Re: On Imperial armies and original fluff

From: Luca Lettieri <magnus_at_...>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 13:59:52 -0000

> While 10000 years IS a long time given the social climate of the
> Imperium I would not be too surprised that nothing new gets done.

Sorry Peter, but I couldn't disagree more.

First of all, it's a well-known fact that technology is following an
hyperbole curve - very slow in the beginning, ludicrously fast right
now. This is due to the "self-supporting" phenomenon - the advances
in technology allow for the construction of advanced tools which in
turn help research to advance even more etc. It would take some
massive world-wide catastrophe to clean the slate. Considering the
fact that the Imperium starts from an even more advanced state and an
even more distributed approach, I just cannot see how this could
happen. While the Heresy arguably WAS a major catastrophe, they STILL
had trans-light speed at the end. And ten thousand years with such a
start is more than enough to recover.

Second, it's not even true that progress was THAT slow in ancient
times. Not MILITARY progress at any rate. And historically, wartime
is the time in which military research gets huge boosts for obvious
reasons. I could imagine the Empire not devoting that much effort to
the welfare of its citizens, but... but... 10000 years of perpetual
war, and not only they didn't advance, but they couldn't even figure
out how to rebuild something which they already have in thousands of
perfectly working copies (e.g: Termie suits)??? Come on, this is
TOTALLY ludicrous.

Religious mumbo-jumbo... low-level rank and file goons, maybe. But
when you have 100 different war fronts at any given moment, you'll
MOST DEFINITELY want high-level competent technicians and
theoreticians who're getting assigned outrageous amounts of money to
research new nifty weapons with which to smite your enemies.

Sorry but I'll repeat myself: there's NO WAY than a technically
advanced civilization, spanning a whole galaxy, and in a situation of
perpetual warfare is not going to evolve in 10000 years. TEN THOUSAND
YEARS, for crying out loud!! Billions of planets! Uncountable
individuals... and not one of them comes up with something new??
Spare me.


Luca Lettieri
Received on Fri May 26 2000 - 13:59:52 UTC