NationStates Post-Modern Tech Community Thread

[Pillowlandia]

I am wondering is my military to OP for Post Modern Tech?
https://www.nationstates.net/nation=the ... /id=710697

I am wondering about the Space Corps equipment and so on. In my lore its 2033 and my nation is a global power and an empire(for a little back ground) and I was wondering what should I add and what should I tone down?

One thing I see, which I know you are simply using images and etc., would be perhaps trying to minimize the amount of different vehicles and stuff you have across the board. The more equipment you have that is completely different makes your logistics way more complicated in any war, so simplifying it as much as possible would be best.

[Haishan]

I am wondering is my military to OP for Post Modern Tech?
https://www.nationstates.net/nation=the ... /id=710697

I am wondering about the Space Corps equipment and so on. In my lore its 2033 and my nation is a global power and an empire(for a little back ground) and I was wondering what should I add and what should I tone down?

In my opinion, it doesn't look OP at all but more like early PMT time period with mobile railgun(?) and a couple of drones. When you start to field vehicle-mounted laser weapons (like on Humvee) on basically all of your ground vehicles and then use high yield, small missiles then I know you have reached a certain level. Having orbital weapon satellite would be a bad idea however because everyone can see it and then shoot it down just as easy. Compare it to land based or even submarine missile launchers, not only they're hard to find, but also hard to destroy. The god rod might be cool but in reality they're just expensive targets but if you want to have it regardless, just expect that you will lose it below two hours after a war started.

Ditto if you also start to field plasma 'stealth' but it is important to not look this as being OP or not; the key point is that whether your material can make people RP with you. Technology would take a back seat for plot to shine since you cannot have a RP without a story to tell; technology is just the window dressing.

I like to think of PMT as hard science fiction, the Mag Cannon sounds like Halo which is a kind of fantasy. You might want to describe this as a combination of Railguns-- which is essentially what a Mag Cannon is, and a missing element-- high powered chemical lasers-- the modern term is THEL-- Tactical High Energy Laser. 135 person base is pretty big-- More like 2050, but that is just my opinion. Unless your 135 person base is your main base and you have a few smaller ones.

There are also some other things missing-- e-bombs, small electromagnetic pulse weapons. Possibly brilliant pebbles which are essentially missiles. The THOR system is right on target. I could also see drone fighters being used to defend the base. Something like this.

(Image)

On railgun, being bigger isn't necessarily better. The sweetspot would be a truck or ship mounted railgun like in https://youtu.be/Ev0G49jXJX0 . If it's on decent size, it means you can field more of it. Make it too big and then it will be hard to conceal and costly to make. He won't be needing any THEL however, the trend would be either Free Electron Laser or solid state ones. On laser, maybe he can try https://youtu.be/j0JR_L_VY8Y

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

The problem with railguns is always going to be cooling and power supply; For a railgun with double-digit muzzle energy for the foreseeable future only large surface ships like destroyers or cruisers really have the space necessary to mount the gun, the cooling system, the capacitor/flywheel energy storage systems, and the various other electrical systems along with the spare electrical power output to actually charge and fire the whole thing.

On the topic of laser weapons I find chemical lasers still useful in PMT because unlike solid state or FEL lasers they don't use electrical power to fire which in vehicle based applications can be a huge bottleneck. So with say a 2MW solid state laser or FEL with optimistic wall-plug efficiency numbers you would need 4-6MW of energy just to fire which would require either a huge diesel or gas turbine engine and generator set which unlike a large aircraft or ship could be a problem for something like a truck or tank. A high-power solid state laser will also need a liquid or cryogenic cooling system which will also add size and weight. For cooling ships have seawater and aircraft have high-speed airflow they can use as essentially infinite heat sinks, a luxury ground vehicles do not have. A chemical laser doesn't need to be cooled and just needs two chemicals which are basically hypergolic rocket fuels that can be stored either in the vehicle or say in a modified tanker truck.

[The Macabees]

Open Discussion:

Even today, the advent of algorithms that can understand semantics and contextual meaning is threatening to replace human writers with computers that can churn out content at a much greater pace. It's part of the methods governments around the world use to produce 'fake news' and distribute it. You can automate what gets written, how it gets written, how it gets promoted, et cetera. And it's not just governments, but individual users like me and the companies we work for.

Does your government produce fake news? What steps have news outlets in your country taken to help combat fake news?

[UniversalCommons]

Open Discussion:

Even today, the advent of algorithms that can understand semantics and contextual meaning is threatening to replace human writers with computers that can churn out content at a much greater pace. It's part of the methods governments around the world use to produce 'fake news' and distribute it. You can automate what gets written, how it gets written, how it gets promoted, et cetera. And it's not just governments, but individual users like me and the companies we work for.

Does your government produce fake news? What steps have news outlets in your country taken to help combat fake news?

Some of our ethnicities enjoy producing pranks, hoaxes, and fakery which are often revealed in stupendous fashion. It is very popular among the Ohyayians to prank the news and produce misleading articles to test the veracity of the news media. The larger the reveal the more satisfied the perpetrators are.

The Cruonians are known to do tricky business to hide their assets and are very secretive with their banking. It is not uncommon to see fake business information to cover the tracks of their transactions and business dealings. There are a variety of tax dodges, smuggling into foreign countries, and sometimes art forgeries involved.

Some of our government produces fake news. The Office of Economic and Special Warfare will sometimes produce misleading information on military operations, sensitive business information, eavesdropping and spying to mislead other countries. Some of this can be to hide economic and military espionage.

[Allanea]

Point of order:

Do old-fashioned NS RPs with big populations using NS stats, superdreadnaughts and SHBTS, belong here, or are they not advanced technologically enough to be in PMT?

[The Macabees]

Point of order:

Do old-fashioned NS RPs with big populations using NS stats, superdreadnaughts and SHBTS, belong here, or are they not advanced technologically enough to be in PMT?

That's within the PMT community.

[Bashriyya]

https://archive.org/details/WeatherAsAForceMultiplier

I urge NS PMT community to check this out.

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

Point of order:

Do old-fashioned NS RPs with big populations using NS stats, superdreadnaughts and SHBTS, belong here, or are they not advanced technologically enough to be in PMT?

If we define "PMT" as anything past "hard MT" then yes. Although for any near-term PMT roleplay (MT +5/10/20 etc) supersiszed ships and tanks are of such dubious practical value and plausibility that they probably belong more in future/fantasy tech RPs than anything else.

[Allanea]

Point of order:

Do old-fashioned NS RPs with big populations using NS stats, superdreadnaughts and SHBTS, belong here, or are they not advanced technologically enough to be in PMT?

If we define "PMT" as anything past "hard MT" then yes. Although for any near-term PMT roleplay (MT +5/10/20 etc) supersiszed ships and tanks are of such dubious practical value and plausibility that they probably belong more in future/fantasy tech RPs than anything else.

MT/PMT is not a measure of whether something is a good idea.

[The Macabees]

Open Discussion

So, similar to FT there are worlds that are like Tau Zero, The Three-Body Problem, or The Martian, that try to stay as 'realistic' as possible. And there are worlds like that of Star Wars that don't really ascribe to realism, except for keeping enough familiarity for the audience to understand what's going on.

As exemplified in the conversation above, those two styles are also prevalent in PMT.

I commonly RP with players who follow different conventions and RP in different styles.

How do you handle situations where another PMT RPer's style might not match yours?

[The Grande Republic 0f Arcadia]

new Rp is now up, its a MT-PMT rp tg me if you are interested

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=424517

[Allanea]

I operate on the following assumptions:

1. Unless you've explicit familiarity with the player in question, get involved in RPs using limited amounts of resources only and slowly escalate if you feel the situation calls for it.

2. I attempt not to nitpick people's technologies, policies, and tactics OOCly. Not only because it fits my belief that people's technologies, policies, and tactics vary widlly historically, but also because I feel debating this is mostly counterproductive. If a person's things are unreasonable or weird, but he's broadly willing to accept the outcome of confrontations, I'm willing to work with that.

I always ask myself: Is it feasible? This is a lower standard to satisfy than 'realistic'. 'Realism', technically speaking, requires that something be compatible with our understanding of reality in terms of both physical aspects (such as engineering) and social aspects (such as economics and geopolitics).

To use the ubiquitous example, a 1500-meter 'superdreadnought' is likely 'unrealistic' in the sense that a professional ship engineer can probably explain some ways in which a 1500-meter warship is unrealistic (some suggest they'd even physically break apart at sea), a military tactician is capable of explaining why they'd lose a fight to a submarine, and why it's likely they'd never be built.

But I also believe that NS is not a fully 'realistic' universe [at least 'big NS' isn't]. So I ask myself: 'can I suspend disbelief about the fact that a nation with a somewhat higher level of technology than wat exists IRL' could build this?' (I can). Is it a bad idea? No, but ideas far worse than this are an indelible part of history. Battleship advocates exist IRL, and even people who advocate a return to the line of battle. It's conceivable to me they won an election somewhre or took over by coup.

On an OOC level, debating about something I can easily suspend disbelief about is pointless and counterproductive.

Now, because I roleplay with a very low level of 'realism' (I accept a variety of fantastic stuff, and try to think through it's social and cultural implications), it's easier for me to go into an RP with people who have a higher realism setting, and essentially 'tone myself down' by not using anything they'd probably find inappropriate, then it would be for them to adjust to my lower realism setting. To paraphrase someone smarter than me, it does me no injury for my neighbour to say he uses a 2000-meter superdreadnought, or no superdreadnought. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

3. One bit of advice I would like to offer to people beyond that is something I learned early on:

There's a lot of people in NS who wank. Some of them wank to how cool their tech is. Some of them wank to how awesome their society is. But people who wank to how much better they, as roleplayers, are, than anyone else, are the most counterproductive people. Debating for days about some fairly nitpicky aspect of someone's tech is realistic or not means you're not spending these days writing a post, or drawing art of your characters, or contributing to theforums in some way. I've really had more fun RPs with 'noobs on II' than I have had with people who think they're super-good RPers and won't talk to anyone who's below them.

[The worst thing that can happen to you when dealing with a 'n00b' is that the thread collapses in a day or through. But it's the people who think they're 'good' that will end up having months, sometimes as much as year of OOC drama about the resolution of a war RP, and the amount of drama increases exponentially with a person's perception of their own OOC importance. ]

[The State of Monavia]

Point of order:

Do old-fashioned NS RPs with big populations using NS stats, superdreadnaughts and SHBTS, belong here, or are they not advanced technologically enough to be in PMT?

Point of order:

Do old-fashioned NS RPs with big populations using NS stats, superdreadnaughts and SHBTS, belong here, or are they not advanced technologically enough to be in PMT?

If we define "PMT" as anything past "hard MT" then yes. Although for any near-term PMT roleplay (MT +5/10/20 etc) supersiszed ships and tanks are of such dubious practical value and plausibility that they probably belong more in future/fantasy tech RPs than anything else.

Open Discussion

So, similar to FT there are worlds that are like Tau Zero, The Three-Body Problem, or The Martian, that try to stay as 'realistic' as possible. And there are worlds like that of Star Wars that don't really ascribe to realism, except for keeping enough familiarity for the audience to understand what's going on.

As exemplified in the conversation above, those two styles are also prevalent in PMT.

I commonly RP with players who follow different conventions and RP in different styles.

How do you handle situations where another PMT RPer's style might not match yours?

I always view the inclusion of a given piece of technology in terms of trade-offs. For instance, there is the relationship between ship size and the accuracy of tungsten rods fired from orbit. If you want to insist on roleplaying as a country that operates kilometer-long capital ships and I roleplay my commanders firing rods at them from orbit, then it is unreasonable for you to claim that my forces will score a very low kill rate simply because the sheer size of your ships makes missing unlikely even with a wide CEP. To offer another example, if you insist on roleplaying the existence of 400-ton house-sized tanks in your army, then I will insist that you refrain from claiming that they get Prius-level gas mileage and have an easy time driving through sand, mud, swamps, and narrow urban streets.

Another way I approach MT and PMT technology is to take what I call an alternate-history approach. Under this approach, I not only evaluate the plausibility of an NS technology in terms of what is plausible in RL, I also evaluate the plausibility of an NS technology in terms of what could be plausible in RL had RL people chosen to pursue different options in the past. For example, I justify Monavian possession of borderline PMT railgun and orbital bombardment technology in MT on the grounds that Monavian leaders made different strategic investment decisions than RL leaders did forty, fifty, and sixty years ago. My Defenses factbooks contain concrete examples illustrating this principle.

I operate on the following assumptions:

1. Unless you've explicit familiarity with the player in question, get involved in RPs using limited amounts of resources only and slowly escalate if you feel the situation calls for it.

2. I attempt not to nitpick people's technologies, policies, and tactics OOCly. Not only because it fits my belief that people's technologies, policies, and tactics vary widlly [sic] historically, but also because I feel debating this is mostly counterproductive. If a person's things are unreasonable or weird, but he's broadly willing to accept the outcome of confrontations, I'm willing to work with that.

I always ask myself: Is it feasible? This is a lower standard to satisfy than 'realistic'. 'Realism', technically speaking, requires that something be compatible with our understanding of reality in terms of both physical aspects (such as engineering) and social aspects (such as economics and geopolitics).

To use the ubiquitous example, a 1500-meter 'superdreadnought' is likely 'unrealistic' in the sense that a professional ship engineer can probably explain some ways in which a 1500-meter warship is unrealistic (some suggest they'd even physically break apart at sea), a military tactician is capable of explaining why they'd lose a fight to a submarine, and why it's likely they'd never be built.

I generally agree with both of these principles. When it comes to giant ships in particular, one thing even experienced RPers often fail to realize is the full range of implications that come with doubling the size of something. If you double the length of a ship, you also end up having to double its width and height. Likewise, you don’t so much “double” the number or size of the parts used in constructing the ship’s internal machinery as you multiply them by a factor of eight. Years ago I locked horns with other roleplayers (especially Lyras and Wagdog) on an offsite forum when they invoked economies of scale to explain how they produced their fictitious technology. While some seemed to be fine with RPers saying “my fictional country has 100 times the population, GDP, and manufacturing base of an RL country and can therefore build a ship that is 100 times bigger than one of their ships in the same time frame,” I was not. Here’s how I justify my dissension.

If you want to increase the overall size of a ship by a factor of two, then you have to increase the size of its parts by the cube of two (I’m keeping my example crude here). You cannot simply invoke linear economies of scale, however, because even if you double the workers involved, you still have to acquire eight times the material (thus quadrupling the time required to produce the ship), but specific parts (especially large castings and forgings) will take more than four times longer to produce because of the way the surface area-volume relationship affects the rate at which parts cool off.

Put another way, even if your fictional country has little trouble rapidly scaling up the production of wires, electronics, hull plates, and bulkhead sections, the laws of thermodynamics will make it impossible for you to scale up the size of the propeller shafts and gun barrels you want to produce and still be able to manufacture them within a fixed time frame. The resulting production bottleneck means that the total lead time involved in constructing a giant capital ship cannot be held constant simply by linearly scaling up the resources invested in its construction. Since economies of scale are thus unit-size dependent an RPer who wants to produce 100 times more naval tonnage in a fixed time frame should produce 100 time the number of ships, not a single ship that is 100 times larger.

But I also believe that NS is not a fully 'realistic' universe [at least 'big NS' isn't]. So I ask myself: 'can I suspend disbelief about the fact that a nation with a somewhat higher level of technology than wat [sic] exists IRL' could build this?' (I can). Is it a bad idea? No, but ideas far worse than this are an indelible part of history. Battleship advocates exist IRL, and even people who advocate a return to the line of battle. It's conceivable to me they won an election somewhre [sic] or took over by coup.

I adhere to a simple principle: The ease with which a reader can suspend disbelief while reading a given piece of fiction is directly proportional to the degree of effort that the writer of that piece invests in avoid contradictions and inconsistencies that remind the reader it is fictional. For instance, if you roleplay having a population of seventeen billion people living in an area the size of Manhattan you cannot maintain every reader’s suspension of disbelief if you subsequently claim that your country has an average population density comparable to Omaha, Nebraska.

A ten-year-old might not connect the dots and deduce that you did a sloppy job crafting your fictional world, but a twenty-year-old who has a reading hobby will probably notice your mistake sooner or later—and when he or she spots the bug, the spell your story cast over your reader’s imagination will lift and send him or her reeling back into reality. This is why I get so peeved when veteran roleplayers (who ought to know better) take suspension of disbelief for granted while simultaneously undermining it and then claim they aren’t doing anything wrong. One obvious example is any player who insists of roleplaying with current NS population and economy stats while simultaneously roleplaying a massive nuclear strike against his or her country. By insisting on having it both ways, they come across as take-no-damage godmoders at best—at worst, they make it impossible for IC events to meaningfully influence their canon and serve as a means of generating fun stories.

On an OOC level, debating about something I can easily suspend disbelief about is pointless and counterproductive.

Now, because I roleplay with a very low level of 'realism' (I accept a variety of fantastic stuff, and try to think through it's social and cultural implications), it's easier for me to go into an RP with people who have a higher realism setting, and essentially 'tone myself down' by not using anything they'd probably find inappropriate, then it would be for them to adjust to my lower realism setting. To paraphrase someone smarter than me, it does me no injury for my neighbour to say he uses a 2000-meter superdreadnought, or no superdreadnought. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

I agree. The problem that my past experiences have revealed to me is that some people are more liable to notice things that disrupt suspension of disbelief than others, hence my previous point. It’s one thing to roleplay inside an explicitly fantastical or futuristic setting or transparently employ magic or supernatural elements to bridge believability gaps in a “realistic” setting. It’s another to pretend that readers will easily suspend disbelief and enjoy your magic-free, straight MT roleplay if the substance of your characters, settings, and plots contains obvious flaws that you make little or no effort to paper over or explain away.

[Allanea]

Years ago I locked horns with other roleplayers (especially Lyras and Wagdog)

I'll be straight with you.

My first impulse when reading this comment was to come up with an objection. I've come up with several. They were (in my mind, at least) reasonable objections, having to do with construction technology, mathematics, etc.

But then I realized that this is exactlythe sort of thing I was railing against.

My rule on this matter is simple:

1. My nation possesses 3 superdreadnoughts, for elaborate IC reasons.
2. My nation makes and exports superdreadnoughts, some of them built in Allanea, others elsewhere in allied countries where the manufacturer owns or rents facilities.
3. It also possesses superdrednought turrets, etc. from ships it has decommissioned.

I don't deploy them in combat against people who might object to them.

I've had zero problems with people who disbelieve in the realism of superdreadnoughts, in 14 years of RP.

[The Macabees]

A little sperg on the "economies of scale" argument:

Economies of scale spreads, for example, fixed costs. Economies of scales assumes increasing marginal costs, but decreasing average costs. All economies of scale have a limit (optimal production).

Most NSers who RP massive militaries with massive missile loads etc are producing at diseconomies of scale. The more they producer, the higher the cost per unit (average cost).

[Allanea]

A little sperg on the "economies of scale" argument:

Economies of scale spreads, for example, fixed costs. Economies of scales assumes increasing marginal costs, but decreasing average costs. All economies of scale have a limit (optimal production).

Most NSers who RP massive militaries with massive missile loads etc are producing at diseconomies of scale. The more they producer, the higher the cost per unit (average cost).

Let's take the assumption the large population that exist in some NS RPs can exist and not everyone is starving to death (i.e that resource prices are comparable to those in the real world). Wouldn't it follow that a country like The Maccabees could afford a military proportionately the size of the US military, at more or less the same unit costs per vehicle, etc.?

[The Macabees]

Let's take the assumption the large population that exist in some NS RPs can exist and not everyone is starving to death (i.e that resource prices are comparable to those in the real world). Wouldn't it follow that a country like The Maccabees could afford a military proportionately the size of the US military, at more or less the same unit costs per vehicle, etc.?

Not necessarily.

Costs don't tend to translate proportionally. A larger population means more people to spread out fixed costs to, but before we can talk about demand we need to talk about the cost structure of supply (this is what determines whether there's an opportunity for economies of scale -- if fixed costs are zero, you might not have economies of scale at all [unless at some point marginal costs are also zero - like for tech]).

But if we (rightfully) wanted to avoid getting into a complexity that most NSers don't care about and is not helpful, let's assume yes, you're right.

What I was referring to, more so, was NSers (like myself) who don't just RP a military and stock proportional to the US, but disproportional on the heavy side. An average fleet like Lyras' or mine will carry more missiles than a U.S. fleet, proportionally. It's just what a lot of NSers tend to do: "spam."

At these points, in all likelihood we're manufacturing at diseconomies of scale. For example, I sold something like 25 million Nakíl tanks before I stopped counting. I sold them at a fixed per unit price, but in reality at that point the average unit price should have started to increase.

Like I said, it's a sperg, -- it's not something I think NSers should worry about, tbh, because it'd be like worrying about the risk profile on the fictional banks many people run -- but I find it funny when people go out of their way to use "economies of scale" as a justification.

[Allanea]

There are severe problems with both sides of this argument (complex,elaborate arguments can be made to both defend and attack the notion that cruise missiles in NS would either cost as much as RL cruise missiles, or somewhat more) but at any rate:

I RP my nation as possessing a military vaguely of the same scale, proportionate to population and GDP, as the militaries of nations like the US and Russia. I find that in practice, as Nationstates warfare actually occurs, the biggest practical issue is actually deploying a significant proportion of these people to anywhere you don't have a land border with. Very rarely do I deploy more than a Corps. Indeed I rarely even send out that much.

[Libraria and Ausitoria]

Certainly I have the same experience - indeed Ausitoria has only used a corps twice, and that was only logistically feasible as it was the same region. Hence why I would expect all large nations seeking to project power to focus almost exclusively on their navies.

Point of order:

Do old-fashioned NS RPs with big populations using NS stats, superdreadnaughts and SHBTS, belong here, or are they not advanced technologically enough to be in PMT?

If we define "PMT" as anything past "hard MT" then yes. Although for any near-term PMT roleplay (MT +5/10/20 etc) supersiszed ships and tanks are of such dubious practical value and plausibility that they probably belong more in future/fantasy tech RPs than anything else.

I generally agree with both of these principles. When it comes to giant ships in particular, one thing even experienced RPers often fail to realize is the full range of implications that come with doubling the size of something. If you double the length of a ship, you also end up having to double its width and height. Likewise, you don’t so much “double” the number or size of the parts used in constructing the ship’s internal machinery as you multiply them by a factor of eight. Years ago I locked horns with other roleplayers (especially Lyras and Wagdog) on an offsite forum when they invoked economies of scale to explain how they produced their fictitious technology. While some seemed to be fine with RPers saying “my fictional country has 100 times the population, GDP, and manufacturing base of an RL country and can therefore build a ship that is 100 times bigger than one of their ships in the same time frame,” I was not. Here’s how I justify my dissension.

If you want to increase the overall size of a ship by a factor of two, then you have to increase the size of its parts by the cube of two (I’m keeping my example crude here). You cannot simply invoke linear economies of scale, however, because even if you double the workers involved, you still have to acquire eight times the material (thus quadrupling the time required to produce the ship), but specific parts (especially large castings and forgings) will take more than four times longer to produce because of the way the surface area-volume relationship affects the rate at which parts cool off.

If you will forgive my observing this discussion with some interest (like Allanea, my nation is rather larger than normal, even though I am constantly inventing ways to make it smaller to try to fit in with this sudden shift without serious cannonical implications), I should point out it is very clear that using eight times as many people and resources will result in a ship eight times bigger in tonnage (and twice as big in length). The time then depends on how modular it is.

Looking at the data, it is also very clear that larger countries IRL build larger ships. They do not build ships proportional to how big they are, because they still need more small ships, but in general a nation X four times the size of nation Y with a ship of 10,000 tons will have something like 2 ships of 10,000 tons and 1 of 20,000 tons, depending on the strategic constraints. Ignoring research costs and everything else (for sanity), in countries which operate in limited waters and for whom their is little need to have lots of ships they might well have one of 30,000 and one of 10,000. As such I for one have no problem with large countries having superdreadnaughts if they have any reason to do so.

Also, just to add a comment, if something is feasible, it arguably is realistic, because there are a hell of a lot if monkeys on nationstates and one if them is likely to write Hamlet at some point. Although personally I am still not about to let nations explicitly copy RL nations exactly as that is boring even if it realistic. Otherwise I think I generally agree with Allanea.

To get back to the opening question, then ... should we consider our large nations PMT?

For instance, I'm currently putting together a 100 ton tank with a 155 mm gun and medium armour protection, but I don't expect Ausitoria would deploy it abroad in any serious numbers because of the nightmare of getting it there. But for a nation of enough size and inclination to build specialist tanks which would increase the range of fighting and defeat enemy attacks, it seems a logical step. Does the size of the nation in itself used to justify the tank being built make it PMT?

[The Macabees]

I don't think there is a "we" that has a say on what's PMT and what isn't, and I don't think it'd be a productive conversation anyways.

Tech is an identity, you opt-in depending on how you see your canon fitting. I definitely consider myself PMT, despite having a NS pop nation.

The question isn't whether certain PMT things should be accepted, it's how we deal with subjective frictions in the spirit of promoting productive roleplay.

One way to do that is to set meta-rules that dictate pop-sizes and what technology is okay.

[Marquesan]

Hi All,

I wanted to drop a link to my brand new MT/PMT storefront, Arioi Engineering! Myrmidon has, regrettably, died a slow but deserved death. My first attempt at a storefront coinciding with my first attempts at designing military weapons for NationStates left the store with somewhat of a sour reputation in NS, and I knew I could do better. I've spent the better part of the last year and a half re-designing every aspect of all the products MTD had offered; when I completed the process, I realized that the designs I had really had nothing to do with the reasons MTD never got the traffic it should have, but the storefront had a reputation for not being realistic anyway, so it became clear that I needed a new storefront to showcase the months of hard work I've put into these new designs. I'm very proud of the result and I'd like (especially this bunch of players) everyone to take a look and see what I've got to offer. There's a lot of new stuff here, please let me know what you all think; if you have any questions, comments or concerns, I'm easy to get ahold of. Thanks! - Marquesan

[Bashriyya]

Not as if I support it, but if you want PMT socialism you may want to look at ideas of Col. Muammar Gaddaffi and green book.

I do NOT support them, but I think they will fit in more likely than standard communism / socialism, which I as well see as long dead in PMT societies due to the fact that the working class will be long gone.

That seems to be a huge issue in traditional politics nowadays, particularly with old-guard leftist parties facing somewhat of an existential crises. The whole notion of an industrial working class of manual laborers is somewhat obsolete in post-industrial societies. Moreover, the many former members of this class, now feeling threatened by this novel shift, are migrating wholesale into the arms of right-wing populists.

However, looking further into the future, easily the biggest point of contention will be the fate of labor structures in the face of increasing automation. As I mentioned earlier, some are saying that the Luddite Fallacy is no longer a fallacy, whilst others are countering that the basic principles behind it remain firm.

Should the first position manifest, even without any hint of a robopocalypse, we could see a huge reorganization in socioeconomic divisions across human society.

Here is another good example of what PMT Social-Democracy might look like
http://metamoderna.org/what-is-the-alt- ... ut?lang=en
I do not advocate form any form of leftism btw.

PMT Anarchism might be similar to Rojava, with elements of Murray Bookchin concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Scarcity_Anarchism

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_AR ... bmuni.html

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable ... employment

[Allanea]

For instance, I'm currently putting together a 100 ton tank with a 155 mm gun and medium armour protection, but I don't expect Ausitoria would deploy it abroad in any serious numbers because of the nightmare of getting it there. But for a nation of enough size and inclination to build specialist tanks which would increase the range of fighting and defeat enemy attacks, it seems a logical step. Does the size of the nation in itself used to justify the tank being built make it PMT?

More and more MT is being used as a short-hand for 'strictly realistic' nations, I think.

Moreover, I'd just like to note: there's not really a need for a 100-ton tank to carry a 155mm gun, nor are the difficulties for getting it there all that great.

152mm high-velocity guns were successfully put on 50-ton tanks IRL.

[Libraria and Ausitoria]

Interesting - presumably with lesser armour though, given most of the weight of a modern tank is armour?

Here is another good example of what PMT Social-Democracy might look like
http://metamoderna.org/what-is-the-alt- ... ut?lang=en
I do not advocate form any form of leftism btw.

I must say I'm not seeing any significant difference in that chart - if you consider the aims, legal means, or ends. And since social does not mean socialist, I'm struggling to see how that's the future of social democracy - it looks more like the future of socialism.

Tech is an identity, you opt-in depending on how you see your canon fitting.

However, all RPing (here) should be with the consent of the participants, therefore how others percieve you is important and relevent.

The question isn't whether certain PMT things should be accepted, it's how we deal with subjective frictions in the spirit of promoting productive roleplay.

Well, I'm not interested in whether it should be accepted - I'd like to know who accepts it and therefore how likely it is to be accepted in various contexts?

One way to do that is to set meta-rules that dictate pop-sizes and what technology is okay.

in short I'd like to know how we deal with subjective frictions and what people think is ok?

I don't think there is a "we" that has a say on what's PMT and what isn't, and I don't think it'd be a productive conversation anyways.

There is a "we" - RPers who want to RP with at least some(/hopefully all) others - and as long as we all recognize that defining PMT and MT is a subjective question with no absolute right or wrong, I think it would be productive and helpful to have a bit more of an idea of where everyone's opinions lie regarding the definition.

For instance I'd be very interested in your opinion please?

Hi All,

I wanted to drop a link to my brand new MT/PMT storefront, Arioi Engineering! Myrmidon has, regrettably, died a slow but deserved death.

Nice work! Now what shall I do with all the equipment Ausitoria bought? But the most important one is still there. The mainstay of all naval power projection. The sole reason why Ausitoria has not given up hope. The backbone of all economically justifiable amphibious logistics. The Capricorn.