Opposition to self-sustaining economy

In a space-based setting, consider the emergence of an N.G.O. Superpower based upon a permanently-inhabited Mile-Long Ship built by Ancient Astronauts. Thanks to the nanotech discovered onboard said ship, the organization has established a complete autarky: they are completely self-sufficient, with no need to import anything other than raw materials they can mine practically anywhere in outer space.

Due to this self-sufficient economy, the NGO has enough material independence to operate as a quasi-independent enclave with considerable military strength and a population of over one million. Their internal economics don't even use money; instead, the legal tender are requisition credits that represent access to the ship's nanotech fabrication bays. Objects directly fabricated in the nanotech bays are centrally priced according to their constituent chemical elements and the quantity of those elements, with the price fluctuating according to current shipboard reserves of the element in question. Food is an exception, as it is grown in hydroponic bays because it's way easier than making it synthetically. There's also no restriction on redeeming credits for blocks of processed material, turning those blocks into finished products and reselling (with a centrally regulated profit margin) the products for credits because it encourages the common folk to work for a living.

External companies are allowed limited trade but the organization is very keen on staying influentially independent, smiting any and all attempts at corporate lobbying with trade sanctions. They also do not have regular export goods as they're aware that flooding the market with prime-quality goods and no profit margin would collapse the trading partner's economy by undercutting and bankrupting every other supplier. Due to what requisition credits represent, they are not recognized as valid currency by other nations, forcing whoever wants to buy something from outside to redeem credits for processed raw materials and sell those for foreign capital, which is strictly regulated to prevent abuse.

Problem is that the allied nation the organization's mothership spends most of its time lazing around in the territory of eventually tries to pull Gunboat Diplomacy to force the opening of trade relations. At least part of the reason behind this Face–Heel Turn was corporate pressure to slap down this upstart country-wannabe who dares to have an economic model that's not dependent on corporations, plus the fact that the NGO is blocking access to a million potential customers. There's also the fact that the formerly-allied nation wants the NGO's technology and production capabilities for themselves in order to equalize their military strength with their other neighbor.

The NGO itself is deliberately operating like this to minimize external influence, since their agenda of protecting what's left of humanity from external threats would only be hindered by national and corporate interests; in other words, they want to do their job without anyone having a say in it, directly or indirectly.

I suppose it could make sense, depending on how you presented it. The thing is, the ship-based economy doesnt sound self-sustaining in the long run: they seem to have provided their individual "citizens" with no motivation to produce innovations, and you didnt explain how they limit their population growth in the face of essentially unlimited resources.

Population control is an issue.

I also doubt they would have capability of being a serious military power especially compared to groups that possibly inhabit multiple planets. The planets have a comparatively greater area for both expansion and access to resources plus places for their military to be.

They have to keep hunting for resources and what happens if they wander into someone else's patch of space?

A mile long is only part of the scale what about other dimensions like width or height? What is it's shape?

What it sounds more like is a habitable space factory capable of supporting the worker populace for extensive periods of time. Instead may I suggest they focus on offering their manufacturing capability to various client nations who in exchange provide them with a sort of a multi-national force to keep any one particular group from taking over or making any desperate moves. They would also carefully control the manufacture of military and military related products limiting how much of what goes to who. They could have their own bit of space that is safe with the various groups bringing them the raw resources in exchange for services. They bring enough raw materials to offer up to the manufacturies for their projects plus some extra for the big ship. They remain independent and maintain a small defensive force that protects the stations immediate space and internals.

The amount of political and military jockeying such a thing would cause could be an interesting story.

Yes, it is. They deal with it by using the nanotech fabrication bays to build O'Neil cylinders equipped with a lesser version of the nanotech bays.

No, the bays are not large enough to make a whole O'Neil cylinder. They're made piece-by-piece and assembled outside. Later, the cylinders' production speed is sped up by using the nanotech to make a smaller version of itself (though the lesser version can't make more of itself because the AI controlling the original specifically disabled that functionality, for obvious reasons) that can build the cylinders without access to the main ship.

The NGO's mothership can independently go FTL. The other nations are all limited to using a Portal Network. That means the NGO don't have to engage in a stand-up fight because they can pick and choose where to attack, with no chokepoints limiting them. They also have a considerable technological superiority due to the ship's manufacturing capabilities allowing them to focus on research and development while the other nations need to expend most of what they have on survival.

Their mothership's independent FTL allows them to mine "off-the-grid" systems with impunity. With no one else being able to touch those systems, no one is realistically in a position to contest it.

Mile-long is a misnomer due to the trope's name. The ship is 78 kilometers long and 13.75 kilometers wide/tall at its largest width/height. The primary superstructure has a roughly triangular cross-section along the bow-aft axis, with its largest width/height being due to a spherical section located at two-thirds along the ship's length.

It's actually a warship designed to carry capital ships in the same way aircraft carriers lug around carrier-based fighters; the nanotech bays were originally included by the ship's builders to reduce the logistical issues inherent to an escort fleet of such size by fabricating replacement parts on-demand instead of carrying them without guarantee that they would actually be needed instead of being dead weight.

It's got so much internal space in fact that its whole population is housed in suburbs, with enough room to expand further.

Like I said above, entering the market with the ship's superior production capacity would severely undercut the regular suppliers, making everyone dependent on the ship. Due to the organization's goals, the ship sometimes needs to head off into deep space for weeks; integrating themselves into the economy would severely upset things whenever they leave.

There are only two human factions that matter politics-wise. The Federation turn against the NGO (and promptly scapegoat them for propaganda purposes; it's a win-win as far as the feddies are concerned) when they refuse to give up their independence and The Remnant of the One World Order both they and The Federation used to be a part of doesn't recognize the NGO as a legal entity, having declared them terrorists due to their role in toppling the previous regime.

I'm going to point out that it takes time and resources to find other resources to mine. Which seems like a weak point, or otherwise could be turned into one. That... doesn't actually sound very self sufficient at all, considering that if they're in someone else's space they'd probably need to get permits of some sort.

Also, if it's just the one ship against an organized military? There's something to be said for outnumbering the opponent. I also severely doubt that either of the two other powers you've named have production capabilities so far behind the ship that the ship can outstrip them all. That just doesn't make sense, it's just one ship and it'd take quite a bit of time to actually move the product when it'd be, in many cases, far more economical (not to mention faster if everyone is trying to use the ship) to produce something on planet/in system instead of going through the waiting line for this ship. It's easier to just say that the ship doesn't need much input economically from other sources.

edited 7th Oct '14 5:40:13 PM by AceofSpades

Unless they enjoy a very notable technological edge it doesn't mean much to have better tech. Good tactics, adequate numbers, and reasonably reliable tech of your own can overcome a lot of technological shortcomings.

They wouldn't have to leave if the people are bringing them supplies. That they could bounce out of trouble at a moments notice beyond the reach of conventional forces is still there. If you make things for other nations or do any sort of trading you are already integrated into the economy in the first place. If the two big powers are hostile, enough of the other guys backed by the NGO able to give them decent kit could feasibly be enough to keep them reasonably protected from hostiles without having to worry about building, maintaining, crewing (Are they crewed or unmanned?), and supplying your own fleet as much. Having someone to help do the heavy lifting makes things a lot easier on your resources for both parties. The lesser nations could provide the training, crew and a good chunk of the supplies in exchange for high quality equipment and a military body. If the big ship has plenty of room to grow they could even offer citizenship to those in the military after a certain period of service.

Why would they need cylinders if they have ample room so far unless they were planning on taking on more people or creating space for other nations to use instead. That would be rather valuable as a service with a neutered manufacturing capability or removing anything but the habitation components and forcing the buyer to install their own stuff to safe guard their tech.

Outside of willingly participating in the local economies and maybe even the local conflicts there is really no reason at all to have the ship really be part of the local conflicts much less interact if they can just safely park it in the resource rich far regions beyond anyone's reach. It would make no sense to hang around areas for any period of time if there are people hostile to you and you have the ability to be pretty much anywhere.

All of the NGO's toys are overengineered like crazy. Since they don't have the numbers, they go for individual strength instead.

And yes, their human enemies do use superior numbers against them. Standard tactics against the NGO's main weapons are to swarm them with superior numbers of more agile combatants, split them up then proceed to wear them down with constant flanking and harassing. 3:1 is the absolute minimum to break even with the NGO's grunt pilots; against aces however, sometimes not even 10:1 is enough.

That is at least partially compensated by the NGO's grunts not being particularly well-trained. Plus quite a few of them have problems with shooting at human targets.

Crewed. AI tech does exist but it's only used for coordination and advisory roles.

Too many eggs in one basket. They only have one mothership, it can only be at one location at a time and if it were to go down, they're utterly screwed if they don't have an alternative.

FTL in this universe is slow^note 99 times the speed of light (roughly 0.88 parsec per day) when using the Portal Network, placing inhabited systems weeks away from each other; the ship is faster but not by much and there's no Subspace Ansible. If the external threat the NGO was created to fight shows up, not being on-site means they won't be able to react fast enough or even hear about it until it's already over.

...I may have missed something somewhere, but I don't see why the ship doesn't just up and leave the inhabited regions of space. The enemy, being reliant on a portal network, can't easily follow them if they do, right?

Love that image. Skip skippity skip.

edited 8th Oct '14 2:02:57 PM by DeusDenuo

Yeah, the logical reaction would be for them to basically go Screw This, I'm Outta Here. Raw materials for their nanoforges are extremely plentiful in space...once you have that level of technology you're basically skipping happily upwards on the ol' kardashev ladder.

Keep in mind Over Engineered is not the same as technologically superior it just means its been made more complex then is needed for the task it is designed for. Sometimes on purpose to be more robust or to ensure redundant parts built into it. Being over engineered can also be from design and engineering flaws. Such things have damned what should have been a decent design before and caused no end of production and maintenance issues.

Those cylinders though sound like they are still reliant on the existence of the mother ship in general from what you told us partly because their manufacturing capability has been reduced deliberately. If the mother ship is gone they are likely just as screwed without that capability. What about military vehicles and replacements and parts for forces protecting the cylinders? Or if they are reliant on the mother ship for protection if it is gone they are now unprotected.

If the mother ship and its population are dedicated to fighting the threat it was built for then the current plan is just as bad as isolating themselves. Attempting to win the possible war singlehanded is more likely to be damning to the effort. Wouldn't a coalition of the lesser powers to again bolster not only numbers but total military presence make a lot more sense then just wandering around space? It would have a two fold benefit of giving them more for a military as well as larger base for dealing with the possibly coming threat.

In this case, the stuff is deliberately overengineered so that it will punch above its own weight.

The only deliberate reduction is the nanotech bay's inability to make more nanotech bays. Everything else is fair game, from printed circuit boards to kilometer-long battleships. Well, that last one is an abstraction: it is capable of building a whole battleship as a single, seamless hulk in one go but that would be a bit hard to repair and maintain due to the lack of disassembly options that do not involve cutting it to pieces - hence why the preferred method in that regard is to fabricate the ship in pieces and assemble it manually, like real-life naval shipyards do.

The cylinders need to be self-sustaining because the story would involve the first completed cylinder's FTL drive malfunctioning on its maiden voyage, launching the cylinder into intergalactic space between the Milky Way and one of its satellite galaxies. That incident is what really puts the self-sustaining economy to the test; if they were still using nuclear fusion like the other factions, they would all freeze to death long before getting home.

? The main nanotech bay can't repair things at a nano level? The advantage of a seamless-construction battleship would be material efficiency and size - it's the difference between a multi-board tower PC with an external monitor and keyboard, and a single-board fully integrated tablet computer (why don't we call one of those a 'TC' yet?). Besides maybe performance (in which case you just build several of them), the tradeoff would be a completely inability to do any kind of maintenance... But that could be offset by the time and energy needed to dis- and re-assemble the battleship once it's reached the end of its operational lifespan. So my thought is, how quickly can the bay 'do' stuff, and why aren't the naval yards of this setting (which would probably not be in gravity wells, if anyone can help it, as those just screw everything up) already doing it this way?

If I understand correctly, this is ancient alien tech. The humans dont understand the underlying engineering principles.

You should take care not to have a God Mode Sue NGO.

Also, having access to whole planets uncontested by other powers (basically, the rest of the Universe) and the ability to build more ships, they could, given enough time, expand their power base well beyond this one mothership.

It's not that they don't understand the science, more like they don't have the technology to recreate it. Due to in-universe events, human research into nanotechnology is about nineties-level.

Plus I don't want humanity to be too advanced in this universe. They already have Schizo Tech, courtesy of Used Future intermingling with holograms and crude cranial cybernetics. But in general, human technology is a mishmash of their own tech and scraps of Imported Alien Phlebotinum.

And speaking of the NGO, they are shown in a Flash Forward as still around and kicking more than a thousand years later.