20 years from now (the time Ariadna left Earth) i think they'll be far more easier to make. I'd say almost to the "trivial" level. Carbon fiber is almost at this level, actually. all you have to do is make tiny strands of a specific plastic (rich in C) and burn it through a particular burner. this way you get carbon fiber. then you weave it like a cloth and you're done. but, yeah, i can understand that losing half of the shipments could affect the total manufacturing capabilities of Ariadna, so no problem in the current Ariadna situation.
The energy generation would be dependant mostly of Ariadna's and the Nomad Nation's trade agreements. Considering how the Antipodes might go, orbital solars that send the energy down using microwaves or similar wireless means might be more attractive to the Ariadnan's governmets than having to defend more ground, specially if the planet is as "untamed" in regards of natural disasters as Outrage claimed with that flow! Also, if the relationships with the Nomads are tight enough, it is possible to see strange jumps in technology... like having the factories in orbit instead of on the planetary surface, because of the Nomad's expertise in that precise field (they have little choice after all) Vs the more "traditional" way PanO seems to run things in Acontecimiento. Again, it all depends on trade agreements, relationships... I mean, the Nomads might have helped Ariadna to buy space factories or even move some of their own there, in exchange for safe harbour for X time, or paying "parking rights" in usage time of those Nomad factories... As for the planetary options, well, Haqquislam is tight with Ariadna too, so we can imagine traditional production of both goods and energy thanks to them.
But where does that plastic come from? It's bordering on trivially easy for us because there are about 3million people working in the oil fields, and probably several times that many more working in industrial chemical factories. But Ariadna had less than 1mil in the total colonist load (they're up to something like 12mil now!) This meant that Ariadna had to go back to First Principles once the wormhole collapsed: Want iron? dig it out of the ground yourself! Oils they might have been creative with vegetable oils (biodiesel is depressingly easy to make, almost any Navy ship has all the stuff you'd need to make some), but heavier hydrocarbons would be problematic.
@Section9 I guess it depends on what the tech level for the original colonists was, (in the Infinity Verse, not based on what we can guess by extrapolating from the real world in 20 years). For the sake of argument, this is a verse in which semi-autonomous drones are well established, and I wouldn't put the idea of fully automated factories out the window either. There may be 3million working in Earth's oil industry, but as far as the infinity verse is concerned, thanks to robots and fully automated production facilities, 20 people might be enough to just direct and supervise the plastic needs of <1million people. Probably makes sense they brought the gear needed to produce plastics along with them.
Considering we basically already have that now... Existing "lights-out factories" FANUC, the Japanese robotics company, has been operating a "lights out" factory for robots since 2001.[5] Robots are building other robots at a rate of about 50 per 24-hour shift and can run unsupervised for as long as 30 days at a time. "Not only is it lights-out," says Fanuc vice president Gary Zywiol, "we turn off the air conditioning and heat too." In the Netherlands, Philips uses lights-out manufacturing to produce electric razors, with 128 robots from Adept Technology. The only humans are nine quality assurance workers at the end of the manufacturing process.[6] In the manufacturing of Integrated circuits using 300mm wafers, the entire manufacturing process is completely automated, with workers only making sure that the process runs without problems and repairing any faulty machinery.
And remember that the survivors on Dawn are from the first wave. They probably didn't have all the fancy factories and stuff loaded, since the first wave is there to secure the area, make sure it's safe, and set up the infrastructure to allow the factories to be built. Second wave would have been carrying all the major factories. First wave would carry spare parts and stuff for the tech they carried with them, with some level of repair capabilities (and probably 3d printers for making things that they don't carry spares for, but at some point you need to get the refills for the printer). But an integrated circuit factory is a BIG thing. I live at the other end of town from one, you'd be talking several hundred Shuttle-loads (or box-car loads).
While I agree that the physical tech wouldn't be shipped, a First Wave (if designed the way it should be) has to be as self autonomous as possible, something we can imagine since they didn't lost their tech base. Meaning that, while they might have lacked the big factories, they would have the knowledge base needed to make them, and the "raw" materials from the colony ships (designed to, at least, make one planet landing and being stripped for resources). The presence of the traktor muls suggest they had that, and regular computers (the ones you don't use in combat). The main stopgap for Ariadna's development would be the Antipodes and the need to defend themselves from those. By the way, isn't Paradiso where the 2nd wave ended? And they still carried troops.
Yes, the second ship ended up on Paradiso. It was also destroyed and all of the 2nd wave colonists died (either from corrupted biotech or "ultimate sacrifice" of the unaffected so that they could stop them). Not enough infrastructure creation gear left to salvage, I'm wagering - not to mention that if they had, questions would start getting asked about how long it was known they were there, and about the alien bodies, too - ESPECIALLY if those bodies look like our erstwhile new "allies". Conspiracy theories WOULD also start up alongside those questions when they didn't hear the "right" answers (especially from the Dawn colonists, who already nurse a grudge about being "left behind". They probably don't believe that the wormhole collapse that stranded them was something outside of Earth control. Once that shit starts up, you never hear the end of it. Imagine what a 22nd century Alex Jones would sound like?
Time to find a mini of a short fat bald guy screaming into a microphone so my local Ariadna player can have a fitting HVT... To add some visual and descriptive examples to the thread, we do have some information on certain aircraft in the Infinity universe, via @Antenociti 's various kickstarters for official Infinity dropships... a way to establish the technological base the various powers of the Sphere are working from. So far they seem to all be human-piloted transport craft, in keeping with the general assumption in-thread (one I very much agree with) that Human Sphere air forces probably have pilots for hauling people, and drones for most else. Yu Jing Azure Dragon. A craft used by the Yu Jing military and Imperial Service, and also (if decals are to be believed) sold or otherwise acquired by some civilian corporations and mercenary companies. (My own headcanon seems to have derived an assumption that, because this is named for one of the four traditional benevolent animals/directional protectors of Chinese culture, the StateEmpire operates three other basic hulls named for the other mythological animals: Azure Dragon transport/gunship, Red Phoenix fighter-interceptor, White Tiger fighter-ground attack, Black Turtle heavy roles (bomber, recon, AWACs, etc)). Nomad Turtle Its entirely because the circular part of the hull on top reminds of the radar domes on the Boeing E-3, but I feel this one has some sort of significant sensor suite in addition to its transport functions (because its the Nomads, I imagine a massive hacking suite that misdirects anti-aircraft defenses and disrupts communications while it swoops in to land its troops, but the placement of intakes means its probably just a different type of engine). Haqqislam Roc Haqqislam Efreet This one is a smaller craft than the others, and apparently manufactured by Haqqislam but sold widely, so not only is it probably common amongst the mercenary companies but it'd be a candidate for Ariadnan purchases. PanOceanian City Hopper Not really an air-force craft per se, but an example of a civilian aircraft and a chance to see the scale and power of those engines, when one refers to the blurb: The SJX93 is a hypersonic VTOL that is capable of reaching close to the Karman line which makes it a favourite “toy” of the rich and powerful, capable of transporting a few people very (very) quickly from one city to another in fast, upper-atmosphere “hops” far quicker than traditional jet aircraft. It has also found service as a rescue craft on wealthier systems and difficult-terrain areas, where its tiny footprint makes it capable of getting into areas denied even to rotorcraft or larger Landing Craft. With a pilot and Medic onboard it leaves little room for evacuees, but for single-person emergencies it provides a very fast service from even the most rural area to the city-center medical facilities at a pace that no rotorcraft or jet can match. A specialized Medical Emergency version, (IA SJX93M) which has a “rack’em and stack’em” stretcher system in the rear, is capable of handling 2 evacuees at once, with the pilot shifted forward and room behind him for two med-techs, however room is cramped to say the least and it is more common to find the Pilot being cross-qualified as a Junior med-tech and a fully qualified Doctor used to replace the 2 med-techs, leaving much more room for the Doctor to act within and the Pilot acting as ‘aide” for loading, unloading and immediate triage tasks at emergency sites. Now, maybe the engines in this fellow are more high-tech than the ones in the military craft, militaries get big budgets and fancy toys but the wealthy can have way more cash to play around with for a single vehicle. But those are not large engines, and they can make high-speed trips via the upper atmosphere. Compare that to a) the military dropships above, with their much larger and possibly more potent engines to get more range and speed; b) to a potential military drone where you cut down all that useless passenger and pilot space in favour of a REM and weapons, to get something small and potent doing the same upper-atmosphere hops from a base on one side of the planet to a target on the other. ChickenHawk & SuperHawk @TopoSolitario 's venerable transport design and its upsized version, which seems to be in use across the Sphere. The original papercraft have civilian and medevac versions, as well as versions in the colours of PanO, Yu Jing, Nomads, and Ariadna. Its probably just the fact the design itself has been present on Infinity boards for so long, but it seems like the ChickenHawk has got to be a venerable old design within the Sphere as well, used by most powers but now being retired by the wealthier ones, placed in their reserves or sold off where they are bought up by the Ariadnans to make up for lesser domestic tech, and by Nomads to do their crazy upgrade thang. We'll get more dropship designs in future, and I'm particularly looking forward to seeing what might emerge for ALEPH and PanOceania (assuming the SuperHawk isn't filling that spot), as they seem the most likely to break with the piloted-transport rule and have their dropships run by Remote Presence (or as an additional body for a PostHuman).
I assume the Chickenhawk is the Infinity version of the venerable UH1 Huey or C130. I mean, various versions of the Huey or Hercules have been in service since 1963, and are still in use today. In some cases, those 50+year old airframes are still in service, not just more recent production. Ain't broke, keep it flying till it is. Plus Hueys are easy to work on, and because there are so many of them spare parts are readily available. (Un)Licensed production in pretty much every nation on earth, too. In all honesty, the engines on the City Hopper are grossly undersized for hypersonic speeds. Supersonic, sure, they're about the size of the classic J85 used by F5 and T38 Talons, good for about 3000lb thrust each. More modern engines could probably bump that up to about 5-7000lbs thrust, maybe 9klbs if you really went all-out. But you need BIG engines for hypersonic, drag goes up with the square of the speed. The 35,000lb thrust engines on an SR71 are nearly 5 feet in diameter and 35 feet long, roughly 1" by 7" in Infinity scale. The equally-powerful engines used by the F22 and F35 are a bit shorter, the fancy intakes needed for the SR71's speed take up some significant length. Also, the dropships probably use more airliner-style turbofans for their VTOL engines, which are larger in diameter but shorter than a fighter engine.
@Shiwen what you link there are, basically, troop transports (either civil, military, space-atmo, space-only, or atmo-only), and they are quite right into the lore (I'd suggest "mining" the Outrage manga aswell if you want more images ^^), we just need more roles! XD I doubt the Tohaa Novus Ordum Mundi would neglect the "cleaning" of Tohaa bodies, frankly, if only because the Cubes mean you find a body and the you have an endless supply of "people" to interrogate, sequencially or in paralell... and if you reach a dead end, delete that instance and start again with a fresh one! For that same reason, I imagine they would have tried to find and remove as many human bodies as they could, even using some genengineered beast for that. Anyway, my point was that the colonization effort of Ariadna was a multistage one, but all stages had a degree of autonomy, and while the first wave (Ariadna) would be military-focused, it would still be viable and have a healthy amount of farmers, scientists and (gasp!) even medics!!! On the other hand, the second wave would have a lesser military complement, with more civilians, but I'd bet most of those were workers (specialized to a degree, or even robotic managers, able to direct a bunch of industrial bots to assemble factories, mine, and work into controlled environments with minimal supervision). That would mean the biggest stopgap in the Ariadna mission was a workforce specialized into force-production multiplication (a worker that can yield 8-10 times of what he does nowadays, by simply doing most of the work using robotic workers), meaning they had to allocate military manpower between defense and resource gathering (and have little yield multiplication).
Yeah, above is definitely just a summary of Infinity's 'transport helicopter-ish things that can maybe achieve orbit', as those are the sorts of things which can appear on a wargame table*. But it gives us some idea of what roles are filled and how, and maybe a glimpse into some of the aircraft technology and design philosophy of various powers (assuming no one else buys my totally-likely-and-not-at-all-ludicrous theory on Yu Jing aircraft for the other 3 mythological animals). Once we know what we know, we can maybe make some guesses as to the rest, but things get a little more sparse from here. Outrage has some more of the same, along with that very large Yu Jing craft which seems to be launching/escorted by Azure Dragon gunships and dropping a basketload of Guija & Tiger Soldiers. Given its scale next to the Dolly Dagger and its not-very-aerodynamic shape I'd assumed it had to be either a spacecraft which descended from orbit or some sort of Heavy Gear-esque 'landship', which leads down some interesting avenues in-of-itself... if its a spaceship (and even if not, taking into account the Dagger herself and a lot of the spaceport art from the RPG) then spacecraft definitely seem to be able to move between ground and space pretty easily (though from some of the info on space elevators we know the cost, presumably in fuel but maybe also risk of accident, is higher doing so), so the existence of craft that could operate in both orbit and atmosphere seems likely. But all that raises more questions than answers. I can't find it off-hand, but I'm sure I recall a passage in one of the rule or setting books from a (PanO) fighter squadron commander working the blockade on Paradiso, which would confirm space fighters but if PanOceanian probably speaks to Remote Presence more than manned. Outrage also gives us the defenses of a space station, which include guns and also drones. These look very much like REMs, but comparing scale to the Dagger (a small spaceship next to most others depicted, but from what we see of the interior with humans and TAGs quite large) these are significantly bigger than a Meteor Zond, as one would expect. Its an assumption, but compared to the Dagger these REMs are half-sized, but they don't need to worry about crew, air and food supplies, cargo, engines capable of reaching orbit from the ground. Being defensive craft from a Druze caravanserai, their armament of cannons rather than missiles probably differs from a dedicated military fighter-drone, and they may be civilian or knockoff rather than top-line military tech, but at least they let us set a type. Now, an example from the RPG art: Here we have some flying security REMs/drones. We can see a rocket pod and a rotary cannon as armaments here, and again, they look pretty much like a legged REM from the tabletop. I know, I know, thats a space fighter drone and a hovering ground-attack drone, its not revealing the Infinity equivalent of the F-22. But I think we all agree that there are advantages to support the use of remotes/drone combat aircraft in the Infinity setting, and from this we can pretty confidently make a call that drones get used for atmospheric aircraft as well (outside of Ariadna I suppose), and that their appearance will have some sort of common link with the REMs we've seen on the tabletop. For a subject where we can't do very much but speculate, its a start? *I'll note that one of TOPO's ChickenHawk skins is labeled 'PanO Air Superiority', which seems odd and was probably not thought out at a deep level. Could just mean its some sort of anti-aircraft missile boat with cargo-area-sized sensor suite, but if anyone wants to dive down an excessively deep rabbit hole of extrapolation with me, its nose art is 'King Konga Drummin'... air superiority through hackers who break into enemy aircraft REMs and make them 'dance' to the hackers' beat?
"Air Superiority" is actually a camo pattern name, not necessarily the use. I haven't seen it in use for a long time (phased out in favor of plain haze gray in the mid-90s), but the F15s and F16s were painted in that. Lighter gray around the edges, darker gray on the flats (and down the top of the engine humps on the F15s). It's the kind of colors you'd wear if you were flying relatively high, not spending too much time down in the weeds (plain gray seems to work better for that, oddly enough, judging by the A10s I see flying around).
Dunno if it's been covered, but considering how the sky's color is dependant on the reflection from the sea and atmosferic composition, it could be possible that the color scheme selected for different planets will be totally different (since some planets will have a much smaller % of water on the surface, and the ground might be "of a different color", or even it might have a dense cloud cover...). While this simply means different color patterns for the atmos, it means that space-atmo military transports will need either to be repainted fast or have some sort of color-changing surface (there exists one or two nowadays, at least one depending on heat variations. used on cars, which I've seen). Among the years I've read about several ways for changing the color on the hull of a vehicle. The most simple was heat-based, the next one (I think I read about it on the EXO RPG) was to apply electric charges in order to "paint" on the ship's hull; the most egregiously ridiculous was to use a mix of cameras and "emitters" (of some sort) to turn James Bond's car invisible (Die Another Day), and the most "regular" involved the use of "smart materials" and "nanomaterials" (this last one on Eclipse Phase). Of all of them, I can imagine PanO and YJ using some sort of electrical-reactive materials for adapting the shuttle's colors, and the rest just using paint, with the "golden globe of engineering" for the most simple, cheap and obvious solution of deploying some sort of colored plastic covers over big areas going to the Nomads...
Common misconception, but the sky's color has nothing to do with the sea. Indeed, skies over landlocked regions are just as blue. You are correct, though, in stating atmospheric composition as the reason (more specifically, the Rayleigh Scattering of light off of the particles in the atmosphere). Fun fact: blue eyes are blue for the same reason... there is no blue "pigment" in a blue iris. Sorry for the interruption. Carry on.
The one thing I can guarantee is Airforces in the future are just as shite and lazy as they are present day. Wankers.
I'm going to have to disagree with you, but not in the expected way: I think that the air forces will be even lazier than todays!
