[Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions

Inspiration => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_steam_technology

Regarding the interactions between Porca-Porca and the NCR :

First, it's important to remember that "to this day" (thirty years after the battle of Neighvarro), the NCR still hasn't a secure foothold east of the Central Mountain Range, and much less any access, direct or indirect, to the Sea of Equestria.

Moreover, it is still in the early phase of its expansion toward the north, and neither Stockhast, Fancee, Trottingham (and Hoofington if it still exist...) have a significant NCR settler presence, and all of them are still very much independent.

That means that any kind of meaningful relationship between Porca-Porca and the NCR would be dependent on either :

- the NCR securing access to New Oatleans' maritime infrastructures (I haven't read "All That Remains" so I don't know how (un)realistic that would be), or to Neighpon's ones (which the city being farther east, with the road leading to it passing through the harshest parts of the Central Mountain Range, would be a far less attractive proposition).
- or securing the long maritime trade route between Manehatten and Porca-Porca ; which the absence of any NCR presence along the northern coast of Equestria, the potential existence of an independent Hoofington and the Alliance's control over the Zanzebra straight offered by their control of the eponymous city combined with the NCR's lack of any kind of any meaningful Navy makes a non-starter proposition.


On the other hand, it is in the strategic interest of Porca-Porca to ensure that there exist a balance of power, that there exist a counter to the Alliance's power in order to ensure its own independence, by playing each major powers against each other. So the idea of Porca-Porca granting, if it has the ability to do so and if it wouldn't risk provoking an Alliance intervention, technological and industrial help to the NCR to ease its development and rise as a major power, is a believable option.

It however rest, as I hinted, on the capability of the NCR to either secure the northern coast of the equestrian peninsula [1], or more likely to secure access to maritime infrastructures on the eastern coast of the peninsula. In both cases, it would also need to develop a meaningful Navy able to secure the trade lanes between its ports and Porca-Porca's.


Either way, at the current time interactions between the NCR and Porca-Porca are probably limited to a few diplomatic envoys, if they exist at all.



[1] : unlikely to be achieved in the twenty years to come unless the NCR were to commit large resources to a takeover of the region, with the risk of provoking unrest in its home territories from the increased burden put on the economy and the necessary commitment of conscripted troops away from their homes ; which would be somewhat mitigated by the fact the NCR's population believe the Republic has a Manifest Destiny to rule over the Equestrian Peninsula, viewing itself as the successor state to Equestria.

Forgot about Kalcolta, which would be the NCR's ideal overture on the Sea of Equestria. And if the river is navigable up until it reach the mountain range, that's even better. Though the mountain pass would still represent a bottleneck for any trade route toward either Fillydelphia or the NCR's core territories.

_IF_ the Alliance wanted to contain the NCR's expansion, its best bet would be to prop up groups of locals in the northern territories resisting NCR's attempts at assimilation.

However, the nature of such help would need to be subtle or the NCR would quickly understand the Alliance's implication, and this would only serve to antagonize the former toward the later and further complicate Elusive's plans of economic conquest of the peninsula. And even then, such a support would only slow, not stop, the NCR's assimilation of the northern territories, its relative industrial and technological might and the number of soldiers it can mobilize far outweighing anything the northerners could muster.


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One thing is to be noted in my opinion :

If there is one thing Equestrians learned from the War, it is "Never let yourself become dependent on foreign resources". To fail to do so is to invite consequences of a literally apocalyptic magnitude.

The core goal of all the NCR's efforts is to find means to become self-sufficient. It may allow trade with the Alliance, and even to some aspects encourage it, but it will never allow itself to become dependent on it. And this run counter to the very essence of Elusive's plans.

Currently, the NCR is still the underdog, and Elusive may see it as weak and foolish enough to be lured into his plans. But as time pass, and Five Year Plans after Five Year Plans, it will only reinforce its position, industrially, militarily and geographically. Soon (in a generation or two), the NCR might well be able to severely cripple or even outright conquer San Frantello if war were to ever break out between the Alliance and the Republic. In short, the more the Alliance wait, the more the idea of a war against the NCR become a losing proposition.

On the other hand, with each passing years the NCR will become more prosperous. Of course it will still take generations before life will really start to become comfortable for most of the peninsula's inhabitants, and longer still before the Equestrian Peninsula will be able to enjoy a Pre-War quality of life, but it still remain that, barring any catastrophe, the re-united Equestrian Peninsula is destined to become a major power on the world stage, if only because of its demography.

Elusive will not be able to conquer by economic means the NCR. However, it might be able to integrate it into the Alliance. The benefits are obvious : their mastery of magic and arcano-technology alone would prove to be an invaluable addition to the Alliance's society, coming next after their control over the climate and the sheer productivity of their agriculture which might help the Alliance to viabilize the harsh terrain of Zebrica and to turn itself into a demographic powerhouse.

Elusive is certainly not an idiot and must be aware of it. The question is : is his programming able to admit the idea that it might have to treat the NCR as a partner on the basis of a relationship as equals, and not as a subordinate vassal ? If the answer is yes, THEN the situation might end well for everyone involved. If however he fail to come to term with that, the final outcome will be either a destructive and protracted war or the rise of a powerful and possibly antagonistic power.

One thing is certain : the process of integration will be a slow one, and it will be decades, maybe centuries before it will be complete.

The most arduous task will be to ensure peace during that time.





Also, Alliance occupation of the Equestrian Peninsula in case of war might be made impossible if Littlepip were to decide it had enough of their shit and decided to unleash the full might of the SPP on the Alliance's forces.

So really, tensions might exist, but in my opinion the leadership of both the Alliance and the NCR would see the costs associated with a war would far outweigh the expected benefits.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:So, sure, the vehicles will be heavier, and the JCMC Truck Model 3 would more likely be a "Model 6" (=> for weighing 5 or 6 metric tons), but with that kind of torque and potentially a gearbox to better deal with driving off-road, and maybe by replacing the rear wheels with tracks to make it a half-track... Okay, more like 8-10 metric tons, but far sturdier and with a better autonomy / range and easier to maintain due to a less complex mechanism.

I was thinking of something like this, but stripped down to the essential bits : one thing I haven't quite made clear yet is that maybe more than energy, the thing the NCR lacks most to develop its industry is steel. Or more exactly, the NCR hasn't yet fully developed its metallurgy sector to industrial levels (from ore extraction to advanced alloy casting), and is still dependent on recycling scavenged metals and importing refined metal, steel and advanced alloys from the Alliance (if it accept to trade that, that is) to support its industry.

Currently, they scavenged most of Fillydelphia's equipment (apart from the things that are too big to move like the blast furnaces), and the Manehatten region had metal working equipment they were able to salvage ; but they yet have to start mining ore, and even if they have a basic grasp of chemistry and the fundamentals of metallurgy, running an industry is something radically different from operating laboratory equipment or a backyard forge. And no one wants to have a repeat of Red Eye's "Meat-Powered Steel Mills".

Harmony Ltd. wrote:

The NCR never tried making small steam engines, though? Something like a Doble engine?

Holy shitting Christ Batman !

Scratch internal combustion engines for the NCR, that's the perfect logical development for its automotive industry !

The cold-start problematic (which isn't really one with heating-up times of only 90 seconds, unless you're on the battlefield...) can be easily fixed with a limited application of Magical Spark Energy (a heating talisman) to allow if necessary the same kind of starting speed of a conventional IC engine.

Good Gawd. It's perfect. Thanks for linking me to that !

Oh, you're welcome! I didn't know that you didn't know, or I would have mentioned it earlier.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:So, sure, the vehicles will be heavier, and the JCMC Truck Model 3 would more likely be a "Model 6" (=> for weighing 5 or 6 metric tons), but with that kind of torque and potentially a gearbox to better deal with driving off-road, and maybe by replacing the rear wheels with tracks to make it a half-track... Okay, more like 8-10 metric tons, but far sturdier and with a better autonomy / range and easier to maintain due to a less complex mechanism.

YES ! Steam power FTW !

Harmony Ltd. wrote:(I mean, only from an aesthetic point of view... Steam powered cars, dagnabit ! It's just perfect !)

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Inspiration => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_steam_technology

:)

Harmony Ltd. wrote:That means that any kind of meaningful relationship between Porca-Porca and the NCR would be dependent on either :

- the NCR securing access to New Oatleans' maritime infrastructures (I haven't read "All That Remains" so I don't know how (un)realistic that would be), or to Neighpon's ones (which the city being farther east, with the road leading to it passing through the harshest parts of the Central Mountain Range, would be a far less attractive proposition).
- or securing the long maritime trade route between Manehatten and Porca-Porca ; which the absence of any NCR presence along the northern coast of Equestria, the potential existence of an independent Hoofington and the Alliance's control over the Zanzebra straight offered by their control of the eponymous city combined with the NCR's lack of any kind of any meaningful Navy makes a non-starter proposition.

Well, there's also the possibility of getting the canal system across the isthmus back in working order, but given that that route goes right past Thornbush… yeah.

Also, there seems to be some confusions (or I've forgotten something); when did the Alliance get control of Zanzebra?

Harmony Ltd. wrote:On the other hand, it is in the strategic interest of Porca-Porca to ensure that there exist a balance of power, that there exist a counter to the Alliance's power in order to ensure its own independence, by playing each major powers against each other. So the idea of Porca-Porca granting, if it has the ability to do so and if it wouldn't risk provoking an Alliance intervention, technological and industrial help to the NCR to ease its development and rise as a major power, is a believable option.

Hm… I'm not sure that that would work here. First, Porca Porca has had two hundred years of not having to do that; they might be out of practice. Second, they had to do that last time because they were literally in the middle of a hot war between two superpowers. Now, though, there're off to the side and probably not all that much involved with either power. Giving heavy assistance to one side would be taking a side, not remaining neutral, and the Alliance has more ability to strike them than the NCR does at the moment (since the NCR "navy" probably consists of guns strapped to whatever function boats they could find).

Of course, if Porca Porca was somehow motivated to help the NCR, the Alliance doesn't necessarily have to know about it (well, officially; we're talking barely-plausible deniability here)…

Harmony Ltd. wrote:[1] : unlikely to be achieved in the twenty years to come unless the NCR were to commit large resources to a takeover of the region, with the risk of provoking unrest in its home territories from the increased burden put on the economy and the necessary commitment of conscripted troops away from their homes ; which would be somewhat mitigated by the fact the NCR's population believe the Republic has a Manifest Destiny to rule over the Equestrian Peninsula, viewing itself as the successor state to Equestria.

:)

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Forgot about Kalcolta, which would be the NCR's ideal overture on the Sea of Equestria. And if the river is navigable up until it reach the mountain range, that's even better. Though the mountain pass would still represent a bottleneck for any trade route toward either Fillydelphia or the NCR's core territories.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:_IF_ the Alliance wanted to contain the NCR's expansion, its best bet would be to prop up groups of locals in the northern territories resisting NCR's attempts at assimilation.

I actually thought of that the other day and then pretty much immediately completely forgot about it. I agree that it makes sense, though.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:However, the nature of such help would need to be subtle or the NCR would quickly understand the Alliance's implication, and this would only serve to antagonize the former toward the later and further complicate Elusive's plans of economic conquest of the peninsula. And even then, such a support would only slow, not stop, the NCR's assimilation of the northern territories, its relative industrial and technological might and the number of soldiers it can mobilize far outweighing anything the northerners could muster.

Aye, the Alliance couldn't stop the expansion without directly intervening, and their efforts in slowing it would be quite limited. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of old supply caches of strangely new-looking ammunition end up being "found" in the north (and later east), though…

Harmony Ltd. wrote:If there is one thing Equestrians learned from the War, it is "Never let yourself become dependent on foreign resources". To fail to do so is to invite consequences of a literally apocalyptic magnitude.

Indeed.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:The core goal of all the NCR's efforts is to find means to become self-sufficient. It may allow trade with the Alliance, and even to some aspects encourage it, but it will never allow itself to become dependent on it. And this run counter to the very essence of Elusive's plans.

Indeed. :)

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Currently, the NCR is still the underdog, and Elusive may see it as weak and foolish enough to be lured into his plans. But as time pass, and Five Year Plans after Five Year Plans, it will only reinforce its position, industrially, militarily and geographically. Soon (in a generation or two), the NCR might well be able to severely cripple or even outright conquer San Frantello if war were to ever break out between the Alliance and the Republic. In short, the more the Alliance wait, the more the idea of a war against the NCR become a losing proposition.

Aye. In the short term, though, they still have to buy Alliance to avoid antagonizing the Alliance. Since they're not going to let their military and government become dependent on imports, that means that the NCR will be buying consumer goods and civilian vehicles (and fuel to run said civilian vehicles). Elusive is betting that a substantial fraction of the populace won't want to switch when the NCR starts making the things itself and trying to shut down imports, particularly since the NCR's early efforts are probably going to be of much lower quality than the imports. The Elusive Company then has the patronage and trust of a good portion of the NCR's population, which it can use to try and sell more Alliance services and influence the people of the NCR to support Alliance-friendly policies in government, even though the NCR government and military don't need the Alliance.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:On the other hand, with each passing years the NCR will become more prosperous. Of course it will still take generations before life will really start to become comfortable for most of the peninsula's inhabitants, and longer still before the Equestrian Peninsula will be able to enjoy a Pre-War quality of life, but it still remain that, barring any catastrophe, the re-united Equestrian Peninsula is destined to become a major power on the world stage, if only because of its demography.

Elusive will not be able to conquer by economic means the NCR. However, it might be able to integrate it into the Alliance. The benefits are obvious : their mastery of magic and arcano-technology alone would prove to be an invaluable addition to the Alliance's society, coming next after their control over the climate and the sheer productivity of their agriculture which might help the Alliance to viabilize the harsh terrain of Zebrica and to turn itself into a demographic powerhouse.

Elusive is certainly not an idiot and must be aware of it. The question is : is his programming able to admit the idea that it might have to treat the NCR as a partner on the basis of a relationship as equals, and not as a subordinate vassal ? If the answer is yes, THEN the situation might end well for everyone involved. If however he fail to come to term with that, the final outcome will be either a destructive and protracted war or the rise of a powerful and possibly antagonistic power.

That's not just admissible, it's his plan. To quote from that earlier document (which is now slightly out of date, given that the oil companies have dropped a bit in importance):

O. Hinds wrote:____If Hell doesn't exist, NEROC's monopoly continues. The NCR, unless they can find their own petroleum source (using equipment either acquired by espionage or fully domestically designed and produced, since the Alliance certainly won't sell them any) or manage to get biofuel production back up and running, probably eventually become the third central member of the Alliance, which is then the dominant power on the planet.

It's called the Elusive Alliance for a reason, after all. Not that he doesn't eventually hope to gain control of the whole thing, of course; indeed, he thinks that he might be able to play the NCR and Miliozi against each other once the power balance has three nodes instead of two.

In a lot of ways, though, Elusive is trying to be a Caesar.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:One thing is certain : the process of integration will be a slow one, and it will be decades, maybe centuries before it will be complete.

Yet another reason, Elusive would say, why he, as an immortal, ought to be in charge. What's another few centuries? :)

Harmony Ltd. wrote:The most arduous task will be to ensure peace during that time.

Aye. Though if war does break out, well, the Elusive Company will probably be in rather better shape at the end of it than the Miliozi… Not ideal, but that's why it's not Plan A. :)

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Also, Alliance occupation of the Equestrian Peninsula in case of war might be made impossible if Littlepip were to decide it had enough of their shit and decided to unleash the full might of the SPP on the Alliance's forces.

Aye; the first or second strike of a war (depending on who started it) would be a series of anti-superweapon attacks. I don't know if the Alliance could destroy the SPP hub, but they'd certainly try (there probably a few ghouls in Profectum who started quietly working on the problem as soon as they learned that Celestia was still alive and trapped there).

Harmony Ltd. wrote:So really, tensions might exist, but in my opinion the leadership of both the Alliance and the NCR would see the costs associated with a war would far outweigh the expected benefits.

Well, much of the leadership would, certainly, but I expect that both sides have both their hawks (initially much weaker in the NCR, since no sane estimate would side with the early NCR in an NCR invasion of the Alliance) and those who fear a first strike by the other side and believe that a first strike by their side is the best way to avoid that.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:
I was thinking of something like this, but stripped down to the essential bits : one thing I haven't quite made clear yet is that maybe more than energy, the thing the NCR lacks most to develop its industry is steel. Or more exactly, the NCR hasn't yet fully developed its metallurgy sector to industrial levels (from ore extraction to advanced alloy casting), and is still dependent on recycling scavenged metals and importing refined metal, steel and advanced alloys from the Alliance (if it accept to trade that, that is) to support its industry.

Nice.

Hm… I'm not sure what the Alliance would do here. Either they'd offer lots and lots of metal really cheap (so as to flood the NCR market and discourage domestic production) or they'd not offer any (so as to prevent the NCR from using it to build military and industrial equipment to support their independence). Actually, nevermind; I'm pretty sure that it would be the latter.

Of course, the NCR could still buy metal manufactured goods from the Alliance and melt them down, but that would be quite inefficient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPc0RfyjLSM

Oh, to clarify, what fuels is the NCR making? Just alcohol?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACO-HXvrRz8

I thought you might like to take a look at this one.

The Steam Man

StoneSlinger88 wrote:I thought you might like to take a look at this one.

The Steam Man

Hm, nice! Thanks. It might be getting offtopic for this thread, though.

Quickly because I'm on my phone.

RE metal :

Recycling still offer them vast quantities of materials to work with, Fillydelphia alone having enough scraps to support another two or three decades of exploitation. And after that, they can just start harvesting the damaged beyond repairs buildings of Old Manehatten to continue for another decade or two. But simply put, there'll come a time where will not be anything left to recycle.

More on that later...

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Quickly because I'm on my phone.

RE metal :

Recycling still offer them vast quantities of materials to work with, Fillydelphia alone having enough scraps to support another two or three decades of exploitation. And after that, they can just start harvesting the damaged beyond repairs buildings of Old Manehatten to continue for another decade or two. But simply put, there'll come a time where will not be anything left to recycle.

More on that later...

Good point.

O. Hinds wrote:Well, there's also the possibility of getting the canal system across the isthmus back in working order, but given that that route goes right past Thornbush… yeah.

Also, there seems to be some confusions (or I've forgotten something); when did the Alliance get control of Zanzebra?

I hadn't understood there was a canal traversing the isthmus. That's interesting. Though after two centuries the locks are probably FAR from being functional, and it would take some heavy engineering work to get everything back into working order.

Also, I might have been under the impression that the Alliance had already reclaimed or was in the process of doing so with most of the Pax Roamana's territories - at least around the Marediterranean and the Sea of Equestria (given it's a maritime power).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uoUacPV0o8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LxBxIC1Hxw

Harmony Ltd. wrote:I hadn't understood there was a canal traversing the isthmus. That's interesting. Though after two centuries the locks are probably FAR from being functional, and it would take some heavy engineering work to get everything back into working order.

Well, a canal system; that's what the border runs along. There was already a river to the west of the mountains; the engineers blasted open a path from the lake to an ancient course of the river (which used to flow to the east), then made the rivers navigable via dredging and lock construction.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Also, I might have been under the impression that the Alliance had already reclaimed or was in the process of doing so with most of the Pax Roamana's territories - at least around the Marediterranean and the Sea of Equestria (given it's a maritime power).

Oh, there's quite a bit that they've reclaimed, yes, enough to be the Alliance's heartland, but Zebrica is big, often harsh, in many places inhabited, and big. They've also not reclaimed the entire coastal area, since in many places there's not much to attract them. It's an ongoing project.

Hm, another interesting thought: with CP getting reduced patronage due to the NCR promoting domestic-fueled steam, Hell might be brought closer to the Alliance. Not sure, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHjAT2_7ALY

It's occurred to me to wonder what, if anything, the psychological effects of the differences in the Alliance and NCR preferred powerplants might be. The NCR, after all, is using clean and quiet advanced steam engines, and the Alliance is using rumbling, roaring, smoke-belching two-stroke diesels and whining, wailing gas turbines. Very different impressions. Thoughts?

O. Hinds wrote:Oh, to clarify, what fuels is the NCR making? Just alcohol?

Given the philosophy behind their fuel production infrastructure is to take all the useful scraps and waste they can get their hands and hooves on, I think it operates less on "what kind of fuel do they use ?" and more on a basis of "how many different kind of fuels can their engines run on ?".

As you said, alcohol might be the easiest to produce, and would maybe be the most produced, but I think they might also be producing a large amount of methane and other bio-gas. Also maybe some amount of vegetable oils, but I would guess most of it would be used as lubricant.

Though after a while and once their overall energy consumption start rising, you might be starting to see some amounts of agricultural products directed straight to fuel production.

One important thing is that at first, at least until they start taking a keen interest into Solar Power, most of their fuel consumption would go toward static power generators.

O. Hinds wrote:

StoneSlinger88 wrote:I thought you might like to take a look at this one.

The Steam Man

Hm, nice! Thanks. It might be getting offtopic for this thread, though.

Well, one thing that's interesting with the MLP:FiM setting, in a general sense, is how schizophrenic its tech-base seems to be. So I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some people in the country building things like that out of scraps to help with the agricultural work of their peers. Hey, there might even be some cutie marks to gain through that, don't you think ?


RE the two documentaries : very interesting, from a technical and aesthetic point of view. One thing though, is that things would probably be done on a smaller scale, at least at the "current time" (more like the model steel mill from the American Revolutionary War they shown in the first one). There's also the fact that contrary to Earth, the NCR has access to literal magic, which may help with some processes.

See, from my work on Stalliongrad, I was thinking that the wartime engineers of Equestria may have designed some kind of arcano-technologic tool to, from raw ore, separate all the elements contained therein into various, pure chemical compounds.

But of course it would require enormous amounts of energy to function (which is partly why Stalliongrad had so many "nuclear reactors"), as they accomplish through magical brute force what we would accomplish through chemical reactions.

I was thinking that, from a case of convergent evolution, the eggheads from the Institute and the Twilight Society may come toward some kind of similar solution.


But of course, at the "current time", no such thing would be operational, and the metals produced through recycled scraps would be produced in moderately large quantities through melting and re-casting them.

I was just thinking about something...

In a way similar to how the US Armed Forces had a program after WWII to send the ex-GIs to college in order to give them a professional qualification in the "real world" (given a large part of them hadn't even really completed school before joining and going to war, or just barely) ;

Part of the NCR's universal conscription system might be, during or after the one or two years of "Universal Service", to give the conscripts a practical trade formation, or for the most talented of them send them to the various academies of the NCR to offer them an education.

That might be one of the incentives the NCR would have to justify the Universal Conscription to its people : come, serve, and get out with a chance to do something useful in your life.

O. Hinds wrote:Hm, another interesting thought: with CP getting reduced patronage due to the NCR promoting domestic-fueled steam, Hell might be brought closer to the Alliance. Not sure, though.

Well, if the civilians buy motor vehicles from the Alliance or other oil-powered stuff, the NCR will still want to have a supply of oil that isn't from the Alliance.

O. Hinds wrote:It's occurred to me to wonder what, if anything, the psychological effects of the differences in the Alliance and NCR preferred powerplants might be. The NCR, after all, is using clean and quiet advanced steam engines, and the Alliance is using rumbling, roaring, smoke-belching two-stroke diesels and whining, wailing gas turbines. Very different impressions. Thoughts?

I don't think we have enough perspective yet to have quite a complete view about that, but one thing I was thinking about is that, outside of the cities and other major population center, in the case of the NCR you'd have the vision of people working on green fields by hooves, the horizon punctuated by the ruins of a long gone civilization ; and it would only be when you go close to the population centers that you'd start encountering "modern" technology. A technology that at the same time would, by our modern human standards, look outdated (link for visual reference, not functional), but which under closer inspection would display a certain degree of sophistication coming from the use of literal magic in their operation, allowing performances simply impossible to attain without them.

For example, I was envisioning that twenty years after the Battle of Neighvarro, Shattered Hoof / New Canterlot's public transit system would consist of pony-drawn carriages and trams : because they simply didn't have the motor vehicles to do otherwise, and it also had the advantage of giving jobs to a rising urban population => most of the NCR's cities at that time would look like your average third-world shantytown.

Anyway, to get back on track... The aesthetic of the NCR would be that of a mostly agricultural power rising as an industrial power.


... That was mostly off-topic.

The more I'm working on this, and the more I think it would be quite interesting to at one point put it all into a reference document that could be used, for example, as the "setting" part of an RPG.

Also, one thing that would be interesting would be to have several "timelines". IE :

- The Bitter War : From the Battle of Neighvarro to the official end of the conflict (still hesitating between eight and twelve years for that period). The NCR's blood soaked founding.
- The Reconstruction / The Birth of a Nation (pun-reference intended) : From the end of the Bitter War to the "current day". How do you create a form of centralized government over what had only been chaos and anarchy ? How do you get past centuries of hate ?
- The Reclamation : A decade past the present day and after having rebuilt most of its core territories, the NCR gears up for the Reclamation of the Peninsula. Will the locals welcome the Republic, or will it meet only opposition ? How many will die so that the Equestrian flag may fly once again ? But most of all... Who's side will you be on ?

After that it gets murky, but here's a possible future :

- The New World : Two hundred and fifty years have passed since that fateful day the Skies cleared. Now fully part of the Alliance, the Equestrian Confederation, home to almost two hundred millions ponies, zebra and griffins, is leading the world toward a revolution, one which had been halted so long ago by the War of Annihilation. Because today, a new path is opened, and a new frontier will be conquered : Space.


Also, maybe a timeline for Wartime Equestria and Zebrica ?

Harmony Ltd. wrote:As you said, alcohol might be the easiest to produce, and would maybe be the most produced, but I think they might also be producing a large amount of methane and other bio-gas.

Hm, well, there's no reason why the engines couldn't run on gaseous fuels too, but there'd be limited compatibility in the fuel systems, resulting in having to run separate liquid and gas systems up until reaching the point where both turn to fire.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:So I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some people in the country building things like that out of scraps to help with the agricultural work of their peers. Hey, there might even be some cutie marks to gain through that, don't you think ?

Hah!

Harmony Ltd. wrote:RE the two documentaries : very interesting, from a technical and aesthetic point of view.

Glad you liked them!

Harmony Ltd. wrote:more like the model steel mill from the American Revolutionary War they shown in the first one

Oh, that wasn't a steel mill, that was an iron furnace.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:See, from my work on Stalliongrad, I was thinking that the wartime engineers of Equestria may have designed some kind of arcano-technologic tool to, from raw ore, separate all the elements contained therein into various, pure chemical compounds.

But of course it would require enormous amounts of energy to function (which is partly why Stalliongrad had so many "nuclear reactors"), as they accomplish through magical brute force what we would accomplish through chemical reactions.

I was thinking that, from a case of convergent evolution, the eggheads from the Institute and the Twilight Society may come toward some kind of similar solution.

Interesting. Also, "the Institute"; I apologize for forgetting, but that would be the NCR's main public R&D body?

Harmony Ltd. wrote:I was just thinking about something...

In a way similar to how the US Armed Forces had a program after WWII to send the ex-GIs to college in order to give them a professional qualification in the "real world" (given a large part of them hadn't even really completed school before joining and going to war, or just barely) ;

Part of the NCR's universal conscription system might be, during or after the one or two years of "Universal Service", to give the conscripts a practical trade formation, or for the most talented of them send them to the various academies of the NCR to offer them an education.

That might be one of the incentives the NCR would have to justify the Universal Conscription to its people : come, serve, and get out with a chance to do something useful in your life.

Sounds good.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Well, if the civilians buy motor vehicles from the Alliance or other oil-powered stuff, the NCR will still want to have a supply of oil that isn't from the Alliance.

Hm, true… I'm just not sure how the volume of fuel "just a lot of the civvie stuff" compares to the volume of fuel for the entire NCR… A lot of that comes back to how authoritarian/statist the NCR ends up being, I think.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:I don't think we have enough perspective yet to have quite a complete view about that, but one thing I was thinking about is that, outside of the cities and other major population center, in the case of the NCR you'd have the vision of people working on green fields by hooves, the horizon punctuated by the ruins of a long gone civilization ; and it would only be when you go close to the population centers that you'd start encountering "modern" technology. A technology that at the same time would, by our modern human standards, look outdated (link for visual reference, not functional), but which under closer inspection would display a certain degree of sophistication coming from the use of literal magic in their operation, allowing performances simply impossible to attain without them.

Nice!

Harmony Ltd. wrote:For example, I was envisioning that twenty years after the Battle of Neighvarro, Shattered Hoof / New Canterlot's public transit system would consist of pony-drawn carriages and trams : because they simply didn't have the motor vehicles to do otherwise, and it also had the advantage of giving jobs to a rising urban population => most of the NCR's cities at that time would look like your average third-world shantytown.

Also nice!

Of course, the Alliance would be happy to build, maintain, power, and run public transport for the NCR, but that would deprive a lot of NCR ponies of work (certainly nothing to do with any sort of economic warfare, nope, we're all friends here… :)). That said, I note that you didn't mention Manehattan; is Manehattan still mostly just Tenpony, or has the NCR, possibly partly as appeasement, taken the Alliance up on their offer to rebuild the monorail system (with the potential caveat that NCR ponies be employed as train drivers)?

Harmony Ltd. wrote:... That was mostly off-topic.

Not at all! I'm actually rather baffled as to why you'd think that it was at all offtopic.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Also, one thing that would be interesting would be to have several "timelines". IE :

Hm, one of the rare instances where your English is not better than most native speakers'. Sorry, but "timelines" isn't the word that you want there; "time periods" (or possibly "eras") would likely be better. A "timeline" in this sense is a(n alternate) history; the periods you've listed would be sections of the same timeline. A change in timeline would be a change to a history where, say, the war never happened, or, to pick a smaller example, ponies use can pull tabs for money instead of bottlecaps.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:- The Bitter War : From the Battle of Neighvarro to the official end of the conflict (still hesitating between eight and twelve years for that period). The NCR's blood soaked founding.
- The Reconstruction / The Birth of a Nation (pun-reference intended) : From the end of the Bitter War to the "current day". How do you create a form of centralized government over what had only been chaos and anarchy ? How do you get past centuries of hate ?
- The Reclamation : A decade past the present day and after having rebuilt most of its core territories, the NCR gears up for the Reclamation of the Peninsula. Will the locals welcome the Republic, or will it meet only opposition ? How many will die so that the Equestrian flag may fly once again ? But most of all... Who's side will you be on ?

Sounds neat!

Harmony Ltd. wrote:- The New World : Two hundred and fifty years have passed since that fateful day the Skies cleared. Now fully part of the Alliance, the Equestrian Confederation, home to almost two hundred millions ponies, zebra and griffins, is leading the world toward a revolution, one which had been halted so long ago by the War of Annihilation. Because today, a new path is opened, and a new frontier will be conquered : Space.

That also sounds neat, but it's too far away for me to have many more detailed thoughts about at the moment. I mean, pretty much all of my post-SR headcanon is still technically provisional pending the end of PH.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Also, maybe a timeline for Wartime Equestria and Zebrica ?

Also sounds neat.

"The Institute" => The New Canterlot Institute of Technology, one of the main research institutes of the NCR, amd the first one when it comes to engineering and practical applications of fundamental research.

You also have the Twilight Society, which is more concerned with anything arcane, both on the fronts of practical and fundamental research.

You have Glyphmark's School of Medicine and Alchemy, serving double-duty as the NCR's centre of learning and research for medical and alchemical matters.

And then probably a number of other things I haven't thought about yet.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:"The Institute" => The New Canterlot Institute of Technology, one of the main research institutes of the NCR, amd the first one when it comes to engineering and practical applications of fundamental research.

You also have the Twilight Society, which is more concerned with anything arcane, both on the fronts of practical and fundamental research.

You have Glyphmark's School of Medicine and Alchemy, serving double-duty as the NCR's centre of learning and research for medical and alchemical matters.

And then probably a number of other things I haven't thought about yet.

Ah, thanks.

O. Hinds wrote:Not at all! I'm actually rather baffled as to why you'd think that it was at all offtopic.

Heh. :)


Anyway, another thing that came to my mind...

I was thinking that, as the people from the NCR remember what it was to live in a Wasteland, and as they also heard of how horrible Fillydelphia was, there would be a strong vibe of what we'd call today "environmentalism", and a mistrust of "industry" in general. Or more accurately, that the most important is for people to have enough to eat and just the right amount of technology to not get eaten in return : guns, water pumps, etc... the basics.

Of course, the NCR's elites and leaders don't exactly see it that way (the country need to industrialize if it is to survive in the long term, which is why it is investing so much in education), but they would still be forced to take that into consideration. And this would explain why the NCR's tech-base would be, to some extent, cleaner than the Alliance's, if not shinier.

Which could be another obstacle to Elusive's plans now that I'm thinking about it...

Harmony Ltd. wrote:

O. Hinds wrote:Not at all! I'm actually rather baffled as to why you'd think that it was at all offtopic.

Heh. :)


Anyway, another thing that came to my mind...

I was thinking that, as the people from the NCR remember what it was to live in a Wasteland, and as they also heard of how horrible Fillydelphia was, there would be a strong vibe of what we'd call today "environmentalism", and a mistrust of "industry" in general. Or more accurately, that the most important is for people to have enough to eat and just the right amount of technology to not get eaten in return : guns, water pumps, etc... the basics.

Of course, the NCR's elite don't exactly see it that way (the country need to industrialize if it is to survive in the long term, which is why it is investing so much in education), but they would still be forced to take that into consideration. And this would explain why the NCR's tech-base would be, to some extent, cleaner than the Alliance's, if not shinier.

Makes sense, and I like it. It also ties back into that divide that I mentioned earlier. As I see it, to the Alliance, the quite, clean-burning NCR tech, particularly if it's couple with a common desire for not much industrialization, connote timidity and weakness, while to the average Alliance citizen, who's a soldier in the mechanized Miliozi, a citizen of the robot-run Elusive city, an engineer from Profectum, someone who's been living in the nature-trying-to-horribly-murder-you-daily wilds of Zebrica (or one of the new primitive civilizations therein... not to say that necessarily the Alliance is the only Zebrican power trying to get industry back up and running, but I've little headcanon on any others), etc., the Alliance's turbines and diesels say "Civilization is back, strong, and proud of it!". To the many citizens of the NCR, who remembers Fillydelphia and a Wasteland where nature, where there was any left, would have been harmless if it hadn't been mutated, the NCR's machines are polite and harmless while the Alliance's are rude and dirty. On the other hand, though, there are probably ponies in the NCR who do find the power (image of and actual) offered by Alliance tech attractive, probably sure that, yeah, their ancestors may have ruined things, but they know better than to do that again.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Which could be another obstacle to Elusive's plans now that I'm thinking about it...

Maybe. Elusive is, for one thing, aware that a society fueled by petroleum and relatively unconcerned with pollution (as long as it's not a ready danger to the society's members) is not ultimately sustainable (though he may not be aware of the full effects of rampant pollution); he plans to transition to something better in the future, but he's letting that wait until he's more firmly established.

As for the NCR's environmentalism, well, as I said above, there probably are ponies in the NCR, even outside the leadership, who are for one reason or another quite happy to use dirtier Alliance tech for the extra power and image thereof. There were, after all, plenty of ponies who didn't seem to mind being slavers in Fillydelphia. Moreover, there's the next generation for Elusive to consider, the first generation born post-SR. The'll only have stories of what the Wasteland was like, and stories tend to leave a much weaker impression. And the thing is, large-scale industry is going to look much the same whether powered by petroleum-fueled gas turbine generators or biomass-fueled steam engines. The NCR, in convincing ponies to accept native industry, will be unable to avoid at the same time convincing them to have at least some acceptance of Alliance-style industry. And if they decide to not do that, Elusive will be able to very easily leverage the products of an industrial society against an agricultural but not nonmaterialistic society and bribe his way to victory.

In that "far future" era I was envisioning, the Equestrian peninsula (and the Alliance and the rest of the world with it) would have benefited from a new industrial revolution based on three key aspects :

- The ability to extract elements in their purest form from everything from raw dirt to recycled materials with the use of the arcano-technologic devices I mentioned earliers (the ones which exist in Stalliongrad's underground facilities, and which the Institute & the Twilight Society might get in their minds to reproduce)
- Robots & automated manufacturing.
- The ability to produce huge amounts of cheap and sustainable energy ("nuclear" & solar power, among others).


Which would give it most of the attributes to be considered as a "post-scarcity" society.

And the best part is that all of this has already seeds in wartime Equestria, and to some extent in the "curent" NCR. And would fit with the theme that Wartime Equestria had already all the tool to be self-sufficient, free from the need of foreign resources, but that it had let itself get sucked into the war.



I may have thought of having this general theme for that era.

I mean, heh, a Civilization that nuked itself to hell and back, but which not only managed to rebuild and unite, but also managed to build an utopian future society, and is now looking toward space ? Sounds familiar ?