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Shoguneagle In reply to space-commander [2015-01-31 07:57:46 +0000 UTC]

Compared with modern technology and production, probably on the scale of aircraft carrier construction, an entire fleet of fifth-generation aircraft, and the Large Hadron Collider project combined. But factoring in that the Zentradi (and their corrupted counterparts) were bred specifically for warfare, the construction of such war machines stripped away any cultural identity they would have developed. They pilot mecha bristling with weaponry, travel aboard starfaring battleships with weapons that can annihilate worlds... but none of them know what music is, or painted an image, or understand dating and romance.  So for them, carrying a laser rifle equates to us carrying a cell phone around; they don't even think about it.

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space-commander In reply to Shoguneagle [2015-02-01 01:13:49 +0000 UTC]

Yep, I knew the Zentradi were socialists. Perhaps a better question would be how the cost of one of these things compares to the GDP of a typical planet?

One thing that I have noticed when comparing military hardware is that the cost per mass or size ratio increases much faster in real life (tug boat, destroyer, aircraft carrier) than in fictional worlds such as Star Wars (M Falcon, Frigate, Star Destroyer). I was curious about how Macross compared.

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Shoguneagle In reply to space-commander [2015-02-01 02:19:24 +0000 UTC]

That's a good question. Macross doesn't really delve into its own economics, except in relation to say, the original SDF Macross, when it was mentioned how much money and resources was pumped into rebuilding it (the Mayor of the city hints at it when he goads Captain Global into launching it for the first time). The background and the specifications reveal that entire planets were devoted to manufacturing specific Zentradi ships, but again, no solid figures are given.

Gunbuster gives a far better example, when in episode five, one of the protagonists clearly states that nearly all of Earth's manufacturing resources were funneled into building the Black Hole Bomb to use against the origin of the space monsters in the center of the galaxy. But considering the nature of Japanese anime, when the size of the explosions are reined in only by the animation budget, economics tends to be a throw-away value.

I know the costs now provided in Star Wars for ships are from the original West End Games roleplaying game; no starting player would ever be able to afford a starship using a conventional scale (something like an X-Wing would cost tens of millions of credits, if compared to our own civilization), so they were dialed down to be still be expensive, and yet attainable within the context of the game.

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space-commander In reply to Shoguneagle [2015-02-28 04:30:30 +0000 UTC]

Super sorry times ten for this atrociously late reply, but sometimes deep conversations require deep thinking. In today's world it's tempting to normalize economics based on hourly wages and income brackets, but it's also worth noting how productivity went up 75% around the 80s while wages only went up about 10% since then. In a scifi world it might be more like 1000% and 10% depending on the extent of AI combined with globalization-like forces related to the speed and safety of FTL. In that kind of world wealth might be so concentrated that you might have a state of de facto feudalism: supply so high that demand can never really catch up and market forces become virtually nonexistent.

The affordability of an X-Wing would depend on how effective automation is at driving costs down as well as the scarcity of minerals needed to build the widgets (X-wings) and gadgets (droids). If the minerals needed to support AI are scarce enough that people become less expensive to employ than droids then it would make sense for the X-wings to remain expensive. In this scenario the limiting factor of the economy would be something like gold. Then one has to ask if gold mining from asteriods, etc can be automated in a manner similar to the von neuman paradigms of a lot of the hard scifi universes. Once everything gets completely automated you might as well throw your hands up and live like Star Trek.

I find it tempting to limit the capability of AI for the sake of keeping human labor a viable factor, but based on all these news articles I keep seeing about machine learning, it seems like reality is about to get stranger than fiction.

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Shoguneagle In reply to space-commander [2015-03-22 02:47:58 +0000 UTC]

No worries (and an apology for my own).

Yeah, in a world where supply far outstrips demand, I can definitely see society taking that path, where self-determination grabs the front seat at last. The only real limiting factor is the availability and the accessibility of the elements to support it. When 97% or so of matter in the universe is hydrogen with few means to convert it into heavier elements, short of thermonuclear fusion and supernovas, it proves problematic. Of course, with fantastical technologies, that limitation is eradicated, or at least for the duration of the orderly universe.

We certainly live in interesting times. I just hope that it's all not a means to the end, instead of the realization of our potential.

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rushvin In reply to Shoguneagle [2015-02-05 02:18:33 +0000 UTC]

Flagged as Spam

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Shoguneagle In reply to rushvin [2015-02-07 04:12:15 +0000 UTC]

The Protoculture species of the Stellar Republic could be considered said civilian population, since they genetically created the Zentradi to fight threats on their behalf, charging them with a prime directive to not interfere with the Protoculture population. The Bird Mecha found in Macross Zero is a rare example of a Protoculture-built ship, designed to destroy the human species if they ever developed overtechnology (which they did, thanks to crashed Alien Star Ship One, which became the SDF Macross).

I think you are correct in your assessment of the automated factory planets; in the Macross background, most of these were destroyed in the conflict between the Zentradi and the Supervision Army, forcing both sides to utilize whatever reserves they had (the Glaug officer's pod is one of those mecha they had in short supply, because its manufacturing source was one of the factories destroyed). The Zentradi knowing little else than warfare and their own history, found themselves unable to repair most of their technology, until their contact and integration with humanity.

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