How did the Terran Federation economy work?

Dilandu wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:Interesting speculation, though.

We know the PICA's were limited to 10 days of continuous activation; but in all other aspects seem to be just as capable (intellectually) as any real person. And even more capable physically.

We know that the Federation had nanotech and AI's.

One would *think* that based on that, with whole solar systems worth of raw materials, they could have just created "battle PICA's" (without the 10 day limit) and created fleets that should have dwarfed the enemy, especially considering AI's doing R&D in literally "electronic time".

Plus the fact that the enemy didn't seem to have any desire to innovate like humans do.

But for some reason they didn't. Since it was a question of species survival, not just winning or losing, it's hard to see *why* they didn't.

Maybe some day we'll see a conversation about that; perhaps if any of the "Archangels" are actually in cryo and survive to have that conversation.

I asked this question; generally, RFC stated that the Federation simply haven't got enough time. Gbaba appeared and crushed the Federation before the key technology could be perfected, and "human constrains" (like the prejustice of autonomous PICA) could be eliminated. They simply haven't got enough time; a century later, and the situation would reach the turning point, on wich the humanity would ascend on the transhuman stage, became immortal and rapidly developing.

Also, let us not forget that if the humans had been powerful enough to defeat the Gabba the 1st time around we wouldn't be reading this story we'd be reading The Shiva Option.

OrlandoNative wrote:Interesting speculation, though.

We know the PICA's were limited to 10 days of continuous activation; but in all other aspects seem to be just as capable (intellectually) as any real person. And even more capable physically.

We know that the Federation had nanotech and AI's.

One would *think* that based on that, with whole solar systems worth of raw materials, they could have just created "battle PICA's" (without the 10 day limit) and created fleets that should have dwarfed the enemy, especially considering AI's doing R&D in literally "electronic time".

Plus the fact that the enemy didn't seem to have any desire to innovate like humans do.

But for some reason they didn't. Since it was a question of species survival, not just winning or losing, it's hard to see *why* they didn't.

Maybe some day we'll see a conversation about that; perhaps if any of the "Archangels" are actually in cryo and survive to have that conversation.

David actually has answered this question in one of the Pearls: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... hold/230/1

Dilandu wrote:I asked this question; generally, RFC stated that the Federation simply haven't got enough time. Gbaba appeared and crushed the Federation before the key technology could be perfected, and "human constrains" (like the prejustice of autonomous PICA) could be eliminated. They simply haven't got enough time; a century later, and the situation would reach the turning point, on wich the humanity would ascend on the transhuman stage, became immortal and rapidly developing.

Just to illustrate your point, I re-read the start of Off Armageddon Reef and got the following timeline:

2368 Humanity finds one of the Gbaba's victims. They learn little or nothing about the Gbaba's motivation, location or technological and logistical capabilities, but they start the process of building a fleet and defenses.

2378 A Gbaba fleet of 75 ships show up at one of humanities newest and most distant colonies and destroys it.

???? to ???? Gbaba destroy 5 or 6 more human planets but then humans get the edge, counterattack and capture several Gbaba worlds. Then the Gbaba main fleet shows up and humans spend the rest of the war on the defensive.

2421 Operation Ark is underway.

Just 43 years from first contact to destruction against an enemy with unknown but enormous resources. Humans started with inferior military technology and didn't even know what they needed until after the war was underway.

To give an idea of how unfavorable the balance of forces was, Operation Ark was chased down by over 2,000 Gbaba warships. Sent after a breakout force of just 46 Terran Federation ships (as far as the Gbaba knew, at least).

looksbeforeheleaps wrote:Just to illustrate your point, I re-read the start of Off Armageddon Reef and got the following timeline:

2368 Humanity finds one of the Gbaba's victims. They learn little or nothing about the Gbaba's motivation, location or technological and logistical capabilities, but they start the process of building a fleet and defenses.

2378 A Gbaba fleet of 75 ships show up at one of humanities newest and most distant colonies and destroys it.

???? to ???? Gbaba destroy 5 or 6 more human planets but then humans get the edge, counterattack and capture several Gbaba worlds. Then the Gbaba main fleet shows up and humans spend the rest of the war on the defensive.

2421 Operation Ark is underway.

Just 43 years from first contact to destruction against an enemy with unknown but enormous resources. Humans started with inferior military technology and didn't even know what they needed until after the war was underway.

And up til 10 years before that, they had no reason to suppose they needed any space military forces beyond essentially police. For that matter, for those 10 years, they could still suppose the Gbaba were far away, since dead, since reformed, or an error in archaeology. So the TFN was started without an idea of what it would have to do, where, when, or how, and only got those questions answered 10 years in.

To give an idea of how unfavorable the balance of forces was, Operation Ark was chased down by over 2,000 Gbaba warships. Sent after a breakout force of just 46 Terran Federation ships (as far as the Gbaba knew, at least).

For what it's worth, the 2000 Gbaba warships wouldn't have been some afterthought leftover diverted from the real action. At that point, the Gbaba had the last Terran system(s) besieged and the real problem for them would precisely be a breakout that they did not detect, track down, and destroy. So it could still have been a significant part of the force they had available.

Still though, it was a lot larger than the operation really needed, so it still shows that they could not only afford to divert that much, they could afford to splurge on it.

JeffEngel wrote:

looksbeforeheleaps wrote:Just to illustrate your point, I re-read the start of Off Armageddon Reef and got the following timeline:

2368 Humanity finds one of the Gbaba's victims. They learn little or nothing about the Gbaba's motivation, location or technological and logistical capabilities, but they start the process of building a fleet and defenses.

2378 A Gbaba fleet of 75 ships show up at one of humanities newest and most distant colonies and destroys it.

???? to ???? Gbaba destroy 5 or 6 more human planets but then humans get the edge, counterattack and capture several Gbaba worlds. Then the Gbaba main fleet shows up and humans spend the rest of the war on the defensive.

2421 Operation Ark is underway.

Just 43 years from first contact to destruction against an enemy with unknown but enormous resources. Humans started with inferior military technology and didn't even know what they needed until after the war was underway.

And up til 10 years before that, they had no reason to suppose they needed any space military forces beyond essentially police. For that matter, for those 10 years, they could still suppose the Gbaba were far away, since dead, since reformed, or an error in archaeology. So the TFN was started without an idea of what it would have to do, where, when, or how, and only got those questions answered 10 years in.

To give an idea of how unfavorable the balance of forces was, Operation Ark was chased down by over 2,000 Gbaba warships. Sent after a breakout force of just 46 Terran Federation ships (as far as the Gbaba knew, at least).

For what it's worth, the 2000 Gbaba warships wouldn't have been some afterthought leftover diverted from the real action. At that point, the Gbaba had the last Terran system(s) besieged and the real problem for them would precisely be a breakout that they did not detect, track down, and destroy. So it could still have been a significant part of the force they had available.

Still though, it was a lot larger than the operation really needed, so it still shows that they could not only afford to divert that much, they could afford to splurge on it.

you might also consider that since the Gbaba did consider escaping fleets to be a major issue they likely did (especially since they seem to have a rather strong SOP for this situation IE they had done it before repeatedly)
they most likely setup multiple detection rings around the system /systems in question. then its just a question of how many "rings" they feel they need. so lets say they have 20-30k ships total for the attack. if they start with sending 500-1000 ships in for the actual attack (ring 0 so to speak) and have 2000 ships in ring 1, 8000 ships in ring 2 and whatever is left in ring 3-4 what you get is multiple layers to pickup "leakers" plus you have ready reinforcements available if it turns out you underestimated what you need for the primary attack.

SWM, I should point out that you have apparently missed that the Terran Federation already achieved 'singularity'(see Narhman and Nimue Note: Spelling may be off)


On the subject of out producing the Gbaba. You must consider two things

1: The Ghaba started out with a tech level greater than humanity's. So anything you think humans could do the Gbaba could also do. So massive AI/PICA manned fleets would be countered by similar fleets from the Gbaba.

2:The Gbaba had a huge empire. So it doesn't matter if the Terran Federation could produce a thousand ships in a month. The Gbaba could do that times twenty, plus a massive reserve fleet waiting to be reactivated.



Note: The Object Which Moves Towards Vegetables wrote in the prolog to OAR that Solar Systems make great fortresses, this seems to be rather the opposite of true as solar systems are mostly made up of empty space and so have many avenues of approach and no natural defenses. I just find that interesting.

Highjohn wrote:
1: The Ghaba started out with a tech level greater than humanity's. So anything you think humans could do the Gbaba could also do. So massive AI/PICA manned fleets would be countered by similar fleets from the Gbaba.

But they would not. This things would require free thinking and ablility to adapt. And if the Gbaba would start think about what are they doing, they eventually came to the point "for what reason we are doing that?". And the war would be over.

Highjohn wrote:SWM, I should point out that you have apparently missed that the Terran Federation already achieved 'singularity'(see Narhman and Nimue Note: Spelling may be off)

I am confused. What are you responding to? I have only posted twice in this thread, and I don't see how your response applies to either of them.

I would say that the Terran Federation was just entering singularity, as of the end of the war. That is why the Federation felt that the could have defeated the Gbaba if they had just a little bit longer. But without understanding exactly what point you are trying to make, I'm not sure if this distinction is relevant. What did I say that you are objecting to?

SWM wrote:

Highjohn wrote:SWM, I should point out that you have apparently missed that the Terran Federation already achieved 'singularity'(see Narhman and Nimue Note: Spelling may be off)

I am confused. What are you responding to? I have only posted twice in this thread, and I don't see how your response applies to either of them.

I would say that the Terran Federation was just entering singularity, as of the end of the war. That is why the Federation felt that the could have defeated the Gbaba if they had just a little bit longer. But without understanding exactly what point you are trying to make, I'm not sure if this distinction is relevant. What did I say that you are objecting to?

We'd desperately need an agreed-upon definition of 'singularity' to have a working discussion here. Highjohn seems to be working with one in which high speed AI personhood and brain to computer transfer are sufficient conditions for it. I would not assume that anyone else is working with the same definition.

JeffEngel wrote:We'd desperately need an agreed-upon definition of 'singularity' to have a working discussion here. Highjohn seems to be working with one in which high speed AI personhood and brain to computer transfer are sufficient conditions for it. I would not assume that anyone else is working with the same definition.

There seem to be 3 kinds of singularity that we're discussing:
1) the intelligence explosion: virtual people and NEATs effectively make humans able to become smarter by interfacing directly with modern supercomputers and knowledge databases. I think that's the kind of singularity that Highjohn means.
2) AI singularity: once computers are able to think for themselves, scientific research, for example, becomes a matter of how many transistors you can bring to bear on a problem. All technology, not just software, starts to progress at moore's law rates.
3) nanotech singularity: manufacturing effectively disapears. There's no need for mills, lathes, foundries, jigs, saws, drills, etc. You design an object in a CAD, and a billion nanites mine the needed resources and assemble them atom-by-atom into your computer, space-ship, car, baby-rattle, whatever.

It seems as though the Federation had all 3 at the start of the war, but hadn't been there for long, and the war started with them at a disadvantage in science and technology. The gbaba started with faster ships and better weapons (not sure about ECM, but I presume that too). Humanity had mostly closed that gap by the end, but by then they lacked the time and resources to build an adequate fleet.
They also seemed to have handicapped themselves a little by being biased against AI and virtual people. They preferred to be flesh and blood, and to have a human directly on the kill-switch. How much smaller could a super-dreadnought be if it didn't have to have life support or life-boats? If it didn't need inertial compensators (or whatever they call them) to keep the squishies from being reduced to paste, they'd be pulling much heavier accels, too. The mental, or perhaps social leap that they needed to make to get the most out of their tech is the only reason I see to believe that they were *AT* the singularity, not past it.