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World of Warships?

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: World of Warships?
Post by Dilandu   » Mon Jul 20, 2015 7:45 am

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JRM wrote:The paradigm we have been discussing is wrong, or at least incomplete. The correct paradigm is how fast can Merlin get Charis to grow given that he has centuries of technology advances available, and that he has the capability of unlimited interfaces.


No. The problem - the real problem - is that the possibility of building such ship doesn't exist in Charis before, and all neccecary infrastructure should be created from zero.

Merlin may give as much "subtle suggestion" as he want - assuming that his suggestions was subtle, and in case of KH's they aren't - but if he haven't got factories, plants and tools to build the ship he may as well "subtly suggest" them how to build the nuclear aircraft carrier. They need to build a awful lot of industrial equipment to build a late XIX century warship! High-powered steam hammers, big presses, rolling machines, all sorts of powered tools for component production, a awfull lot of high-quality steel and wire, molds for the guns. It COULD be created, yes, but it need a lot of time, and a lot more capabilites than Charis really have.

How could you build a late-XIX battleship without previously building something like THIS -

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ilon_5.jpg

- ?

And this thing is almost as hard to build as battleship machinery.
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Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: World of Warships?
Post by Dilandu   » Mon Jul 20, 2015 8:04 am

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MWadwell wrote:

I agree.

It's not just the practical experience! (I.e. with no institutional experience, all maintenance is going to be "learn by doing". Which means that a LOT of steam engines are going to be run to death, because no-one knew what preventative maintenance was required).


It's also theoretical knowledge as well.


Exactly!

Generally, what we have in Charis? We have workers and engineers, that - exept for the tiny portion of "Inner Circle" - simply could not understood what they are building and why exatly that way. And they are Charisian, not the Harchongese serfs, wich means, that they would not just mindlessly "follow the orders and don't ask any questions". They WOULD ask questions. They would ask questions about "why this should be build like that?", "why are you thinking that it's right thing to do?" and even "how could you came to this, this isn't the obvious solution?!"

And what could be the respond? They surely would find that pretty strange, if so much of perfect solutions "just appeared" from a relatively few group of peoples. The best that they could assume - is that the Archangel Langhorne truly send the knowlege to the faithful, and you should be chosen to became a vessel of divine knowlege. They wouldn't be able to assume that the design of KH's isn't divine gift, because something SUCH FLAWLESS as the instructions, given to them, couldn't be just created by mortals.

There is a major problems here. As colleague MWadwell mentioned before -


Unless OWL is able to tell every designer how to correctly design something that has never been done before (i.e. ventilation / lighting / counter flooding, etc) then the design is going to be a white elephant.

And unless OWL is going to sit on every construction workers shoulder, and tell them how to do the job properly, the inexperienced workforce/ships crew are going to make mistakes that will result in the ship being quickly sunk by its own crew....


- the KH's simply would not work in case any of its component would be build perfectly.

So:

- If we gave peoples the perfect instructions how to build KH's. the Safeholdians would just assume that this knowlege is truly divine. Because they understood perfectly, that something such advanced and innovative could not be designed perfectly by just mortals. Peoples aren't fools - especially engineers. If they see something big and innovative that just designed perfectly, they would start to have doubts, how exactly it was designed.

I must remind you, that for Safeholdian point of view, the perfect knowlege could came either from Archangels, either from Shain-Wei. Given the Charisian position, they would probably assume the first... and this is actually bad, because the main reason of all this mess on Safehold is to tech peoples to think for themselves, not to await that some genius would be "blessed by the divine knowlege".

- If we gave peoples just the main directions to work - it would be much better, because peoples would be able to actually design thing themselves, not just "aquire the blueprints from some Langhorne-blessed genius". they started to think themselves, to learn...

The only problem, that they wouldn't be able to create workable KH's this way. Too many problems would appeared, because the task is enormously complex. To learn by themselves, peoples should make mistakes. In KH's project, the mistakes would mean that the awful lot of money and resources was wasted on the ship, that wouldn't work at all.
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: World of Warships?
Post by Isilith   » Mon Jul 20, 2015 2:21 pm

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Re: World of Warships?
Post by Dilandu   » Mon Jul 20, 2015 3:01 pm

Dilandu
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As i recall, i proposed something like that in the Sun Jul 19, 2015 9:44 pm. ;)
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
Top
Re: World of Warships?
Post by Isilith   » Mon Jul 20, 2015 9:51 pm

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Dilandu is the guy in your RPG group that constantly stops the game 3-4 times a night to argue with the GM. 8-)
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Re: World of Warships?
Post by MWadwell   » Wed Jul 22, 2015 5:02 am

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Isilith wrote:Dilandu is the guy in your RPG group that constantly stops the game 3-4 times a night to argue with the GM. 8-)


Usually 'cause the GM is being an ass..... :lol:
.

Later,
Matt
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Re: World of Warships?
Post by SWM   » Wed Jul 22, 2015 8:03 am

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MWadwell wrote:
Isilith wrote:Dilandu is the guy in your RPG group that constantly stops the game 3-4 times a night to argue with the GM. 8-)


Usually 'cause the GM is being an ass..... :lol:

Be careful how you say that. If I recall correctly, RFC is a GM. :D
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Re: World of Warships?
Post by Randomiser   » Fri Jul 24, 2015 6:08 am

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Dilandu wrote:Let's make it clear: this discussion we have with RFC a lot of time, and eventually decided that we are both uncapable to persuade each other. It's highly unlikely that the definite experiment would be possible. ;) So, i don't think that the repeating of the same arguments would do any good.


Well, exactly, but you are the one who keeps going back to it, unfortunately. ;)
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Re: World of Warships?
Post by MWadwell   » Fri Jul 24, 2015 10:25 pm

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Randomiser wrote:
Dilandu wrote:Let's make it clear: this discussion we have with RFC a lot of time, and eventually decided that we are both uncapable to persuade each other. It's highly unlikely that the definite experiment would be possible. ;) So, i don't think that the repeating of the same arguments would do any good.


Well, exactly, but you are the one who keeps going back to it, unfortunately. ;)


...and I'm glad he did - as otherwise I might be tempted to beat that dead horse.

But now that I know that it's already well and truly been beaten before, I won't bother.... :lol:
.

Later,
Matt
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