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Sounds like something we might want to add to the Soviet update material, X-COM producing tons of stuff that gets rolled into GJ's standing permanent forces & the stockpile immediately, boosting @rep n' shit.
(Eclipse Phase has my brain & is holding it hostage until we unleash the TITANs. Naturally.)
EDIT: Also, my brain just gave me the phrase "Weapons potlatch - who can give away more of their arsenal faster?" Discuss.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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Does the Professor count as a faction, and does his mind count as a strategic weapon? [grin]
Just asking...
One Blue Hair day for quite a few of the Mads/Sparks, and you may well have a strategic weapon, or on a really bad day a whole strategic weapons technology, that wasn't there before...
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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
M Fnord Wrote:Sounds like something we might want to add to the Soviet update material, X-COM producing tons of stuff that gets rolled into GJ's standing permanent forces & the stockpile immediately, boosting @rep n' shit.
"GLADOS even sponsored two dozen test chambers for boarding action training... at least thats what she said." 
But I think the reputation gain by showing good will to give things away or let someone check you are not secretly building up your army of doom will be an important factor.
Quote:(Eclipse Phase has my brain & is holding it hostage until we unleash the TITANs. Naturally.)
Yes, Eclipse Phase has fun ideas...  (I think you recognized CIs memory modification stuff there ^^)
Quote:EDIT: Also, my brain just gave me the phrase "Weapons potlatch - who can give away more of their arsenal faster?" Discuss.
Just make sure that everyone keeps a few weapons... otherwise there will be some bad guys willing to take over.
"Hi, I'm from Boskone/////// the Weapons Fetishist faction. Please give me all your weapons!" [grin]
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Then there re the individuals who happen to be weapons in their own right.... how to they factor into the system. How do edge cases like weapon produces who might keep hardware on-stock factor in? Or the training centre on Frigga which explicitly has enough firearms to equip a small army and a good chunk of demilitarised drones? What counts as an operational weapon? Just the spacecraft itself, or a spacecraft and a crew to fly it?
There has to be some manner of grading it all on an even keel so you can compare apples, oranges and chainsword. A sort of points system like a wargame. Which naturally leads to the creation of a Fenspace tabletop wargame where you can actually put your crackpot theories about who would win in a fight with who to the test. And accusations of bias as each new codex comes out.
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All this talk of stockpiling leads me to think there would be 'Training' Bases all over the place that act as 'Assesment' Centres. Mothball yards basically, where the Factions can train with all the toys of other Factions and work out what is best.
The fact that there are usually hundreds of trained soldiers, a couple of flights of fighters, and half a dozen capital ships nearby will curtail 'losses'. They'd make good staging bases for patrols as well.
I can also see weapon systems (followed by everything else) becoming modular, just in case a quick increase in firepower is needed.
The inspection thing is going to be really tricky. The network of trust idea will probably be the only way this could be implimented without tearing The Convention apart, but it'll still be a hot topic for years to come.
In fact, I'll bet the Charter will be fairly loose at the start as the Generalists/smaller factions will complain about the bigger factions using it to subsume them.
Business as usual there, although it may lead to new factions as some Generalists or smaller groups join to 'protect ourselves from X'. The UBA perhaps?
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M Fnord Wrote:* Blanket ban on individual faction ownership of weapons of mass destruction / terror. (ABC weaponry[1], exotics like nanoswarms, aerosoled biomod handwavium, etc.)
...
[1] Kaboomite being at the top of the list.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
Noah wants to get rid of that albatross (as do I). Kohran keeps saying "but what if we need it?" and tries to make more... which was justified during the Boskone War when they actually were needed, but not since then. And Noah can produce records showing that the last of the pre-war and during-war batches of kaboomite were expended during OGJ.
And we can take that note about him scrounging enough uranium for two more warheads out of the FenWiki. Edit: I just did this.
(We probably want to add to that "banned" list as we think of things, such as trunk-sized FAEs. It might also be a good idea to list "kaboomite" as an example banned substance, thus telling everyone in-universe that it doesn't matter whether anyone else knows how to make it, it's what happens when it's set off that matters.)
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Star Ranger4 Wrote:As far as the inspectors, I'd say each faction gets to nominate one of their own for membership, but they are vetted and approved by the whole, with x number of inspectors appointed as members at large by the members at large rather than any one faction As long as a given faction's inspector isn't allowed to inspect the faction's facilities. (At least, not alone.)
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Rob Kelk
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Well, yes, that should be a given, Rob.
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"Should be," but we all know how some folks like to rules-lawyer...
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Rob Kelk
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them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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M Fnord Wrote:Output's not a bad way of looking at it, I was drifting towards a more object-oriented classification but I can see output making sense. My only worry would be an ICly concern of some chucklefuck pulling the "every spaceship is a kinetic warhead bloo bloo" thing, but enh. I can see rotating excess strategic & non-strategic capability into $GJ; it'd keep the military-industrial complex at least a little happy though they may request some sort of quid-pro-quo if they keep producing (capitalists *eyeroll*). Unless somebody's going to start up a military-industrial zaibatsu that does everything from "mine the ores" to "launch the torpedoes," somebody's going to have to trade things or cash along the way. And equipment upkeep isn't free.
M Fnord Wrote:Population was pretty much the only metric that makes sense to me in terms of limits hard or soft, since we've got factions that have maybe a hundred people who've got entire air armies worth of strategic hardware. If nothing else that level of toy collecting needs to go, so forcing hoarders to scrap their stuff or rotate it into $GJ until they grow another thousand people or whatever makes sense to me. I can only think of one such faction, and it's an "author's preserve." If we strike the word "air" from your first sentence, then I can think of a second such group.
As for the group that isn't air-based, we can do what we like with the Dorsai. I'd suggest incorporating it into $GJ as Company/Division/Brigade #1 (exact term depends on just how big they are - we've never said), with headquarters and training facilities on 334 Chicago. Their "Convention Security" arm can be spun off into an elite unit in $GJ's MPs, the Space Patrol's Section 2, or a small mercenary force contracted to the Convention; I'd recommend the latter so that it doesn't look like the Convention (the legislature) has any direct "hands-on" control over even a part of the military or the police. (If the convention becomes a permanent body with a permanent meeting location, then the remaining Dorsai can become permanently hired by them to protect that location.)
As for the Roughriders... I see three options, and BA's going to have to make the final decision: - incorporating them into $GJ as Wing #1 (which removes their autonomy)
- stripping them down to something sane for a private mercenary force (with excess assets either scrapped or purchased and maintained by $GJ)
- leaving the Convention, and possibly the Solar System, altogether (which would make them Boskonian by definition, like the Turnerites)
If there's another option, add it to the list... but I can't imagine what it might be. I can't see any perfect solution here.
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Since we're being blunt, a lot of the principle of rotating strategic assets into the GJ chain of command was inspired by the RR situation... possibly other factions too, but they're the only one with writers. And fundamentally in terms of production stuff... I mean look at what we (VVS) are doing with respects to the OVs and Gagarin Crater and the rest. So sure, they (RR) could probably set things up that they're building strategic stuff, and if thats what they want to dedicate themselves to, on OOC terms fine. On IC terms though... let's encourage them to slow down production from wartime frenzied heights, and at the same time, there's important uses for the stuff as has been discussed. They want to build the stuff and help keep the system safe? Why not legitimize that?
The exact socioeconomics I'm going to leave up for debate, but if they could afford to build and run the stuff solo (can they? that actually seems a good question) than I don't see why the same sort of broad stuff wouldn't apply to them too. They stay an independent political faction, with the majority of their strategic force rotating into GJ and working alongside everyone else.
Maybe there should be some system of leasing stuff (or reuptation trading, or bargaining chips or wtf-ever) to GJ as it's rotated in to compensate factions for the use of their Stuff - not anywhere near purchase price, but enough to take a lot of the sting out of it.
robkelk Wrote:"Should be," but we all know how some folks like to rules-lawyer...
I would suggest that each signing party has to name a number of Inspectors from OTHER groups/factions, the number depending on the size of their faction (and the number of necessary inspectors ^^). The Convention then can choose their inspector teams from this list. If both sides cannot agree on a list of inspectors, they have to continue to negotiate... which might become a good reason why it will take a few years until PEPPER works as intended.
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KJ Wrote:The exact socioeconomics I'm going to leave up for debate, but if they could afford to build and run the stuff solo (can they? that actually seems a good question) than I don't see why the same sort of broad stuff wouldn't apply to them too. They stay an independent political faction, with the majority of their strategic force rotating into GJ and working alongside everyone else. Yes, this would work. It just seems a bit odd to work out a lend-lease deal with your own government...
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
I'm not really seeing the Convention as a conventional Earth-style Government-with-a-capital-G yet, more something like a confederation that all the member polities are forming to do stuff that's too large or delicate for any of them to do on their own and mutual benefit; EU vs. US, though I understand this is a loaded comparison. I think there's too many different thoughts on how people want stuff to run to get things done as a more rigid thing at this point.
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A thing to consider: Look back at the Washington Naval Treaty for an example of what WILL happen when this sort of arms limitation treaty comes down.
What happened then?
People immediately started lawyering and trying to find ways to exploit everything about it.
Pushing the ships they were building right up to the limits, converting stuff to formats (like carriers) that weren't limited by the treaty, building hulls that could be easily converted to more powerful units that were banned or limited by treaty... it was really a sea lawyer's paradise.
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Question... does choosing to live outside the Fenspace convention automatically make one a Boskonian?
Space is, after all a big place. While it might complicate trade, at the same time there're those who would rather just not have any government at all and look after themselves.
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Could make life difficult for Space Hermits.
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I was imagining the PEPPER thing written in anticipation of that (somehow, I sure as hell don't have wording hammered out) with clauses allowing stuff to be added. I was also thinking, assuming an energy-output-based metric for what counts as strategic or not, the criteria being deliberately low to include some stuff that really isn't... say, the edge being where the common off-the-shelf coilguns that everything including freighters and crap are sprouting for defense being excluded as well as fighter-scale guns, but stuff past that being included. I mean, if you set the limits right, "treaty ships" will be "fine", and there's a level of implicit social pressure to not do it that didn't exist with the Washington Naval Treaty.
I think living outside the Convention is going to be looked at, at least by most, as at least odd? Not necessarily criminal by any means, but some question about motives.
KJ Wrote:I was imagining the PEPPER thing written in anticipation of that (somehow, I sure as hell don't have wording hammered out) with clauses allowing stuff to be added. I was also thinking, assuming an energy-output-based metric for what counts as strategic or not, the criteria being deliberately low to include some stuff that really isn't... say, the edge being where the common off-the-shelf coilguns that everything including freighters and crap are sprouting for defense being excluded as well as fighter-scale guns, but stuff past that being included. I mean, if you set the limits right, "treaty ships" will be "fine", and there's a level of implicit social pressure to not do it that didn't exist with the Washington Naval Treaty.
The "social pressure/reputation" thing will definitely a very important part of any kind of treaty.
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Dartz Wrote:Question... does choosing to live outside the Fenspace convention automatically make one a Boskonian?
"Boskonian" is a term of art applied to people who aren't simply outside the Convention but are also actively engaging in criminal activity (by Fenspace and Earth standards). Just dropping out into the main belt or the Kupier or whatever doesn't automatically make someone Boskonian, it's when they start trading slaves or guns or thionite that they make the turn.
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Also, it may be a good idea than such treatises only limit offensive capacity, not for (fixed) defenses in habitats and cities: Senshi cannot use that cute Death Star missile launcher (twenty megatons of pink destruction) in the Sammies' ships, but they can install as many as they want in Crystal Tokyo, the idea being that if an enemy is actually in range of those weapons, it would be due the their actions, and not an attack from the senshi
Rakhasa Wrote:Also, it may be a good idea than such treatises only limit offensive capacity, not for (fixed) defenses in habitats and cities: Senshi cannot use that cute Death Star missile launcher (twenty megatons of pink destruction) in the Sammies' ships, but they can install as many as they want in Crystal Tokyo, the idea being that if an enemy is actually in range of those weapons, it would be due the their actions, and not an attack from the senshi
Please do not forget that the Venus Cities can fly interplanetary distances.
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True, but what's to stop them from turning around and installing it on a ship when no body is looking?
Granted the Sammies wouldnt' cause, hey, Magical Girls. Which reminds me. a Quirk all Sammy ships should have: "Shout Out!" Weapon systems will not fire unless the name of the attack is shouted out loud by at least the weapons officer (but the more the better!)
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
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Castle Borealis's heavy coilguns would pretty definately count as strategic weapons, and the contents of the armory probably officially belong to $GJ's wing of VFs that are hosted aboard, even if they also get hung off Paladin Lead & the two dragons, WC, Hotseat, & Tigre when an actual incident occurs that requires breaking them out. (But should the vfs be Brown Squadron, Taupe Squadron, Beige Squadron, Khaki Squadron, Fawn Squadron, Cinnamon Squadron, Chocolate Squadron, or Sand Squadron?)
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