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[Rolepgeek]

Well, our primary motivators to have children are sexual gratification (from sex) and emotional fulfillment (from the kids). When both of those can be simulated with the society's technology (Why bother having sex with a disgustingly biological human when you could have an impossibly beautiful sexbot? Why waste time raising shitting pissing babies who'll probably turn out disappointing anyway when your virtual children always respect and love you?), population growth is going to take a hit.

Yep, not a pleasant setting. Love the discussion guys, do keep it up. When this is complete you will be credited for your ideas that I stole borrowed.

People aren't economic utility maximizers. At the minimum, and I cannot stress that enough, there will always be Luddites, and because they'll be the ones having more kids, guess who's gonna end up more common? If you're saying that the setting is such that they have literally everything and can simulate everyone perfectly, then resources aren't an issue anyway, people would probably have kids for shits and giggles, and the settings kinda boring, in my view. There's a lot of motivators to having kids, whether it be leaving a legacy, a shared bond between people, and so on. Emotional fulfillment being perfectly granted by perfect kids, rather than someone who's imperfections you work with each other through and with, besides the question of who's making the virtual children, will always come up. Why have virtual children instead of real children? So you don't have to do diapers? Machines can do the diaper bit. So you don't have to deal with temper tantrums? Really? That's what people will think of first? There's artificial wombs, so pregnancy issues aren't a danger. But masturbation does the job as well as sex, and yet we still want sex, not masturbation. Until everyone's in pods, which I personally doubt, if only because of aforementioned luddites, it's not gonna be that perfect. Civilization will stabilise and then grow again, and there'll be population size issues once more. That's how evolution works. It happens through behaviours and ideological manifestations too, not just genes and sex.

[Fniff]

I see your point. There are luddites in the setting, so they would be the primary growth. That's interesting as they are also focused on disrupting the society by natural methods. Their primary resource, in fact, could be sheer numbers.

My main motivation for having a population shortage would be to create a strangely empty and bleak urban setting, but I realize since the majority of the populace is in holodecks there can be a skyhigh population growth without sacrificing the aesthetic I was going for; the kids are there, they're just in holodecks.

[Amperzand]

The visible population would be any human maintenance workers, Luddites, and wandering semisentient machines, with a small subset of those who simply don't spend all of their time jacked in, for one reason or another.

One issue with the Hedonism Machine is what happens when an exterior threat arises, like an asteroid or alien life. Not a lot matrix'd pod-people can do to fight off the Antagonistic Alien Empire of Genericia II.

[TheBiggerFish]

Except that there will be people who military sims.

[Tuxfanturnip]

Time will always be a scarce resources, and a lot of people have no or fewer children because they don't have or don't want to spend the time to raise them. Simply modulate the availability of adoption and surrogate care to change the disincentive to procreation. And besides, how does reproduction even work in holodecks....

[Rolepgeek]

Many people find raising children gratifying. That's entirely based on the individual in question. In a post-scarcity society, time will not really be an issue; what do you need to spend all your time doing? No one really has to work, after all.

Also, don't forget there'll be different levels of 'Luddites'. Most people aren't extremists, even if they don't feel comfortable staying jacked into a pod all day, every day.

[Amperzand]

On a completely different subject, I've been thinking about magazine-fed recoilless rifles/rocket launchers. Basically conventional shoulder-fired launchers, but loaded from, say, a revolving cylinder of six rockets 25mm wide and 200mm long, rather than one 60-200+mm rocket loaded directly into the tube.

[MonkeyHead]

On a completely different subject, I've been thinking about magazine-fed recoilless rifles/rocket launchers. Basically conventional shoulder-fired launchers, but loaded from, say, a revolving cylinder of six rockets 25mm wide and 200mm long, rather than one 60-200+mm rocket loaded directly into the tube.

Similar things of smaller calibre already exist, especially for grenade style weapons rather than rockets ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_19_grenade_launcher , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_47_Striker , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGS-17 , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_automatic_grenade_launchers ). The main problem you have with such a system is sheer mass, limiting its infantry usefulness. If it needs to be vehicle mounted, other automatic reloading systems are possibly more useful. Grenades rather than rockets are preferred for smaller size projectiles as the usefulness of a rocket is limited by its range, which is a function of its speed which in turn depends on its propellant mass. More propellant means less ordnance. Grenades do away with this trade off.

[Tack]

Although future-engines could be much more efficient, at which point rockets are limited by size of explosive and technological training-wheels.

Do like the discussion above re: hedonism holodeck and military sims.
Can imagine the cheesy ads.
"Earn money playing games! Compete internationally in the EAC tournament ladder, with finalists being invited to join the SFR's and get paid six figures a year to do nothing*!
Do you have what it takes to defend freedom?"

[Amperzand]

Basically, recoilless rifles don't need to be made if particularly strong mayerials, allowing them to be quite light, and leaving much of the mass in the ammunition. Given the way many modern grenade launchers work, it's quite possible to get more efficiency out of a rocket. Russian launcher grenades are basically gyrojets already.

[Grimlocke]

Lightening the weapon is not all that useful if the weight just ends up in the ammunition though.

Perhaps light-weight explosive shell/rocket casings could offer some relief there? That could make for a really big boom at little weight, especially if explosive compound and propellant can also be made lighter. If they could be made into shaped charged then an easily carried weapon could do the job of shooting enemies hiding behind walls, which is a job currently best left to medium and heavy machine guns.

[Tack]

magnets, m8
recoiless railgun m8
p8nt p3nding

[Amperzand]

While I realize you're being a joke, but magnets are heavy as fuck, and need batteries and capacitors which, huge surprise, also tend to be heavy as fuck.

Lightening the weapon is not all that useful if the weight just ends up in the ammunition though.

Perhaps light-weight explosive shell/rocket casings could offer some relief there? That could make for a really big boom at little weight, especially if explosive compound and propellant can also be made lighter. If they could be made into shaped charged then an easily carried weapon could do the job of shooting enemies hiding behind walls, which is a job currently best left to medium and heavy machine guns.

I mean, I doubt you'd be carrying too very much ammunition anyway, and, usefully, you can spread out the ammunition without preventing the weapon from being used, as long as the guy with the launcher keeps at least one mag/cylinder/clip on him.

Actually, those wacky Nazis did something like this, called the "Luftfaust". An eight-barreled, 22mm rocket launcher, intended to be a man-portable way of throwing a good number of explodey things at a plane. Not terribly effective, but they were using shitty explosives and inaccurate rockets.

On a completely different topic again, what about the idea of clip-fed weapons in an advanced setting. Yes, I do mean clips, not magazines. In general, clips seem like an outdated technology, but I can't help but feel a clip-loaded repeating cannon of some sort would be badass.

[MonkeyHead]

While I realize you're being a joke, but magnets are heavy as fuck, and need batteries and capacitors which, huge surprise, also tend to be heavy as fuck.

Lightening the weapon is not all that useful if the weight just ends up in the ammunition though.

Perhaps light-weight explosive shell/rocket casings could offer some relief there? That could make for a really big boom at little weight, especially if explosive compound and propellant can also be made lighter. If they could be made into shaped charged then an easily carried weapon could do the job of shooting enemies hiding behind walls, which is a job currently best left to medium and heavy machine guns.

I mean, I doubt you'd be carrying too very much ammunition anyway, and, usefully, you can spread out the ammunition without preventing the weapon from being used, as long as the guy with the launcher keeps at least one mag/cylinder/clip on him.

Actually, those wacky Nazis did something like this, called the "Luftfaust". An eight-barreled, 22mm rocket launcher, intended to be a man-portable way of throwing a good number of explodey things at a plane. Not terribly effective, but they were using shitty explosives and inaccurate rockets.

On a completely different topic again, what about the idea of clip-fed weapons in an advanced setting. Yes, I do mean clips, not magazines. In general, clips seem like an outdated technology, but I can't help but feel a clip-loaded repeating cannon of some sort would be badass.

Hows about a clip of railgun rails, with each pair or rails ejecting to be replaced with the next from the clip after becoming too worn? Again, not too useful for an infantry weapon...

[Amperzand]

That's actually already being considered by the various people trying to build railguns. Something along the lines of a gatling gun is, I think, a popular choice.