1926 PD - Export hardware

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Relax wrote:So, your idea of an argument is the abject incompetence from the SLN instead of OYSTER BAY?

Oh yes, and the "incompetence" still worked.

No, I'm not saying that the SLN is your worry. That's why I wrote that it turns the entire humanity against you. Previously, the SLN would be the one paying a visit and for anyone except the GA, that is still a sufficient threat.

The SLN is toothless now, but it is embarking on a modernisation effort under Admiral Kingsford. It will get its teeth back. So don't try to get away with an EEV just because the SLN is currently busy. And besides, others can take up the slack meanwhile.

Destroying the entire industrial capacity of a system and committing atrocities will not win you any friends. You were not likely to gain any in the system you attacked in the first place, but there's a big difference from there to everyone else. Something like a 3-order of magnitude difference. Moreover, unless you are the MAlign and your objective is to really just depopulate the settled galaxy and cause chaos, you don't want to give the survivors any more chance for revanchism. You'd need to supply sufficient forces to occupy the target (all of them) for a considerable period of time while you brainwash the residents.

Uh, reading comprehension? SLN nor Eridini violation have zilch, de nada, zippo to do with reality of said discussion.

MALIGN has nothing to do with discussion. Why bring it up?

Machiavelli would like to have a talk with you. Suggest reading Machiavelli.

Or just pay attention to WWII, or heck ANY OTHER WAR... Try to read the actual history, not the propaganda newsreel fluff garbage. Peace in human history ~never happens. There is ALWAYS Revanchism. Worrying about Revanchism is nothing but a dog whistle, red herring, whatever you want to call it for utopians to trot out and pretend this is reality. The ONLY time there has EVER been a period of peace is after a Gargantuan war to the death where one side has undergone Total Annihilation. Then you have fools say, peace is here to stay ~ we are SOOOOOO civilized and "modern" unlike those prehistoric fossils... I am SO MUCH more moral than my ancestors... We have "evolved"... Pile of pretentious Horse manure. No, those soft utopian fools just get to pretend because they have NEVER had to make hard decisions.

For instance, since 1995, I have literally thrown out ALL of my grandfathers WWII books(bought new to replace) other than a couple which have some nice maps as they were shown to be complete Lies by and large as soon as the archives were opened after 1995. I did keep the SeaBees book as that stuff was never classified or hidden. Everything from crypography, to the cause of WWII by and large was a complete lie as told by WWII compendiums written during the Cold War. Heck, I do not even call the cold war the cold war anymore, it is just the END of WWII.

Theemile wrote:It's only an EE violation if an unguided munition is sent in on a ballistic course and kills innocents indiscriminately. Military targets hit by guided or unguided munitions are fair game.

If you achieve your military objectives and only them, without committing an atrocity, good for you.

The problem in the HV is that RFC has decreed that unattended, automated things are quite dumb. The Silver Bullets appear to be the only exception and even they needed weeks to home in on their targets.

Of course, EE violations are kinda void at the moment, sine the SLN is toothless.

See what I wrote above: others can still take up the mantle of punishing crimes against humanity.

Another force you need to reckon with is your own population. Even in the case of the MAlign, with filtered news, brainwashed population, and zealot military, they can't go too far, for fear of turning even a portion of those against them. In their case, their secrecy is something they must protect. For other states, there can be revolutions or other changes of government, military coups, etc.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:[...] and we know that TIY is definitely going to produce that for the SLN.

I'm not going to bet on that. Technodyne is now known to be in bed with the Alignment. And the knowledge of how to build the Cataphracts is now within the SLN hands.

Also, AFAICS, Yildun didn't sign up with the new constitution, so it's not a League member any more.

So that's enough reasons to order from some of the other military providers which are still based within the (now smaller) League.

Do we even have a partial list (with a time frame) of the former SL member systems who have

1) approved the NEW SL constitution?

2) have formally declared they are either going independent or joining some other group (and what is the group/polity's name)?

markusschaber wrote:I'm not going to bet on that. Technodyne is now known to be in bed with the Alignment. And the knowledge of how to build the Cataphracts is now within the SLN hands.

Possible, but unlikely change of contracts for the foreseeable future, because TIY is just too big a supplier to the SLN to be ditched from RFQs. Plus, the SLN ditching TIY for being duped by the MAlign is like the kettle calling the pot black... they were deceived too. They want TIY to clean house and become a respectable supplier once again.

Also, AFAICS, Yildun didn't sign up with the new constitution, so it's not a League member any more.

Yildun never was. It was the headquarters of Technodyne precisely because it was no one's home. It's an otherwise uninhabited system and the only presence there is Technodyne. So TIY falls outside the League's jurisdiction and has always done that.

Which means forcing it to clean house may be difficult or, at the least, unverifiable. The question then becomes one of relative market forces: how much of SLN's supply was TIY responsible for and how much of TIY's revenue was SLN's contract responsible for? Ideally the League would never have let TIY become dominant, but more than likely it did, so the SLN has no choice but to buy from TIY (unless it wants to hand out contracts to the GA). TIY probably sells to everyone (it did to the Peeps), but the SLN contract was probably way too large too, so it can't afford to piss off its single biggest customer.

Will be interesting to see how the market forces go on this one.

So that's enough reasons to order from some of the other military providers which are still based within the (now smaller) League.

True, but are they big enough to supply the new SLN, even if diminished? We're talking about someone or a couple of someones producing at least a thousand SD(P)s within a decade. I suspect there's no one with that capacity, outside of the TIY and the GA (who was at war footing). Civilian yards may begin converting to military builds for a while because there's a huge market opportunity coming, but the design bureaus are probably very few.

Brigade XO wrote:Do we even have a partial list (with a time frame) of the former SL member systems who have

1) approved the NEW SL constitution?

2) have formally declared they are either going independent or joining some other group (and what is the group/polity's name)?

I think we only have three entries on that list:

1) Sol: stays
2) Beowulf: leaves
3) Hypatia: leaves

As I said above, Yildun is not a former SL member, so it doesn't fit the criteria of your questions. But it decided not to join the new SL.

Some of the RF members were said to be SL members, back when Albrecht Detweiler invited all their leaders for dinner. But I got the impression from that passage that these were not systems clustered together, but by TEiF, the ONI chief Charles Gannon made it sound like they are and that they were all outside the League. So there may be some amount of retconning in the process here, or not all MAlign-commanded RF members have yet declared their intention to join. One I'm pretty sure was an SL member is Visigoth and that can't be easily retconned due to the wormhole leading to Mesa, but we don't know if they've declared for the RF yet.

Mannrheim was not an SL member.

Relax wrote:Remember BIG and S C A R Y Clearly they do NOT have a true RMN/RHN baffle--> They wouldn't be wasting their time with Cataphracts if they did. Though apparently Baffle doesn't matter anymore and latest Cataphract is superior to MK16 other than ECM

Cataphracts are a lot bigger than MK16 dual drive missiles.

Theemile wrote:Of course, EE violations are kinda void at the moment, sine the SLN is toothless.

Against most star nations, the SLN is not toothless, and it will regain even more teeth quickly.

Also, I think the GA, Anderman Empire, or the Erewhon/Maya sector would not tolerate EE violations, and punish them, maybe even in cooperation with or at least at request of the SLN.

Brigade XO wrote:Do we even have a partial list (with a time frame) of the former SL member systems who have

1) approved the NEW SL constitution?

2) have formally declared they are either going independent or joining some other group (and what is the group/polity's name)?

If not, we might put one in the wikis.

About Yildun, in "To End In Fire", rather close to the end of the book, in the May 1924 chapter:

To End In Fire wrote:"Personally, I think Admiral Saleta and Admiral Trenis are correct when they suggest that it was actually the Alignment, fronting through Technodyne, who provided the SLN with the Cataphract. We can't prove that, especially since Yildun is one of the systems which has declined to ratify the new Constitution, which means even our friends in the League aren't in a position to learn on Technodynes home offices for details of the original design's R and D. But the fact that they refuse to give us that information strikes us as a pretty strong indicator that it didn't come out of their own shop...and they think we'd be just a bit unhappy with them if we found out who handed it to them."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Some of the RF members were said to be SL members, back when Albrecht Detweiler invited all their leaders for dinner. But I got the impression from that passage that these were not systems clustered together, but by TEiF, the ONI chief Charles Gannon made it sound like they are and that they were all outside the League. So there may be some amount of retconning in the process here, or not all MAlign-commanded RF members have yet declared their intention to join. One I'm pretty sure was an SL member is Visigoth and that can't be easily retconned due to the wormhole leading to Mesa, but we don't know if they've declared for the RF yet.

Mannrheim was not an SL member.

That remark by Gannon also irritated me a bit. AFAIR, most of the members have been clustered together, but Visigoth has been an exception. Maybe those members going public are clustered together, but at least Visogoth didn't (yet) publicly announce their RF membership?