The Chiron Chronicle: Discussions 2

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Desert Journeyman
Actually, my idea was for a sort of military contengient to form, independant of either the Spartans or the Hive.

The storyline assumes that a scattering of regular combat soldiers were aboard the Unity - imbued with special genetic materials and neural stapling - and that the descendants of these origional units remain. At some point, they will begin to break from the Spartans and Hive in large numbers. For now, they're simply likely to be distributed into elite or special units within those two factions.

The followers that made up Santiago's group would have been highly dedicated to the Spartan cause. So I don't think that they would break off so easy. Saying that, I already have a storyline going about Blast Rifle Crag declaring it's indepenence from Sparta. It remains to be seen how long this situation is allowed to go on. it seems to be that the Blast Rifle Crag story and the cult of war are all the splts the Spartans can take.

[[LordLMP]]

Darkcloud, Free Drones are not part of the Chiron Alliance, just friends with the Pirates and treaties with rest of alliance. They are Neutral.

Svensgaard didn't specificly say that CA doesn't need data angel help, just that "if you don't like it, don't get involve".

Desert, you can take control of Kane's Hive, an army that left Hive and currently residing in PPk territory, part of the force surrounding Data Acquisition which the Spartans captured during the spartan war. Not much as been done with them description wise and so on, what makes them difference compare to the rest of Hive and so on.

No, you won't get attacked left and right.

Morganites
Free Drones
Gaians
Believers
Cult of Planet

these are the factions that are available to be taken over. Believers just declared war on Cult of Planet about the third time in its history and preparing for their third crusade.


to remind you all, Chiron Chronicles IS a Diplomacy type game, not divide and conquer, split, convert and extremes,

[DarkCloud]

It is story motivated.

The tech level is at 3-6 right now, with some factions at either spectrum, but with most having only a few techs at level 6.

Most of the cities on Chiron are the regular earth-type, mid 20th century laid out cities, with the exception of a few crowded together "New York" like cities in the University- were congregation translates into ideas which translate into research which translate into strength.

[Desert Journeyman]

I'm thinking of the Morganites.

But I would also need a background for Kane's Hive.

Anything faction suddenly appearing will likely not have a Tech Level over 3, although I do believe that since my idea involves regular military units, we'd have some upgrades and remaining Unity equipment that could rise to Tech Level 5 or 6.

Can you give a slightly more detailed description of the Tech Levels? What have the Morganites been doing all this while?

[Natan]

My thoughts on the infantry discussion - my guess is that the population varies radically from faction to faction. The PKs, Pirates, Cyborgs, University and Morgan probably have rather low population growth, along with most other factions. But then a few factions, like the Hive and the Believers, would have skyrocketing growth. The extra people would probably be deployed as forced labor, put into the military, or put into military units which spend most of their time on construction duties. The Hive and the Believers would probably need these laborers and soldiers to enable them to break even with the other factions economically and militarily despite their technological backwardness. So I think that the number of soldiers in an infantry unit would vary drastically from faction to faction, because some factions might deploy soldier-laborers who could fight (albeit not as well as professional armies) while still earning their keep as laborers. I read that this actually happened in the USSR and still happens in Russia, with soldiers growing pigs on their bases and being sent out to the fields in the fall to gather in the civillian harvest.

[DarkCloud]

Morgan has been having problems... The Perfect Society has been attempting to oust him as leader and eventually combine the University and the Morganites into a large Trade Conglomeration.

Morgan is quickly becoming unpopular with his people because he has tried to regulate companies which are buying up lots of shares on the stock market. They will soon be able to control the Market Economy's votes (which are based on #of stocks invested in the market) and easily oust Morgan- so he is worried.
(The people in question are the Perfect Society)

However, Morgan is approaching a possible trial in the near future. He will welcome world investment in the Morgan Stock Exchange as will outlined in the Free Trade Summit meeting as free investment will allow him to regain control over the stock market's activities.

Morgan's people don't really want the other factions to invest in their country as they can buy votes off of the stock exchange and elect who THEY want to be the Morganites leader.

[Desert Journeyman]

Concerning the size of "standard" formations, I'm going to have to agree with previous speculation: depending on the faction or organization in question, deployments would vary in both their composition of supernumiaries and equipment.

Even a fairly martial society such as the Spartans would likely field some of the smaller echelons. The University, Morganites, Cyborgs, and Pirates probably mirror this. Each can afford to supply themselves - via various means - with technology capable of elevating the firepower of even a small group well above the average standards.

The Peacekeepers, Free Drones, Hive, Believers, Cult of Planet, and Gaians might supply larger formations - approaching several hundred persons in size, armed with an assortment of archaic, outdated, and even useless equipment. They fight their battles with less precision, the majority of heavy weapons being used en masse or by teams with little expertise in the field of joint combat operations.

In terms of Rovers and Speeders, this would be similar. Although seventy Rovers would be a large cadré or regiment - of the type seen as a corps. It would probably be relied upon until its numbers ebbed to the dozens before replacement was even considered as a viable option. Resources are scarce even now - I doubt mass production has gotten very far so early.

---

Also - I'd sooner take another faction than the Morganites. Unless I could redress the situation and pull some military capability out of Morgan's wealth.

[Natan]

Well, I envision small workshops which could turn out weapons with interchangeable parts based on prefabricated designs using simple tools. Factory work would probably be very labor intensive, at least until the discovery of Industrial Automation. I don't think it would be that difficult to field units of thousands. The average faction has 20 million people, and even today nations with that many people can field large armies of hundreds of thousands on a regular basis without serious economic damage. Many nations have one or two, even more percentage points of their population in the military. Since the factions using larger formations are probably the ones with more people, they should be able to afford large infantry brigades of five to eight thousand troops, even accounting for the fact that most soldiers aren't in combat units.

[Desert Journeyman]

I thought there were, oh, ten thousand at most on the Unity itself, and that many of those died during Planetfall or shortly after that point.

Even a nation of twenty million or so - take Venezuela for instance - can hardly prop itself up. Most of these factions are intensive in one way or another; i.e. their focus blinds the leadership to perepheral - yet vital - requirements or interests. This suggests that to mobilize anything approaching even one million citizens would be a signifigantly taxing objective and undertaking.

Even weapons with interchangable parts are difficult - especially when the process of construction shredder pistols, automatic variants of the same, rifles, and all sorts of other innovated killing machines is both time-consuming and difficult. Granted that most of those present are technicians, engineers, or scientific minds, but this is still going to be horribly fraught with challenges.

[Natan]

Originally posted by Desert Journeyman
I thought there were, oh, ten thousand at most on the Unity itself, and that many of those died during Planetfall or shortly after that point.

Even a nation of twenty million or so - take Venezuela for instance - can hardly prop itself up. Most of these factions are intensive in one way or another; i.e. their focus blinds the leadership to perepheral - yet vital - requirements or interests. This suggests that to mobilize anything approaching even one million citizens would be a signifigantly taxing objective and undertaking.

Even weapons with interchangable parts are difficult - especially when the process of construction shredder pistols, automatic variants of the same, rifles, and all sorts of other innovated killing machines is both time-consuming and difficult. Granted that most of those present are technicians, engineers, or scientific minds, but this is still going to be horribly fraught with challenges.

Could you please clarify what you said in your second paragraph?

LordLMP said that there were between one quarter and one half of a billion people on Planet. I would assume that those sent on the Unity were chosen for their technical skills. Producing weapons with interchangeable parts shouldn't be too difficult, the technology to do so is over 200 years old. All it requires is the sort of basic tools you and I could probably get access to with ease if we so desired.

By the way, this is a great discussion.

[Desert Journeyman]

The origional Unity crew salvaged or produced by hand, most of their armament and any complimentary weaponary. This process was likely both time-consuming and rather difficult, when despite being composed of engineers, technical specialists, and scientific advisors, the majority of the colonists are likely to be utilizing these specialities in far more mundane tasks: habitation module construction, genetic agriculture, and even to a very great extent: organization, exploration, and repair.

I always found it odd that no "security" contengient existed other than personnel intended for minor base detail. It seems unlikely that the Unity would be sent into the unknown without a small, if dedicated, corps of heavy-armed regular combat soldiers. Although the Spartan lifestyle might be appealing, I could see the vast majority remaining in service under Shen-Ji Yang, the vessel's former XO.

Weapons of all types are utilized by the Unity settlements. From shredder pistols to gravimetric charges. This suggests that a variety of methods for the production of munitions, dedicated repair, and modification do exist. Again, that would be a major undertaking because of the sheer number or scale of the factory components required.

[Natan]

How much factory space this requires depends on how you do it. It's a fairly simple process to get the raw materials out of the ground, particularly with Industrial automation. It's also fairly easy to assemble the raw materials into a usable form, just melt the metals and pour them into a mold. It would be possible to make an automatic projectile weapon in a small machine shop with a few metal working tools, once the metals had been poured into the basic shapes at the steel mill. My guess is that the Unity would have carried a lot of equipment of this sort with it, and although a lot would have been damaged, I would guess that a lot survived. If the colonists are able to maintain large naval and air forces, I don't see why they can't maintain good sized land forces either. Almost all of the land on Chiron has been claimed and settled by now, so colonization itself isn't taking up industrial production.

Also, I think that the professional soldiers would have left along with Kane. In case you don't know, his forces left the Hive after I broke a deal with the peacekeepers and declared war on them. Kane's troops, about a third of those in the southern region, fled to PK territory, where they remain to this day. Kane left with those elements of the army which were more loyal to him and the military then to Yang, which would, I presume, be the original military units included in the Unity expedition.

[Desert Journeyman]

My father owns a large factory of sorts; an industrial steel mill. As a child, I always used to ask him if he could fashion firearms or anything of that sort. While my father does entertain numerous government contracts, the answer is consistently: "No." Realize that in the United States of America today, only one factory, that being Lima Railway Works of Ohio, can build Main Battle Tanks of the designs specified by the United States Army.

Because moulds and equipment are on hand does not necessarily indicate that any sort of capability to produce firearms exists. It is similarly important to remember that much of Chiron still likely exists in a near-feudal setting; that is to say, nearly all of what infrastructure does exist does so in cities, isolated from the faction's territories at large.

The Hive did not have access to advanced military applications, which I do find odd, because a contengint from Earth's own regular armies - which I do admit would be nearly impossible to scrape togeather - would have technology left over from the crash that even today is superior to that of nearly all of the factions.

[Natan]

The Vietnamese Communists, the IRA, the PLO, etc. have all been able to make their own weapons in factories which had to be hidden and operated with poor equipment. Surely the factions of Chiron could make infantry weapons cheaply, although I agree that rovers would be very difficult to manufacture. Still though, eighty years is a long time, and it's possible to build up real infrastructure from scratch in that time. There are parts of the world which had virtually no Industry eighty years ago but which are now industrial powerhouses. If the factions of Chiron are able to produce aircraft in substantial numbers, then I presume they can mass-produce infantry weapons. Cheap infantry weapons can be made even in poor conditions with bad equipment, because they are very simple. The Sten gun, for example, was mass produced in Britain during WWII by utilizing various products which had previously had civillian uses, like bicycle parts. It was a sturdy and reliable sub-machine gun which cost next to nothing to make. The technology required to make these sort of firearms is very simple - all you need is a metal tube, some springs, and a few simple machine tools to drill a few parts correctly. Once made, the product can remain just as effective for a century or two if given the most basic care. If the colonists don't have access to these tools, I find it hard to believe that they can build cities, agricultural equipment, or even their own pressure helmets and purification systems for the water and air. Rovers, on the other hand, would be more expensive, since they require complex and powerful engines, larger guns, a constant supply of fuel, and if they are to be of any use, they need complex gun-sighting systems, armor, and many spare parts. Aircraft and ships would be a nightmare to construct. These could probably only be provided in smaller numbers, but they would be much more effective then infantry.

[Desert Journeyman]

My arguments are geared to twenty years of colonization. It is a general given that after eighty, sufficient progress has been made that essentially permits high levels of industrial automation.

However, do recall that where some nations progress in eighty years, most of those were already in existance as semi-modern entities. No civilization exists on Chiron. It would require at least twenty years to settle without industry being on hand in any appreciable quantity.