Nigel wrote:
> We fall into another specific to counter and specific about a generality.
> I think we go at slightly cross routes to the same destination.
OK.
When I build a game setting, or a vehicle to explore possible
game settings, I do it almost like mathematics -- I set a few
axioms, and try to find out what follows, like doing geometry
with or without the parallel postulate. Or I try to determine
the axioms which lead to the desired look-and-feel.
In some game settings, the axioms are frankly absurd ("the
world is a disc and rests on the back of four elephants"),
and the rules to deduce the setting from them are equally
strange ("good stories are bound to happen").
In other settings, the axioms are equally absurd ("FTL is
possible, and works as in Star Trek"), but the rules to get
the setting are halfway logical ("if you can have megaton-
range starships, you can spacelift kilotons of gear to new
colonies").
In most SF-like games, I add to the available technology,
but I do not subtract from it, because additions make it
easier to believe (or to suspend disbelief) than deletions,
and for this little project I do not want to exclude
tracked vehicle technology.
And David wrote:
> there are hard limits on prop tech, though. They can only go so fast, fly
> so high. the first side that has a jet bomber gets to drop bombs from above
> the operating limit of the enemy's fighters, pretty much with impunity,
> until they build a jet fighter to go after them.
And as I wrote, I DON'T want Mecha if the price is such a
collective blind spot.
> > It could be that the real world has similar blind spots where
> > it comes to plentiful free energy and easy space travel. By
> > definition, we can't know. We do known that tracks are viable
>
> Yeah, and the unicorns in central park are real pests at this time of year.
If they were pests, we could at least prove they're there.
How do you prove that there are NO invisible pixies
watching you if they never interfere in mortal affairs?
Human knowledge went throught earthquake shifts, for example
when we realized that thunder was not the wrath of some
anthropomorphic god, or that atoms were not indivisible.
Are you completely sure that no similar shifts are waiting
to happen?
> > US WWII tank destroyers sounded good on paper, too :-)
>
> You'll notice they disappeared after the war, too. Lots of really clearly
> bad ideas have billions of bucks spent on them.
Tank destroyers were a bad idea, but not clearly a bad idea.
Showing how bad they were required experience or hindsight,
and having tank destroyers was better than having no tracked
guns at all. I want the same level of soundness for my Mecha.
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