anyone up for another Chiron Chronicles?

[Mellian]

hence why i suggested starting in 2200...and now thinking possibly pushing the starting date a bit later.

after we figured out some of the basics, we could also collectively figure the general chironian timeline, mentioning first contacts, major events, wars, seperation of the crossfire factions from the original factions, establishment of the planetary council, alien crash landings, and etc to help form the starting atmosphere in the world of chiron.

-mellian

[Illuminatus]

I would move the timelime to 2210 or 2220 for two reasons: factions are reaching of fusion/orbital age which would take time and this is not a regular SMAX game, + enough time for splinter factions to develop. Does someone agree?

[Sovereign]

2210 - 2225 sounds good, Obstructor.

I think after 110 - 125 years on Chiron, Humanity would have a considerable population, well developed bases, and the beginnings of "globalism" with communication, information exchanges, etc.

I think, with a considerable population growth, setting up mines and farms ASAP, etc. upon planetfall, Humanity would have a pretty good infrastructure in place to confront either each other, or the Progenitors.

[Illuminatus]

Exactly. Anyway, should we make Progenitors ahead in tech?

[Mellian]

i wouldn't say that the factions would have a considerable population, but something like under or around a million i mean...

while there is the beginnings of 'globalism', there is still plenty of room left for expansion, exploration and to fight over, especially at key resources and landmarks

they would have enough infracture, and tech, to build and maintain cruisers, needlejets and etc with beginnings into the use of Fusion and starting to shoot stuff up into space with Orbital Spaceflight tech... but wouldn't be big enough to field entire large armies. like, fielding a regiment of infantry would be quite a task, while Battalion and smaller units is more common. so would be like armies of today nations, where you don't need big armies like in world war two and previous wars to wage war.

As for the Proginators...yes they would be more advance. proginators would have been on chiron for at least 10-15 years when the story starts, where they may kept to themselves at during that time, with sparse contact with humanity. They could be the reasons why the chironians really started to globalize themselves, with the help of satellites when they start shooting them up, using the planetary council to cooperate a bit concerning the aliens who are still generally unknown and still no direct contact with them.

-mellian

[Illuminatus]

Ahem, one million ! And we should keep the realism, yeah.

Isn`t a bit odd that a faction cannot field a regiment but can launch a satellite into orbit? Must be that they got that tech somehow from Progenitors.

[Mellian]

more or less 500k then, whatever...

considering the size of their population, fielding regiment size units (the average size regiment in real life is what...1000+ people?) would end up having a good chunk of the population being part of the military.

of course, some factions would definatly have reserves, or have at least half or most of the population combat trained like the spartans for example...but in constant active military duty?

we would start the story with no war/conflict happening, unless some authors want to start the story in war *shrugs*

so really, there is no point, or cost effective, to field units. always thought the standard infantry unit would be a battalion, while rovers, needlejets and choppers would be platoons/company/squadrons. naval ships would would be single ship units.


as for shooting up satellites...you don't need to able to field regiments to be able to field satellites, which mainly only needs the infrastructure and technology. units require people in comparison. i can see some factions try to find alternatives in regards of human resources and support.

-mellian

[Sovereign]

I think, with the instinct and desire to survive, humans on Chiron would try to have as many children as possible.

After 100 - 125 years, 10,000 people could go up to a million.

I propose that every faction has a maximum of 1 million at the start of the story, around 2210 - 2225. The Hive should have 1.5 million due to its aceticism and communal nature, and the Peacekeepers should have 1.2 million due to its population growth bonus (I forgot the exact nature of the bonus from in-game). Or leave Peacekeepers at 1 million.

Thats my 2 cents for now.

[Mart]

Peacekeepers have one additional "talent" citizen per every four in a base. Plus they kinda more booming due to population floccing to them more than to others.

[Illuminatus]

And raised limit for population too. Still, a faction cannot afford to field a regiment, but can afford cost to shot up satelites?

[Sovereign]

Well, Obstructor, let me put it this way...

There's two kinds of currency in Chiron.

Energy / money.

People.


You can't field big armies yet during the first 1 or 2 centuries on Chiron.

You might have enough Energy / Money.

BUT.... You won't have enough People.

You can field big armies if your population is high enough, like 10 - 20 million or more. This is because there will be plenty of people to run infrastructure, farm, mine, oversee machinery, take care of daily faction needs, etc. while leaving millions of people to work jobs or be available for conscriptions.

The USA has a standing army of about 2 million people. I could be wrong, but I remember reading that somewhere. I believe divisions and task forces have like 100,000 people each.

With a population of 1 million, 100,000 people is quite a lot, especially when everybody's trying to farm, mine, build colonies, etc.

But if a faction has 10 million people, then a division of 100,000 people won't put a serious dent in the population "resource" of the faction.



Space flight is quite a different story.

The considerable Energy / Money requirements can be met.

People "currency" cost isn't high.

Therefore, it is affordable.


IIRC, in Houston and Cape Canaveral, I think there may be at most 10,000 people working with or for NASA. However, with robotics and automation, the number of people can be reduced to maybe 5,000.

5,000 out of 1 million people is pretty much neligible. Then the only question left is the raw resources and money needed to launch such a program. That won't be a big issue on Chiron. There would be plenty of metals, plastics, etc. which leaves the money issue.

If a faction is willing to invest considerable sums, it can achieve space flight and support a NASA style corporation or institution to maintain the faction's space program for the short term.


Hope this helps, Obstructor.

[Mellian]

also considering the longivity technology they brought with them from earth, a long with 2060 medical tech at first which will evolve to more improvements and discoveries as time goes on chiron... they could sustain a better rate of growth of population, especially if some factions may dabble into genetics, cloning and artificial wombs

yet even, around one thousand per faction to grow up to a million over a hundred years later? what would be the rate of birth year have to be? also consider the early years dangers they face before they feel comfortable...

anyway, overall, exact population size should be abstract in the story...

as for militar units....didn't say anything on how many units a faction can field, i just saying that a single unit should be a battalion for infantry, or platoon/company/squadron for mechanical units like rovers, aircrafts and etc...with single ship per naval unit.

it is a realistic limit for unit sizes, and varying unit sizes per faction caused problems of its own and unrealism in Chiron Chronicles...so not interested in seeing that repeated.



-mellian

[Trithemius]

Originally posted by Mellian
as for militar units....didn't say anything on how many units a faction can field, i just saying that a single unit should be a battalion for infantry, or platoon/company/squadron for mechanical units like rovers, aircrafts and etc...with single ship per naval unit.

Regardless of what people call them (battalion abteilung, cohort, etc...) standardised sizes are probably a sound idea.

What about:
300-1,000ish for Infantry.
12-25ish for Vehicles (possibly more for lighter vehicles than for heavier varieties?).
12-25ish for Aircraft.
2-5ish capital ships, plus support craft; or a horde of skimships for Naval.

This gives some relatively flexible numbers, but leaves terminology up to the writer.

[Mellian]

100- 1000 for Infantry per Unit

12-15 for Rovers, Crawlers, Hovertanks, etc per Unit

12-15 Needlejets, Choppers, Gravships, etc per Unit

1 Cruiser, Foil, and etc. per Unit (will have to check the manual for the size of a Foil when i come back home...)

5-15 Probes in a Probe Team unit


-mellian

[Sovereign]

Mellian, I must disagree a bit about ship fleets.

I believe this would be better....

1 Unit = 1 ship of cruiser class or higher.

1 Unit - 2 - 3 ships of Destroyer and Frigate class

1 Unit = 5 - 10 Transport ships

How can 1 transport cram in 8 infantry units, which can be up to maybe 10,000 people? That would be a floating city. Not to mention ALL the equipment, supplies, ammo, guns, etc. that the infantry would need.

I think 5 - 10 transports per 1 Unit would be reasonable. That way, it would be realistic to transport 8 to 16 units (I think the max units per transport was 16) of infantry, rovers, tanks, or hover tanks. Along with all the support equipment, supplies, food, ammo, etc.

[Illuminatus]

No one understand my point - it is not about people it is about infrastructure ( I hate when people completely misunderstand an argument) -

I have often been asked: if we have traveled between the stars,
why can we not launch the simplest of orbital probes? These fools
fail to understand the difficulty of finding the appropriate
materials on this Planet, of developing adequate power supplies,
and creating the infrastructure necessary to support such an
effort. In short, we have struggled under the limitations of a
colonial society on a virgin planet. Until now.
^
^ -- Col. Corazon Santiago,
^ "Planet: A Survivalist's Guide"

It is not the people resource question - it is simpler to arm an regiment of impact men than to launch a satelite since satelite requires a ton of things, like materials, power, and certainly not manpower. (BTW - I think that each faction cant afford more then 10 000 standing troops - I mean they are developing and cant support such an army.).

Well we will have to drop population as realistic, but it was just an thought - 1000 000 after planetfalling with 1000? Do the colonist do anything excapt multiplying?

[GeoModder]

To have about a population of 1.000.000 after one century, every woman must give birth to 7-8 children each 25 years.

And that is without taking natural losses into account (death by accident, old age, war,...)

[Sovereign]

Sorry, Obstructor.

I understand now.

Lets say in year 2100, upon planetfall, each faction is stuck with the necessities.

Nutrients, breathing masks, basic tools, some mining equipment, some pre-fabricated material for house building, etc.

Then 50 years pass. Colonies are established. Infrastructure grows, and technology improves to Earth pre-Unity levels. People already know how to do technologies. They don't have to re-invent anything like the plane, computers, rockets, etc.

After all, the BEST of the BEST were put on Unity, not some retards.

Turn the clock to Year 100.

The colonists have grown a lot, having a solid infrastructure set in place. They have resources coming in, economies are growing, towns / cities expanding, etc.

With a solid infrastructure, especially with computers and metals, a faction can send up rockets. They simply have to add a module to the rocket, and fire it off much like we did with our satellites before the Space Shuttle.

The computers can calculate the mass, fuel requirements, rocket trajectory, etc. while the metals and gases can be put together into a rocket.

Build a computer with several antennas and radio stuff, shoot it up into space.


There's no space cities, huge stations, space factories, etc. yet. I think Mellian meant the basics, such as basic radio satellites.


A good parallel with this would be the colonization and development of the USA. North America was colonized in the 1600's. Then by the 1700's it had a decent economy, several dozen cities going, and some military.

However, it took until the 1900's to research and develop the technologies.

I am pretty sure that if the USA was colonized in the 1900's, it'd be able to shoot rockets and stuff within 100 years.

[Illuminatus]

Radio satelittes? Has sence. I thought she thought on SHL and OPTs. Anyway, can we get this started already

[Sovereign]

Actually, on Chiron, we'd already have the know-how to use modern technologies, so we wouldn't have to research them for 20, 30, 40 years all over again.

Another example...

Leonardo Da Vinci. He was considered a genius of all geniuses in the 1400's.

But we, in the 2000's are just as smart and knowledgable as Leonardo Da Vinci. Vinci researched how to build gliders, submarines, catapults, etc. but the common man in the 2000's knows the basics of these things.


I guess what I'm trying to say is... on Chiron, we already have the know-how to do things. Thus, we can colonize and modernize a lot faster than the USA was colonized and modernized from 1600 to 2000. The USA went from a simple colony to the only Superpower in the world in a mere 350 - 375 years.

That was with the technology research, and without the modern technology "know-how".

That said, 100 - 125 years sounds like a reasonable time for a faction with all the modern "know-how" stuff to build a nation, cities, mines, etc. then get ready for shooting radio and communication satellites into space.


Whew. A lot of typing.

Then again, debates are fun!

[Sovereign]

Yah I know Obstructor.

Git, Mellian! Schnell! Schnell!

[Mellian]

yes, i am keeping in mind of that quote, while also keeping in mind that they are not dealing with mid-20th to early 21st century technology or that they limited by a present day ever increasing inflationg capitalistic economy. also helps that they base their currency on energy, and that they can in time acquire all the resources they need on Chiron.

how about we started the story at the year 2250 instead, with the average faction population size of 100k-200k, which will be generally abstract in the story for story sake. the highest general planetary tech of level 6, not counting the Proginators who may be more advance yet behind infrastructure wise while quickly catching up.

keep in mind that, tech wise, there will also probably be some more tech trades and espionage happening than what the game seem to make seem, and that some of the techs in the game also signifies at what stage of infrastructure they are at, and that some techs are tied into to others.

like, Industrial Automation would definatly help free up a portion of the population to do other things while still increasing level of production.

-mellian

[Sovereign]

Originally posted by GeoModder
To have about a population of 1.000.000 after one century, every woman must give birth to 7-8 children each 25 years.

And that is without taking natural losses into account (death by accident, old age, war,...)

It IS feasible.

Suppose a woman decides to have a kid every year from 15 years old (when her womb becomes fertile) to around 40 - 45 (when her womb dies out)....

That would give us 20 - 30 children total.

However, maintaining such a huge family isn't feasible. Perhaps with the Hive due to its communal nature.


So we reduce that to maybe 10 kids over a lifetime. Then 3 or 4 of these kids die either during childhood, or during their adult years.

In addition, gene altering of sexes is possible today.

Men can produce far more children than women, due to the man being ths sperm donor while the female carries the infant and nurses him / her.

Thereotically, a faction could alter the sex of their kids to produce a population of this...

80% women, 20% men.

This would ensure that the women are always producing babies.

The women who are pregnant, or just gave birth could work academic, secretary, and bureaucratic jobs, while the men manage the hard tasks such as construction, mining, and farming.

Once the population levels out, women would be free to pursure whatever jobs or careers they desire.

Survival of the Human race overrides all social and cultural issues. After all, Humans don't want to become extinct.

[Sovereign]

Ok, I just finished calcuating population growth on a spreadsheet.

I set the # of years = 125. Years 2100 to 2225.

I entered Starting Population of 10,000.

I entered 5 possible annual population growth rates. 1%, 2%, 4%, 7%, and 10%.

Here's the results I got...

Year 1 = 10,000 people per faction

1% growth by Year 125 = 34,300 people

2% growth by Year 125 = 116,500 people

4% growth by Year 125 = 1,294,600 people

7% growth by Year 125 = 44,013,000 people

10% growth by Year 125 = 1,357,353,477 people!

1.3 billion people with a 10% growth in just 125 years. Hot Damn!

I think our factions should have somewhere between 2.5% to 4% population growth annually.

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by Mellian
.

how about we started the story at the year 2250 instead, with the average faction population size of 100k-200k, which will be generally abstract in the story for story sake. the highest general planetary tech of level 6, not counting the Proginators who may be more advance yet behind infrastructure wise while quickly catching up.

keep in mind that, tech wise, there will also probably be some more tech trades and espionage happening than what the game seem to make seem, and that some of the techs in the game also signifies at what stage of infrastructure they are at, and that some techs are tied into to others.

like, Industrial Automation would definatly help free up a portion of the population to do other things while still increasing level of production.

-mellian

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by Sovereign
Ok, I just finished calcuating population growth on a spreadsheet.

I set the # of years = 125. Years 2100 to 2225.

I entered Starting Population of 10,000.

I entered 5 possible annual population growth rates. 1%, 2%, 4%, 7%, and 10%.

Here's the results I got...

Year 1 = 10,000 people per faction

1% growth by Year 125 = 34,300 people

2% growth by Year 125 = 116,500 people

4% growth by Year 125 = 1,294,600 people

7% growth by Year 125 = 44,013,000 people

10% growth by Year 125 = 1,357,353,477 people!

1.3 billion people with a 10% growth in just 125 years. Hot Damn!

I think our factions should have somewhere between 2.5% to 4% population growth annually.

You now see why natural growth is not measured in percentages but rather by 1/1000s (forgot the english word).

[Mellian]

okay, here is the basic story settings draft:

-story starts on mission year 2250

-average population size per faction is between 200k to 500k

-general planetary tech would be at level six, with faction basicly started dabbling with orbital spaceflight, fusion power, magtubes, and Mind/Machine interface (which the cyborgs basicly already had for a while now).

impact (rail/gauss) weapony is the most common and basic weaponry on planet, while the most common military grade weapons would be Chaos (disruptors, bolt energy) and Missiles (indirect projectiles of various types).

silksteel is the most commonly used type of armor, while plasma and synth steels is still used in some areas, mainly by lower teched factions.

while now gradually, and quickly with some factions, being replaced by fusion, fission is still mostly used at the moment.

average faction been using cruisers for the last 50+ years and needlejets for the last 20+ years.


-basicly, a new era age in Chiron history is beginning, with a planetary economy really starting to form, and sense of 'globalism'.

-a long with the beginning of a new age, the aliens is becoming more and more of a threat to humanity on Chiron.

-time progression in the story would be that an author can go more than 1 story month than the latest dated story post, while they cannot go more than 3 story months before the latests dated post. so, it would be really encouraged that authors post the story date of when their story post happens in the story.

-faction placement, and base placement will be figured out soon after the story settings are agreed upon, followed by a the acceptance of a basic starting general timeline which can be filled as the story goes on.

-as for standard unit sizes...

100-1000 per Infantry Unit

12-15 per Rover/Crawler/HoverTank/etc Unit

12-15 per Needlejet/Chopper/Gravship/etc Unit

1 per Frigate/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship/Carrier/Submarine/etc Unit (those units are base on the Doctrine: Initiative tech)

1-5 per Naval Transport Unit

1-5 per Foil Unit

-Planetary Council as been established for like 50+ years now, and mainly just the faction leaders having their council in a virtual world council room thing. UN Charter is 'enforced', and present planetary governor is Lal for now, until someone calls for an election in the council in the story

okay, anything else i miss? is this agreeable?

-mellian

[Illuminatus]

No objections.

[Sovereign]

Good rough draft. I like.

Now I'm waiting to get cracking.

[GeneralTacticus]

No objections here.