Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tryrar]

IIRC the Army Corps of Engineers IS still an army unit(hence it is still military), so call us an engineer unit or a militia, but why are you guys so dead set against having a military?

Ok let me ask you this: how is a militia NOT necessary? Just because this is a primarily desert moon doesn't mean we are safe from hostiles

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Combat engineers... It's nice in fact. But  I suggest to reinforce our habitation blocks, that's far more important than barracks or making designated military base right now.

We have zero housing problems... but we will have if we fail to fortify our habitation before something bad happens

Using military hull plating ( and stones)  will help to protect habitation modules against:

a) Storms
b) Radiation ( Spaceships are build with assumption that they need to block radiation)
c) Whatever Enemy fire
d) Temperatures - more insulation is always good.

Barracks may get used as a vehicle bay, right now we have absolutely no need to separate combatants from civilians, even if we choose to have a dedicated militia.

I am 100% sure that we do have radio in the cargoship, APC and mining vehicles. Plus some personal

[Gentlefish]

Why do we need a military?

Work on procuring fish tanks and try to find genetic information for any kind of aquatic creature I can.

"...Aha! The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis! ...Well, I'll look some more before relying on that."

If I can't find any aquatic creatures, try to find annelid or mollusk DNA or something. Use whatever DNA I could find and try to turn the creature into a tasty creature to grow and eat.

Wahaha, glass is useful! Anyway,

Help Prahlow with fish Gengineering, making sure the best qualities for an aquatic creature to thrive on a barren planet are chosen.

[xtank5]

A military is a good idea for our world in case of marauding pirates/mercenaries/etc who may or may not have a rational reason to raid our colony.

Pretty much everything sounds good so far but I do have a few gripes.

• Windmills aren't going to last very long up where the wind is.  Sand storms will quickly erode the blades, pedestals, generators, everything critical to generating power.  Putting them out of the way of the wind would defeat their purpose so windmills would only be a waste of resources at this time.  However, if we acquired water and the appropriate metal salts we could do as someone else suggested and create another solar power plant with these as collectors which we can hide out of the way of the wind but where they can still receive sunlight.
• A fence around a military base is also pointless for the same reasons as windmills.  Biocrete pillars with radio beacons delineating the boundaries might be a better idea, but for now we don't really need a large base, not until we start having decent population growth.

It appears that the hulk  has been reduced to it's structural elements not including the hull plating.  We should get to work on recycling the (what I presume is) steel.  Then we can use it to make the coilgun emplacements that tryrar wanted.

On that note Pyotr might wish to begin looking into ways to build very large capacitor banks using locally sourced materials.  He may also wish to figure out a way to harvest energy from the static electricity of the sand storms.  This is his decision though.

From what I gather, the crashed ship was military (by the damaged military plating we scavenged off the wreck), and it was probably lost during the war 80 years ago.  That means the encryption techniques are 80 years out of date and somebody ought to be able to crack the encryption.  We should get someone working on that right away.  For all we know the ship's logs might have useful information about the local system including potential hazards on the other planets.  It is critical we get that data so we can safely proceed to harvest water and other resources from the water planet I hope to call Lympha (although the logs may provide its original name too).

In the meantime, Stefan will begin drawing up plans for a semi-automated factory that can be quickly re-tooled to produce nearly anything given the proper materials.  Hopefully the factory would take advantage the scavenged electronics and database system.

[GreatWyrmGold]

IIRC the Army Corps of Engineers IS still an army unit(hence it is still military), so call us an engineer unit or a militia, but why are you guys so dead set against having a military?

Ok let me ask you this: how is a militia NOT necessary? Just because this is a primarily desert moon doesn't mean we are safe from hostiles

...Where would the hostiles come from, that they don't have a ship?
Explain how a militia would protect us from a spaceship attack. Even if they want to raid, and not destroy, it would make sense that they wuld stay out of personal-weapon-range and threaten to bomb our settlement if we didn't hand over X. Assuming that a couple hundred people on an isolated desert world has anything worth raiding.
(And if they're engineers, why are you calling them a militia?)

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Having special housing for miners may be not a bad idea but what about their comfort? It's better to live in normal house with your family than spend your life undeground in shitty conditions Besides it's an easy transport scheme - ore to base, miners from base... Else transports that move ore will just go back empty. So no saving fuel here
And I think ore mine is pretty close

Well, good points, but what if the miners need a quick place to crash, and don't want to wait for the transport to come back?  It'd probably serve as a place to wait or take a quick snooze to wait for the transport, if it is being used to take ore back and forth.

As for the comm tower, how is that NOT a good idea? people outside the colony(i.e. the dedicated mining base Zan wanted) can't exactly shout and be heard if something goes wrong, and I'm not sure what sort of comm system we have already so building a dedicated one should make that not an issue.

Fair point.

Considering how the mine is not that far away, we wouldn't need to sink that many into it, but it would be good to have a radio tower between the areas.  We could use some of the electronics to create handheld radios for the miners, so that if they are trapped in a cave-in and prevented from accessing the mining vehicle radios, they aren't just lost and we know they are still alive.

It appears that the hulk  has been reduced to it's structural elements not including the hull plating.  We should get to work on recycling the (what I presume is) steel.  Then we can use it to make the coilgun emplacements that tryrar wanted.

If it is closer to the mine, I would like to use a portion of it to construct these buildings:
1) a ore dump site to place the extracted ore until pick-up.
2) a minor wall to hold back sandstorms.
3) a dedicated radio tower for contact with the main colony, with a local beacon for contact with the miners.

[tryrar]

GWG, if they want to rob us and not simply blow us up, they'd need to send troops/raiders to the surface to loot everything. Now, I can see that you're saying if raiders come with a ship we're fucked since we can combat ground troops but not orbital ships, which is where the artillery emplacements come in. I'm hoping to eventually upgrade them to full railguns capable of at least limited orbital interception, and maybe even a few surface-to-orbit missile emplacements if we get advanced enough.

Keep in mind that this is a frontier colony, and help from the central government might be days or even weeks away-if they come at all and don't just write us off(that doesn't even get into how we contact them!). I'd rather not disband the militia on the premise that if raiders come we be fucked anyways, I'd rather go down in a blaze of glory 

As for the fence, yeah, a full fence might be a little much right now, so I'll go with that biocrete marker idea. Also, good point about windmills, I guess I'll have to run a tap from the power plant for now, though isn't there a way to make capacitors from silicon? If so, making a bank of large capacitors can help alleviate the draw and load of the coilguns if they need to be fired.

Heh, I guess the base is bigger in my head than it should be, so the only things it has right now is the barracks, vehicle bay, and comm tower, and has markers around it to deliniate the boundaries.

Note: If possible, if we can recycle enough steel/ferrous material from the wreck, instead of coilguns I'll start with full railguns(from my understanding coilguns are easier to engineer, but if we have enough materials railguns are more powerful)

[GreatWyrmGold]

GWG, if they want to rob us and not simply blow us up, they'd need to send troops/raiders to the surface to loot everything.

Yes, because reneging on the surrender agreement and killing the people they send to pick up the loot isn't a great way to get bombed. What makes you think that everyone needs to be sent to grab it?

Now, I can see that you're saying if raiders come with a ship we're fucked since we can combat ground troops but not orbital ships, which is where the artillery emplacements come in. I'm hoping to eventually upgrade them to full railguns capable of at least limited orbital interception, and maybe even a few surface-to-orbit missile emplacements if we get advanced enough.

Fine, fine, but why do we need a militia?

Keep in mind that this is a frontier colony, and help from the central government might be days or even weeks away-if they come at all and don't just write us off(that doesn't even get into how we contact them!). I'd rather not disband the militia on the premise that if raiders come we be fucked anyways, I'd rather go down in a blaze of glory 

I'd rather live. And, we're just a frontier colony; why would raiders go to the frontier just to raid whatever crap we have? We don't have much of value; there's more-settled systems where pirates and such can raid, as seen in Salvation. Why would they bother? We don't even have anything worth the jump here.

[xtank5]

EDIT: Bah, double ninja'd!

Having a rest area on-site for the miners sounds like a good idea to me. So do your proposed uses for the steel.

...Where would the hostiles come from, that they don't have a ship?
Explain how a militia would protect us from a spaceship attack. Even if they want to raid, and not destroy, it would make sense that they would stay out of personal-weapon-range and threaten to bomb our settlement if we didn't hand over X. Assuming that a couple hundred people on an isolated desert world has anything worth raiding.

Keeping a working military around will serve us well in the future, even if at the moment it seems useless.  Any effective military has a functional command structure, discipline, and good training.  If the military is disbanded the command structure disappears and will be difficult to re-create when it is again needed.  The same goes for discipline and good training.  The military needs to be kept around otherwise the discipline will be eroded and skills will be rusty when it comes time to reactivate.  The military runs drills in times of peace.  They practice.  They train and hone their skills.  Who's to say that using our troops as an engineering corps won't help keep our troops' skills sharp, their discipline strong, and their command structure ready?  Even if they enemy they fight is the environment, they are still learning to fight the enemy.  Divvying up the work to squads in order to build roads can be compared to divvying up the objectives on the battlefield.  So long as they also get more conventional military drills in, the military ought to be ready for when it is time to expand into the space of our local system.

As for defending from space based threats, appropriately sized coilgun or railgun emplacements on the surface ought to provide adequate anti-starship capability until we get our own battle cruisers and things.

[tryrar]

Dude, if you had objections to having a militia when we first started, why didn't you speak up when I created my character? I've gone through the trouble of creating a militia, getting barracks for it, and training. I'm not just gonna sit back and have you guys disband it as "not needed". As well, who the heck said we were surrendering in the first place? You seem to assume that would be our default action in the face of danger!(We aren't France, after all!) if we can get good enough defenses, any raiders that come we can tell to just piss up a rope. And as xtank pointed out, you also seem to be assuming we can just reactivate as needed when it just doesn't work that way, since we need command structures and whatnot. If you really want, I can have the militia be like the National Guard: civilian reserves that spend every so often doing military drills when not doing their jobs.

Desides, I'm going to pose this question: say we do disband the military. What is it you want to do with the extra 70 or so personnel(since that seems to be your goal in getting more people doing other things)

[Ukrainian Ranger]

What problem in playing a capitan and having no standing militia and separate military base?

And you can't diband something that doesn't exist. We have 300 colonists, just men and women who looked for the better future on the frontier. Your captain is just one of them... Who granted him any power ? Right to command forces? I suspect that no one

[tryrar]

FTLOG people what is it that you guys have against having a militia?! IT EXISTS GET OVER IT

[GreatWyrmGold]

...Where would the hostiles come from, that they don't have a ship?
Explain how a militia would protect us from a spaceship attack. Even if they want to raid, and not destroy, it would make sense that they would stay out of personal-weapon-range and threaten to bomb our settlement if we didn't hand over X. Assuming that a couple hundred people on an isolated desert world has anything worth raiding.

Keeping a working military around will serve us well in the future, even if at the moment it seems useless.  Any effective military has a functional command structure, discipline, and good training.  If the military is disbanded the command structure disappears and will be difficult to re-create when it is again needed.  The same goes for discipline and good training.  The military needs to be kept around otherwise the discipline will be eroded and skills will be rusty when it comes time to reactivate.  The military runs drills in times of peace.  They practice.  They train and hone their skills.  Who's to say that using our troops as an engineering corps won't help keep our troops' skills sharp, their discipline strong, and their command structure ready?  Even if they enemy they fight is the environment, they are still learning to fight the enemy.  Divvying up the work to squads in order to build roads can be compared to divvying up the objectives on the battlefield.  So long as they also get more conventional military drills in, the military ought to be ready for when it is time to expand into the space of our local system.

Then retain the command structure but don't waste resources on anything new until there is a chance it might be helpful.

As for defending from space based threats, appropriately sized coilgun or railgun emplacements on the surface ought to provide adequate anti-starship capability until we get our own battle cruisers and things.

Again, why does this require a militia?

Dude, if you had objections to having a militia when we first started, why didn't you speak up when I created my character? I've gone through the trouble of creating a militia, getting barracks for it, and training. I'm not just gonna sit back and have you guys disband it as "not needed".

I missed that...I'm not perfect, and for me this isn't a high-priority game, so I miss things. (Besides, I thought it was more of a long-term thing, not something to start the moment we reached the planet.)

As well, who the heck said we were surrendering in the first place?

Why would the Raiders be landing to collect loot if we didn't surrender?

And as xtank pointed out, you also seem to be assuming we can just reactivate as needed when it just doesn't work that way, since we need command structures and whatnot. If you really want, I can have the militia be like the National Guard: civilian reserves that spend every so often doing military drills when not doing their jobs.

Then why give them barracks?

Desides, I'm going to pose this question: say we do disband the military. What is it you want to do with the extra 70 or so personnel(since that seems to be your goal in getting more people doing other things)

I dunno, maybe have them build stuff like you're suggesting they would, only a third to half a working day more each day?

Oh, and you still haven't explained how the militia would EVER be useful. Darn good arguments for railguns, though.

[tryrar]

DUDE WE HAVE A MILITIA GET OVER IT

Seriously, can we just drop this for now? This is starting to get ridiculous

Edit: Ok, if you're objecting to separate quarters as wasteful, I can maybe see your point, though I am going to insist on a dedicated drill area. I can have the barracks become the vehicle bay, and we can use the housing we have for now and reinforce it. BUT NO DISBANDING THE MILITIA GOT IT

[GreatWyrmGold]

DUDE WE HAVE A MILITIA GET OVER IT

Seriously, can we just drop this for now? This is starting to get ridiculous

I'm not arguing against a militia*, I'm arguing against wasting resources and manpower on it.
*Although I am still in the dark on how in the Nine Hells it could be useful...

Edit: Ok, if you're objecting to separate quarters as wasteful, I can maybe see your point, though I am going to insist on a dedicated drill area. I can have the barracks become the vehicle bay, and we can use the housing we have for now and reinforce it. BUT NO DISBANDING THE MILITIA GOT IT

What do you mean, "drill area"? Just an area to drill or some structures?