Quote:
Originally Posted by ArmySGT.
With any other faction, I would agree with you.
Not in the case of the Kentucky Free States, also known as the Rich Five.
Five Industrialist with a Robber Baron attitude went into cryosleep with two thousand loyal followers and preserved industrial capacity.
The KFS is the only functioning government above small town; and an actual Nation State. They have no problem using slaves and condemned criminals to salvage material out of radioactive hot spots or other lethal areas.
The KFS preserved the people with the knowledge and the skills to make or refine just about anything. It is the only other Tech level A group besides the Morrow Project, in game. While it is true they are scavengers, it is also true that they are manufacturers too. All very low rate and on a, as needed, schedule.
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As far as the group it would have to be beyond Morrow Project in size and capacity. All the discussions we have had about keeping the MP off people's radar would be magnified by an order or more magnitude. PLUS it is all being put in a limited are as opposed to MP's dispersion. To pull this off they would be spending something on the order of a trillion dollars. So would TMP.
To manufacture what you are talking about you are talking a hundred thousand knowledgeable people plus all the dependants. You are building a new city somewhere which will quickly have an SSBN something pointed at it.
Two thousand loyal followers gets you the managers for your operation, not the people with the hands on skills. Can't get that from books.
I work in the manufacturing industry and know how many knowledgeable people it takes to do a little manufacturing. The scale you describe (M1s, unlimited ammo, planes) takes layers upon layers of interlocking skills and manufacturing infrastructure. Yes a handful of guys can probably cover all the steel hardening required (my area of knowledge). But you need groups of specialized maintenance personnel (who we just phone and wait a week or two to show up), guys making parts and supplies for our machines, a regular and reliable source of natural gas, propane, and all that entails (lots more people equipment companies, support companies), chemicals, steel, pipe, tooling, and on and on. All these people don't feed anyone but need to be fed as does their families, barbers, plumbers, ...
All this ain't hiding in some little hole in the ground. What you are describing is North America. Yes you are talking a dozen tanks not thousands but the infrastructure of that scale is needed for so much of it.
Unless it was my PMs interpretation I was under the impression Krell was running a large (multi-state) empire. Based on my interactions manufacture was limited to pre WWII tech from salvage.
Please note I was a player not a PM and had/have nothing but the original 1979? pre publication loose leaf binder manual. I made it a point not to ruin the fun of discovery.
My issue is keeping this from turning into high fantasy. You guys are getting so wrapped up in the tech gizmos to very high levels of detail but to my mind are missing "the big picture". I may be wrong, it happened once before, all I am trying to do is have you stop and think about the real world implications. TMP is frankly a science fantasy game. Everything BEM is supposed to have brought back is that so truthfully letting some other faction(s) have some degree of it in the game is fair I suppose. I can live with TMPs goodies just in my mind it was supposed to be the special ones. How long before NK had a buried clan of Kim group, etc..
If you also hold the assumption BEM knew the project was going on in 150 years and lied about the 6 month to 5 year time frame then another can of worms is both opened and closed.
The order of manufacturing support you envision is orders of magnitude beyond TMP. TMP made HAM suits, the Mars vehicles, sci one yes and had to hide those in plain site as "failed prototypes". We dumped them in the ocean/desert/buried them when they failed. BUT TMP wasn't making the steel, machine tools, optics, electronics, chemicals... these were bought from XYZ corp. Now you have to create XYZ corp as part of KFS because there is no XYZ to buy from anymore.