Relative size of combatants

...Fourth, it tells us that the large Ransaran population of Arcana enjoys a very high standard of living and describes that standard in language clearly intended to evoke the late 20th and early 21st century consumer driven societies of the developed world on Earth.

I believe that the combination of free movement of people and the "almost universally high standard of living amongst Ransarans" indicates that the Ransaran standard of living cannot be the result of exploiting the rest of Arcanan society. If Andarans or Multhari and Shakira caste Mythalans lived at a greatly lower standard of living then Ransarans I would expect large scale immigration from those societies to Ransar as well and we have no evidence for that. Differences in living standards on the scale of what is found today in the EU, or maybe even a little larger are believable, but they can't be much greater then that. That means the vast majority of Arcanans probably live with a quantity and quality of consumer goods comparable to what is available in the Developed World today.

Such a supply of consumer goods requires a very large "relative level of discretionary economic surplus" and thus shows that Arcana can devote a portion of its economy to war comparable to the portion that an industrial society can. If what I have said above is true then the "Hydraulic" versus "Industrial" comparison cannot apply.

Mil-tech bard wrote:As far as the following is concerned --

...Fourth, it tells us that the large Ransaran population of Arcana enjoys a very high standard of living and describes that standard in language clearly intended to evoke the late 20th and early 21st century consumer driven societies of the developed world on Earth.

I believe that the combination of free movement of people and the "almost universally high standard of living amongst Ransarans" indicates that the Ransaran standard of living cannot be the result of exploiting the rest of Arcanan society. If Andarans or Multhari and Shakira caste Mythalans lived at a greatly lower standard of living then Ransarans I would expect large scale immigration from those societies to Ransar as well and we have no evidence for that. Differences in living standards on the scale of what is found today in the EU, or maybe even a little larger are believable, but they can't be much greater then that. That means the vast majority of Arcanans probably live with a quantity and quality of consumer goods comparable to what is available in the Developed World today.

Such a supply of consumer goods requires a very large "relative level of discretionary economic surplus" and thus shows that Arcana can devote a portion of its economy to war comparable to the portion that an industrial society can. If what I have said above is true then the "Hydraulic" versus "Industrial" comparison cannot apply.

The key issue is the Arcania Prime (and highly developed Arcanian colony world) "Magical power grid."

Arcanian developed worlds that have magical power grids can supply things like recharges to sliderways without magical individuals to provide them.

Thus the Ransaran standard of living and "advanced technology" may be a reflection of consumer magic goods developed for the non-magic talented with pure physical user interface having magic power grid recharge of spellware.

This is not true on most Arcanian frontier worlds with sliderways, let alone frontier worlds solely supported by Dragons and arcane-enhanced hippotrain.

Andaran military authorities would not develop or deploy such Ransaran magic technology for combat use on worlds outside the magic grids.

NB: I suspect that Ransaran combat forces on Arcania Prime are the highest firepower simply because they have the most physical interface only magical combat weapons attached to the largest Arcanian magic power grid...which cannot deploy far beyond Arcania Prime or highly developed power grid Arcanian sister colonies.

Mil-tech bard wrote:You missed the implications of the last sentence of my post --

The relative fighting power of the non-magically gifted armed Arcanians is so inferior to that of armed Sharonan's that it parallels nicely that mobilization difference between hydraulic and industrial civilizations.

Whether or not Arcania can generate lots of disposable magic based war material and supply. If it is magic talent limited -- see Battle Dragon pilots requiring not just a magical talent, but a SPECIFIC MAGICAL TALENT.

Then they have a mobilization problem compared to Sharona.

Currently, the Arcanian magical war material -- Dragons, unicorns and the implied magical WMD spells apart -- is far inferior to Sharonan and it is not limited in use to only their psi-talents.

NB: The Arcanians need numerical superiority in magically talented individuals at the point of contact to generate similar levels of combat power with industrial weapon equipped Sharonans.

And Sharonan talents mean that equivalent numbers of Shronans will be far better coordinated in their battlefield movements, all other things being equal.

brnicholas wrote:I also suspect that you are overestimating the importance of having a gift in order to use magical devices. We see lots of non-gifted individuals using magical devices. You don't need a gift to be a dragon gunner, everyone gifted or not uses PCs and I don't think you need a gift to be a transport pilot. The requirement of a gift appears to be when the magical device can't be physically handled (implanted chips in battle dragons, gryphons and hummers) or when the device needs charging.

My conclusion though is that we don't really have enough information to be sure.

Nicholas

acute limits on the uniformed personnel who could charge levitation accumulators, especially once they got too far forward to tap the power nets

PeterZ wrote:

Hell's Gate: Chapter 1 wrote:...Doubletons were the rule—indeed, only sixteen triples had ever been found, which was a rate of less than one in ten. But a cluster like Zholhara was of literally incalculable value.

This implies that there are less than 160 universes in the Arcanan sphere after more than 150 years of exploration and less than 200 years.

-SNIP-

Mil-tech bard wrote:I disagree here --

brnicholas wrote:I also suspect that you are overestimating the importance of having a gift in order to use magical devices. We see lots of non-gifted individuals using magical devices. You don't need a gift to be a dragon gunner, everyone gifted or not uses PCs and I don't think you need a gift to be a transport pilot. The requirement of a gift appears to be when the magical device can't be physically handled (implanted chips in battle dragons, gryphons and hummers) or when the device needs charging.

My conclusion though is that we don't really have enough information to be sure.

Nicholas

As it was stated repeatedly in the text, the small pistol like lightning and fireball crystals required some measure of magical gift to use.

And that the special operations Andarans at the negotiations ambush at Hells Gate all were minimally mage gifted to use them.

This point was made in the first book with larger lightning and fireball staffs -- rifle equivalents -- as well.

That is why it was such a big fat hairy deal was made over the fact that all Sharonan individual weapons and other technology could be used by the non-talented.

Given the above, while we don't know whether infantry of field dragons combat support weapons required mage gifts or not to use...but it would be a good way to bet.

Astelon beat me to mentioning that we had text evidence of garthan using infantry dragons, as far as I am aware those are the only lightning and fireball staffs we have seen in the books so I don't know what you are thinking of as requiring a gift to use when you reference that.

Yes the Special Ops troops were all gifted, it was stated that a gift was required for special ops. That is logical since Special Ops would often require acting in secret and the ability to activate a spell without touching the crystal would often be important.

Yes the dagger stones (pistol equivalents) required a gift to use. We have no idea why that is so, however, and so can't extrapolate from it.

In sum, gifts are needed for certain special weapons where the sarkolis can't be touched and to charge anything magical everything else can apparently be done by a non-gifted.

Nicholas

Mil-tech bard wrote:Actually what you said in bold below --

...snipped...

In sum, gifts are needed for certain special weapons where the sarkolis can't be touched and to charge anything magical everything else can apparently be done by a non-gifted.

Nicholas

Is 180 degrees out.

Go see the "cut down infantry dragons" used by the Heavy Horse to assault Ft Salby.

Those needed gifted individuals.

Infantry Dragons are crew served support weapons on the order of Sharonan crew served machine guns.

That the Arcanian Military made infantry crew served support weapons usable by the non-gifted shows good foresight and an appreciation of the loss rate of infantry dragon crews in combat.

I suspect "Cut down" regards Heavy Horse carbine-dragons was the weight of physical interface spellwear as well as projector size resulting in cut-down range.

And BTW, Battle Staff =/= Infantry Dragon.

The former was the individual magic weapon equivalent Jasak was comparing to a Sharonan rifle.

As yet, Battle Staves have not had any "on-screen time".

He took great care with the long, tubular weapons every man—and woman—had carried. There seemed to be several different types or varieties of them, and he rapidly discovered that they were intricate mechanical marvels, far more complex than any war staff his own people had built. Of course, war staffs—including the infantry and field-dragons which had been developed from them—were actually quite simple, mechanically speaking. They merely provided a place to store battle spells, and a sarkolis-crystal guide tube, down which the destructive spells were channeled on their way to the target.