Author Topic: Planets/Systems on the fringes of Periphery states -- come and go?  (Read 18159 times)

Archangel

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You are trying to apply logic to FASAnomics which is usually an exercise in futility.  Worlds needing food imports is keeping in the with the nature and spirit of the BT universe.  As I have previously said, developers have been trying to clean up many of the problems created by Fasanomics with mixed success.  Getting food to worlds that need it in quantities needed without causing further issues is probably one of their biggest hurdles and isn't likely to be completely resolved without a reboot.  In the past they have tried increasing the number of JumpShips and DropShips which created problems elsewhere.
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abou

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I'm comfortable with small populations, subsistence farming, and the possibility that some planets can produce food with sufficient calories, but not nutritionally complete: similar to how rice and beans complement each other in regards to essential amino acids. I am willing to brush aside the hard numbers and universal inconsistencies and look at food shipments -- except in the most extreme of examples -- as being relatively small amounts of foodstuffs delivered to guarantee the intake of micronutrients.

I know that isn't perfect, but what do you do?

snewsom2997

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You are trying to apply logic to FASAnomics which is usually an exercise in futility.

I know, but it is fun anyway.

Some things are not as far fetched with minor changes like major depopulation of a thousand basically unknown worlds. A yearly Star Lord or Monolith or 2 with Mammoths or Behemoths, is probably enough to bring a years worth of supplies in exchange for a years work of mine output, to a mining outpost of 100,000 people. After mastering Spaceborne Hydroponics, I'd imagine Terrestrial Hydroponics would be a walk in the park, so food would just be supplemental anyway, especially if it takes anything like Domes on the world.

Having 100 JS and 300 to 600 DS going to 1000 worlds a year isn't all that far fetched. Especially when most worlds have 100k people or less instead of 10 or 100M people.

The other 100-200 worlds that are capitals, military strongpoints, factories, agriworlds, which do require weekly or even daily jumpship pickups deliveries can be handled with whats left. 8
Plus with the Belters, and the fact that a bunch of Jumpship Yards did survive and even more were built between 3085 and 3145, it doesn't really require a major rewrite.

Since 1988 the developers have been able to give themselves some wiggle room. With rising technology and relative peace even during the 4SW, 3039, clan invasion, up to the FCCW and Jihad. There was always the Comstar bottomless pit of Jumpships also.

Korzon77

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Note that even vitamens and supplements really don't work that well for large populations-- even assuming one ounce per week for a population of 1.5 billion people means that  you need about 47,000 tons of supplements, every week. 

I think it's best to assume that we're not talking about raw materials, per se, as the equipment designed to make them-- you don't ship a load of vitamins,  but the machinery needed to make the vitamins.  That does require us to change the fluff about a number of worlds, IE, Buenos Aires, but that's far less problematic than having to assume a vastly increased number of dropship/jumpship cargo carriers.

Kovax

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Importing food doesn't mean importing ALL of its food.  Even with that large population of 1.5 Billion people (VERY large for a planet that's not really "habitable"), if the planet is running a 20% deficit of some specific 1 ounce item that provides an essential nutrient, that's 9400 tons per week, meaning that a single Mule dropship arriving each week could almost cover that.  Interrupting shipments means that half of the population is going to suffer from malnutrition to some degree, and prolonged lack of those nutrients could lead to millions of deaths, outbreaks of disease ravaging a weakened population, and an eventual collapse of authority, which in turn could reduce the planet's ability to produce what little of that rare but essential element it could make.

Of course, if you're talking about pounds of bulk food per person for that kind of massive population, then it becomes totally impractical by the somewhat vague transport capacities which have been described so far.

The other half of the issue is: how did those absolutely massive populations GET to those planets in the first place.  Normal reproduction rates really don't add up (or multiply, to be more accurate) to those figures in the amount of time available, and the limited transportation capacity doesn't seem capable of moving the enormous amounts of settlers required to allow natural reproduction to get a sufficient head start.  Also consider that for every group of settlers going to the planet, you're going to have a couple of settlers who had second thoughts and returned to their planet of origin.

Obviously, we're either dealing with FASAnomics throughout, and need to dismiss the vast majority of it as "misinformation", or else the Star League had FAR greater transport capacity than the successor states, and most likely some combination of the two options.

snewsom2997

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I have no doubt that the TH had superior transport capability, plus they were not really transporting stuff outside of the hegemony except troops. That greatly increases the Transport Density in the TH.

Like I was musing earlier, once you get out of the Hegemony I wouldn't expect the population densities of the Hegemony. Hence my comments about planets on Trade Routes and Mining Outposts of 100k people.

Archangel

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I have no doubt that the TH had superior transport capability, plus they were not really transporting stuff outside of the hegemony except troops.

Even pre-SL there was plenty of trade going on between the TH and its neighbors especially after the TH government foreign policy switched from conquest to aggressive diplomacy.  Obviously there was more trade going on with nations they were on good terms with (while they were on good terms with them) and equally obvious there were trade restrictions on military technology in order to preserve their technological advantage over their neighbors.  After the Lyrans revealed to the rest of the Inner Sphere that they had BattleMech technology when they killed Captain-General Geralk Marik, the TH imposed "massive trade restrictions on the Lyran state" (HB:HS, p20).
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glitterboy2098

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The other half of the issue is: how did those absolutely massive populations GET to those planets in the first place.  Normal reproduction rates really don't add up (or multiply, to be more accurate) to those figures in the amount of time available, and the limited transportation capacity doesn't seem capable of moving the enormous amounts of settlers required to allow natural reproduction to get a sufficient head start.  Also consider that for every group of settlers going to the planet, you're going to have a couple of settlers who had second thoughts and returned to their planet of origin.
artificial insemination and surrogate parenthood, with economic incentives (or outright requirements) towards their use on colony worlds?

several scifi's i've read in the "reasonably plausible tech" genre used that as their solution to the mass problem in space colonization. sperm and Ova, or fertilized embryo's, don't take up nearly as much space and life support as a adult person, letting you bring fairly large stocks of them. and depending on the way you've set up the colony creation program, you could select colonists that prefer larger families, set up economic/material incentives to bear "genetic colonists", or outright require every adult colonist to bear a genetic colonist or two before they can have a kid the traditional way.
« Last Edit: 15 June 2016, 12:33:05 by glitterboy2098 »

wanderer25

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Importing food doesn't mean importing ALL of its food.  Even with that large population of 1.5 Billion people (VERY large for a planet that's not really "habitable"), if the planet is running a 20% deficit of some specific 1 ounce item that provides an essential nutrient, that's 9400 tons per week, meaning that a single Mule dropship arriving each week could almost cover that.  Interrupting shipments means that half of the population is going to suffer from malnutrition to some degree, and prolonged lack of those nutrients could lead to millions of deaths, outbreaks of disease ravaging a weakened population, and an eventual collapse of authority, which in turn could reduce the planet's ability to produce what little of that rare but essential element it could make.



I would think any planet dependant  on something  critical from an outside source would be wise enoght to stock pile a month or two  incase of trade disruption.

Archangel

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I would think any planet dependant  on something  critical from an outside source would be wise enoght to stock pile a month or two  incase of trade disruption.

They do.  But what happens when the JumpShips and DropShips that normally carry the agricultural goods are recalled by their owners and never seen again while locally owned JumpShips and DropShips are conscripted by the state for the duration of the emergency?  It could take months or even years before they are released and when they are they may receive little to no reimbursement by the government for their time of service forcing some out of business.  That is what happened to many independent and some national operators in the Combine as a result of the War of 3039.

For Periphery worlds this was especially bad.  The Star League had made them economically dependent upon them so many routes ran from the Periphery into the Inner Sphere.  By the beginning of the First Succession War most had been recalled to the Inner Sphere by their owners and those trade routes were never re-established.  Worlds that were dependent upon those trade routes suddenly found themselves abandoned as new trade routes that bypassed them were established.
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wanderer25

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For Periphery worlds this was especially bad.  The Star League had made them economically dependent upon them so many routes ran from the Periphery into the Inner Sphere.  By the beginning of the First Succession War most had been recalled to the Inner Sphere by their owners and those trade routes were never re-established.  Worlds that were dependent upon those trade routes suddenly found themselves abandoned as new trade routes that bypassed them were established.

As I mention before, I dont think Periphery worlds with critical dependance that rely on trade to fill would survive to 3025.

Archangel

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As I mention before, I dont think Periphery worlds with critical dependance that rely on trade to fill would survive to 3025.

And most didn't.  They, for the most part, died out early in the Succession Wars.  The rest survived after their population fell to sustainable levels.
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Medron Pryde

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I am perfectly fine with the idea of "food imports" being vitamins or amino acids or other vital things like that.  Luxury foods.  Fertilizer for green houses and the like.

The thing is that on a world that can't support food, we would build green houses above ground or hollow out caves below ground.  Either way we would grow our own bulk food.  I mean sludge.  I mean pink slime.  Soylent Green.  ;)

Whatever.  ;)

As noted, there is simply not enough ships in the BattleTech universe to transport bulk food or bulk ore or anything bulk anywhere in the universe.

Interstellar trade has to be in rare, high value materials.

Or in lead.  Lead is always in high demand, especially when ejected at high velocities from rifled barrels by well-trained individuals...;)
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Yes, lead is always in high demand as the number one cure for human stupidity.  For well over a thousand years humans have been ending stupidity with a brief introduction of lead.  So unfortunate that human stupidity appears infinite, but it means there's always a market.
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Archangel

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As previously stated this disconnect between planet food dependencies and limited in-universe cargo capacity is one of the outstanding issues of Fasanomics.  It is canon that there are quite a few planets that are dependent upon 'food' imports (meaning crops, meats, etc not vitamins or supplements) for their survival.  It is also quite clear that to support even a fraction of any major planet's dietary needs would take a huge number of DropShips.  The developers have looked at this issue from time to time but have come to no satisfactory resolution that doesn't have a major ripple effect down the line.
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Sharpnel

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A simple solution is to increase the number of JumpShips by two or three orders of magnitude. This will lead to a corresponding increase in DropShips as well.
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Medron Pryde

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That "simple" change changes the entire economic and transport situation of the Inner Sphere.

The whole idea of there being a couple thousand jumpships out there is that it takes a major bugger of a time to put together a real invasion.  That is why the Succession Wars petered out.  There wasn't enough jumpship capacity left to move the military anymore.

That's why when the Federated Commonwealth attacked the Capellans, they had to strip their own territory of trading ships in order to move enough troops to nail the Liao flippers to the wall.

Increasing jumpships and dropships just destroys the setting.
Changing "food imports" to "vitamin imports" balances the setting to the way FASA designed it to be.

AKA...it is less destructive to the atmosphere and setting of BattleTech to change "food imports" than it is to increase the number of spaceships.
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skiltao

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As previously stated this disconnect between planet food dependencies and limited in-universe cargo capacity is one of the outstanding issues of Fasanomics. 

With the caveat, of course, that the disconnect only exists when too many "major" worlds are assumed to be too dependent on food imports. Populations in the periphery (especially outside the Concordat and Magistracy) seem to be very low - tens of thousands to low millions - and so there should be no issue with Mules hauling staple foods at "Fasanomic" rates there.

Changing "food imports" to "vitamin imports" balances the setting to the way FASA designed it to be.

It also helps to assume that the typical "needy" world is small, and that exceptionally "major" importers/exporters are in the same star system as complementary exporters/importers.
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Archangel

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Increasing jumpships and dropships just destroys the setting.
Changing "food imports" to "vitamin imports" balances the setting to the way FASA designed it to be.

Actually it doesn't.  Your 'solution' makes the setting seem less desperate than what FASA was striving for.  What makes the situation sound worse: "We haven't received this month's shipment of food/water" or "We haven't received this month's shipment of vitamins"?

With the caveat, of course, that the disconnect only exists when too many "major" worlds are assumed to be too dependent on food imports. Populations in the periphery (especially outside the Concordat and Magistracy) seem to be very low - tens of thousands to low millions - and so there should be no issue with Mules hauling staple foods at "Fasanomic" rates there.

Even a single major world requiring only a small amount of imports to sustain the local population would require huge numbers of DropShips and JumpShips regularly bringing food shipments.
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skiltao

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Even a single major world requiring only a small amount of imports to sustain the local population would require huge numbers of DropShips and JumpShips regularly bringing food shipments.

Like Irian, yeah? It's feasible without breaking the setting.
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Archangel

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Like Irian, yeah? It's feasible without breaking the setting.

It quickly adds up once you start cranking some numbers.  In the Dark Age, Irian has about 1.3 billion people.  Lets assume that on average those 1,300,000,000 need to have 2 pounds of food imported per month.  Doesn't sound a lot until you start doing the math.  That means on average that 2,600,000,000 pounds of food (or 1,300,000 tons of food) each month.  Per year that is 31,200,000,000 pounds of food (or 15,600,000 tons of food).  How many DropShips will be needed to carry all that food?  The most commonly available cargo DropShip is the Mule which can only carry about 8,100 tons of cargo.  How many Mule shipments of food are needed to supply the needed food per month?  Per year?  And this is after the Blakists killed more than a third of the planet's population during their withdrawal from the planet.

In 3067 the planet Summer had an F rating in agriculture and needed to import food for more than 2.5 billion citizens.  How much food do they need to import to maintain their margin of safety (meaning they don't have to utilize their emergency supply of food) per month? Per year?
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Medron Pryde

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Actually it doesn't.  Your 'solution' makes the setting seem less desperate than what FASA was striving for.  What makes the situation sound worse: "We haven't received this month's shipment of food/water" or "We haven't received this month's shipment of vitamins"?

If you are going to die without the right vitamins because the planet doesn't provide them, it is just as bad and just as civilization ending...
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skiltao

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The numbers do add up quickly, but... well, let's look at the environment Irian was written for:

Bulk shipping on high capacity routes is handled by big cartels operating Mammoths and Behemoths, not independent traders operating Mules; Behemoths are less common than Mules among independent traders, but not particularly less common overall. Old stats amount to ~42ktons per collar (Behemoths occupy two collars). Irian has 2.169 billion people, eating poor rations, most of which are imported - assuming ideal rations of 2.13kg per person per day, then at 2/3rds rations of which 2/3rds are imported, they'd need to import 49 collars of food each day.
  • With recharging stations and Monoliths (12.5 day round trip), it would take ~68 JumpShips to feed Irian. That's around 1/6th of the FWL's fleet - in other words, each House could manage ~2 Irians without breaking the setting.
  • The FWL possesses the Ryan Ice Fleet: if the Ryan Cartel method can be used to transport bland food-like substances, then Irian would only need one deposit per decade.
  • Many star systems have more than one inhabited world. Space habitats also exist. If Irian's food can be sourced from within its own star system, no JumpShips are needed at all.
So there's a few ways that exceptional worlds like Summer can fit into the spirit of the BT universe.
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Archangel

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If you are going to die without the right vitamins because the planet doesn't provide them, it is just as bad and just as civilization ending...

As long as people are getting sufficient foods to survive, vitamin deficiency, barring other medical conditions, isn't likely to kill anybody before the supply line could be restored.  At best it might cause some health issues.  Lack of food will quickly cause massive loss of life, both to starvation and in food riots as the masses struggle to survive.
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SCC

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That "simple" change changes the entire economic and transport situation of the Inner Sphere.

The whole idea of there being a couple thousand jumpships out there is that it takes a major bugger of a time to put together a real invasion.  That is why the Succession Wars petered out.  There wasn't enough jumpship capacity left to move the military anymore.

That's why when the Federated Commonwealth attacked the Capellans, they had to strip their own territory of trading ships in order to move enough troops to nail the Liao flippers to the wall.

Increasing jumpships and dropships just destroys the setting.
Changing "food imports" to "vitamin imports" balances the setting to the way FASA designed it to be.

AKA...it is less destructive to the atmosphere and setting of BattleTech to change "food imports" than it is to increase the number of spaceships.
Actually no. Sure there are more JS and DS now, but as most of them are tied up shipping food around, it doesn't matter. It's not the absolute number of JS and DS that matter, but rather how many can be turned over to military service without causing major problems else where, as long as that number doesn't change, everything remains the same.

Archangel

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The numbers do add up quickly, but... well, let's look at the environment Irian was written for:

Bulk shipping on high capacity routes is handled by big cartels operating Mammoths and Behemoths, not independent traders operating Mules; Behemoths are less common than Mules among independent traders, but not particularly less common overall. Old stats amount to ~42ktons per collar (Behemoths occupy two collars). Irian has 2.169 billion people, eating poor rations, most of which are imported - assuming ideal rations of 2.13kg per person per day, then at 2/3rds rations of which 2/3rds are imported, they'd need to import 49 collars of food each day.
  • With recharging stations and Monoliths (12.5 day round trip), it would take ~68 JumpShips to feed Irian. That's around 1/6th of the FWL's fleet - in other words, each House could manage ~2 Irians without breaking the setting.
  • The FWL possesses the Ryan Ice Fleet: if the Ryan Cartel method can be used to transport bland food-like substances, then Irian would only need one deposit per decade.
  • Many star systems have more than one inhabited world. Space habitats also exist. If Irian's food can be sourced from within its own star system, no JumpShips are needed at all.
So there's a few ways that exceptional worlds like Summer can fit into the spirit of the BT universe.

One, you do realize that Behemoths never intentionally go planetside right?  They are unloaded via its 20 shuttles which can take a long time especially since largest shuttle can only carry 31.5 tons of cargo. 

Two, while Monoliths are the largest JumpShip available, the FWL isn't likely to have "~68" of them in their whole fleet.  According to 3057R (p106), "less than fifty vessels remain in the armies of the Successor States, half of which serve with the DCMS."

Three, besides "1/6th" of the FWL fleet devoted simply to supplying a single planet?  That doesn't leave a lot leftover for any other planets not to mention keeping the FWL's interstellar economy going or supporting the FWLM.  Although such a concentration of JumpShips would make an awfully tempting target.  >:D

Four, Ryan Cartel and space habitats, uh no and no.  The Ryan cartel didn't care how the ice turned up in the target system, in the end it was still water.  Containers of food wouldn't fare any better.  Personally I prefer to keep pieces of steel, plastic, styrofoam, etc out of my diet.   Each space habitat would only be able to produce a small percentage of the food required to feed a large planetary population and the cost of building and maintaining each habitat would outweigh any benefit.

Five, the capital of the FWL, Atreus, had 8.4 billion citizens and an agricultural rating of D.  How much of the FWL's fleet would be required to feed Atreus and Irian alone?  Would there be any ships remaining for interstellar commerce or the military to wage war or other planets that need to import food?  Les Halles has 1.25 billion citizens and an agricultural rating of D.  Three planets in the FWL with a rating of D and a combined population of over 10 billion.  And what about all the smaller planets that have an agricultural rating of D or F but have less than a billion citizens?  As I said it quickly adds up.

House Steiner has similar problems.  In addition to Summer, there were at least 3 more planets with an agricultural rating of D and more than a billion citizens.  Dar-Es-Salaam had more than 3.6 billion, Rahne hasdmore than 3 billion and Arcturus had more than a billion.  Three planets with a rating of D and a combined population of almost 10 billion.  And again that doesn't even include all the planets with an agricultural rating of D or F but have less than a billion citizens.
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MrJake

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Fasanomics works just fine (at least in this particular case).

The bottleneck seems to be in transport tons available, either thru dropship or jumpship scarcity. Tonnage however, is only part of the transport equation. Caloric/nutritional density is the other, more important variable, and as luck would have it, is still officially undefined (outside of space travel). 

"Bulk" foodstuffs are not going to be ears, or even kernels, of corn; they're going to be high fructose corn syrup which has three times the caloric density of just the kernels. And that's to produce a substance that can be used immediately. I'm pretty sure the caloric density could be increased by a factor of ten or more, if the engineers designing the process were allowed to stipulate that reversing the process so the calories could be consumed would require substantial reprocessing.

Add in the passage of a thousand years and a bright, glorious Star League, and there's plenty of room at the bottom. Highly compressed blocks of pure protein, all cellular components removed, artificially stabilized for long term storage, could provide the needed minimum nutrient for ten's of thousands of people, per ton. It might take a month to process it back into something approaching edible, but the number of DS/JS visits you need to keep a population fed quickly plummets to more manageable levels.

Either define the caloric density of bulk goods, or, even simpler, add: "Only the use of heavily processed high density bulk foodstuffs make trade, and colonization, on such a scale (barely) possible." Do that and none of the previously published numbers need change, just our assumptions about undefined aspects of the 'verse. Assumptions, I would point out, about a science fiction universe.


Edit: Spelling





« Last Edit: 02 July 2016, 18:03:27 by MrJake »

glitterboy2098

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Highly compressed blocks of pure protein, all cellular components removed, artificially stabilized for long term storage, could provide the needed minimum nutrient for ten's of thousands of people, per ton. It might take a month to process it back into something approaching edible, but the number of DS/JS visits you need to keep a population feed quickly plummets to more manageable levels.



"It's pure, Patience. Genuine A-grade foodstuffs. Protein, vitamins, immunization supplements. One of those'll feed a family for a month. Longer, if they don't like their kids too well."

MrJake

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"It's pure, Patience. Genuine A-grade foodstuffs. Protein, vitamins, immunization supplements. One of those'll feed a family for a month. Longer, if they don't like their kids too well."


Ya know, just once I'd like my original idea to actually be original....


Edit: To include quotation and image
« Last Edit: 02 July 2016, 18:04:54 by MrJake »

Medron Pryde

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Tastes kinda like cardboard...

 8)
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