User:Etzan/Arms Market

Hey guys! The upcoming intergalactic war has many of us scrambling to update/create our navies. It can be a dull and lonely process, a chore to many if it's not your thing. And, in the end, not many people end up seeing our work. I have an idea to help with that. I want to introduce a market where people can visualize and exchange their equipment, and propose collaborations between two or more nations, combining their research to create a better product, very much like in real life.

If this idea catches on, I'll use this blog as the Market's home for now. We'll see what happens.

Submitting Equipment
Those who want their creations to participate in the market will submit them in the comments in a bulleted list with a description. I will link to that comment when I transcribe the information here. I want to know about its general design. What can it do? What is it designed for? How does it get around? What weapons or defense systems can it accommodate? Is it cost efficient? Of what quality is it? Is it in your nation's area of strength? (I'll get to that in a second). When compared to other equipment of the same generation and role, is it below average? Average? Good? Extraordinary? What are the notable defects or limitations of the craft? (No piece of equipment is perfect!) Would your nation be willing to sell the piece of equipment to non-allies? Would they be willing to sell production rights, or will they sell the craft individually?

Creativity is strongly encouraged. Think about your nation's military doctrines, and from that think about how they would build their equipment to service that doctrine. Often, when you put a piece of equipment on sale, you're not only soliciting the equipment, but the use of the equipment––the doctrines and tactics it was made for.

Limitations on Production
Before everyone starts making only perfect equipment, I'd like to get a word in. Given that no nation really has infinite resources, we're not all going to excel at every single field. We have limited resources and staff which we allocate to develop and produce different equipment. A nation can allocate its resources evenly to all fields (tanks, light vehicles, aerospace, etc), and will get average equipment in all fields. They won't be competitive in the market, but will have absolute control over every aspect of production and will be able to customize their equipment down to the last detail.

However, if a nation wants to produce better quality equipment, they're going to have to divert resources from other areas. The current Aerospace strike craft giants, France and POTATO, fall short in other fields. France relies on POTATO's superior SEAD craft, having not bothered to invest in a SEAD program when it would just produce an inferior craft. Similarly, POTATO decided to adopt France's Super Mirage 3 Strategique because it was a good enough strategic bomber for their purposes, allowing them to invest resources elsewhere.

note: This balance is also kept within a single piece of equipment. For the sake of simplicity, we'll use two values: quality and cost efficiency. A project with a lot of resources invested in it might result in a produce with high quality and high cost efficiency within its price range. One with less resources might create something with decent cost efficiency and decent quality. Or it might produce one with high cost efficiency but low quality, or something with high quality but low cost efficiency. The choice is yours! Also note: Stats decrease with age.

My advice is choose a few areas where your nation has above average or even extraordinary equipment and market it. If you want to submit your good or average equipment to the market and attempt to sell it on count of originality, please do so! If you have a unique doctrine you want to share and no competition, it's very possible that someone might buy and adopt that doctrine based on its merits.

Collaborations
One exciting aspect about this is actually collaboration between nations. In the real world, nations pool together their resources and research to jointly design and create better craft. The Eurofighter Typhoon is one such craft. I'd like to attempt to replicate this in the FU.

All nations involved would have to agree on a design and terms of production and distribution. By definition, if everyone invests a decent amount of research, the end result might be of great quality without much effort on the part of the individual nations.

Collaborations with nations who are good in a specific field, like collaborating on a fighter with France, or on a tank with Roreinia, are very very valuable and hard to come by. Nations who are ahead might be reluctant to share their research, hoarding the best versions of their creations until they've been eclipsed by those still in development. A collaboration with a nation that is not so skilled in that given field essentially means that the skilled nation is just giving away their advantage in research. However, they can be garnered through exchanges: One nation allows the other to collaborate on a project in their area of strength while the other does the same.

Example: France allowed Roreinia to collaborate with it on the Mirage Comète 3, which became Roreinia's primary omnirole strike craft. In exchange, Roreinia and France collaborated on a tank which went on to become France's flagship MBT, though it was of lesser quality than Roreinia's flagship MBT. Both nations benefitted from each other's expertise and got better equipment out of it. It was a good deal!

Variants
After you obtain a craft, it's general practice that you have permission to alter it (to accommodate your nation's weapons or tactics), refit it (as new technology comes out), and thereby make new variants of that craft (with a cool name!). It is generally agreed upon that the original seller of that craft still has rights on the design, so a buyer wouldn't have permission to push a variant of the craft to the market as their own product without the original nation's permission.

Many fighters - especially omniroles - can be retooled to act in very specific role, such as tactical bomber or fighter, or even SEAD if the craft has good enough electronic countermeasures. Have fun with this!