Ase was just referring to pure design plans. Mad is just referring to pure deign plans. I suspect that Mad thinks that people are complaining about plans that simultaneously cover designs, production, and extras. While Ase thought that Mad was suggesting that people could propose partial plans that only cover a couple of designs, but Mad is actually insisting that all design plans use all design slots?
If a plan gets the sizes wrong and does small(s), s, s, medium(m), large(l). then the whole plan is invalid. If it were individual designs then they would just choose two of them and skip over the invalid design. So plans have a problem in that if there is a flaw, then the whole thing fails rather than a much more easily-handled single-design flaw.
And I think that it would make it worse for voters too. Instead of tracking a single design and its merits. You need to track a series of designs and their individual merits simultaneously and compare it to the combined value of another series of designs. The more things that you have to consider at once the more complex it is. Not to mention that it means that you spend proportionally more time referencing, because there are more things that need to be held in memory at once. ?Also it is likely to be less descriptive because the plans would rather not list the full list of items with their full names for every variation on the plan, and with a broader scope people are more likely to take issue with one part and propose an alternative.
And then there is the issue that, assuming that the extra workload doesn't scare people away from making proposals, there would likely be far more proposals to look through. There are likely only two or three close-quarters weapons in a design phase. Maybe with a couple of variant proposals? Lets say that you have three close weapons, three medium personnel weapons, three antitanks guns, and three aeroplanes. That is 12 proposals. If each of these is a plan, then we can have one of each and one extra, such as tow antitank guns or two medium weapons. Then we can have a plan for each combination. assuming one of each it is at a potential aaaa, aaab, aaac, aaba... 81 proposals, just because everyone has their favourite weapon in each category. Then we have a1A1x, aa1Ay, aa1Az, aa1Bx... a11Ax... a1AAx... and I am not inclined to calculate the totals but it is rather huge. Now, granted, not all of these proposals will be made, but the potential mess of plans when it ends up being a multiple choice with a dozen elements is immense. When each entry is a unique element, then it is more difficult to spam minor variations than it is when you can just slot out one design for another...
Also, I am a little dubious about whether 2.2 is really a variation and not a new design. The extremely pathetic round is sort of a consistent element of its design. It is based around the theory of having very low recoil and being very light, and having a long firing time. I am not actually complaining, I am happy to just leave things as they are, but I was finding it a bit awkward to just not mention anything when it seems that the outcome would be rather opposite as far as the submachinegun scale goes. I certainly believe that 2.2 could work, indeed, it is a safer bet than the basic 2, even if the 2 would be awesome if it works, it is just that 2.2 is about having a solid gun for close quarters, and 2 basic is about taking away the soldier's hesitation to fire, and as such they have fundamentally different design specifications. Still, as I said, things are cool as they are, I have no issues with 2.2 as it stands, I just tend to overanalyse these sorts of things and then feel bad if I don't say anything.
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Topic: The Glorious Design Bureau of the People II : 1922 "The art of Boxes" (Read 8644 times)