Non-People/Country Things in AH that are wanked
- Thread starter Strategos' Risk
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Interplanetary travel and colonies.
Wait, don't beat me up yet, hear me out!!!!
First of all, the motivation for space travel in the last half of the 20th century was really to fight the Cold War in the scientific sphere. After the Americans landed on the moon, the Soviets pretty much gave up, and NASA seems to have fizzled out.
Second, people are much harder to keep alive than you'd think. We've never been able to get an small-scale biosphere (which is what a large-scale colony would have to be) permanently habitable without constant resupply from Earth. Then there's the problems of gravity, and the old favorites like nutrition and mental health, both of which tend to get screwed up quite easily.
Finally, no one's really been able to put forward a decent engine that can send people to Mars and back in less than a year that doesn't rely on advances "just around the corner" that never materialize.
Sorry if I put my foot in anyone's birthday cake here. I'm just kinda burned from all those Popular Science articles.
Wait, don't beat me up yet, hear me out!!!!
First of all, the motivation for space travel in the last half of the 20th century was really to fight the Cold War in the scientific sphere. After the Americans landed on the moon, the Soviets pretty much gave up, and NASA seems to have fizzled out.
Second, people are much harder to keep alive than you'd think. We've never been able to get an small-scale biosphere (which is what a large-scale colony would have to be) permanently habitable without constant resupply from Earth. Then there's the problems of gravity, and the old favorites like nutrition and mental health, both of which tend to get screwed up quite easily.
Finally, no one's really been able to put forward a decent engine that can send people to Mars and back in less than a year that doesn't rely on advances "just around the corner" that never materialize.
Sorry if I put my foot in anyone's birthday cake here. I'm just kinda burned from all those Popular Science articles.
A nuclear thrust engine would do that job fine. Unfortunately people are irrationaly afraid of nuclear power.
People seem extremely reluctant to utilize alternate Great Men in their TL's. I think its due to a fear of seeming like they are simply handwaving improbable changes through, but I find it even more historically unprobable that a country might go through 1000 years of history without any outstandingly good. Obviously taken to an extreme its bad, but dropping a Peter the Great or Bismarck here and there adds a lot of authenticity and flair to a TL.
There seem to be awfully few Persian or Afghan centred TL's and scenario's here...
Especially Persia during the Islamic age seems to be a bit under-represented in most TL's and scenario's here,
even though information about Islamic Persia is not that hard to find...
Especially Persia during the Islamic age seems to be a bit under-represented in most TL's and scenario's here,
even though information about Islamic Persia is not that hard to find...
I have a powerful Egypt and a powerful Persia in the 1800s in Afrikaner TL. Both are initially Afrikaner allies, although the Egyptians later switch sides and ally with the British.
Still, your point stands--you said "few," not "none."
Extremely overused: Superpowers.
Far too often, either because of authorial laziness or simple oversight, the world simply gets divided into a handful of great empires or nations. Even during the height of European colonization, there were dozens of nations on Earth. It seems like a cheap way out for most folks.
Far too often, either because of authorial laziness or simple oversight, the world simply gets divided into a handful of great empires or nations. Even during the height of European colonization, there were dozens of nations on Earth. It seems like a cheap way out for most folks.
Jomazi
Banned
I'll have to agree on Nazi technology. Nazis are almost as bad as environmentalist when it comes to making their wishes bias what they see in science. In SWE we've had a series of greens enthustiastically declaring that all CO2-emissions could be brought down to null using fuel-cells in combination with electrolysis.
NG giving scientists access to resources brought the world the V2. But as stated by others before, they would have fucked up science with perpeteum mobiles, welteislehre, aether and declaring whole fields of it "Jewish" within a generation. They're really not rational people.
The communists also had some similar ideas (planting seeds in the tundra among others), but on the whole they could be considered quite a bit more rational than the NS.
Today only the small field of population-genetics and related medicine are suffering from political bias, and that's marginal compared to those mentioned before.
Others? Amerindians or Africans being unitied into a civilized worldpower far to easy. Where did the tribal, linguistic and cultural differences go, and the rock-hard conservativism that's present in most backwards societies?
And, most important, everything ends up as good as can be, with the world being unified by a benevolent democratic superpower.
Hell no! If the US and GB wouldn't have had the geographic advantage of OTL-history these ideals might have died in infancy. Parlamental democracy is nowhere near a must to create great powers, although economic freedom might be in the long term.
"Free fascism" ideologies like that of stirlings drakas is underused compared to ones functioning just like today's where the mean states essentially are never very efficent.
Cultural divergences and the effects of these on politics are also underexplored. How about a free, democratic society that views all other races a vermin? Or the opposite, a fascist state where gender and race of a person is considered unimportant? Perhaps even a religious order (although this is unlikely) that decides that science is the way god favors his followers.
NG giving scientists access to resources brought the world the V2. But as stated by others before, they would have fucked up science with perpeteum mobiles, welteislehre, aether and declaring whole fields of it "Jewish" within a generation. They're really not rational people.
The communists also had some similar ideas (planting seeds in the tundra among others), but on the whole they could be considered quite a bit more rational than the NS.
Today only the small field of population-genetics and related medicine are suffering from political bias, and that's marginal compared to those mentioned before.
Others? Amerindians or Africans being unitied into a civilized worldpower far to easy. Where did the tribal, linguistic and cultural differences go, and the rock-hard conservativism that's present in most backwards societies?
And, most important, everything ends up as good as can be, with the world being unified by a benevolent democratic superpower.
Hell no! If the US and GB wouldn't have had the geographic advantage of OTL-history these ideals might have died in infancy. Parlamental democracy is nowhere near a must to create great powers, although economic freedom might be in the long term.
"Free fascism" ideologies like that of stirlings drakas is underused compared to ones functioning just like today's where the mean states essentially are never very efficent.
Cultural divergences and the effects of these on politics are also underexplored. How about a free, democratic society that views all other races a vermin? Or the opposite, a fascist state where gender and race of a person is considered unimportant? Perhaps even a religious order (although this is unlikely) that decides that science is the way god favors his followers.
Cornwall used to be bigger
fortyseven said:
A Different Fate for the Templars has Australia colonised by 3 powers.
Another one- Croats as villains. From the ever-present Ustaša in Axis wins AH's to the mercenaries in 1632, Croats usually make incidental villains, and how! They're like always portrayed as human wolves.
Riain
Banned
Overused. The Commonwealth making Britain a superpower, despite the impossibility of maintianing sea links in wartime. Underused. The effects of logistics in military offensives, eg Barbarossa and Western desert in WW2, Schlieffen plan in WW1. I'm sure there would be dozens of others in which how the army is fed and supplied isn't given a second thought as a AH leader waltzes through one successful invasion after another.
Hapsburg
Banned
That's almost exactly what arises in my TL in the link in my sig.
But, yeah, such things are underused.
Grey Wolf
Donor
Well, if you mean wholly 'created' great men, I do my best
After all, a country has to have its rulers, its leaders in government and the military and its industrialists. I recall one of my timelines having a lot of fun also with REAL people in many might-have-been cases, some sons of the father sort of thing, others who were minor rising stars in OTL whose rise ceased for various butterflied away reasons
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Blackbeard tried one pirate TL once, can't remember the name. Something of the Caribbean...
It's "Vikings tries to conquer North America" thats overused.
Overused: Uber-USA
Underused: Uber-Canada.
One can never have too much Canada. Ever!
Underused: Uber-Canada.
One can never have too much Canada. Ever!