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Leperflesh posted:No? I assumed the currencies were floating. Japanese yen is kind of a bad example, as the yen system resulted from the dollar being used to back the yen post World War 2 to control inflation in Japan; a result of government policy that lasted long enough to enforce permanent change, not 'natural' market forces. If Japan had been left to its own devices, it probably would have created something "bigger" than the yen to simplify financial transactions. C-Bills and house currencies, by contrast, are all using the same currency structure, so one currency changing wildly in value would be *very* bad.
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Nov 12, 2015 22:08
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The Merry Marauder posted:Obviously a single data point when comparing floating exchange rates is useless for analysis. I've always assumed those aren't single data points but the averages since the collapse of the Star League. It's easier that way.
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Nov 12, 2015 22:34
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The Merry Marauder posted:Obviously a single data point when comparing floating exchange rates is useless for analysis. PoptartsNinja posted:The M-Bill is close to 1:1, the Steiner one is worth more (in canon). This is what I'm referring to. No offense to PTN. "Worth more" does not imply Steiner has a stronger currency. PoptartsNinja posted:I've always assumed those aren't single data points but the averages since the collapse of the Star League. It's easier that way. Which also doesn't imply strength, only that both (or all) of these economies are inflating or (god I hope not) deflating at about the same rate. Exchange rates also do not imply purchasing power parity. One currency might be strong against another due to political events that have no bearing on either currency's domestic purchasing power or stability. This is a nitty derail of course. I just like to yak about currency because a lot of people grossly misunderstand what exchange rates actually mean. e. thetruegentleman posted:Japanese yen is kind of a bad example, as the yen system resulted from the dollar being used to back the yen post World War 2 to control inflation in Japan; a result of government policy that lasted long enough to enforce permanent change, not 'natural' market forces. If Japan had been left to its own devices, it probably would have created something "bigger" than the yen to simplify financial transactions. Actually it's a perfect example, because I'm specifically stating that if all you know is the spot exchange rate (or even an "average" exchange rate), that tells you nothing about the historical reasons for two currencies having different integer-amounts for typical buying power. Without knowing more, we can't know if Steiner simply made its currency "smaller" for historical reasons or something, or if it's actually gained strength against the C-Bill over time. Also, "strengthening" currency isn't always good! The US has trade imbalances with other countries. When the US dollar gains against those currencies, it becomes cheaper for Americans to buy foreign goods and more expensive for foreigners to buy American goods. This may be seen as a bad development for America: in the past, politicians have at times pursued a "weak dollar strategy" in an attempt to improve the trade imbalance. Pursuing such a strategy does not necessarily imply economic weakness, though: only that the government in question is choosing to expand the money supply (or contract it). Steiner may indeed have a stronger economy than other Great Houses; I don't know the fluff so I can't say. But merely pointing out that their exchange rate is different in one direction does not in any way support such a conclusion. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Nov 12, 2015 |
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Nov 12, 2015 22:40
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Blahblahnlah
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Nov 12, 2015 22:50
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Leperflesh posted:This is what I'm referring to. No offense to PTN. "Worth more" does not imply Steiner has a stronger currency. Did I ever say it did? There's a reason I'm simply encouraging people to not pay too much attention to this: it's completely meaningless. They're feudal economies, the 'strength' of the money doesn't matter when some Davion worlds are still using barter since they don't have a printing house / etc. and everything is dependent on whether or not your current leader is going to get 5% of the army killed this year or not. House Steiner and House Marik have the best industrial capacity and the most self-sufficient worlds, so they both have "stronger economies" barring misrule or the destruction of that capacity. Short of mathing out how much a BattleMech costs in C-Bills or H-Bills currency in BattleTech is completely arbitrary. Everything is fixed at 1 c-bill per 5 1980s US Dollars IIRC because it's the space 80s. That's just what you do.
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Nov 12, 2015 22:52
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Economic stability in Battletech has very little to do with industry and trade and far more to do with how likely the backer of the currency is to get their rear end kicked. Why is the Steiner currency strong and stable? Because Assault Mechs, motherfucker. C-Bills are stable because EVERYBODY is under constant threat of having their communications halted and their planets wrecked by Comstar. So it's not that $5 or 400 yen can buy you a loaf of bread. It's that you better sell me that loaf of bread for $5, or I'll burn your store down. It just so happens to be worth $5 of burning things down to everyone.
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Nov 12, 2015 22:55
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The Inner Sphere has two strong economies and three weak economies. The League has a strong economy because they win most of their wars and do very little fighting on their own "soil." The relatively stable border with the Lyran Commonwealth helps. Their economy is hampered by the relative strength of their internal power blocks. Most of their production doesn't go towards furthering state ends. The Commonwealth has a strong economy because of a few hugely productive industrial worlds and nearly every one of their colonies being self-sufficient for basic needs. They're hampered by a nobility prone to indolence and having things 'their way' at the expense of efficiency. All in all not a bad problem to have when you have enough manufacturing power to brute force your way through that inefficiency. The Suns has a weak economy because at one point or another nearly every Federated Suns planet has been invaded. Not just raided, straight-up invaded. The only real exception is New Avalon. They make up for their weakness with JumpShip production, and are usually better at either making do or moving resources from world to world to make up for their lack of self-sufficiency. The Capellan Confederation has a weak economy because they haven't protected many of their industrial worlds from the Free Worlds League (or later, from the Federated Suns). They compensate for this by simply letting their non-productives starve. The Draconis Combine has a weak economy because they're always at war. Their production is very decentralized and highly inefficient which they make up for with 16 hour workdays and a total war economy. The whole of their economy is, theoretically, dedicated to furthering state ends.
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Nov 13, 2015 00:11
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Man, no disrespect, serious economics is serious, but this currency stuff is the least fun derail this thread has had in a while. We could have at least framed everything in terms of two cows jokes. And none of that "clan cows weigh half as much" nonsense. ComStar: You have two cows. Someone tries to take one cow so you detonate the nuke you hid under your farm. Capellans: You have two cows. There are two mystical dragons that look like cows from the underneath while they sail overhead and massacre your cows. The dragons are somehow also your cows, but in a way that makes you think farm ownership isn't as simple as you'd like. Death Commandos: You have two cows. They are disgraced old cows that no-one else wants but they're badass because they *survived* the hambuger making process. Stackpole: You have one clearly unlikable cow. Other characters talks about how amazing the cow is while it stands in the middle of the field doing nothing to earn the compliments. Hell's Horses: You have one cow and a dozen chickens which everyone knows aren't as good as a another cow but does lead to a more balanced diet overall. I don't know much about the Battletech backstory other than what I read in this thread. Anyone want to continue / correct me?
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Nov 13, 2015 01:39
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Saw 30 new posts and thought it was political vote time. Instead I have apparently stumbled into a spaceonomics lecture.
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Nov 13, 2015 02:34
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Endomorphic posted:And none of that "clan cows weigh half as much" nonsense. Clan nonsense is half as long and twice as funny as IS nonsense.
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Nov 13, 2015 02:40
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Lyran Commonwealth: You have two elephants. Strangely, they produce milk, so you call them cows. No one corrects you.
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Nov 13, 2015 02:42
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I'm sorry. e. Elephants are mammals, why would it be strange that they produce milk?
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Nov 13, 2015 02:43
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That's all we needed to hear 
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Nov 13, 2015 02:44
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Devorum posted:Saw 30 new posts and thought it was political vote time. I was going to be disappointed until I got to the Hell's Horses example and then decided that it was actually worth it in the end.
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Nov 13, 2015 02:45
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It was pretty great.
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Nov 13, 2015 03:05
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Endomorphic posted:Man, no disrespect, serious economics is serious, but this currency stuff is the least fun derail this thread has had in a while. We could have at least framed everything in terms of two cows jokes. And none of that "clan cows weigh half as much" nonsense. This is gold. You are gold. I wish you'd done them all, and Xarbala had illustrated it.
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Nov 13, 2015 03:43
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Devorum posted:Saw 30 new posts and thought it was political vote time. It'll be a couple of days. I took a short break (to finally watch Fury Road among other things (I'll check my PMs one of these days)) and I'm starting in on the fluff now. We're probably rolling straight into the last mission of the campaign but we'll see if the fluff makes for any interesting voting.
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Nov 13, 2015 03:45
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PoptartsNinja posted:We're probably rolling straight into the last mission of the campaign but we'll see if the fluff makes for any interesting voting. Sweet, the campaign continues! Carlos Marik holding out against the much reduced forces of the Prefectural Guard on planet? Or the Cappies hitting where it hurts, perhaps with the help of more legendarily named experimental Project Phoenix mechs? Guess we'll tell when the votes are tallied. Want to see more of those legendarily named experimental mechs, but not to actually play as team warcrimes. There are lines you just don't cross, even for the shiny tech.
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Nov 13, 2015 04:14
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Crossing lines that other people think should never be crossed is the entire point of Team Warcrimes. Go big or go home (and then find your home was leveled and your family murdered). Zaodai fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Nov 13, 2015 |
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Nov 13, 2015 04:18
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TildeATH posted:This is gold. You are gold. I wish you'd done them all, and Xarbala had illustrated it. Seconded.
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Nov 13, 2015 04:29
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Zaodai posted:Crossing lines that other people think should never be crossed is the entire point of Team Warcrimes. Ah, but which IS Team Warcrimes at this point? CapCon who mercilessly murdered their own soldiers along with a town to hide their new prototypes, or Comstar who just likely explosively(as in exploding power plants) cut off the power to an entire continent for the indefinite future - and then proceeded to make sure there was some radioactive fallout as well?  The answer is of course both. But which do we play as?
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Nov 13, 2015 04:46
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Endomorphic posted:Man, no disrespect, serious economics is serious, but this currency stuff is the least fun derail this thread has had in a while. We could have at least framed everything in terms of two cows jokes. And none of that "clan cows weigh half as much" nonsense. FedSuns, Hanse era: You steal your neighbor's cow. Everyone tells you how awesome that is because no one has stolen a cow since the Star League. FedSuns, Victor era: One of your cows gets stolen. Everyone tells you how awesome you are at cow management even though you've lost one cow and you get almost no milk from the ones you have left. FedSuns, Yvonne era: Someone nukes your cows. You manage to scrape up some powdered milk to keep things going anyway. FedSuns, Caleb era: You kill your cows and roll around in the viscera. Everyone is afraid to tell you this is not normal. Fraction Jackson fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Nov 13, 2015 |
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Nov 13, 2015 04:48
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Don't do Monarchy kids, it's a bad scene.
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Nov 13, 2015 04:56
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Lord Koth posted:Ah, but which IS Team Warcrimes at this point? CapCon who mercilessly murdered their own soldiers along with a town to hide their new prototypes, or Comstar who just likely explosively(as in exploding power plants) cut off the power to an entire continent for the indefinite future - and then proceeded to make sure there was some radioactive fallout as well? Comstar blew up their base for both tactical and strategic reasons. Depriving the power to an entire continent was an unfortunate(-ish) side effect, not the end goal. The Cappellans are going to burn the continent that is out of power to the ground simply because they'll be damned if they're loading all that flamer fuel back into the dropships to haul it away.
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Nov 13, 2015 05:39
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Zaodai posted:Comstar blew up their base for both tactical and strategic reasons. Depriving the power to an entire continent was an unfortunate(-ish) side effect, not the end goal. To clarify for any newcomers who haven't read through the earlier days of the LP when Zaodai posted more frequently, he's explaining the reasons why the Cappellans are his favorite.
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Nov 13, 2015 06:05
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Voyager I posted:To clarify for any newcomers who haven't read through the earlier days of the LP when Zaodai posted more frequently, he's explaining the reasons why the Cappellans are his favorite. I mean his Avatar already does it very succinctly. I admit I very much enjoyed Team War Crimes' rampage through the Hell's Horses, mind.
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Nov 13, 2015 06:08
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If I were backing somebody for tryhard reasons, I'm a Lyran supporter. I just back the Cappellans in the thread because it's hard to resist cheering for the team of mustache twirling cartoon villains. They're always so comically over the top, and they get poo poo on by everyone. You're not backing Dr. Doom, the maniac with power to actually threaten the world (or existence itself). You're backing Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget. A vaguely evil buffoon who can't beat a 9 year old girl, a dog, and a mentally dysfunctional robot. If you can't win the battle, and you can't win the war, just burn everything. In the PTN-verse, they at least get to do that and genuinely make people mad or upset about it. [EDIT] Also, Death Commandos, WOOOOO! 
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Nov 13, 2015 06:15
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Wouldn't the comically evil, mustache-twirling villains in this example be the WoBbies, which Kernoff became part of? You know, between their multiple atrocities, profligate use of WMDs and managing to unite literally everyone in the Inner Sphere, INCLUDING THE CLANS, into working together against them? Or I suppose you could go back in time and choose Stephan Amaris if you need literal mustache-twirling along with cackling evil. Or are you more associating them with the mentioned Dr. Doom(though he actually succeeded semi-permanently in some fashion, unlike any of the aforementioned examples)?
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Nov 13, 2015 06:30
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Lord Koth posted:Wouldn't the comically evil, mustache-twirling villains in this example be the WoBbies, which Kernoff became part of? You know, between their multiple atrocities, profligate use of WMDs and managing to unite literally everyone in the Inner Sphere, INCLUDING THE CLANS, into working together against them? Or I suppose you could go back in time and choose Stephan Amaris if you need literal mustache-twirling along with cackling evil. They're more the Dr. Doom end of things. Threats to be faced, with the understanding that they'll do some real damage. The Cappellans are just there so someone can go give those Space Asians what-for! [EDIT] More directly, Wobbies and the like have the ability to get poo poo done on a large scale. They're ultimately going to go down at some point, because they're the bad guys, but they'll get their hits in. The Cappellans are the bad guy that get beaten every episode by the plucky group of kids. They're Team Rocket, but with flamethrowers and torture.
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Nov 13, 2015 06:34
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Lord Koth posted:Wouldn't the comically evil, mustache-twirling villains in this example be the WoBbies, which Kernoff became part of? You know, between their multiple atrocities, profligate use of WMDs and managing to unite literally everyone in the Inner Sphere, INCLUDING THE CLANS, into working together against them? Or I suppose you could go back in time and choose Stephan Amaris if you need literal mustache-twirling along with cackling evil. Well, the Wobbies only did that after watching their main plan lie in ruins for about dozenth time in 20 years.
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Nov 13, 2015 06:35
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dis astranagant posted:Well, the Wobbies only did that after watching their main plan lie in ruins for about dozenth time in 20 years. What DO the Wobbies actually want?
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Nov 13, 2015 06:36
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Night10194 posted:What DO the Wobbies actually want? A seat at the big boy table with hopes of kicking off a new Star League they can manipulate into ruling. Same thing Comstar always wanted, minus being seen as a splinter faction no one gave a poo poo about. The Clans hosed it up, then someone else kicked off a new Star League a time or 3 instead of them and when it was clear they were never going to have it their way they threw a giant tantrum They had a big dumb army they thought they were gonna knock over the Clans with and once the Clans quit being a huge problem they decided they might as well use that army to take a crack at this whole Succession Wars thing that's so popular these days.
dis astranagant fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Nov 13, 2015 |
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Nov 13, 2015 06:40
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Devorum posted:Saw 30 new posts and thought it was political vote time. I'm glad that I wasn't the only one.
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Nov 13, 2015 07:47
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I thought the clans were the mustache-twirling villains. You can tell because they're always angry and also idiots. Everyone in battletech is the villains, so it's just a matter of classifying them. The Capellans are the legit warcrimes villains: the ones that even all the other villains are repulsed by how evil they are. Like, you know, in those movies where the bad guys are robbing a bank, and all of the bank robbery crew are basically aware that it's wrong to rob banks but they're doing it anyway, yelling at the tellers and shoving people over and shooting the ceiling, and then one guy just puts his gun against a hostage's head and blows his brains out for no reason whatsoever and all the other robbers are just like, what the gently caress frank! What the gently caress, why did you do that??? And Frank doesn't even understand that he's gone too far, he's such a psychopath that it simply doesn't register with him that he's just gone way way over the line. Like if he'd shot a security guard that was going for his gun, they'd have been upset but they'd understand it was always a risk and maybe Frank just had to do it, but that hostage wasn't doing anything and Frank just murdered him on a whim. That's the Capellans. As far as I can tell, from reading this thread. Also maybe that one clan that nuked the gently caress out of a planet, the jade falcons or whoever? Those guys too. But mostly the Capellans.
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Nov 13, 2015 08:26
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Night10194 posted:I mean his Avatar already does it very succinctly. See also; the rest of the thread misting up over Engine Joe while Zaodai claps and cheers every time a hostage dies.
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Nov 13, 2015 08:33
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Voyager I posted:See also; the rest of the thread misting up over Engine Joe while Zaodai claps and cheers every time a hostage dies. I would contend that my enjoyment of the scenario is no less valid than anyone else's. It's all fiction, nobody actually died. I'm sure if my backing the "bad guys" in certain scenarios were that disruptive to the thread, PTN would have asked me to leave by now. One man's drama is another man's comedy. It's all in good fun.
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Nov 13, 2015 10:24
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Zaodai posted:I would contend that my enjoyment of the scenario is no less valid than anyone else's. It's all fiction, nobody actually died. I'm sure if my backing the "bad guys" in certain scenarios were that disruptive to the thread, PTN would have asked me to leave by now. For that matter, how do we know any of these other posters are real? I put forward the theory that PTN, in an effort to create the biggest and longest-running LP in forums history, has actually made up all of his players and their accounts to create the illusion of an active thread. It's all just been PTN, playing both times all along. Not only has nobody died, but nobody has won or lost either!
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Nov 13, 2015 11:31
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It's us. We were PTN the whole time.
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Nov 13, 2015 12:09
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Leperflesh posted:
Clan Smoke Jaguar is probably tied for "most bugfuck insane" of the Battletech factions. Granted, they pretty much took the Clan warrior-ethos to its logical conclusion, but still. At least they eventually got what was coming to them, in any case.
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Nov 13, 2015 13:05
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But do I even exist? For all you know I'm a figment of everyone's collective-subconscious desire to have a BattleTech thread on SA, and the thread itself is yet another BattleTech-related mass hallucination like the Phantom Mech ability and giant butterflies.
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Nov 13, 2015 14:11
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