| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <plotd@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Another Dead Judge |
| Date: | Tue, 4 Aug 1998 00:07:32 +0100 |
Jameson <erikj@****.COM> writes
>At 04:46 PM 8/1/98 +0100, you wrote:
>>Corporate Shadowfiles, pages 57 to 61. The megas _do_ pay taxes, and
>>there _have_ been shooting incidents in the past over the issue, and the
>>megacorps (in the case mentioned, Aztechnology) backed down after taking
>>losses.
>
>But they don't pay anywhere near as much as they should (should be same
>pages). And yes, they've backed down because in the cost analysis, it was
>cheaper to pay some taxes than none at all.
But why? You don't hand over money without good reason.
>>Cybertechnology, Page 88, for FASA's opinion of what national militaries
>>think of megacorporations.
>
>Oh, I agree with that. I never said that a corporate army could go toe to
>toe with the UCAS Marines. But I think you and/or Mitchell are badly
>overvaluing the overall power of the UCAS and underestimating the power of
>the megas.
Nope. Especially not militarily, and economically too.
Erik, consider the cost of developing a modern fighter aircraft. The
EF2000 and the F-22 will both have consumed about ten to fifteen
_billion_ dollars to get to the first flying production model.
Now, few if any megacorps will buy critical assets from each other
(Saeder-Krupp buying Ares tanks/aircraft/missiles? Not exactly
likely...) so the _only_ customer for this stuff is national militaries.
Yet, how many can afford to consider purchasing state-of-the-art
fighters? How many air forces, even today, fly the 25-year-old F-15?
(Not many - the US, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia).
And selling such an aircraft is not like selling a car: it's a package
deal involving support and maintenance for twenty or thirty years.
We're supposed to believe that the UCAS is going to buy the sinews of
its national defence from a foreign power that says "By the way, we can
crush you tomorrow if we feel like it"?
If Ares maintains an aggressive, confrontational attitude towards
national governments, then the billions ploughed into development of
advanced weapon systems will have no buyers and represent money flushed
down the drain. Sure, Ares may be a world leader with the best air-
superiority fighter available, but if nobody who can afford it is
willing to buy from them, what was the point? Even megacorps can't
afford to flush billions away with no return, without serious
consequence.
Ares can make no profit without sales, and yet to make sales of major
military equipment it _must_ present as a stable, long-term ally. Or,
they make a "sale" that includes transfer of all IPR and design data on
the aircraft / missile / tank / whatever, because they are not trusted:
and so they lose out on the lucrative PDS contract, and the data they
spent billions developing is in the hands of their customers, to be
passed on to their competitors if necessary.
Ares _cannot afford_ to alienate a major customer. They _need_ sales and
yet they have no monopoly: other megacorps have sizeable defence
interests, as do other nations and smaller corporations.
>>Well, Erik, there FASA makes a major divergence from reality and their
>>own previous material. Ares doesn't have the troops. The UCAS does.
>
>Read your Shadowfiles again. They've got a lot of trained folks running
>around with big guns, much more than their standing military forces.
Those "trained folks" are needed to defend Ares sites and property:
weaken them too much and you're vulnerable. Those troops come at a
price, Erik. Costs to train them, costs to equip them, costs to replace
them - both to fill the gaps as men are deployed elsewhere, and to
recruit replacements as troops are killed in action.
Who's paying that cost? And if the answer's "nobody" then where's the
return for Ares?
>And
>it's in the FASA canon that Ares had to help the UCAS quell the riots after
>the Big D's death. That indicates to me that the UCAS had neither the
>military nor police force required to do the job itself, a megacorp had to
>step in.
Bear in mind that the UCAS was maintaining the Containment Zone at the
same time. Kind of an overstretch for _anyone_. Three divisions of
troops tied up in the sort of attrition warfare the Contaimnent Zone
represents would place the US today in a serious position, let alone the
UCAS.
>>Now, Ares was able to build up and sustain forces equal to even a tenth
>>of that grouping? I suggest you run a few numbers to work out just what
>>it would cost Ares to do that...
>
>Paul, come on, don't get snippy. You know as well as I do that few on TK
>or RN can dispute your knowledge of the military. But you've also got to
>realize that FASA doesn't have this knowledge and may have made canon
>statements regarding troop size without realizing if it was feasible or not.
Erik,
Horseshit.
If FASA claim that black is white then FASA's full of it.
Remember, their sourcebooks are written as files generated by anonymous
neo-Anarchists and held on a corporate-owned server (read Shadowplay for
some speculation as to who _really_ controls Shadowland). What "a neo-
anarchist believes" in a sourcebook and what the truth is, may be very
different things.
>You say that about 10K people were needed for the CZ.
Conservative minimum, and remember that's only the forces on the front
line. You need to triple that over time, to allow for the units training
up for their deployment to Chicago, and recovering and training
replacements after a tour of duty there.
> According to FASA,
>this was a *major* drain on their military resources, enough so that the
>Occupation Army incident (detailed in one of the novels, later is given
>full canon status in later sourcebooks though only briefly mentioned)
>creates a major stir because the UCAS is unable to respond militarily,
Is that a surprise? Three divisions tied up working Chicago. The US Army
_today_ only has ten.
>sufficiently. If that's really the case, the UCAS Army must be seriously
>down in numbers. Which also means that they may not be as strong as you
>believe. I wouldn't doubt if there were less than 100K (and perhaps 50K)
>front line troops left, for all four branches combined.
More likely around half a million. You're talking a smaller military
than Britain, it's simply impossible the UCAS could have manned the
Containment Zone on that force. The British military is being set up
(courtesy of the SDR) to deploy two reinforced brigades to two discrete
trouble spots. That's nowhere near the level needed to match the
Containment Zone.
Likely force levels - about 400,000 active duty, made up of 150,000
Navy, 50,000 Marine Corps, 200,000 Army and 100,000 Air Force.
Main force elements, six Army divisions, six CVBGs, eight MEUs, six
fighter wings, one bomber wing.
Recall, from FASA's own material, the UCAS has enough naval force to
still seperate carrier types: they have LPAs (the Wolverine-class)
embarking helicopters, Eagle VTOL fighters and a Marine battalion and
supercarriers like the Koontz.
In your version, the UCAS has fewer armed forces than the UK today,
while being surrounded by real or potential enemies and still
maintaining a division in attrition warfare over years. Not really
credible.
>Still a lot more
>than the megas have, but it's still down considerably from today. Might
>not make any military sense at all, but that's the sense I've gotten from
>FASA. I mean, we all know that the game rules don't mimic real life very
>well at all, right? Why should their treatment of the army be any different?
Because in Corporate Shadowfiles they at least tried to give a sense of
realism.
>>Erik - This is an old and well-worn argument, and one that's been gone
>>over several times now and in the past. You may find that not everyone
>>shares your views on the primacy of megacorporations.
>
>I don't expect them to. I don't believe the megas are ultra-powerful
>either. But I do think that the UCAS isn't anywhere near as strong as you
>posit.
Beg to differ. For both sides, conflict is too expensive to undertake.
But the UCAS can smash any single corporation. The corporations combined
have the power to destroy any nation... provided they remain united.
What else explains Zurich-Orbital and the Corporate Court?
>>As a single for-instance, I'm moderately versed in underwater weapons
>>development and use, and there's simply no way any corporation - "mega"
>>or not - could field any effective blue-water ASW force, especially
>>given their need for global coverage. You can buy a few ships and
>>weapons, but the training required is the key and it is _expensive_.
>
>Totally agreed Paul. Again, I never claimed that the megas could compete
>with the UCAS in the military side of the equation. That really is the
>single edge that the UCAS and other nations have over the megas. Since the
>UCAS doesn't need to make a profit, it can spend money on losing ventures
>like a navy.
"Losing" ventures indeed. It's the price of survival. (Hey, you're
talking to a Brit here :) )
I'd refer you to _Paukenschlag_, or Operation Drumbeat, the great "happy
time" off the US East Coast in early 1942, for an example of what crude
submarines with poor weapons can accomplish against merchant shipping:
five small, slow, crude submarines sank 27 ships totalling nearly
200,000 tons in a few weeks, without loss, in the very first
_Paukenschlag_ patrol. Overall, the "happy time" accounted for three
hundred ships totalling over two million tons in the first six months of
1942.
_That_ is the reality of unrestricted submarine warfare against
commerce. If FASA and the "neo-anarchists" who write the sourcebooks
have forgotten it, the UCAS Navy has not, and they've yet to produce a
sourcebook of their own.
And remember always that this was not against some helpless foe:
Doenitz' U-boats were opposing the might of the US Navy as they achieved
this feat. Extrapolate that, replacing seven-knot Type XI U-boats with
2050s-era hunter-killer SSNs and unguided G7 straight-running torpedoes
with modern weapons, and ask which corporation can survive such losses.
>>The Big Eight, combined, have the economic muscle to crush any nation
>>that makes an unprovoked assault on a corporation. But, no
>>megacorporation can engage in open conflict with a major nation alone
>>and win: and megacorps have a vested interest in _not_ weakening or
>>threatening their customers.
>
>I'd say that Ares alone (in 2059) could crush the UCAS.
How?
Ares is simply too isolated and too weak within the UCAS (with all
available forces plus reserves mobilised and interdicting their every
move, Ares UCAS is in deep kimchi), and if they tried such a move, not
only would many other nations join in either open military or covert
economic (note to Ministry of Defence and Department of Trade: _never_
buy Ares goods!) warfare, but so would many of Ares' competitors who
resented losing a lucrative market.
What nation would _ever_ purchase any Ares product that might require
maintenance, support or any Ares involvement after such an incident, win
or lose, when there are less openly aggressive and violent sellers
available?
>>unlikely move. Does the name Yvonne Fletcher ring any bells?
>
>No.
Female police officer. Killed while keeping the peace at a demonstration
outside the Libyan People's Bureau during the 1980s: someone inside the
embassy opened up with a machinegun, wounding several of the protesters
and killing WPC Fletcher. The embassy was evacuated and cleared, the
Libyans insisted they had diplomatic immunity, and her murderer went
home unpunished.
That's not something that lends favour to the notion of
"extraterritoriality" in Britain. Don't like the lack of
extraterritorial status? Nobody's forcing you to trade here, pal...
>>Tough. Mitchell is massively pissed off at the Marketeer. Debating corps
>>versus nations, fine, no problem. Cheap shots at the men who died beside
>>Mitchell fighting bugs, that's a _very_ low blow. So the Marketeer's a
>>cripple? So what? That give him some special dispensation?
>
>I didn't say upset, I said shocked, as in suprised. Cheap shots?
>Marketeer doesn't know the men, doesn't know what happened, doesn't care.
Too bad. Hang with some soldiers for a while :)
Seriously, go find a British Army soldier, preferably a Para or a Royal
Marine, and tell him "You guys aren't much use, and I especially think
you screwed up in the Falklands."
Make sure your medical insurance is paid up first, though. You will
provoke a very strong reaction. Possibly a violent one.
The fact that you don't know what happened and don't really care will,
if expressed, make your fate more rather than less painful: if you don't
know and don't care why did you open your stupid yap in the first place?
>He didn't go about profaning their memory though.
Actually, he did: he was dismissive of a cause Mitchell and others shed
blood for, while earning less in a year than a shadowrunner does for one
operation: and then he chickened out of saying what was done wrong and
how it could be done better.
Tread carefully around dead comrades.
>Mitchell could care less
>about shadowrunners dieing. Why should he be suprised by the mirror reaction?
Because his men died for a cause and for their country, not as thieves
for hire: they fought to protect their fellow citizens, not for the
fattest paycheque on offer: because one reason Marketeer's sitting smug
and happy in his wheelchair without a giant bug snacking on his brains
is that so many of the soldiers he dismisses so casually died fighting,
instead of running away or refusing to get involved.
When can you say the same about shadowrunners? There are exceptions like
ODIN, but most won't move without a fat paycheque. What has the
Marketeer ever done to help his fellow man? On stated form... nothing.
He's a high-tech thief, nothing more.
>>You stand up for your troops, Erik. Especially against whining SINless
>>civilians sniping from the sidelines.
>>
>>"Hey, all those friends you fought with, lots of whom are now dead? I
>>say they were wasting their time and I could have done way better if I'd
>>been in charge, and they're dead anyway so deal with it..."
>
>Marketeer never said *he* could do better.
He never even bothered to say what was done wrong, just blurted that
"you didn't do so great". Since it's not his country and he doesn't pay
taxes, what does he care?
>And it's part of what a
>civilian, especially civilian politicans, should do.
When did anyone elect Marketeer? If he isn't happy, use his vote. Oh,
he's a SINless professional criminal. Too bad.
>Snipe at the
>military, the police, anyone that wields tremendous real power.
<Heh> Erik, you've spent paragraphs telling me how weak the UCAS
military are. If they wield no real power then Marketeer has no business
sniping at them, he should be attacking their Ares paymasters.
One thing or another.
>Yes, it
>sucks to be sniped at and be called into question. Asking questions of
>them if for no other reason than to make them rationalize their actions and
>be able to defend them. I don't have to know dick about strategy and
>tactics to call a manuver into question.
Just suggest a better alternative. Too many friends have been in the
position you describe: it's a little bit personal.
Remember, the military does _not_ make policy. The military carries out
the orders it receives from the Government. Same in the UK as it is in
the US, and as it ends up in the UCAS: elected officials say "Go!" and
the soldiers go.
Don't like it? Bitch at the politicians, not at the troops. They don't
get to choose the missions, or their leaders.
>But the alternative is to let
>them run roughshod; it's merely a small way of keeping those forces in
>check.
Again - suggest something better. And target those who make the
decisions, not those who carry them out.
--
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and
praiseworthy...
Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk
