Is Liberty REALLY more powerful than Rheinland?

[AJBeast]

A lot of things don't make sense. If you follow logic then after the events of Freelancer Rheinland would have bleeping collapsed from wearing itself out, Kusari would be in political turmoil and the Blood Dragons would have seized power or whatever and Liberty would be dragging itself slowly out of the crapper after everyone who held any influence got infected.

In the end there's not much we can do beyond say "It's like this because Igiss/the dev team wanted it to be so."

Besides, if we nitpicked about vanilla we'd probably see a ton of stuff that doesn't make sense.

[jxie93]

Let's not forget the writing in the original Freelancer was flawed to say the least, when Microsoft rushed the game out for $$$. Discovery is built on the basis of an already shaky canon history, we can only make it as believable as we'd like it to be. Canon is important, but it's not a rule set in stone.

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[Sturmwind]

I wouldn't say 'no resources'. It's pretty much a copy of America now, and while America does have a lot of resources, it still has a very very large budget deficit. That means it imports a whole ass-load of stuff more than it exports.

Certainly though, Liberty is not self sufficient.

Of course, it was bold of me to state it has "no resources", interpret it as Liberty having most of its resources mined out.

At any rate, I tend to believe Liberty is much more reliant on foreign resources than the USA is, since as you said the USA still has a considerable amount of minerals and stuff at its disposal due to the fact that they started recovering it about 1000 years after the rest of the world. As an addition, currently most countries actually run on a budget deficit and also having higher import rates than export (even China does as opposed to the common belief) while in Disco I don't believe anyone but Liberty has its resources pretty much mined out while other Houses still have their natural resources.

What I don't see logical is that there is an embargo between Liberty and Rheinland. Rheinland, as said above, has two mining companies with a huge ZoI whereas Liberty has none. In such a case, Rheinland should be more self-sufficient, thus probably would have more minerals and resources at their disposal, maybe having a larger window of opportunity to establish a fleet than Liberty which has to buy every single brick from abroad. So even if Liberty imports its stuff from Bretonia or Kusari (the former having its own real mining fields again, really), Rheinland would still have considerably more resources at hand. Thus, why not a larger fleet?

What's this "Rheinland has veteran pilots and elite fighter corps" based on? And remember, capships ingame are not representative of the firepower they're meant to have. After all, capital ships in vanilla SP had guns which did like 50 damage per shot.

As an addition to that extract from the news article, it has been said several times already that Rheinland, due to their resources to build a sufficient amount of capships, is heavily reliant on fighter warfare. I won't really look any specific articles or entries up on that though, it has been stated several times if you were following Rheinland-related debates. The [RM] itself is a follower of that principle, as I'm sure you observed.

The real question here is, why did their economic overdrive and the strip-mining of most of their industrial centres not result in economic collapse right after the nomad war, given that they were in a precarious position even before then. How did they build up their military power so fast again?

I assume the reasoning would be something similar to why Kusari doesn't seem to be in any way affected by having its fleet crushed in New Tokyo orbit during the course of the Nomad War. Who knows?

As an addition, twenty years have gone by. It's been enough for the ancestors of Rheinland to build up one of the most competent armies of the world while having to pay compensation and endure a financial crisis. I don't think I need to state which period I'm referring to.

Ingame=/=InRP. A naval force is far better equipped, trained and organised than pirates and/or terrorists.

Since you came with a real life example, then here's another one: Insurgency. Look at how much effort of the USA it requires to handle. That slapped with a full scale (non-nuclear) war with say, China or Russia? The great America would definitely need to give up one of its fights to win the other.

[McNeo]

I do apologise, I meant the trade deficit, not the budget deficit. Here, China is definitely operating with a large trade surplus, allowing them to essentially buy assets all around the world (such as the USA <_<).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11724098

Liberty now apparently has Kansas/Pennsylvannia (do they even count?) as their mining fields now. Added to this, a powerful military means deteriorating or stagnant public services, unless you have a large supply of money, which Liberty, and to a lesser extent, both Bretonia and Kusari are assumed to have. I know that "even the poorest living on New London are comfortably middle class" and Liberty has always had crucial monopolies and therefore a steady source of income. I've never seen Rheinland come out of the recession it's been in since the end of the 80 year war though, it sorta just happened. Rheinland also has the Red Hessians, which I believe are quoted as part of the cause for Rheinlanders relocating to Los Angeles... Remember, Red Hessians are far more organised, dangerous and well organised than, say, the Liberty Rogues or Xenos. That said, we have the Outcasts, but their presence is meant to be less of a pirate-oriented one and more of a smuggling one.

I could go hunting for these rumours if you really want me to.

I assume the reasoning would be something similar to why Kusari doesn't seem to be in any way affected by having its fleet crushed in New Tokyo orbit during the course of the Nomad War. Who knows?

There was no reason at all for Kusari not feeling the effects of the short-lived Rheinland invasion.
There is also no reason for Rheinland being able to recover so quickly from a terrible social situation at home, underfunded military and collapsing government.

It's been enough for the ancestors of Rheinland to build up one of the most competent armies of the world while having to pay compensation and endure a financial crisis. I don't think I need to state which period I'm referring to.

We could compare navies if you like, since that's what we're doing here. Moving over land is all well and good, no one disputes Germany's WW2 dominance over mobile warfare on land, but naval warfare is a very different kettle of fish. You can assemble a tank in a few days with the correct infrastructure in place, but assembling a warship quite different.

Since you came with a real life example, then here's another one: Insurgency. Look at how much effort of the USA it requires to handle. That slapped with a full scale (non-nuclear) war with say, China or Russia? The great America would definitely need to give up one of its fights to win the other.

How much effort the USA needs to expend on doing what? If they -really- wanted to end the ridiculous notion of insurgency, they would've glassed the middle east. Sure, it'll cost a couple of Cold-War era multi-warhead ICBMs, but that's no great loss to their arsenal.

What the USA are doing is attempting to passively protect their populations from insurgencies that have made relatively few attacks. But, insurgencies are generally confined to attacks on specific targets (trade convoys) or installations (planetary or orbital). What tends to be going on here is, in my opinion, more like what the Somali pirates are doing off their coast.

Of course, it's all my opinion. So basically, neither of our opinions will change, therefore the only point of this discussion is to convince the wider audience of our respective points of view >_>.

[Gaz83]

Oh of course, Liberty is the descendant of the USA thus it must win every war even if logic dictates otherwise.

- Liberty has no resources of its own and is dependent on the income received from other Houses, yet it has an insanely large fleet.
- Rheinland has veteran pilots and elite fighter corps which in actuality easily counter -any- larger scale Liberty capship attack. Yet "in role play" Liberty forces are superior because of their capital ship fleet.
- Rheinland pretty much blitkzkrieg'd every single House in vanilla, when its economy was supposed to be down. Now that it's not so anymore, they're even weaker?
- The war is about the independent systems, yet Liberty is gaining territory, even though it has a good dozen of entirely disregarded and empty systems as opposed to Rheinland.
- Liberty is heavily tied down by piracy attracted by it being the center of commerce, in-RP and in actuality, yet they manage to carry all the above points out when their economy is being constantly eaten up by pirates.

Explain the logic in all that, please I'm all ears.

Yeah, tell me about it.

Wars don't adhere to logic on discovery.
You've only got to look at the 4.86 storyline to realize that.


Good points though Major.

[Jihadjoe]

*Lines up the LABCs, LSCs and battleships nose to stern from new tokyo to new berlin and does the 'liberty wins' dance from one to the other across the top*

In all seriousness though... I don't think I actually care that much. We're told Liberty's military spending budget is designed to produce a military force which can take on two houses at once and win.

We're told the RM have veteran this and elite that, which is all epic and stuff. We're also told they're rebuilding nicely and not nearly so broke as they were.

Awesome. Epic fight. Lets go shoot each other now and stop measuring our fictional lower anatomy.

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[McNeo]

Oh yes, added to this, I don't believe any of the inter-house wars make sense. Each house is dependant on the other for something.

Liberty has a monopoly on critical lane and gate parts. It also houses most of the financial infrastructure around shipping insurance and lending.

Rheinland has the Walker nebula, which is pretty rich in minerals, if stiffly contested by Hessians and Corsairs.

Bretonia has just about the only Gold field ever. Though, this doesnt make much sense, since the vanilla description of Gold says that "colony holdings of this rare material increase less than 2% per year". Bretonia are also based heavily around planet leeds, which has been being stripmined for the last age.

Kusari has more mainstream technological advantage, in my view concerned with consumer and high-tech goods such as computing, optronics for instance.

Each house has comparative advantage in one area. Even one house falling out of that equation for the long term neccessitates a redesign in the other three economies to account for the things they need to make up for. One inter-house war is pretty farfetched; two? Really?

EDIT Q_Q Joe dont rain on our parade.

[Gaz83]

Oh yes, added to this, I don't believe any of the inter-house wars make sense. Each house is dependant on the other for something.

Liberty has a monopoly on critical lane and gate parts. It also houses most of the financial infrastructure around shipping insurance and lending.

Rheinland has the Walker nebula, which is pretty rich in minerals, if stiffly contested by Hessians and Corsairs.

Bretonia has just about the only Gold field ever. Though, this doesnt make much sense, since the vanilla description of Gold says that "colony holdings of this rare material increase less than 2% per year". Bretonia are also based heavily around planet leeds, which has been being stripmined for the last age.

Kusari has more mainstream technological advantage, in my view concerned with consumer and high-tech goods such as computing, optronics for instance.

Each house has comparative advantage in one area. Even one house falling out of that equation for the long term neccessitates a redesign in the other three economies to account for the things they need to make up for. One inter-house war is pretty farfetched; two? Really?

EDIT Q_Q Joe dont rain on our parade.

Yeah, I agree.
That's something I've been thinking for a while aswell.

[Diabolicus]

I thought the whole goal of leaving the Solar system was to be at peace.

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Proud member of the ''Gank as a valid tactic'' group.

[Corsair]

@Joe, quantity isn't everything. If those capital ships are all piloted by "budget" crew (After bretonia/kusari stop exporting), how can they stand up to three times as many snubcraft (as is Rheinland's tactic- it is said they loathe bringing out caps after the 80 year war) who have had better training, how can they hope to win?

@Neo, Bretonia & Rheinland are "expendable" in that you don't need the previous operators to manage them at 100% efficiency. Dublin & Walker can be mined by anybody, whereas technological advancement and gate/lane tech is harder to master.

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