3025-onomics noodling

I have

Discovered Tikonov's total production mass

Solved part of the Free Worlds production mystery

And confirmed my production numbers for Luthien, Hesperus, and New Avalon

Details will follow when able [see next post]

Confirming 385 Regiments & 450 Settled Worlds in 3025 Successor States

BattleDroids describes regiments as containing 108 BattleMechs (in 3 battalions of 36), and the regimental commander as Duke of a whole planet. MechWarrior 1st Edition counts about 450 settled worlds in the five Successor States. 

108 regiments * 450 commanders = 48,600 'Mechs

BattleForce 1st Edition says the Houses reorganized to 128 'Mechs per regiment (in 3 battalions of 40 plus an 8 'Mech regimental command group). If I recall correctly, it also says this new organization was copied from Wolf's Dragoons.

48,600 / 128 = 379 ²/₃ regiments

Wolf's Dragoons add 5 regiments plus Zeta Battalion to that total. 

379 ²/₃ regiments + 5 1/₃ regiments = 385 regiments

[Mal] Was It Monkeys? [/Mal]

[As always, inactivity on my blog is consequent to inactivity in the rest of my life. Can't do anything in depth right now. Instead: UI complaints!]

The Spacecraft We Could Have Had

A well constructed discussion of where the space program could be right now with current technology, if we'd made more optimal choices.

Courtesy of Ashley R Pollard.

Map of FWL Military Organization

Made this ages ago.

The old HM:FWL book doesn't just have a map, and doesn't just list regimental deployments for summer 3025, it also has a list* of which provinces and worlds organize their military the way Marik does, or Oriente does, or Andurien does.

Seems like a pretty reliable way to start picking out smaller provinces.

*I forget which page, sorry. It's a purple(?) box in the bottom right corner of a right-hand page. [Next Day Edit: it's page 84, which also says

Across the Free Worlds, many minor variations of the three primary hierarchies exist, due to local government edicts and traditional grants and dignitaries. Below is the military organization used by each state. However, few states, especially the smaller ones, adopt the exact pattern set by their larger cousins. Note that one world is even listed twice.

Courtesy of Reddit user wycca. /Edit]

[Edit, May 15: somehow missed the Stewart Dragoons' Home Guards regiment on Stewart and Juggernaut regiment on Payvand. Now added. /Edit]

Star Trek Episode Roller

White Noise
- Engine Hum
- Bridge Noise

Songs
- Star Trekkin'
- Banned from Argo
- "I Hate You"
- Picard Song
- at the Hothberry
- Tik Tok
- Home ^{[via here]}
- Starships ^{[via here]}

Sketches
- Nimoy vs Quinto
- Voyager Auditions
- Last Voyage

Shatner
- Sha7ner
- Eat Fry Love
- Rocket Man
- Alexander

I think I found this via Popfiend, years ago

In a perfect world, I could dissect all seven or eight hundred episodes to find the Star Trekkiest distribution of Starfleet missions, antagonists, motivations and NPC strategies. Such volume and detail is a sure recipe for burnout, though.

Each new Trek series self-selects what its writers thought was Trekkiest about the previous series, right? So maybe I can approximate the results of all that research by sampling episodes at random and taking different elements from each?

enable javascript

enable javascript

There's a few other series I could mix in. Babylon 5, Farscape, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Shakespeare... and heck, if even Doctor Who borrows from Battlestar Galactica...

But at some point we stray from the themes and structures essential to Star Trek. Like, your average episode of Firefly has a fistfight, a gunfight, a word fight, some kind of spaceship thing, and involves a moral or ethical dilemma. Not too different from Star Trek TOS. Except TOS also adds a good dose of scientific method to everything - whether the problem at hand is mechanical, social or philosophical, the crew feels it out systematically.

The Orville Episode 12 - Fools Rush In

We still rely on the magic of editing; still start each episode a little stilted; and my delivery is still a little disjointed; but not as much as when we started.  On a good day - like I think we had for this recording - we cover everything we wanted to say without having to hold too closely to our prepared agenda. We could undoubtedly polish the product more with scripted repartee and rehearsed personalities; but for me, the point (when feasible) is to engage with the ideas as we're recording and choose my words as I go. When I can do that well then everything else follows naturally.

...before decrying Ready Player One, I should probably consider what (if anything) distinguishes it from "The Ultimate Showdown" and "We Come Together."

...and closing with "faithful listeners?" Yeesh. This is why we need a formal sign off.

I can't find that map of the east coast and I don't remember what it was measuring. Not simple poverty, teen birth rates, brain drain or gun violence - these aren't great for South Carolina, but they're more in line with regional trends than whatever I'm remembering.

Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) has so much empathy it's a crime, and the crew ignore a thousand years of sociological studies.

Available in podcast form at anchor.fm.