Is it more realistic to have a scarcity of resources and have military forces be small and planets be underdeveloped because space travel is expensive? Or is it more realistic to have an abundance of resources and production due to the vast resources of space?
>>98606520neither is realistic because space travel is neither cheap nor expensive, its purely speculative and has a price tag entirely determined by whatever handwavium you use to enable itbut if we use a history as an example, always a danger because the past is rarely like the future regardless of how often it repeatsthen large militaries are mostly determined by the existing threats and socio-political landscape just as much as it is a resource bottleneckyou might have a large military even if resources are scarce because you need to defend what little you do have or you might have a small military despite an abundance of resources because there isnt anyone to fight with over itif transport is expensive, but resources are abundantthen investing in force projection might just be a total waste of money unless you absolutely outsize the enemy by ridiculous marginssince in this situation, a large power wouldnt be able to overcome a minor power if they cant make their numerical advantage meaningful at the tactical level due to transport constraints and they cant just starve out the defenders because they have all the resources they need for a prolonged campaign in this case, everyone has a large army that serves as a deterrent, just having one at all is a safe bet against everything except super powers
Depends on how thorough the space resources are in fulfilling industrial/military demands, how thorough issues with adapting industrial processes to microgravity and enclosed pressure vessels or vacuum get solved, and what your delta-V sources look like."Realistically" it's more a colonization-period thing, as issues get solved a few at a time starting from "basically pointless dick-waving contest" like the vast majority of the OG space race and infrastructure gets built up where it's needed.
>>98606520if you have very few resources you probably dont spend them on expensive space travel that promises very little return on investment. if you have an abundance of resources to invest, and investment is highly profitable, then you will probably invest heavily. in terms of space infrastructure, shipping times get long but energy is abundant, and mining, manufacturing and transport costs are extremely low, so you build a lot of space habitats. if you build a lot of habitats you get high populations, so wars are likely to involve large deployments unless the nature of warfare changes significantly. for anyone curious at current retail prices for steel you can build an oniel cylinder at a compeditive price to the median property value in a capital city (per square meter).
>>98606520do whatever you think will be most fun, getting bogged down by what feels more realistic is not going to improve your game, book, or maladaptive daydreams.
