovery and was perhaps a project better suited for a later date or taken at a slower pace to allow other areas of the Terran economy more space to recover.