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 Ketara wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
Yet that same argument does not hold for the Dark Eldar who do have access to a whole galaxy through their raiding and who do have weapon factories with hordes of slaves laboring away for them.

That would be why I wasn't talking about the Dark Eldar when I said that? Or indeed, the Orks or Tyranids, or any other race? I specified two posts back that I wasn't ruling out the cultural component, and you tried to say I was, now you're talking about DE. I'll be honest mate, I'm starting to get the feeling you're trying to pick an argument over something?

I was pointing out the Dark Eldar and their similar iterative technology to show that this cultural mindset is universal among all branches of the Eldar, even though their material circumstances are very different.

Craftworlders just have certain main lines: shuriken, lasers, plasma, melta, distortion, missile pods, monofilament, vibro. Pretty much everything they have is a variation of these. Dark Eldar Kabals have splinter, darklight, monofilament, some haywire stuff. The Haemonculi creations are less mass produced weaponry and more mobile pieces of depraved art (and hence individualized creations that for convenience are treated similarly in game stats). Material limitation was hardly a factor for the Dark Eldar production given that they were raiding in such quantity and bringing in such wealth to Commorragh that Vect declared it an age of plenty. In fact, the Dark Eldar have stolen at least one whole planet (as given in the Haemonculus Covens supplement).

Iracundus wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
Yet that same argument does not hold for the Dark Eldar who do have access to a whole galaxy through their raiding and who do have weapon factories with hordes of slaves laboring away for them.

That would be why I wasn't talking about the Dark Eldar when I said that? Or indeed, the Orks or Tyranids, or any other race? I specified two posts back that I wasn't ruling out the cultural component, and you tried to say I was, now you're talking about DE. I'll be honest mate, I'm starting to get the feeling you're trying to pick an argument over something?

I was pointing out the Dark Eldar and their similar iterative technology to show that this cultural mindset is universal among all branches of the Eldar, even though their material circumstances are very different.

Are they? One set floats on vast spaceships with no material resources but that of the warp. One sits in a separate dimension with no resources but what they can steal. And another is simply a batch of separate individual worlds, with no great industry to link them. They very much have identical material circumstances, namely a lack of them.

Craftworlders just have certain main lines: shuriken, lasers, plasma, melta, distortion, missile pods, monofilament, vibro. Pretty much everything they have is a variation of these. Dark Eldar Kabals have splinter, darklight, monofilament, some haywire stuff. The Haemonculi creations are less mass produced weaponry and more mobile pieces of depraved art (and hence individualized creations that for convenience are treated similarly in game stats). Material limitation was hardly a factor for the Dark Eldar production given that they were raiding in such quantity and bringing in such wealth to Commorragh that Vect declared it an age of plenty. In fact, the Dark Eldar have stolen at least one whole planet (as given in the Haemonculus Covens supplement).

You're looking very closely at a tree and missing the forest. One planet? In a galaxy of how many innumerable planets? With a population in the Commoragh of how many? All those Dark Eldar need to eat, something to build their dwellings from, something to build their lights, clothes, computing devices, etc from. They do nothing but consume, they're a city. They export very little, no-one in the Imperium or Craftworlds is buying Dark Eldar manufactured goods en masse.

You say that they're 'raiding in such quantity', but that's because they have no choice but to do so. If they stopped for any period of time, their entire infrastructure would collapse. They constantly consume and put nothing out but more raiders. In any ecosystem you'll reach a point where that becomes unsustainable, where the amount of resources taken in the hunt is no longer sufficient for the number of hunters engaging in it. There are a finite number of webway gates on worlds with badly defended populations that have large amounts of portable material resource for the taking.

Commoragh is nothing more than a massive consumer, one which is entirely reliant upon outside circumstances providing sufficient quantities of any individual raw material to manufacture from. If the gemstones/metals that make a shadow field are rare in the galaxy at large, they'll be even rarer within the Dark City, as supply is restricted to what they can steal. Nobody will consequently bother wasting large quantities of it on experimental programs. They'll simply build as many shadow field devices as they can do in order to sell to the Archons who want them.

In such a way does the material factor hinder Dark Eldar experimentation with technology. Less so than it does the Craftworld Eldar, but a hindrance nonetheless.

 Ketara wrote:

In such a way does the material factor hinder Dark Eldar experimentation with technology. Less so than it does the Craftworld Eldar, but a hindrance nonetheless.

And again I say you are seeing great material hardship where there is none. You make it seem as if the Dark City were living a hardscrabble existence, from one mouthful to the next. While theoretically true that the Dark Eldar have to keep raiding to sustain their society, they appear to be in no immediate danger of running out. If Vect declared an age of plenty from all the wealth brought in by raids, if the Haemonculi can afford to stock away literally centuries worth of captives in anticipation of any future hardship, if the Dark City can spread like a dark stain in the Webway, Commorragh is not starving. The fact they have to import their food and resources like a modern city does not make them poor any more than New York City is poor. Sustainability is different from wealth. Their raiding is producing a vast surplus of wealth (not just slave captives) exceeding their consumption for all of the above to happen. There is clearly something more than just "lack of materials" as a catch-all explanation for the stagnation of Commorragh which parallels that of the Craftworlds.

Haemonculi "experiment" in the same way that the Logicians experiment, the way movie trope mad scientists experiment. There is no real peer review or exchange of information. At best you have cliques of similar mad scientists who fancy themselves artists, that are only slightly less likely to backstab each other as outsiders.

Iracundus wrote:

And again I say you are seeing great material hardship where there is none

Okay, let me try rephrasing, since you seem to be quibbling with something I'm not saying. I'll try laying it out in simple steps nobody can contradict.

a) Resources in the 40K Universe are finite.
b) Some resources in the 40K Universe are more finite than others. There are less of them. Much like real life.
c) The Dark Eldar rely entirely on what they can steal. They have no natural resources.
d) This means that they rely entirely upon what resources other races exploit, as they do not gather it themselves.
e) As certain resources are rarer than others, those other races will accordingly gather less of those rarer resources.
f) Certain locations belonging to other races will either not have webway gates on or will be heavily fortified.
g) The rarer the resource, the more likely it will be heavily protected, because it will be worth more. Scarcity breeds value.
h) Ergo, there will be less of those rare resources located in areas which can be hit by DE raids.
i) Therefore, there will be smaller quantities of those resources available in Commoragh. They will be even rarer and more valuable in Commoragh than in the hands of the primary resource extracting faction (who can beef up security and keep producing).

I think that the above is more or less irrefutable? The Dark Eldar can live in an age of 'plenty' all they like, but that does not mean rare resources can be magicked out of nowhere. We live in an age of 'plenty' here in the West right now, but that doesn't mean that we trip over gold on every boat. Or any number of other rare earth metals.

So, another batch of reasonably irrefutable statements:-

a) Certain technologies are more widespread in Commoragh than others.
b) Items are usually more difficult to acquire depending upon the basic laws of supply and demand.
c) Therefore if items like shadow fields were exceedingly easy to build out of common components, everyone would have one.
d) Yet they don't.
e) Dark Eldar society runs on slave labour. So it cannot be a question of a lack of skilled labour being the reason for the scarcity of certain items. An Archon would just kidnap one person who knew how to make them, and force them to train innumerable slaves to perform the task (that way he could have a force all armed with shadow fields or suchlike, making his raiding capabilities that much greater).
f) This means that the only other potential reason for such technologies to be rare is because of the scarcity of the components.

So. If we have established that certain munitions or technologies are rare because of the scarcity of the material components, what logically follows on from that? How does that impact upon their research?

The answer is, it's impossible to say entirely for sure, this is an alien race. It may well be that DE archons fill bathtubs with rare metals and then throw them off cliffs in fits of wasteful pique. It may well be that there's some secret tradition of giving away your most valuable items we haven't heard of. But it's unlikely. The odds are that the DE treat a valuable and rare resource the same as anyone else in real life. They're far less inclined to waste it needlessly.

My speculation here (logically following on from the above) is that without a centrally driven intent to commit research, the scarcity of these rare materials would be an impediment to research. If materials are not wasted needlessly, then there is a strong incentive to commit to utilising resources in a way that gives a known return. You wouldn't waste whatever resource makes a shadow field thirty times over in the hope of discovering something new; instead you'd make thirty new shadow fields. Perhaps the richest of all in DE society (so Vect, for example) would have more leeway to play around with things and experiment, but they would be the exception rather than the rule.

Repeatedly bringing up shadow fields is pointless because we were never discussing the rare items only available to characters but rather the mainstream weaponry available to the rank and file Eldar soldiers. Just as if we were talking about the Imperium, we would not be examining the rare near irreplaceable stuff like Vortex grenades. Look at the types of weaponry the various branches of the Eldar have and we see it is invariably the same types in varying sizes or rates of fire, with only the type varying by which branch of the Eldar. Dark Eldar Kabals have splinter, darklight, monofilament, some haywire stuff. We see nothing like graviton beamers or conversion beamers or volkite stuff. If one goes and counts up the various types of weapons technology used, each branch of the Eldar has fewer. You can shout "resource shortage" all you want, but I'm not buying that as a legitimate reason for the restricted variety of rank and file weaponry. Just because exotic resources for wargear items might be limited does not immediately prove the point of mundane resource limitation being the reason behind the limited Eldar weapon types. The Eldar Craftworlds and Dark Eldar Kabals have a level of material plenty and quality of life (minus any risk of death from internal politics) that would be the envy of any human. The Dark Eldar are described as building immense statues, arenas, and other projects of mind boggling size and extravagance. These societal remnants are still nearly post-scarcity in terms of mundane resources. Commorragh's biggest expenditure seems to be the lives of those expended to provide the suffering to rejuvenate the Dark Eldar.

Although you give cursory nod to culture, I am arguing that it is a bigger factor than you seem to be giving credit for. For the Craftworld Eldar in particular, their entire way of life is a series of compartmentalized mind states and lifestyles, governed by rituals and allegorical references to the myths of the past. The Aspects are as much about internal psychological control as they are about actually fighting in war. As I have made reference to, even their counterparts in the Haemonculus Covens have echoes of something like a Path system in their disciplines even if they will not admit it to themselves. It seems the Eldar as a whole species are prone to getting themselves into mental boxes. They may be very good at refining and pushing the limits of what can be done within those boxes, but it seems difficult for them to break out of the box. As the Outcast character found out in Andy Chambers' Path novels, even being an Outcast for the most part just meant moving into the Outcast box and engaging in being a "rebel" doing similar things to all the other "rebels".

Iracundus wrote:
Repeatedly bringing up shadow fields is pointless because we were never discussing the rare items only available to characters but rather the mainstream weaponry available to the rank and file Eldar soldiers.

We were? Blimey, that conversational shift shot over my head. That's the third zero-g manoeuvre you've pulled on this conversation now.

You can shout "resource shortage" all you want, but I'm not buying that as a legitimate reason for the restricted variety of rank and file weaponry.

That's great....? You said that Dark Eldar were in a land of plenty, etcetc, and that there were no resource shortages. I very carefully, in my prior post, established that the Dark Eldar were just as susceptible to resource shortages as anyone else. I then linked that back in to my original point on how having a lack of material resource can restrict experimentation.

So we've gone from 'There is no resource shortages of any kind, everything they want they have' to 'They have plenty of materials for the most common weaponry'. Well.....yeah. That's why it's, y'know, the most common. Statement of the obvious there.

Just because exotic resources for wargear items might be limited does not immediately prove the point of mundane resource limitation being the reason behind the limited Eldar weapon types.

It would prevent experimentation with more 'exotic' resources. That was the sole point being established. I'm not sure why you keep trying to push me into an argument I've never made.

The Eldar Craftworlds and Dark Eldar Kabals have a level of material plenty and quality of life (minus any risk of death from internal politics) that would be the envy of any human. The Dark Eldar are described as building immense statues, arenas, and other projects of mind boggling size and extravagance. These societal remnants are still nearly post-scarcity in terms of mundane resources.

Here we have the crux of your hangup. Despite conceding that 'exotic resources' are limited, you still don't want to accept that any kind of resource that could be useful in large quantities could be scarce, and therefore reject scarcity affecting technological progress. Allow me to reiterate a prior point in the same 'irrefutable format'.

a) In order to have an experiment with a material, to find out its capabilities, you need to know both that it exists, and possess a large quantity of it.
b) The Webway is devoid of natural resources.
c) When launching a raid, the Dark Eldar will prioritise what they know to be of use and value in what they steal (bar the occasional bit of whimsy).
d) The Dark Eldar rarely stay at any raiding point for long periods of time. A few weeks at most even in completely subjugated locations.
e) Ergo, the Dark Eldar will only steal primarily what they know is of use for common utility in the Dark City. They will not hang around long enough to learn what other materials in any given location could be of use for experimentation or research purposes.

In other words, there will be plentiful supply of the resources Commoragh requires in Commoragh. Of that I have little doubt, and I'm not quibbling with. But that is not equivalent to having alternative resources to experiment with. If a Haemonculus wanted to experiment with a chemical from the God plant (seen in the Last Chancers) and was in a position to persuade an Archon to nab some? He wouldn't do, because he rarely leaves Commorragh, has never visited the planet it comes from, and as nobody ever brought it back to Commoragh before (as it has no value there), simply wouldn't know it existed.

Yet the chemical distilled from that one plant could have a psychoactive component which allowed your average splinter rifle to be linked to its owner so they always know where it is. Or another equally esoteric use. But the DE would never explore that route of technological development, because the nature of their resource acquisition means that in many regards, they sit in complete ignorance of the majority of life and minerals across the galaxy. Not possessing a permanent presence in the material universe provides disadvantages as well as advantages.

Although you give cursory nod to culture, I am arguing that it is a bigger factor than you seem to be giving credit for.

Cursory? I've said many times (I'll say it again in the hope it gets across this time) that their disunity of culture is the greatest impediment to any kind of technological development. A centralised research program could overcome most of the material disadvantages, as it would permit a certain wastage of valuable resources, collation of data, and more targeted raiding.

 Ketara wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
Repeatedly bringing up shadow fields is pointless because we were never discussing the rare items only available to characters but rather the mainstream weaponry available to the rank and file Eldar soldiers.

We were? Blimey, that conversational shift shot over my head. That's the third zero-g manoeuvre you've pulled on this conversation now.

We always were talking about the rank and file weaponry. I have stated previously already that we were not talking about the rare artifact stuff that characters get. I have been consistent throughout this thread in my point that Eldar (of all stripes) have much less variety in their rank and file weapon technology compared to a faction like the Imperium. I

That's great....? You said that Dark Eldar were in a land of plenty, etcetc, and that there were no resource shortages. I very carefully, in my prior post, established that the Dark Eldar were just as susceptible to resource shortages as anyone else. I then linked that back in to my original point on how having a lack of material resource can restrict experimentation.

You haven't established anything of the sort. All you tried to do was saying that because all kinds of resources of any rarity including the exotic are not infinitely plentiful that therefore there is a resource shortage. However the topic in the first place was never about the exotics but about the stuff used to make the common weaponry that squads use. Repeatedly trying to steer the topic to the wargear item rare stuff and the resources needed for those is irrelevant to the main issue: that of the mass produced weaponry and how there is limited variety of those in terms of the types of technology. Any mention of exotic resources or limitations thereof for character items is irrelevant.

So we've gone from 'There is no resource shortages of any kind, everything they want they have' to 'They have plenty of materials for the most common weaponry'. Well.....yeah. That's why it's, y'know, the most common. Statement of the obvious there.

When I stated the Eldar have no resource shortages, I was making that statement in reference to the weaponry used by the rank and file. I have never tried to claim no resource shortage meant infinite resources of all types including the rare ones.

The statement is not obvious: If the most common (i.e. most basic or easily mass produced) weaponry used to arm your forces uses iron, and there is an iron shortage, then your forces will be under-equipped due to that shortage.

a) In order to have an experiment with a material, to find out its capabilities, you need to know both that it exists, and possess a large quantity of it.
b) The Webway is devoid of natural resources.
c) When launching a raid, the Dark Eldar will prioritise what they know to be of use and value in what they steal (bar the occasional bit of whimsy).
d) The Dark Eldar rarely stay at any raiding point for long periods of time. A few weeks at most even in completely subjugated locations.
e) Ergo, the Dark Eldar will only steal primarily what they know is of use for common utility in the Dark City. They will not hang around long enough to learn what other materials in any given location could be of use for experimentation or research purposes.

<snip>

Not all things must come from raids. Also the Webway is not devoid of resources. Some of the weaponry the Dark Eldar use is explicitly described as using energy harvested from certain areas of the Webway.

The issue is fundamentally the Haemonculi Covens are not science think tanks. They are guilds of artist-craftsmen. The Haemonculi create art and their creations are hand crafted rather than mass produced (i.e. rare units and wargear items). And this I think ultimately also boils down to what the Haemonculi are. The thing is I do not think the Haemonculi want to create anything new for the general population (things like the hexrifle are the exceptions that prove the rule). They are out to create their next artistic masterpiece.

The Haemonculi do have access to exotics from their raids as they do targeted raids precisely to get samples of the esoteric ingredients they want. Clearly they are learning what materials are in any given location if they can launch targeted raids precisely for them. There are numerous markets in Commorragh and things get in via trade from other Eldar such as Corsairs. Novelty itself has value so I would disagree about your assertion that the Haemonculi would never find out about a compound or chemical. As arguably the largest trading hub in the galaxy, and with the Webway allowing much faster access to the galaxy over human warp travel, Commorragh is likely to get samples of anything in the galaxy, for novelty value if nothing else.

However despite dwarfing the population of any one Craftworld and getting trade from all over the galaxy as well as the stuff acquired in raids, the Dark Eldar do not create much that is really game changing and radically new for the rank and file as opposed to refinements of the existing. The hexrifle is an example of something unique that enters more general use. But things like it are rare compared to the usual Dark Eldar standard operating mode of splinter, darklight, monofilament, poison. And again I think this boils down to what the Haemonculi are: more artists experimenting with their brush technique than scientists as we understand the term.

Iracundus, judging from how your comments relate to mine, I don't know who you're trying to have a debate with here. But it doesn't appear to be me. So I'll leave this one there, I think.