- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| Greymark Question and Answer; An Opportunity for Clarification; Credit to Tehraani | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 9 2012, 08:13 PM (431 Views) | |
| Deleted User | Apr 9 2012, 08:13 PM Post #1 |
|
Deleted User
|
First off, thanks to Tehraani for the idea. Now to business. Greymark, as an extreme stratocracy, can be a difficult country around which to wrap one's mind. In endeavoring to understand the complexities of a country that is also an army, the first resource for any questions must be the Greymark Factbook. However, I understand that this is a work in progress, and likely will remain so until late this summer. Moreover, it would not have the answers to every possible question even if completed. So I'm opening this thread to more specific and detailed questions, or to requests for information pertinent to RPing which is not yet available on the factbook. I am at your disposal! |
|
|
| Replies: | |
|---|---|
| Lamoni | Apr 11 2012, 02:41 AM Post #11 |
![]()
II RP Mentor
|
While NS nations can have more carriers than were built IRL, that would not be true for a nation the size of Greymark, even if only military production was focused on. The laws of economics don't change, just because you only focus on military production. |
![]() |
|
| Canhadast | Apr 11 2012, 02:46 AM Post #12 |
![]()
Administrator
|
Yeah, I agree. Another thing, though, is that in WWII the US had about 100 carriers. But the US could never have 100 modern carriers today. As technology changes, that stuff gets really expensive. And simply not paying your workers wages or paying for materials to be processed doesn't really address why they are expensive. So even if you were to divide that number by 10 and claim they were all Kitty Hawk class in size, but not in technology, that's still fairly ridiculous, because you are taking the most expensive part about the carriers (the aircraft, electronics, and countermeasures) and keeping that, but dropping the stuff that isn't really all that hard, like the hull construction. |
![]() |
|
| Deleted User | Apr 11 2012, 06:03 AM Post #13 |
|
Deleted User
|
I'm sorry to see that this thread has been hijacked by a single number; I had hoped that it would be a chance for people to ask broader questions about Greymark, rather than focusing on statistics which they find unbelievable. Nevertheless, consider this. According to Rie's figures, to build 1400 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers would cost about six trillion dollars; with maintenance costs, let's call that ten trillion dollars spent over thirty years. Now: the original cost of building smaller, simpler carriers would be much lower, and spread out over a much longer time: let's say two to three trillion dollars for initial construction spread out over fifty years. That gives us a per-year construction cost of forty to sixty billion dollars: expensive, but well within the realm of possibility, especially with low labor costs and minimal imported materials. Now let's say that the cost of modernizing such a carrier is about two-thirds the cost of a new Nimitz-class, since modern electronics, aircraft, and countermeasures are the most expensive parts of production. That gives us a cost of three billion per carrier, with 1400 carriers, spread out over fifty years; that gives us eighty-four billion dollars a year, for a total cost of construction and modernization of 124 to 144 billion dollars a year. That's a substantial chunk of per annum defense spending, but not impossible. Moreover, Greymark suffers in most of its units, carriers included, from a technological lag time of about a decade, on average; some carriers will be fully modernized, most will look like they stepped out of the late nineties, and some will look like a vision of the 1970s. In the end, let me just ask you to consider this: if you took every factory in the US dedicated to making shipping parts of any sort, every shipyard that made every commercial vessel in America, and turned them all, every single one, toward producing naval vessels, with a significant portion of them focused on aircraft carriers - is it impossible to believe that over the course of fifty years, they might make well over a thousand carriers? I do not find it so; I find it almost a natural conclusion. Herein lies the difference from the brony example; while the evolution of horses is so speculative as to be inconceivable, I find it possible to imagine relevant, if massively unlikely, circumstances under which military production at the Greymarker level could exist in the real world as it currently stands. If there is no civilian naval production, if the only ships made for fifty years were naval vessels, do you really find it so impossible to believe that production figures could reach such heights? At any rate, let me reiterate my opening point. I am willing to argue over these numbers, but I would rather answer bona fide questions about Greymark, rather than defending the feasibility of its existence. If anyone has any questions about culture, education, living conditions, languages and ethnic groups, or anything else, then such queries are most welcome. |
|
|
| Quendi | Apr 11 2012, 02:35 PM Post #14 |
|
Unfortunately I doubt anyone is willing to accept the 1400 carrier group number, so discussing anything else is probarbly postponed indefinitely. The thing is the US couldn't make all its factories produce military equipment if it wanted to. Where then should the trains transporting raw materials, the cars bring workers too and from thier workplaces, the equipment to produce weaponry etc. etc. etc. come from? Being a stratocracy doesn't give one carte blanche to devote all the national ressources to military production. While you can have 100 % of the total population in the armed forces you can't have 100 % of the total population performing exclusively military roles. The vast majority of inhabitants in your stratocracy will be involved in industries which supports actual military performance. That of course also mean you have no need for 1400 Kitty Hawk class aircraft carriers. With, what, 5,000 personel aboard each that would mean that 20 % of your population would be crew on an aircraft carrier. Thats simply not possible. From where would those people get food, medicine and other basic neccesities? Where would fuel, weaponry, maintenance for the vessels come from? What about the children I assume your state has some of? Who looks after them, who provides medical care to the mothers during and after pregnancy? What about the elderly? Who takes care of them? What about construction of homes for the population? For every person aboard a carrier in actual military service there has to be ten others on the "home front". |
![]() |
|
| Deleted User | Apr 11 2012, 02:45 PM Post #15 |
|
Deleted User
|
Folks, I've been thinking, and I've come to the following conclusion. Greymark matters to me; I poured hours of my life into writing that damn factbook, and I've already started a quite successful school RP in Greymark. But the respect and friendship of the members of Pardes matters a hell of a lot more. Greymark is conceived as an army-state; if it is impossible, in the opinion of this forum, to realistically represent that in NS, then Greymark has no place in Pardes. So I am willing to allow Greymark, despite my work on it, to die a natural death. For those nations invested in its history, they can either maintain their ties to a now-NPC nation, or retcon them; it is up to you. If we are agreed that this is the best way to address the insurmountable issues posed by the inherent structure of the Greymarker stratocracy, then I would like to immediately move a new nation into Pardes in order to replace Greymark; my motive in allowing Greymark to die, after all, is to retain my ties to this region and the people in it. Those of you who know me as Norvenia understand that I have a soft spot for moral crusaders; accordingly, I have plans for a kind of democratic Christian theocracy, a fairly small country that serves as a historic refuge for persecuted denominations which have since merged into a single church and a single nation (and the line between the two is not clear). In some sense, it will serve as a kind of Norvenia-in-Pardes, with tremendous moral influence and an unquestioning - sometimes unwise - adherence to its ideals. It will be quite prosperous, with a large tertiary sector, and a fairly small but very well-equipped and well-trained military, with a core of elite soldier-monks trained from early childhood; the real defense, though, will be that the nation is a highly mountainous island - a natural fortress, bolstered by centuries of fortifications. Government will be by clergy, but those clergy will be democratically elected to their positions. Ritual and religious culture will look very Roman Catholic and in some cases Byzantine, but theology will lean toward Calvinism. I will have a thread to invite participation in national history; I'll start work on the factbook in fairly short order. If anyone has any pressing issues with this idea, please let me know NOW; I don't want to have a repeat of this thread's events. Once again, I am sorry to see Greymark go, but the respect and friendship of the members here are more important to me than my work on any single nation. I cannot thank you, but I can at least ask for your respect and friendship in return, the fate of Greymark notwithstanding. It would mean a great deal to me to know that I have them. |
|
|
| Canhadast | Apr 12 2012, 09:53 AM Post #16 |
![]()
Administrator
|
See, this is a fairly good way to address the issue, and I am glad that you aren't blindly sticking to Greymark. However, should you ever decide to have an army-state in the future, just remember that they tend to look more like Sparta (Not 300 Sparta, but massive slave holding populations, backwards culture, and all technology is at least 50 years out of date Sparta), Malaysia during it's term as a stratocracy, or North Korea, rather than The US Marines circa 1990 if they became a nation. |
![]() |
|
| Deleted User | Apr 12 2012, 04:39 PM Post #17 |
|
Deleted User
|
With all due respect, I appreciate your input, but after having caused me to abandon a nation on which I worked for months, you might be better advised - from an emotional standpoint - just to let the issue drop. Okay? |
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · National Info · Next Topic » |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| Theme: Zeta Original | Track Topic · E-mail Topic |
9:31 AM Jul 11
|









9:31 AM Jul 11