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Old 01-20-2020, 02:12 PM   #4571
ericthered
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Default Re: New Reality Seeds

NATO headquarters is in Brussels... which could make things interesting.

Aircraftwise, BENELUX can scrape together about 100 F-16's and 10 F-34's today, plus about 80 UAV's. I don't know how long they'll be able to keep all of them working, or how long they'll be able to keep half of them working by salvaging parts. I'm also unsure if they have enough guided ammunition to avoid venturing

They're VERY light on tanks. The Netherlands maintains 18 Main Battle Tanks, but they train with the germans, so who knows if they even show up. They do have a lot of armored vehicles, but I don't know how well those will stand up to wwii tanks. I don't know how much anti-tank munition they have, though I wouldn't be surprised if they had "enough"

They'll need a steady supply of fuel, and high-quality fuel at that. So they'll want to strike up an alliance with the Allies very quickly.
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Old 01-20-2020, 03:30 PM   #4572
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Beside the direct use as fighters and precision bombing I'd think the modern radar would give a major boost to regular Allied fighters by acting as a AWACS lite.
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Old 01-20-2020, 10:10 PM   #4573
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Since we're on the topic of timelost cities, how about we take a big circular section from modern Africa and send it back to the Scramble (or earlier), abruptly reversing the technological gradient?

My first thought was something including Nairobi and Mombasa, presumably taking a big bite out of northern Tanzania too.

Alternatively, we could take a similar-sized area from the west coast and move all of Liberia, which would immediately have an interesting and complicated connection to the United States.
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Old 01-21-2020, 08:36 AM   #4574
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Alternatively, we could take a similar-sized area from the west coast and move all of Liberia, which would immediately have an interesting and complicated connection to the United States.
Liberia probably isn't unified enough for this to work. If you want a story where a timelost area becomes a significant power, you really need to pick an area where the population will pull together, at least mostly. An area that dissolves into civil war won't be scoring any significant gains during the (inevitably limited) period they enjoy a technological advantage, and what with all the stuff destroyed in the chaos, and people fleeing it, or desperate for outsiders to help them win it, that period of advantage is probably even shorter than it would otherwise be.

If it's a big enough area, and/or far enough into the past maybe the population advantage is so large that is less an issue, but it's still possible a large group totally isolated from everybody could lose most of its edge as 75% of the population starves in the initial chaotic war.
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Old 01-21-2020, 01:17 PM   #4575
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Try this twist, you have a functional United African Federation, ala Golden Age sci fi. A big chunk of that gets brought through to a Q6 world experiencing the 1860's. After saving Lincoln and making an alliance with Douglass and other radicals, the timelost (or they assume they are) seek to empower the masses. Marx, Lincoln, Douglas, Jones and others like them are they're allies. The Crowned Heads of Europe and their allies stand against them.
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Old 01-21-2020, 07:43 PM   #4576
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Try this twist, you have a functional United African Federation, ala Golden Age sci fi. A big chunk of that gets brought through to a Q6 world experiencing the 1860's. After saving Lincoln and making an alliance with Douglass and other radicals, the timelost (or they assume they are) seek to empower the masses. Marx, Lincoln, Douglas, Jones and others like them are they're allies. The Crowned Heads of Europe and their allies stand against them.
... Have you noticed that most of your reality seeds involve a (modern conception of) liberal vs conservative struggle? It's a little samey. Maybe it's just my perception.

A couple more timelost ideas:

2012 Mexico is flipped back to 1858 - say, a circle 250 miles or so in radius centered on Mexico City. After all the confusion settles down, the US is faced with a more powerful neighbor on its southern border, and Mexico must decide whether it wishes to roll back the results of the Mexican-American War - now only ten years past - or if it will throw its weight around more gently. And, of course, the narcotraficantes and the slave-holding South will be making all sorts of trouble.

One that's "fun" from either direction:

June 2001. A circle nearly 1500 miles in diameter, centered a little southwest of Kabul, is replaced with the same geography from around 100 BC. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and huge chunks of Iran, Uzbekistan, China, and India (including New Delhi) are replaced by the Indo-Greek kingdom, sections of the Parthian empire, and various Mauryan successors and central Asian states.

First, this seriously disrupts the 9/11 attacks, though they might follow through in some fashion; several of the hijackers had already entered the United States. Second, of course, is that there's a huge chunk of land full of untapped-but-already-mapped natural resources more-or-less free for the taking if you're powerful enough. People will be fascinated and/or repelled by the cultures that have been brought forward; neo-pagans in particular may find it difficult to deal with archaeo-pagans... Iran and India have suffered serious blows to their territorial integrity, and have next-door neighbors who might well take advantage of it. Kashmir is going to be a very interesting place for a while.

In the other half of this, some fairly unstable (and one nuclear, though that won't make much difference) states have been dropped into an equally unstable world where they hold a significant technological advantage. Some of them also have religious fanaticism in spades.

Either world is going to be very interesting to adventure in, and probably give Infinity heartburn. (I feel like if more than two pairs of these timelines pop up, Infinity is going to establish a study group.)

Finally, what's more fun than taking just about any modern city and dropping it into the time of the dinosaurs? Let's see... 1985. As part of a cautious gesture of perestroika, scientists in Leningrad, Massachusetts, and an Antarctic research station conduct an unusual physics experiment, bouncing high energy signals off of certain satellites. The resulting surge of energy combines with an energy pulse of extra-solar radiation (or something) and the three research locations plus the satellites suddenly find themselves on the earth of 66 million years ago! Now the Soviets and Americans must navigate a world full of dinosaurs and strange geography (and geology!) that they know will soon experience a massive extinction event. But how soon? Next year, or next millennium? Whatever happens, they'll need to build trust and a space program...
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Old 01-23-2020, 06:59 PM   #4577
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... Have you noticed that most of your reality seeds involve a (modern conception of) liberal vs conservative struggle? It's a little samey. Maybe it's just my perception.
Nah. Others have made the same observation, one or two of them rather less politely.

It's one of Astromancer's quirks. It crops randomly, but not infrequently, and you get used to it, after awhile.

The thing to remember is that he keeps this thread active, posts any number of interesting notions; the occasional awesome idea; and a lot of things that make you say, "meh", but might spark the occasional variant in your head that you like better. :)

If it starts to bug you, a bit, just counter with ideas of your own -- which is exactly what you did, so, "bravo!"

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A couple more timelost ideas:

2012 Mexico is flipped back to 1858 - say, a circle 250 miles or so in radius centered on Mexico City. After all the confusion settles down, the US is faced with a more powerful neighbor on its southern border, and Mexico must decide whether it wishes to roll back the results of the Mexican-American War - now only ten years past - or if it will throw its weight around more gently. And, of course, the narcotraficantes and the slave-holding South will be making all sorts of trouble.

(SNIP)
Given the chaos that would ensue, I'm not sure "force projection" is in the cards, anytime soon, for Mexico, D.F.

I think it far more likely the whole country rapidly falls to competing warlords, and before they can get their act(s) together, somebody a bit more far-sighted (or simply more greedy...) decides to take some samples to the rapidly-industrializing El Norte.

Up there, the new technology rapidly magnifies the disparity that already exists between the rapidly industrializing northern states, and the hidebound, reactionary Old South. Sure, the Civil War gets fought with automatic weapons, now, but the Union can [i]still[/] produce far, far more of them than the Confederacy ever could in their wildest dreams.

All the other gear that makes a soldier's life (and job) easier also is more readily available to the more numerous Union troops, because the Union still starts out with 3 1/2 times the population, five times the industrial capacity and eight times the railroad mileage, and that's assuming that northern industry doesn't boom like crazy with the arrival of the new technology.

The Civil War still happens, probably more or less on schedule, but it's even more bloody and awful (and that's saying something), and the Union still wins. After all, once a nation industrializes, then warfare becomes industrial, also, and the side with the most money and the most factories almost certainly wins.

Alternatively, said entrepreneur hops a ship to the largest, wealthiest and most technologically-advanced power the world had ever known, to that date.

The world-spanning realm of Her Majesty Victoria Regina, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, would undoubtedly welcome gifts of as many nifty gadgets as they could get.

I bet Sir Charles Babbage and his lovely protege, Ada Lovelace, might actually get that funding they keep requesting.

As for the narcotraficantes, they're just about wholly screwed. While Mexico, D.F., got sent back, Colombia and Peru did not, and that's where the coca plants get grown and the cocaine processed out of them.

Moreover, their number one market now has a 15th of the population, a tiny fraction of the wealth because it has just barely started its second generation of industrialization, and everything they formerly sold is not only perfectly legal, it's socially acceptable for ministers and schoolmarms to buy it out of the backs of wagons driven by snake-oil salesmen.

They no longer have access to their laundered assets, and those pallets of Grants and Benjamins they have sitting around? They don't even make for good toilet tissue, because the predecessor organization of the government that printed them wouldn't recognize the legitimacy of any currency not backed by gold and silver (and most currency is gold and silver, in 1850).

They might get a fair amount of money for their sparkly mouth-grilles, and maybe even more for their silly gold-plated AKs, but their fundamental problem is that narrowly-competent violent thugs are only narrowly competent. The only ways they know how to make money are violent extortion, and selling drugs nobody cares about or can pay much for, in 1850.

So, they head out of town to set themselves up as warlords and think they have it made, for awhile, until somebody demonstrates that a Minié ball to the back of the head kills them just as dead as a 7.62 mm round from a smokeless cartridge. After that, they're just as paranoid as they were, before the jump, and a lot more poor.

Moreover, their technological advantage doesn't last long, once the American and British engineers start taking things apart, and then re-tool their factories to make more.
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Old 01-24-2020, 09:28 AM   #4578
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Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
It's one of Astromancer's quirks. It crops randomly, but not infrequently, and you get used to it, after awhile.

The thing to remember is that he keeps this thread active, posts any number of interesting notions; the occasional awesome idea; and a lot of things that make you say, "meh", but might spark the occasional variant in your head that you like better. :)
Yep. Its what he does. He also loves to play with parrelells driven by interfering outtimers, has a strong pro-US leaning, and Midwinter Aton gets thrown in a LOT. But it keeps the thread going, and there is often a good concept that can be remixed in a different situation.


Quote:
Given the chaos that would ensue, I'm not sure "force projection" is in the cards, anytime soon, for Mexico, D.F.

I think it far more likely the whole country rapidly falls to competing warlords, and before they can get their act(s) together, somebody a bit more far-sighted (or simply more greedy...) decides to take some samples to the rapidly-industrializing El Norte.
Yeah, the country quickly falls into civil war. I don't think that will be a permanent state of affairs though. A powerful dictator will rise to power in five to 10 years, and once he's in place, mexico is a world power.

They outnumber "el norte" 5 to 1. Or the home islands 5 to 1.The modern US has parked a Huge portion of its manufacturing in mexico. They have substantial automotive and electronics manufacturing bases . They can largely feed themselves, though that will be a shock.

The Americans, British, Germans, French, and whoever else wants to can attempt to industrialize quicker than mexico, but once the country comes out of its war, they'll outnumber any potential rival, and they'll have a leg up on technology, industry, and understanding its effects.

They've got a chance to influence who that dictator who shows up in five years is, but they wont' be able to cherry pick him, and they risk making some nasty enemies.

Mexico may be able to take back the western United states through pure population pressure. Settlement is underway at this point, but the Mexicans will have trucks, air conditioning, modern fertilizer, and a 5 to 1 population advantage. Also, they'll be short (but not cut off) on petroleum, and they'll want to set up a lot of wells in texas or off the gulf.

For force projection... They haven't trained for it, but I suspect access to modern transportation and weapons means it doesn't matter. At least not in the long run. They'll be a few embarrassments early on, but internal combustion engines cover a multitude of sins.

The effects on the US civil war are interesting. What do you do when its revealed that over half of your officers will be traitors? What do you do when you're told that succeeding from the union will result in the destruction of your way of life? The southern elite may become much more reasonable about ending slavery gradually via legislation once they have a map of the future.
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Old 01-24-2020, 12:07 PM   #4579
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Yep. Its what he does. He also loves to play with parrelells driven by interfering outtimers, has a strong pro-US leaning, and Midwinter Aton gets thrown in a LOT. But it keeps the thread going, and there is often a good concept that can be remixed in a different situation.
Thanks for the kind words ericthered and tshiggins. I hope all my ideas from best to worst inspire a better idea or at least a chuckle.
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Old 01-24-2020, 12:34 PM   #4580
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Try this one...

Alexander's generals were a dangerous bunch, all the more so once Alexander died. A Persian eunuch, deciding that the "successors" were worthless trash, poisoned the wine at the funeral. Or at least he did in this Q6 world. In most worlds the eunuch got a heads up and managed to avoid becoming a eunuch in the first place, and thus never worked in the palace. But as clever as this eunuch was, Ptolemy Soter was shrewder. And with most of his rivals gone, quickly exposed the eunuch. Ptolemy also exposed the eunuch's murder of of Alexander's pregnant bride. Although most people say she witnessed the eunuch's execution.

Basically, this blends the Alexander Romancer with Pulp Adventure and Noir Detective ( and Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales. The Empire is fabulous, and fabulously corrupt! Read all the Fritz Lieber and Avram Davidson's opus Phoenix and the Mirror and it's sequels Vergil in Averno, and The Scarlet Fig. You could go all Xena and mix the two settings wildly together. But it your game. Get weird!
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