Richard,

Just found your post, so not sure you are still reading my responses.

How you perceive anything is, just about you.

I use the Large Font setting, not Huge.
The font sizes are there for a reason.

There is no advantage to anti-grav technology if that technology is used based on doctrine derived from using vehicles that require surface traction. Similarly using tanks deployed in close order formation (British Army during Normady breakouts) proved deadly to them when attacked by German tanks.

The question is not how Patrons regard mercenaries, but how mercinaries regard themselves, and any Patron that regards them as 'expendable'. A 'mercenary' is a profession, and requires the mercenary to survive long enough to retire and make use of his or her prceeds of employment. If the mercenary unit finds that they were supplied wrong information which leads their contract mission to an expendable culmination, the surviving mercs may decide that the Patron is also expendable.

When a given world-view of anything is questioned and disrupted, the strategy of 'if I ignore it long enough, it will just go away', is rarely successful.

Greg


On 19 June 2015 at 08:22, Richard Aiken <raikenclw@gmail.com> wrote:
Is it just me? Or is Greg's giant blue font really, really irritating to anyone else?

As to the *substance* or his arguments, I frankly can't understand them. For example, he seems to be saying he sees no advantage to using higher tech gravitics over lower tech gravitics . . . which is simply ludicrous.

He also seems to be saying that Patrons don't regard mercenaries as expendable. The way a Patron would see it, mercenaries (especially interstellar mercenaries) are the definition of expendable. Mercenaries don't vote for or against you, you don't have to worry about them if they become casualties (that's what their own insurance is for), their families don't depend upon you for pensions if they're killed, mercenaries can be expected to have no moral qualms about whatever mission they are assigned to do (or they wouldn't have become mercenaries in the first place), etc.

Mercenaries come in, they do the job and then they leave again.

In theory.

It's seldom *really* like that, outside Traveller or some similar fictional universe. There certainly are no "bonded mercenary tickets" in the real world, past or present.

But I'm really tired of Greg, so I don't think I'll be responding to any of his posts any longer. In fact, can someone tell me how to block his posts? I suspect others have already done so, based upon the narrow range of responses above. I've never had cause to block anyone before and have no idea how it's done.

--
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein
"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby
"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester
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