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[Pieter Tuulinen]

Whilst everything in fantasy unconsciously mirrors Real Life it's important to remember that New Eden isn't Earth.

The Cold War is a very bad parallel, because it endured so long entirely because of MAD deterrent. New Eden has no such super-weapon that could be used to devastate Luminaire and New Caldari Prime if the proxy Faction War slipped out of control.

In New Eden there is also no equivalent of the technology gap that exists on Earth. The Gallente Federation does not have a forty or fifty year technology gap over the Caldari that would allow them to prosecute unrestricted war against an enemy fighting to control local space. The Matari, despite their handicaps upon the rebellion, almost immediately had a tech base that equalled the Amarrian one, flavour text aside.

Modern Earth is a very bad place to go looking for New Eden inspiration.

[Gottii]

Im rather baffled that everyone thinks the Caldari military would automatically be more efficient. 

8 separate megacorps, all with their own paramilitaries, all of them nominally separate, competitive and distrustful of the others, with recognizable factions between them?

That would be a bureaucratic nightmare.  Redundant organizations,  political and budgetary jockeying, organizational turf wars, megacorps unwilling to share high-end tech with their factional enemies, just off the top of my head. 

And Im not sure its a given that the best officer would find his way through the ranks of the Cal Navy.  Im sure KK would object if the best new officers happened to be made up of a majority of say Ishukone junior officers.  Such things would no doubt matter in the promotion process. 

[Pieter Tuulinen]

Militaries often select more for redundancy than efficiency. With 8 Corporate militaries providing local security, each with their own intelligence agency, the State has a lot of overlap. This means that whilst they wind up spending a higher proportion of their resources on any given task, you don't get these embarrasing oversights where something is assumed to be somebody elses responsibility.

One Big Agency is not always the best answer.

[Gottii]

Militaries often select more for redundancy than efficiency. With 8 Corporate militaries providing local security, each with their own intelligence agency, the State has a lot of overlap. This means that whilst they wind up spending a higher proportion of their resources on any given task, you don't get these embarrasing oversights where something is assumed to be somebody elses responsibility.

One Big Agency is not always the best answer.

Im not sure youre seeing the big picture.  Its not just that theyre multiple organizations, its that theyre multiple organizations working for different, competing factions and agendas.

You think if SuVee's intelligence organization found a bit of intel that could give it a market advantage against its fellow megacorps, that its automatically going to share it with its fellows?  In the books (yeah i know...sigh) Heth actively uses such things as military conscription and order of battle placement to selectively wipe out his political opposition.  Likely this isnt the first time this kind of thing has happened.  Indeed, the various competitive nature of the Megacorps in general almost demands it.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

I do see your point, Gotti, but you only have to look at the inter-agency rivalries between the CIA, FBI and the DIA... Heck ANY of the alphabet agencies... to see that this happens anyway - unless you have the one big agency, which suffers worse problems due to complexities of scale.

It's even MORE balkanised within the Republic, where many of the Tribes are actively hostile to one another and the very idea of a strong central authority is openly laughed at. The Tribes are openly planning to OFFICIALLY move further from a central authority.

I can't believe the huge morass of individual statelets within the Federation efficiently mesh into the FedNavy either. And everyone born within the Empire owes fealty to a Liege Lord! I can't imagine that any Empire within Eve is free from the problems that you think plague the State.

[Jace Carithias]

And it is worth mentioning that the Demographics article does explicitly say that every Caldari citizen must undergo a basic training period in the military through a conscription method, regardless of corporate responsibilities. And it also says that this is so that a large military force can be mobilized very quickly. So it does seem to point toward the State as putting a high value on a quick and efficient military, especially with executive control of the military surpassing the authority of the megas.

That being said, I'm sure the State would have it's own logistical problems just like any other empire.

[orange]

grumble grumble retcons...

[Desiderya]

The State does have a centralized military, at least in the form of the Caldari Navy, which, I would assume, would gain operational control over the megacorporate security branches in time of need.
It is without question that there'll be internal conflicts between the big eight although these are mostly fought in the shadows and I would assume that a credible outside threat - such as the current state of war - has a unifying influence. It did so in the past and there is still the same at stake: Economical and political control over territories (viewed from the angle of the corporation as an organisation) as well as the independence of the caldari (viewed from the cultural angle of the people).

This basically means that internal bickering would be bigger in peacetime than in times of war, corroborating the sentiment that the State, as a highly militarized entity, strives more ( or suffers less ) during times of war as Gesakaarin has written earlier.

[Lyn Farel]

Whilst everything in fantasy unconsciously mirrors Real Life it's important to remember that New Eden isn't Earth.

The Cold War is a very bad parallel, because it endured so long entirely because of MAD deterrent. New Eden has no such super-weapon that could be used to devastate Luminaire and New Caldari Prime if the proxy Faction War slipped out of control.

In New Eden there is also no equivalent of the technology gap that exists on Earth. The Gallente Federation does not have a forty or fifty year technology gap over the Caldari that would allow them to prosecute unrestricted war against an enemy fighting to control local space. The Matari, despite their handicaps upon the rebellion, almost immediately had a tech base that equalled the Amarrian one, flavour text aside.

Modern Earth is a very bad place to go looking for New Eden inspiration.

You misunderstand me.

It's a bad place to go looking for inspiration.

It is, however, a good place to check your facts and see what's realistic or not. Or at least, it can give a good measure of it, since as you may have noticed, all of New Eden and all the news related events are directly inspired from Earth.

Also, I beg to disagree but the PF arsenal is plenty sufficient to wipe out an entire planet surface (cf Starkmanir Prime). MAD is definitly a reality here either, but yes, mitigated by the fact that humanity is spreaded across many planets instead of only one.

[Lyn Farel]

I do see your point, Gotti, but you only have to look at the inter-agency rivalries between the CIA, FBI and the DIA... Heck ANY of the alphabet agencies... to see that this happens anyway - unless you have the one big agency, which suffers worse problems due to complexities of scale.

It's even MORE balkanised within the Republic, where many of the Tribes are actively hostile to one another and the very idea of a strong central authority is openly laughed at. The Tribes are openly planning to OFFICIALLY move further from a central authority.

I can't believe the huge morass of individual statelets within the Federation efficiently mesh into the FedNavy either. And everyone born within the Empire owes fealty to a Liege Lord! I can't imagine that any Empire within Eve is free from the problems that you think plague the State.

Now I don't understand. You tell me in your previous post that IRL parallels are bad, and you do one of them yourself with intel agencies.

Well, all your intel agencies here all work for the same State, which is not the case in the Caldari State. And yes, each megacorp is a competiting state in itself, totally unlike the states of the USA.

[Lyn Farel]

And it is worth mentioning that the Demographics article does explicitly say that every Caldari citizen must undergo a basic training period in the military through a conscription method, regardless of corporate responsibilities. And it also says that this is so that a large military force can be mobilized very quickly. So it does seem to point toward the State as putting a high value on a quick and efficient military, especially with executive control of the military surpassing the authority of the megas.

That being said, I'm sure the State would have it's own logistical problems just like any other empire.

I am not sure that someone said that the State military efficiency is bad or not their strong point / selling point.


Edit : sorry for the multiple posts, I should not have posted from work.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

I do see your point, Gotti, but you only have to look at the inter-agency rivalries between the CIA, FBI and the DIA... Heck ANY of the alphabet agencies... to see that this happens anyway - unless you have the one big agency, which suffers worse problems due to complexities of scale.

It's even MORE balkanised within the Republic, where many of the Tribes are actively hostile to one another and the very idea of a strong central authority is openly laughed at. The Tribes are openly planning to OFFICIALLY move further from a central authority.

I can't believe the huge morass of individual statelets within the Federation efficiently mesh into the FedNavy either. And everyone born within the Empire owes fealty to a Liege Lord! I can't imagine that any Empire within Eve is free from the problems that you think plague the State.

Now I don't understand. You tell me in your previous post that IRL parallels are bad, and you do one of them yourself with intel agencies.

Well, all your intel agencies here all work for the same State, which is not the case in the Caldari State. And yes, each megacorp is a competiting state in itself, totally unlike the states of the USA.

Ugh. Yes, I quite see your confusion, let me be a bit more clear. Directly comparing the Cold War here during the 50's to the late 90's with the Gallente Caldari Cold War when there are so many dissimilarities is a bad idea.

Using our world as a yard stick for human nature and reality is unavoidable - otherwise we couldn't fairly say that we even know why the sun comes up and sets on Pator and whether a fruit you drop whilst stood on Gallentia will hit the ground because of gravity.

Expanding on your point regarding the comparisons between US Alphabet agencies and the Corporate Intelligence gathering agencies, I would say that if you feel there are too many dissimilarities, then compare the way that the CIA, MI6 and Mossad work, in that case. Different States, mostly aligned aims, differing methods and protocols and occaisionally tangential objectives.

[Laerise [PIE]]

Whether the US has the world's foremost military is up to debate. The thing Veik is talking about is e.g. what happened to the US with the Vietnam War: Their own citizens protesting against the war and advocating unilateral withdrawl of US troops. South Vietnam had in the end fight for itself when the US military withdrew.

Things like these didn't happen to Stalin and where it might have had happened, the movement was squashed before it could get momentum. Certainly that's been because Stalin had little sympathies for libertarian ideas.

Actually, let me correct that slightly: "Certainly that's because Stalin hat little sypathies for ideas that he did not agree with." I think we can say with quite some certainty that Stalin had little sympathies for all kinds of ideas with little regard to their political background. I'll refrain from delving any deeper, but Stalin (and for that matter Lenin also) had little qualms about casting aside the theoretical purity of the communist ideology when it served his personal goals.