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How happy are you with the Uprising book?

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by prophet of doom, Apr 30, 2018.

  1. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    Oct. 2nd, when PanO air force elements attacked Yu Jing air force elements trying to put down sedition within their own army on Paradiso.
     
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  2. psychoticstorm

    psychoticstorm Aleph's rogue child
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    I guess we can keep current politics out of the off topic discussion right?
     
  3. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Negative Ghost Rider, that's from the Qingdao Report, which has been a part of Infinity fluff since the beginning. pg42 of N3 fluffbook.


    You really need to read more international relations history...

    There's a lot of times that two powers mess with each other in a different country. The US and USSR never, ever openly entered each other's territory and had the intruder start shooting. (there were occasional moments where someone got lost or "got lost", but they always went back to their own territory without shooting).


    The Spanish-American War was before nuclear weapons, and Spain didn't really have a way to deploy troops to either Cuba or the Philippines. At least not one that the US couldn't stop. The US and Spain never came to blows on the Iberian Peninsula.

    Your other two examples are two powers butting heads in someone else's territory, which is usually settled with apologies or politely ignored, because the alternative is going to war.

    We are talking about two major powers, in an era with weapons of mass destruction, directly fighting each other over one of the powers home territory.

    I'm telling you, as someone whose job was to end the entire fucking planet, the idea of the US and Russians shooting at each other over either one's home territory scares the everloving shit out of me. The only way that ends is in mushroom clouds. And that's not after a couple months fighting, that's after probably ONE strongly-worded warning. If this was the Cold War, and the Soviets were ~60 minutes drive from the French border, I'd expect the Force d'Frappe to have orders to launch.


    Army strength is of relatively little matter to the game. I mean, PanO or Yu Jing could curbstomp the Nomads pretty easily (drive a ship through the center of a Mothership at 100,000kps closing velocity). And the Nomads could do the same to PanO or Yu Jing, but it'd be a ship hitting a planet. It'd be the end of the Nomads.

    The problem is that Yu Jing's political, 'soft', power has been shredded.

    And that's the power that matters in Infinity.


    The open war (NOT all-out war, as that would involved WMD-scale orbital kinetic strikes) was when PanO started attacking YJ troops before getting O12 approval.

    Look.

    The US and Russians take great pains to avoid even locking onto each other's airplanes over Syria. When the US stonked the crap out of the Syrian base that launched a chemical weapons attack, we told the Russians that anything flying above YdegN latitude would be ignored, but anything below that latitude would be, and I quote, "flying at it's own risk".

    Korea and Vietnam had Russian (and Chinese) pilots or missile ground crews ignored because neither side wanted to go into a direct conflict over some country that was barely even an ally (Mutually Assured Destruction). The US and USSR never attacked each other's native soil directly during the Cold War. To do so would be an act of war.

    This situation is PRECISELY PanO air, naval, and orbital assets attacking Yu Jing native soil.


    You have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much faith in the American political parties.

    All of them.


    No, the difference is that Afghanistan was not US territory. Afghanistan had zero capability to seriously threaten the Soviet Union. We are not talking about PanO kicking some random Non-Aligned Army. We are talking about the superpowers fighting each other on each other's native soil.



    Did I not just post that?

    Here:

     
  4. Alphz

    Alphz Kuang Shi Vet. Retired.

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    Maybe you should read more about the USSR's involvement in the korean war and...

    How many of these are within Yu Jing's nationalistic boundary as we would think of it in contemporary terms?

    Paradiso, mars, svarlheima, dawn are all territorial holding of yu jing within disputed/neutral or other powers regions.

    PanO didn't fly onto the yu jing planet and start shooting.

    The similarities between uprising and proxy wars and "hidden but not really" support shown by competing powers of our recent history are many. They're not identical situations because its a fictional world with fictional characters and different geopolitical standings.

    This also fails to consider the futuristic ways in which human sphere nations can disrupt operations without simply violent means - EM weaponry and nano-clouds (the ones tested on dawn and creating those nasty storms) spring to mind.
    I'm not saying there wasn't shooting. But it might have been from a plausible deniable source which is glazed over in the recounting of the story.

    You can't willingly ignore futuristic options and apply contemporary logic to the situation while simultaneously ignoring contemporary situations which bear similarities.
     
  5. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    Basically all of them.

    The Japanese home islands definitely weren't contested.

    They flew into Yu Jing's airspace and shot their planes down. So it's a pretty classic violation of territorial sovereignty.

    "It's science fiction so it doesn't have to make sense."

    Narrative verisimilitude is a thing. If a narrative is going to break what is understood to be the way things work, it should have a good reason. And explain itself.

    There's no indication that this was the case. You're starting from an unimpeachable premise of "the writing must be good" without any reasoning behind it, and then assuming that the people saying the writing isn't good are wrong as a consequence of that premise.

    The contemporary situations differ in very important respects - they didn't involve wholesale territorial sovereignty violations in a post-nuclear world. So we're not ignoring contemporary situations which bear similarities - said contemporary situations support our viewpoint, not yours.
     
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  6. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    You mean how the US ignored the pale-faced competent MiG pilots that got shot down? Because to make an issue of them was to invite a nuclear attack on the US?

    I noted those, thank you.



    Japan (which had the earliest Steel Wall deployments, BTW) and Mars, definitely. Because we've already hashed out that the area between Japan and China would be recognized as YJ territorial waters, and the area about 25km off the east coast of Japan, too.

    PanO had to recognize YJ's cities on Svalarheima as part of the peace treaty that ended the NeoColonial Wars, same with Paradiso. So those two are only ~5 years old. It's why there were still Cold War operations going on between PanO and YJ there...

    Dawn is the gray area, and note that Ariadna protested to O12 about everyone, equally. Yu Jing's deployment there was just as illegal as PanO's which was just as illegal as Japan's.


    No, they just flew into Japan and started shooting. And Mars. And Svalarheima. And Paradiso.

    All of which PanO had recognized as YJ territory at least 5 years before the Uprising.

    The alternative is that YJ gets to chuck the agreements ending the NeoColonial Wars out the window because PanO is no longer honoring them.

    That's called a return to open warfare, dude.

    And that is a huge club that YJ should have been using to beat PanO with at the O12.

    Not to mention how YJ should have been hitting every nation backing the Japanese with, "dude, these guys are reneging on the promises made to convince us to bail them out of their debts. What the hell gives you the idea that their promises to you will be honored?"


    Yeah. The fictional world has everyone from a freighter-captain on up armed with dinosaur-killers. So there's even LESS reason to go around blatantly shitting on someone else's front porch.

    If you think burning out an entire vehicle's computer system is not violent, more power to you. Not to mention that an EM attack would fry every Cube in the supply convoy. Because it ain't just food, water, fuel, and ammo that is on a supply convoy, there's also the reinforcements and replacements of the troops in contact. Almost all of whom have Cubes.

    Do you want to hand YJ that much ammo to use in O12? That you are using weapons banned by the Concilium Conventions due to their effect on Cubes over another nation's territory?

    Nanotech clouds have the same problem that chemical weapons do: they're banned by the Conventions.

    So, again, do you want to hand YJ a weapon to use in O12? That you're using a weapon banned by the Convention in an attack on YJ soil?



    If you cannot draw parallels between events in history and events in the story, you have very little frame of reference for anything that happens in that story.

    Living space is not exactly without limit, though with some dozen habitable planets to choose from it's not particularly strained. Neomaterials like Teseum and Nesium are still rare, and something to fight over. Nations still behave in their own interests.

    Or are you telling me that we couldn't take someone from... 1845, hand them a newspaper today printed in their language, and ask them what they thought of the world events? Do you really think that they wouldn't be able to track the major geopolitical events? OK, we would have to explain a few details of modern balance of power (nuclear weapons, and how the British, French, and German empires have risen and fallen)

    But given the balance of power given in N3 and HSN3, the behavior of everyone but Ariadna doesn't make sense!
    • PanO and Haqq are taking an incredible risk to knock YJ down a peg. Global Thermonuclear War risks. Dinosaur-killer risks.
    • Nomads aren't as big a risk, since they're not openly deploying force against YJ until after the O12 Security Council approves it.
    • Haqq and Nomads need YJ's backing to keep PanO in check.
     
  7. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    Concur with the bulk of @Section9 s analysis.

    The geopolitics of Uprising as written is not coherent. The outcome, though, is justifiable: you just need to play it more like Russia in Afghanistan and less like Serbia in Kosovo.
     
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  8. daboarder

    daboarder Force One Commander
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    PanO is te hyperpower, this isnt US Vs USSR. This is the unholy amalgamation of the USSR and the US beating up on some nation like say....greece.

    Yu jing can whine and whinge, but the iron fist of the hyperpower lands where it will
     
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  9. xagroth

    xagroth Mournful Echo

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    Let's say Spain claims Gibraltar. Who would Spain be pissing? Ah, the UK. But it's not "native soil" of UK, just a colony/part of the Commonwealth! And in constant dispute!

    Sure it's an inaccurate example, but you have chosen to go to a threaded path... PanO blocking the deployment of YJ troops on Japan, a territory which is part of YJ, is a game of chicken that can end two ways: one, YJ concedes and leaves its already deployed troops to fend for themselves, admits that has fear of PanO, and PanO feels emboldened enough to escalate in Svalarheima; two: YJ keeps sending transports (smaller ones, if needed), and if PanO shoots one... War. Forcing the "feeble" O-12 to recognize that PanO started shooting YJ dropships over YJ territory.

    Japan was part of YJ. That tend to happen when you buy the national bebt of a nation paying off all of its debts it was not able to: collaterals are needed, and obviously there was not enough art, gold and other things to back up the bonds the government was emitting to keep things going.
    If you want a real life, actual example, Japan is there ("passing the debt to the future"), and Spain is too (over 100% debt compared to economic growth, so it's akin to making 100 money every year, and having to pay more than 100 to the bank, where we have to go every year to re-finance the debt... The bank seizes your properties when you don't pay and then sell them to interested parties to recover the money, don't it?).

    Irrelevant argument: if fiction was a blank check to write whatever one wanted and the reader had no option but roll with it, regardless of how illogical, out of context, badly presented, contradictory, or Mary-Sue-ish they were, the amount of successul Science Fiction authors would be extremely large, yet it's not so.

    Internal consistency (with the whole 'verse the things happen in), suspension of disbelief, and engaging narrative and/or characters tend to be basic ingredients the Uprising part of the book totally lacks.

    You do realize that firing EM weapons is using a banned type of weaponry by the Concilium Accords? First, it's not that they disable momentarily the dropships (I can bet you those are hardened against that kind of stuff), it's that they scramble the Cubes, and inflicting "true" death (or final death) when society has stepped on the immortality place tends to be frowned upon.
    Second, I can bet (again) that deploying nanotechnology on Earth will be seen as "What the f*ck, dude" by ALL the NAN on Earth. Like throwing a nuke.

    You can't cherry-pick whatever suits your position and call on the people saying "argument no applicable here" with the "but it's the future, we can't possibly know!". Because that, you know, is a one-way ticket to people telling you "then what the hell are you doing here giving reasons to accept the narrative? Your argument is that there can't be one, you said it already".

    To be truthful, they don't really needed to "fly onto YJ territory". Missiles can reach good enough... XD

    Tots agree. Internal Consistency is a thing!

    Let's add salt to the wound: Honor demands that what a Samurai says is as good as done. So the Kuge are honorless rats, which seems to be fine with everyone, and the Samurai under them are even best followers of the Bushido because they are loyal to a honorless master.
    Meaning a single assassination of a Kuge pinned onto another will spark a civil war like no other, since no samurai can live under the same sky as the killer of his lord XD

    I expect that a warcor's word is more than just coming to a forum to try and heat the discussion. Reported as attempt to have the thread locked.

    I suggest EVERYONE here to ignore @daboarder post.
     
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  10. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    I assume you're just trolling at this point. That doesn't match up with the setting material. YJ has been described as a close #2 to PanO.
     
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  11. Hecaton

    Hecaton EI Anger Translator

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    The section on the Japanese home islands talks about this. They used their own air units, not long-range missiles.
     
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  12. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    Then why did PanO lose during the Necolonial wars? Because they were effectively balanced.

    PanO is a hyperpower but it's not a hegemonic power: it's constrained in it's freedom of action.

    Re: the Gibraltar analogy, China culturally takes a very different point of view regarding what in the West would be considered colonies. And, even then, the UK so more than prepared to enter into an extremely risky war to preserve one of theirs. Culturally Uprising should be comparably damaging to the ruling classes prestige as the Opium Wars. I would not be surprised if people are discussing the 'Mandate of Heaven' (albeit not openly). The loss of prestige they have been forced to suffer would be intolerable: it literally shouldthreaten regime stability.
     
  13. chromedog

    chromedog Less than significant minion

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    Nanotech weapons WERE deployed on Earth.
    By the former "power" formerly known as the US of friggin'A, against the nascent PanO.

    It backfired, and combined with the bankrupting effect of TWO "failed" colonising efforts (Ariadna-Dawn and it's sister ship, the Aurora - which ended up on Paradiso) after two wormhole "accidents", ended up turning the former big fish into a mad-max world at a disneyland themepark.
     
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  14. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    You're missing an emoji in there, homeslice. Something to indicate you're joking.

    Granted, that's how @Interruptor wrote it, but that's sure as hell not how the power balance is described in N3 or HSN3. FFS, the Yanjing was so effective at buying controlling interests in PanO industries that PanO scrapped their entire intelligence apparatus for the Hexahedron. I'm pretty sure Czar Vlad looks at Greece like something too unprofitable to bother taking over (it's sure as hell how the US and UK looked at Greece!)
     
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  15. daboarder

    daboarder Force One Commander
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    Sec9. They straight out say that the term hyperpower was coined because no one other power even comes close to rivaling them.
    Yu jing only plays because collectively the other nations combined with the threat of the ei helps keep pano spread thin

    Pano lost the neocolonial wars?

    Certainly not from a long term strategic point of view.

    Back on the boat nomad scum

    And imp, apparently this is needed :p

    Mate its called a joke.

    An obvious play on the fluff. Chill yourself and stop taking it so seriously....i mean what the frak
     
    #195 daboarder, May 29, 2018
    Last edited by a moderator: May 29, 2018
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  16. inane.imp

    inane.imp Well-Known Member

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    Did they achieve their objectives? No.
    Did their opponents achieve theirs? Yes.

    Seems like a loss to me.

    Go back to looking at slides [emoji14]
     
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  17. daboarder

    daboarder Force One Commander
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    CVs thanks :p
     
  18. Solar

    Solar Well-Known Member

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    Not yet, anyway
     
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  19. A Mão Esquerda

    A Mão Esquerda Deputy Hexahedron Officer

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    Shhhh... a smaller power with two planets and a smidge of another is obviously able to keep up with a never before seen power with three full planets, the vast majority of another, the largest holdings in the Sol system, and significant holdings in the Human Edge...
     
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  20. Solar

    Solar Well-Known Member

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    I suppose that YJ players can always appreciate that even if they lost the Uprising, and even if in the background they can't match PanO, they're still more interesting to play after losing one of their two Sectorals than PanO is with three and a couple of bits.

    #hyperpowermorelikehyperlame
     
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