Thread:Zillafire101/@comment-4960835-20160524105213/@comment-25309944-20160913151214

With regards to black hole foundries and such, this is how I tend to think about them: While they are capable of turning stellar matter into useful materials and then assemble those materials into useful products, GD12 once told me that they actually require a -lot- of energy in the process. One of the reasons for the Drakodominatus Tyranny's expansionist drive was, he told me ex post facto, because they desperately needed andasium to power their machines.

The DT was trying to be a post-scarcity state on par with the DCP and tended to operate by the rules of post-scarcity economics: a teetering pyramid scheme of highly expensive and cost-ineffective megastructures, each trying to fulfill the energy, material, or infrastructural requirements of the other. Generally, these economies can harness truly astounding amounts of energy and cobble together massive megastructures and weapons seemingly without effort, but actually do so very inefficiently both in terms of cost efficiency and effectiveness.

France operates by different rules given that it's a capitalist economy, and it's attempted to integrate the DT's stellar forges into its network of production. They don't serve the same purpose, though, given that it's more efficient and energy/cost-effective to mine steel, andasium, copper, zinc, gold, oil, to grow food, wool, sugar, etc, and to fashion things like plastics, circuitry, than it is to synthetically produce it. Synthetic production of materials like oil, metal, and so on, would require pumping a lot more money in andasium into a black hole forge than buying it from a supplier.

What this means is that the replication capability of France's stellar and black hole forges are nice-to-have, but ultimately not too useful. They provide a good buffer against shortages. What France ultimately uses these facilities for is their ability to assemble ships and other products (depending on the facility). France's black hole forges and the interuniversal syphon essentially serve as massive shipyards which are essential for supercarrier production, while stellar forges serve the same purpose but have mostly passed into private hands for civilian production. Ultimately, France would not build more stellar forges or black hole forges given the costs involved in building one, nor exactly recommend it to others as the most efficient route to take given the energy requirement and the existence of other options.