The info isn't about bootstrapping at all, its far more about understanding when capitalizing on those resources remains useful and has any real utility. That and the actual solidity of what we can do with our weapons and technology is much less in the long term planetside. The xenos don't even need to really do anything before we start breaking down. In fact, there is no need to cover any gap at all, since that's not the time problem with our weapons.Flamelord wrote:We have space ships. With laser weapons, sentient AI's, and cloaking. They don't even have flight capability. That's a pretty hard gap they won't be covering any time soon, at least in what could be seen as reasonable for the game. I'm not sure how your info helps them bootstrap their way even past the interwar period, much less get them to the modern age.
What can we really do with our advantage anyways? Start a shooting war on the ground that becomes a shooting war in orbit? Start a shooting war in orbit that becomes a shooting war on the ground? Try to divy up the planet only for whatever adhoc system we try to strong arm to fall apart a couple months or years later (if that) leading to said shooting war anyways? Hold hands and sing kumbaya with nukes... until we get into a shooting war anyways? Bullshit until we accidentally cause an apocalypse? Our technology and weapons are, if anything, one of our biggest hindrances, especially our WMDs and heavy industry. The majority of our fleet and industry is already basically dead weight, only useful if we were about to trigger an apocalypse, and none of us wants that, so despite all of our shiny weapons and tech we all have our hands tied unless one of our players wants to start murdering everyone and end up causing more division causing us to go back ever further thus making our weapons and tech even LESS useful after we're all done dying.
We also can't start killing the xenos because the moment that happens we all start jumping on each other, once again causing the problems listed above and giving us all a one way trip to the firing squad the moment the Hague can get their hands on us eventually. So the only real game here for any of us, the only game where we don't all die either in space or with a gun to our heads, is the long game that uses as little of our tech and weapons as possible.
The utility our weapons and technology really offer us is pitifully small even just a few months from now, let alone a few years from now, so the only REAL weapon the humans have against the xenos is their confusion and ignorance to act as a screen to our own problems and general long term incompetence post planetfall. We no longer have that, so our technology is about to mean about as much as the pot we piss in, and in the longer term even less than that piss pot.
To be fair, we no longer have this main advantage because I had the Chinese take it away. Though largely because taking away this advantage is probably one of the few things that could prevent all of us from trying to fuck with the planet and end up in a shooting war. With the cat out of the bag maybe we can step back and choose the best choices that don't end in us all dead, and if not, well at least the xenos are now armed to smell our bullshit and if we try to force them too hard now, well then we'll be going down the suicide path anyways.
Anywho, sorry for barfing out several paragraphs, but I hope that got across at least some of the personal and character motivations for that move and view.
