A1-0 Low Hanging Fruit

A1-0
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I would argue that general technological development is generally more important than population. A good example would be ships. Some states have ships with larger crews to circumvent some lack in automation. Other nations have nearly completely automated ships which are only guided and maintained by the crew. This is also the direction RL is going. Most people would not say that China is more powerful than the U.S despite China having a population of 1.4 billion to the U.S’ comparatively measly 333 million.

There’s also a fundamental issue with equating every species to one another. A Sycriûn in Trianar, for instance, has the same mental capacity as a human, but is stronger, faster and more physically resilient, with only a slightly lower lifespan. In that instance, you could say a Sycriûn is “worth” more than a human population, but by the cap’s standards they would be treated the same. This would also hurt people whose species are deliberately weaker or simply reproduce differently (I.E the bugs in Colonus are numerous. They’re a hive mind colony- why should they have the same limits as slower reproducing, less efficient humans?)

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Flaming, if saying true things generated heat you’d be a star :sunglasses: :sparkles: :sparkles: :sparkles:

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I’m going to say this here, since I didn’t say it on the other topic.
I am agaisnt the proposed change because it gets rid of or essentially gets rid of a lot of things I think are important to A1-0. From it, there have been:

  • calls for the abolition of the megastructure limit, which I believe would be a grave mistake and only lead to power scaling, or at the very least, a complete devaluation of megastructures. Megastructures in the end are supposed to mean something and be important to a nation. Getting rid of the limit only allows us to reap the benefits of having them even further, while at the same time removing any possible consequence of it (i.e. their loss being devastating to a nation)
  • a raise in the population limit that I think is just absurd, and similar to the megastructures, makes population counts just completely meaningless. I just saw Flamings post, and yes, while the bugs (especially the Mandi) have higher reproductive rates than most other species, I have also put in self-imposed barriers (even though I’m well below and population limit) because otherwise their population would be so numerous that it’s just unfair. Another point is what I can only describe as peer-pressure; if all of the nations surrounding yours get their populations massively increased, is it reasonable to say that you’ll keep yours at a point you think is reasonable for your nation, even if that puts you at an extremely significant disadvantage?
  • a raise in resource quantities would make it significantly harder for people who choose to rp as less-advanced nations to justify that. I’ve used this example before, and I’ll use it again: guns, germs, and steel. Having easy access to more resources will, by its very nature, speed up the technological advancement of people in that area. And, even if you argue that they didn’t have easy access to the resources at first, by the time they have claimed their current territory they absolutely should have access to those resources, and then should be having a technological renaissance that the rper might not want.
  • the risk of a situation in which a massive amount of retconning would have to take place. This is by far the least convincing point, but also the most relevant to ourselves. We have been crafting our nations around the system that we had before, one with reasonable limits on megastructures, more availably explained tech levels, and a population consensus in which having something like a population of 200 trillion could be considered godmodding. Now, in order to take advantage of the “benefits” of this system, there would either need to be a significant amount of reworking of the lore/history of star nations, or someone would need to figure a pretty good ic excuse for why the statistics (for lack of a better word) of the nation are suddenly ballooning.
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Well it doesn’t really call for the abolition of the megastructure limit, that was just something Maverick suggested. So yeah, that’s it’s own conversation.

As for the gums, germs and steel argument. I personally think you’re looking at it too simplistically. Sure, higher resource availability can lead to faster technological advancement, but you also need to remember that these are nations, not hypothetical bodies: a civilization might not be focused in advancing it’s technology at all for cultural or historical reasons, and/or might have grown complacent in it’s current state. After all, technology answers to necessity in most cases: an isolated nation with no external pressures to develop and advance it’s technology, would be much more likely to stop doing that if there isn’t an explicit cultural interest in doing so.

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I generally think that the importance of population specifically is overblown. I mean, Trianar has a population of 37 trillion and yet I would not call Trianar weaker than Galactya or stronger than the the Tarassian Union (which has a population of less than one trillion) On this scale of technological development, the numbers of population aren’t really as important as how much technology a nation has, especially when nations like Galactya and Pelinai stretch the definition of what even counts as “population.”

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Yes, but the two are related. Reading Maverick’s post, his opinion on that matter is that,

I don’t think it’s all that unlikely that if the plot sizes are increased, the limit on megastructures would also be removed, or at least greatly increased. We shouldn’t be viewing them as completely separate matters, because we need to think of the broader impacts of the proposal before we decide to make such big changes to the canon.

While yes, I agree that this could be true, I think it’s more of a matter of whether it is true. That question is best left to the people who have actively chosen to create nations with lower tech levels, rather than us.

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You have a point, but at the same time, you need to think of the scale. Which of the two is a more significant difference?

  • A nation with a population of 1 vs. a nation with a population of 400 Trillion
  • A nation with a population of 1.5 quadrillion vs. a nation with a population of 2 Quadrillion
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For what it’s worth, I’m in favor of the changes but I think we should use that extra space to add more plots rather than increase the size of our plots. I see no benefit in just making the numbers bigger.

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I agree with this, actually. I voted based on something I had said previously, about how I liked the idea of the plots being bigger and extending into the other sector. However, that’s before some of the bigger numbers came into play. Based on my stance the matter, I think it would be somewhat hypocritical of me if I continued to vote for exactly what I didn’t want

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In terms of scale, the former, not the latter. In absolute numbers, obviously the latter. But I don’t really understand your point here. A nation with a population of 1 is probably ruled by a massive AI intelligence. For a biological species a population of “1” is completely nonviable. And this doesn’t really do anything to disprove my point of how irrelevant population can be when a nation of 755 billion can be as militarily powerful as a nation of 81.498 trillion.

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Population matters in military strength

I throw this example out as a purposeful disadvantage for my nation, being I can’t hold forever in attritional war, with Trianar, you have such a larger population whereby you can feed people to the grinder when needed

This is why I focus on Ewar, rather than trying to match anybody in the sector gun for gun, because I will lose in literally any engagement that isn’t majorly stacked in my favor (be it missile support, jamming, et. all), I focus on deception and stealth, because ambushing is my only way in, and why I’m requisitioning civilian ships for ambush/position holding roles

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I’d argue that you could simply spec into more ship automation. If you’re only losing ~100 people per ship compared to say ~1000s per ship you could hold on for much longer.

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Already have, working on fixing numbers for my destroyers and cruisers

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I’m sorry, I probably could have worded that better, but I feel like you missed the point. It was not for you to take literally as actual star nation populations, but for you to see the actual differences that we would be creating. You’re arguing that the population numbers don’t really matter in terms of strength, and I want to show you why that cannot hold up under the new population system.

1.5 and 2 are undoubtedly close numbers, I don’t think anyone can deny that. Now, lets look at Maverick’s poposed population cap.

1.5 quadrillion is only 3/10s of the population cap, and 2 quadrillion is only 2/5s (4/10s) of the proposed population cap, so not very large numbers in reference to that. Thus, it’s reasonable to assume we might get differences such as 1 quadrillion to 4 quadrillion. This is absolutely absurd when you consider that a difference of only half a quadrillion is 500 trillion, a number greater than even the current projected population of COE, which is Galaxiel and Mila’s post-enver war nation comprised of multiple plots and which will host a large population of virtuals. How many current A1-0 populations would we have to add together to get that number?
And, lets look at the irrelevant population difference that you proposed, 755 billion to 81.498 trillion. just doing the math in my head, that’s a difference equal to about 80 trillion. You know what 80 trillion is? 0.08 Quadrillion. Sure, you could argue that your example is plausible, but then consider that the difference that we would currently call significant is absolutely nothing compared to the proposed population limit.
And look, I get that this is only one of the very first proposals, and that it would likely go down as the discussion continues. What I’m trying to say is that we should by no means be approaching a population number of a quadrillion, because by then those populations are going to matter a whole lot.

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The average Rosecordi Vessel’s reaction when running into any enemy force in the Enver War

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Yeah, but also population influences technological development at the scales we’re considering. Think of a nation with 1 trillion people. We assume 0.1% of their population (1 billion) are focused on military research and development. Now, think of a nation with 1 quadrillion people and the same percentage of people focused on military R&D (1 trillion). The nation with 1 quadrillion people will get more things done in regards to military development because they just have significantly more people to throw at the problem at a scale we can barely fathom. You have a much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, higher chance at someone finding the solution to your problem or an idea that will revolutionize warfare with a thousand times more people working at it than the other nation.

Note: No cap is fine, although it would be nice if we as a community agreed not to have completely broken and insane population numbers like 1 quadrillion or something.

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I never said that I was in favor of a 5 quadrillion population limit (even 1 quadrillion is rather absurd) My point here was that generally the amount population actually matters is overblown.

I also don’t really think the usage of absolute numbers here is relevant. 2000 to 1000 is the same as 240 million to 120 million, in relative terms. In my example, the Tarassians to the Galactyans, the population increase is 10694%, rounded to the nearest whole number. The difference of 80 trillion to 5 quadrillion is 6150%. The percentage difference between your example and mine is way less different. Now, the difference between the Tarassians and the theoretical cap of 5 quadrillion is a whopping 662152% (rounded to nearest whole number) difference, which is so stupid that I don’t think caps of over 1 quadrillion should even be considered, let alone put into formal practice.

Let me put into perspective how much scale matters here. Word War 2 killed 85,000,000 people at the highest estimates. This was ~3% of the world population at the time. A war that killed 3% of people today would kill ~238,530,000 people. For the record, I agree with your take on a population cap of 5 quadrillion, but in the future, I would recommend using percents or multipliers to convey your argument because absolute numbers are very deceiving.

TL:DR yeah 5 quadrillion is stupid but your argument wasn’t very convincing to me

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This is true, with many asterisks.

For one, age is an issue here. An older, war-torn state will probably have more data to use than a new state with a comparatively cleaner history, regardless of population. Cultural factors can increase or decrease how much a state actually develops the military. Also, necessity is the mother of invention. If you can provide a historical need for an invention (within canon limits) being created, then there’s no further justification needed for its invention.

Technological development also matters more here. A state that is more technologically advanced probably has more and better supercomputers. That means more accurate simulations with more parameters and faster, more comprehensive analyzation of existing data. People using the help of this technology are probably going to make breakthroughs more easily than people using less advanced supercomputers and have to rely more on their own theories and physical experimentation.

Now, you could say “but what if a nation claims to have all of that AND a ridiculously high population” to which I say: the sector isn’t a game. It’s collaborative writing. The sector is not a grand strategy game which needs to put caps on everything lest players cheese the entire game, its a platform for collaborative writing. If someone is trying to claim to be the strongest nation to ever exist- well, that’s not very interesting to write with. Hard caps in RP where there is little to no IRL buildup and skill to acquiring numbers will just encourage people to hover just below the cap. If someone is doing something like this, don’t rp with them. They don’t exist. We can discuss the specific amount numbers matter all we want, but in the end, the numbers are only an element of worldbuilding. They don’t matter on their own, and they certainly don’t matter if someone only interested in godmodding their way to the top is using them.

With that, I probably won’t be writing any more responses today because I need to make dinner and this convo has been sucking time away from another project I was trying to have finished by today, so I won’t be seeing anything else form the forums until tmr. Take care and keep it respectful, y’all!

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201

Poll for the favored weapon of choice, first option being Guns

  • Smoothbore
  • Rifled
  • Plasma
  • Coilgun
  • Railgun
  • Other
0 voters
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What’s the difference between coilguns and railguns?

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