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[Kashyyk]

@Aseaheru: Correct, ETC = Electrothermal Chemical

@3D Printer Speed: This vastly depends on the number of printer heads that can be used at once, but you could in theory just print in batches if you have redundant heads. Each individual head can print about 3cm^3 per second, but will be slowed if it has to change material. Each head is at least 1cm apart, and they are typically fixed to a rail which moves in 3D.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Railgun & Coilguns: Touched on in the previous infodump, Railguns are merely waiting on a suitably heat resistant material in order to remove the need to replace the rails after every shot. Due to this drawback, they have been left languishing in favour of laser and ETC weaponry. Mainly due to the lack of interest in railguns, coilguns have also been ignored, but they also suffer from the need for complex timing and switching systems.
Matter Converters: Unfortunately, still in the realms of science fiction. There are some good theories on the topic, but none that are even close to being applied practically.
Plasma Launchers: Plasma can, to an extent, be manipulated in laboratory conditions. Creating any form of weapon from it would be impossible however, due to the large power source required for the containment field, the extensive heat management inherent in handling something tens of thousands of degrees centigrade and the recoil generated from projecting such masses out of the barrel.
Energy Generation: Most needs for energy in a static environment is provided by farms of efficient solar-powered satellites, beaming the energy to special receiving stations to be converted to electricity and added to the power grid. Those that need mobile or more localised power-sources rely on Deuterium fusion reactors. Still a young technology, most warships have a small fusion reactor for combat situations and a bank of solar cells for regular use.
Nanites: Micro-sized robotics is hampered by the limited amount of processing power available to each individual. Currently the only way to get them to do anything meaningful is to broadcast general instructions to the mass from an external unit. Studies into biology inspired interactions are on-going.
Advanced Materials: A few are in common use, such as nanomaterials in structural engineering, synthetic diamonds in electronics and manufacturing and aerogel in insulation. Others are still being developed, like  amorphous metals and conductive polymers.

[Aseaheru]

 Oof, I missed that post a while back.

 Anyways, I suggest that anyone who try to do a more complex form of the Arms Race game do it with a team of people running it.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Had a slight thought.  A complaint I have seen about Far Future/Magic based games is that players wouldn't know what worked or not and one side might luck into something that gives them a tremendous advantage.  Could we mitigate that by having an ability to have, say, three designs made and tested, but players may only select one for production?

[Aseaheru]

 Provided that there is a way to put designs from past turns into play, that could help. However the vagueness of stuff would still hamper designs, and thus salt.

 Perhaps make it so that there are an arbitrary amount of things that can be made a tun, and have generic stocks. Probably as something along the lines of how HoI4 does its industry's resource requirements. It would require a larger map to help with the fairness, and would probally be excruciatingly dull without some way to capture more than one area on a given front a turn, but I could see it working.

Spoiler: Long rambily attempted explanation of concept that will undoubtedly leave reader confused (click to show/hide)

 So, item A, lets say a grenade, takes 1 unit of ferrous metals and 1 unit chemicals to produce 3 units of grenade. They have a grand total of 18 ferrous metals and 9 chemical points, allowing them to make 27 units of grenade and still have some metal to do other stuff. Well, with the design thing, if the three things designed are, say, a tank that takes six units of ferrous metals, one unit of rubber and two of oil, a ship using ten units of ferrous metals and other stuff, and a arty piece that takes only ferrous metals, the players would have to determine what it is worth sinking resources into. Combine that with some amounts of attrition (for instance, 1 unit grenades could be used at one front for one turn while artillery on the same front would keep working until somehow destroyed/captured, but would need to be supplied with shells to function) and I could see alot of interesting compromises show up.
 "Yes, we could make these stamped metal guns, but we need the extra metals used in that for other jobs, and the partially wooden ones work almost as well. Perhaps if we manage to take those mines this turn we can start cranking out tons of all-metal weapons."

 I can see it adding bookkeeping, but less than, say, the way I am currently doing things, with individual weapons. And there would need to be a fair amount of testing to standardize attrition rates and so on, along with example costs for this and that...

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

So, I'm wanting to make a version of this as a suggestion game with the starting weapons being that of United Forenia.  Now you may be thinking of me having it be them fighting in World War II, but I have something different in mind which will have them neutral in that conflict.  I have two options in mind, but I'm not sure which people would like to see more.  Option 1) Forenia discovers a Stargate and first contact leads them to wind up having to fight the Gou'ld.  Option 2) <original> X-Com aliens, wondering what the hell is going on with Forenia due examination of 'samples' they gained from the rocket, invade and Forenia has to fight them off.  Option 3 is to do both in XSG-COM style.

Which of these do people want to see?

[Taricus]

Nah, I wanna see Forenia fight in WWII, especially since it's probably on the same side as the germans

[Aseaheru]

 Well, its supplied the Germans, the Soviets, the British(sorta), two groups of Chinese(one pro US, one pro Soviet), the civilian population of the US, pirates, and... Gangsters? I think gangsters. I think its kinda a crapshoot asto who they wind up backing, though I should note that according to the Southeast Asia game Forenia goes to war with Japan, taking it out of the war before Germany is.

[Taricus]

Basically it traded to everyone. However, given the civil war at the time that could be excused. I'm merely basing the foreign relations based on the last trade that florenia did.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Nah, I wanna see Forenia fight in WWII, especially since it's probably on the same side as the germans

Thing is, while we know Forenia is in the Pacific, we have no idea where in the Pacific it is.  Without that, we can't get an idea of how it would affect the war.  In addition, as Turbados exists in the same world as Forenia (since Sensei was going to have them fight), we would have to consider that factor as well, not knowing where they are either.

Besides, if I recall correctly, Forenia has a superior land force compared to conventional militaries.  While their navy is horrible, they can piggyback off of either the Japanese or United States, depending upon which set of allies they support, until they get their own up.  Don't see too much challenge there.  Now the Gou'ld or XCom Aliens?  That's a force that need to be fought in way that is alien to Forenia and it is against a technologically superior foe.  Not something the've dealt with.

Well, its supplied the Germans, the Soviets, the British(sorta), two groups of Chinese(one pro US, one pro Soviet), the civilian population of the US, pirates, and... Gangsters? I think gangsters. I think its kinda a crapshoot asto who they wind up backing, though I should note that according to the Southeast Asia game Forenia goes to war with Japan, taking it out of the war before Germany is.

I only really did that to justify my game and didn't have any input from Sensei on that decision.  Realistically, other stuff might happen.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Anyone going to stat what they wanted out of the options I provided?

[Aseaheru]

Probably something like option two, though both options are bad in the "what exactly can we do here tech wise" sense. Plus, Aliens can get seriously curbstompy.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Probably something like option two, though both options are bad in the "what exactly can we do here tech wise" sense. Plus, Aliens can get seriously curbstompy.

Could be worse.  Both of these have at least a token explantion behind how their tech works that we can extrapolate from, and Forenia is roughly in early cold war tech, so there can be improvement on that front as well.  Plus, I could nick some stuff from the Orbital Vector site.

I should note for either alien group, I'm not going to have them progress in tech until they notice Forenia rapidly closing in on their tech level.  Gou'ld have a massive ego problem and Ayy Lmaos tend to just send stronger guys.

[Funk]

I was thinking of a Forenia vs war of worlds type Martians, so i'll give you some pointers of what i was thinking.

You'll need to disarm Forenia, just the sake for book keeping.
Let them pick a few designs to keep and remove the rest, it got sold off over seas.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Here's the thread.

Used this list for the United Forenia equipment, my findings of the successful trades, and combined the two tech lists to form the United Forenia tech list.  Tried to convert stuff over to metric, but getting really late, so not everything may be done.  May have forgot something, may not.  All I know is that it is currently 2 am.  I need to sleep.

[Aseaheru]

Well, rejiggering everything to use the same ammunition as everything else sounds like the sorta job that would have been noted down, then carefully ignored until the SHTF, and thus something for us to have to do.