@RenOS's banner p

RenOS

Dadder than dad

1 follower   follows 0 users  
joined 2023 January 06 09:29:25 UTC

				

User ID: 2051

RenOS

Dadder than dad

1 follower   follows 0 users   joined 2023 January 06 09:29:25 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 2051

The dysgenics is trivial to solve with embryo selection, which unlike AI-powered robots has the perk of existing and already being cheap enough to be accessible for middle class people if they so choose. Even in the current form it'd be trivial for western government to subsidize usage for poor people (though I think there is enough slack to make it much, much cheaper to begin with through scaling).

Agree on the Ukraine war & on the problem of extremely fertile ultra-conservative populations, though.

I don't think it's necessary to use for every birth, just consistent usage for people who struggle with pregnancy in the first place & people with certain known problems (I'm deliberately vague here because I think there is a wide range of reasonable policies that should be subject to debate by both the public and experts to collectively find out what we find or find not adequate to select against) is likely to be sufficient to make effective dysgenics per generation almost zero or even turn it around. Many dysfunctions and abnormalities impact fertility, so even just better embryo selection for those that already use IVF is imo likely to impact dysgenics more than you'd naively expect. From the initial data I've seen, simple general-health PGS is likely to even substantially improve the chances for a successful pregnancy beyond what the existing standard tests do, so it's win-win for absolutely everyone.

My first rough idea is something like this:

  1. Make sequencing (again, deliberately vague because while I think deep WGS should be the goal, WES, larger SNP arrays, etc. would be a big step up compared to current practice) for would-be (in the sense of planning, not already pregnant obviously) parents completely free. Even if we assume every second parent takes you up on this, and even assuming one of the most costly option, 100x WGS at ca. 1k (see Nebula for example), this is more in the ballpark of low single digit billions. Probably we will go for a cheaper option, and probably less parents will use it initially, so in practice I'd expect less than a billion.
  2. Only if the parents fulfill the aforementioned "certain known problems" they will also have access to free IVF + embryo selection. Likewise, people that get regular IVF due to struggling to get pregnant also get free genetics-based embryo selection by default on top. Here there is a wide range of costs; I'd probably be initially in favor of a policy that subsidizes only the worst 1% or so. So this would again be in the low single digit billions or less than a billion depending on the take-up.
  3. We can also save a lot by only subsidizing it for people who can't afford it otherwise, but I'm personally against such policies since they have bad incentives imo. But it's an option on the table that would slash the cost down substantially.

I think such a program would be very cost-effective initially as mainly people who already have family histories take it up + those struggling to get pregnant. Over time, success and normalisation would increase the take-up and hence costs, but - and here you can call me out I guess - I think the scaling will more than make up for it. Remember, dysgenics is a pretty slow long-term problem, it's fine if it takes some time, as long as we get the process started and don't just completely ignore it.

In my ideal future, it's completely normal and free for everyone to have access to their own genome through ultra-deep WGS, access to several different risk scores for various diseases, abnormalities and dysfunctions for themselves, there is simple, accessible software that can estimate the joint risk for the same things for the offspring of any two people, and there are clear, commonly agreed guidelines when embryo-selection is subsidized or free for you (ideally with a linear or a multi step function instead of a simple free vs full price). All in addition to full-price IVF/embryo selection for those who don't agree with guidelines and want to select for the things they personally care about. And in think this ideal future is actually possible even just with the current technology level.

Clearly, it was a burrito. It's the sacrifice you have to make to eat something so delicious.

Yes, I saw that one, too. Not very nice either.

One can believe that Senators face a relatively high threat compared to random citizens and so need the protection more and not be hypocritical.

I suppose he is not talking about STDs, but it is possible.

To me, the two first sentences are somewhat at odds, especially together with the last sentence. Using your definition, can't you gain their trust and then change their opinion?

No offense, but that's very ... autistic. Sure there's still large differences and resentment is not inappropriate. Especially given the often extreme hypocrisy and prejudice of our woke betters. But nevertheless, it's also important to keep in mind that we did in fact make great advances. My parents come from poor rural super large families (I literally don't know the number of my cousins) and didn't even enter high-school. Nevertheless, they build up a comfortable middle class existence and I'm now a postdoc at a decent university.

My gf, who is also a postdoc, comes from a post-soviet background where they lost EVERYTHING, twice (once her grandparents due to being silesian germans, then her parents due to their entire education not being accepted by west germany, so they were suddenly untrained workers with no private ownership).

We lived together with a thai girl for a while, whos parents most prized possession was ... a donkey I think? Some large animal like that. And they lived in a literal shack. She's now a nurse with, comparatively, amazing living standards in germany.

And so on. Re-introducing monarchy, or even just formalizing classes/castes solves exactly no problems, and in fact just makes everything worse. What we need is an honest perspective on what real privilege looks like, and less (sometimes literally) royal girls lecturing everyone on how they deserve to get special treatment. The current petty woke framework is so popular because it's very easy for even the most privileged to conjure up some kind of oppression. Monarchy, as we have seen in the past, would just make them go "actually, I deserve this", which is even worse.

What does success mean? It is getting what you want. Women have high standards in a number of different, often vague and socially informed attributes like status. Dating Apps are absolutely terrible at helping you to find this out. Even worse, they are by their nature most conducive to casual hookups, which most women aren't particularly interested in. I think it is not surprising that they broadly speaking steer clear of them as a result. Yes they can leverage this mismatch then to make the men on apps jump through ridiculous hoops if they so wish, but it doesn't really mean that women have more "success" in a meaningful sense or that the experience really is more pleasant for them unless they have a specific kind of personality.

Ah, schizophrenia it is. That's certainly harsh. In this case I admit that changing countries is questionable independent of legalities and finances - even the most functional schizophrenics I know have had issues that required assistance by family, friends and/or the state. You don't want to become a crazy homeless guy in latin america. I guess you've already been to different places inside the US itself? I've heard about a similar dynamic in southern US, where it can be a lot easier to find a hispanic wife, and they often are surprisingly right-leaning and becoming more so with time. Sure you might have some ... disputes on immigration law, but agreeing on everything is boring anyway.

SSI forbids this — it is, in fact, a big part of the issues I've been having with Social Security for the past year thanks to the Covid lockdown times. I'm forbidden from having more than $2000 total assets at any one time — if I go over that, my SSI drops to zero each month until it's back under.

Oh man do I hate SSI laws that are structured like this. But you can subvert this, depending on the way the law is written - in the most benign way if you're owing debt to your parents anyway, you can just pay them whatever you earn extra, and then ask for money again once you need it. Depends on the relationship with your parents and their attitude, but if I was them I'd be more than happy with such an arrangement. Next on the list would be to spend your money on easy-to-claim-worthless assets, such as trading cards (also a good source of companionship for losers, though you probably should avoid talking politics with them). This is technically breaking the law, but extremely unlikely to be caught (how many policemen care to look at your trading card collection?) and very plausibly deniable - you can just claim you thought of it as consumption. Further is just good ol' working black labor and keeping everything in hard cash - at least in my country, as long as you're just doing some odd jobs here and there for like 200$ a month, not a full-blown employment, nobody really gives a shit in practice. Private tutoring is ideal and very common for this in particular. But I guess you've probably considered this last one already.

Not great at video games, and my internet is too lousy for that.

I guess Alaska in general does probably not have the greatest ping even if the connection might be good otherwise. I'd consider it anyway, looking at my acquaintances who are very much losers it seems to be one of the most reliable ways to find companionship and even some respect for them. And to be frank they often also weren't actually very good, plenty of online games are structured so that the time you put in is more important than the skill you have (though it obviously is beneficial). In general given your age it's not unlikely that you're primarily bad since you never got into the habit. There is plenty of right-leaning spaces in gaming also, especially if you just stay in modding/clan discords and choose games appropriately (who would think that a WW2 tank warfare game where most of the best tanks are german would be absolutely dominated by right wingers? pikachu face). There is a decent number of games that do not require a good internet connection, such as turn-based games.

Again, it's not a lack of interest, it's that as a 42-year-old virgin loser, my prospects are non-existent — unless you've got some some sort of new advice how to remedy that?

That's certainly problematic, but imo not as bad as you think it is. As a man it's easy to fall into a life where your contact with the fairer sex is minimal, and dating events/apps do not suit everyone. But to turn it around, you're basically dating on hard mode. Alaska does not have as bad of a sex ratio as I remembered, but it's still pretty lopsided, it's not exactly known to be full of extroverts and depending on where exactly you are there might not even be that many people in total in the area. As a (presumably white?) US citizen there's a long list of countries where it's extremely easy to find a partner even if you're arguably a loser. Latin america & eastern europe are good options, and asian countries are amazing bc asian women are really, really into white guys.

Financial reasons and what little family I have prevent this

You don't need to stay there forever, nor do you need to go there as a tourist. Unless you're the only carer for someone close, in which case I truly feel bad for you; I've seen a few cases where someone was stuck in a place they hated with no way out for 10+ years because they were the only one giving a shit about their sick mother/dad/grandparent/whatever.

Given that you're clearly reasonably intelligent, and even assuming that you're unreliable, lazy and/or physically disabled, I admittedly have a hard time believing that you can't find some (no matter how marginal!) employment to save up some money. In the worst case Mechanical Turk or such. Plenty of countries are ridiculously cheap in terms of both getting there and in living expenses if you're a childless western single eating regular supermarket food and staying in private accomodation. I read that you have some debt to your parents, but as a parent myself I can confidently say that if my chronically depressed son suddenly tried to get his act together and save up money to life somewhere else bc this place is killing him, I wouldn't mind just writing that debt off. Not claiming that any of this is easy or guaranteed to work, but remember, if you end up offing yourself you'll hurt your parents by far the most compared to any other option.

On the other hand, if you think you're incapable of living on our own due to mental issues and the government agrees, are there any options at all for shared living arrangements in your area? I know it's not ideal - even if you get a spot most people there will be noticeably mentally handicapped, which can be frustrating for someone who isn't - but it gives you a community, which is imo critical, and there is a good chance that you can help the others there to some degree as well, and they also often offer government-supported employment for people who are normally difficult to employ.

Lastly, have you ever tried online gaming guilds and similar? Again it's not ideal - you don't even attempt to be a productive member of society in that case - but it's another good way of finding community for the struggling. Also, it can be an OK-ish source of untaxed, albeit usually very marginal, income depending on the game.

I've been on meds since my first suicide attempt back in 2004. This is me on meds.

Yeah, that sucks. Depression meds are notoriously unreliable, with a side dish of occasionally making people suddenly kill themselves even if their depression hadn't been that bad beforehand. @self_made_human is of course correct that you sometimes have to cycle through a lot of meds until you find something that works for you, but I can understand wanting to stick with a med that is at least tolerable.

You're not getting my point (also, I'm european, so no, this isn't about america for me). As humans have a rather high inter-individual variance, you can do this game on any level. If I say mediterranean is a good group, you can point out well-known differences between, say, north and south italy. If I say fine, then surely south italian is a good category? Then you can point out differences between more local groups, then between families and finally, individuals. And you will always get more precise this way, despite ending up with a nonsensical "grouping" of one each.

So the imo correct way is to see this as a precision-practicality tradeoff. In any given population, the largest ~2-5 groups that have consistent differences between them are the most practical while still retaining a comparatively good precision (this is incidentally the way people instinctively group other people everywhere in the world). So if you're looking worldwide, that is black vs white vs asian. If you're in africa, it's something like bantu/bantoid vs hausa/hamitic/semitic vs others. If you're specifically in India, it's Indo-Aryan vs Dravidian vs Tibeto-Burman (btw, looking this up it's very unfortunate how consistently wikipedia is trying to reduce everything to culture/language and steadfastly ignores the biological dimension of ethnicities, but that's the general modern biases at work).

Yes.

On another note, am I the only one who thinks scat and the two incests seem out of place compared to the others? In particular mother/daughter seems outright tame to me.

I didn't click on the Aella link bc I'm at work. Nevertheless, I chose "past 4" with confidence. Take that as you may.

Why do they hate us? Why does anti-Western Islamism exist (and before that anti-Western pan-Arabism)? Why did Egypt and Syria and Iraq all move to favour the Soviet Union? Why does Iran hate us? In a nutshell - Israel.

I think you're being very naive here, and also with Ukraine. I'm hardly a hardliner on both issues - back during Maidan time I was actually in favour of the russian territories getting their independence referendum, and I currently work together with different muslim researchers that work in arabic universities. I can see the value of working with people even if they have very different values. But the arabic world has been opposed to the west for a long time now. The alliance with the soviets was purely out of convenience and correspondingly never very stable. The Israeli issue might be the most legible complaint they can give us, but I'm quite confident that if we had given up on the Israelis we'd have different things we'd be fighting over with them. Likewise, they can take our aid and weapons and then abandon us if it suits them just fine, and in terms of their own worldview they'd be perfectly justified in doing so. The same goes for Russia, there was a time where there was a decent chance they may switch to the western side, but I don't see such a chance with the current leadership anymore.

There are a whole host of differences here, like said annexations happening within living memory (Golan Heights for example), a large population of forcibly displaced Mexicans wanting to go back to New Mexico and the fact that there's no European union of states. Europe and North America aren't even on the same continent as Israel, it's a different region entirely. Mexico also isn't the world's largest oil producer. New Mexico in this case, I assume, is not a nuclear power.

The key here is how people identify their teams. Most people nowadays consider themselves something like "Team Western World", which spans the globe and so to them being on different continents is not a reason to not send (military) aid. You, from what I can gather, consider yourself primarily "Team America", so I gave an example that applies directly to America, to get you in a similar headspace as the average Israel supporter. It's not about the example being perfectly comparable - it never is - , the purpose is to understand how others think about an issue due to their values differences. If you want, you may imagine many displaced Mexicans - with the average values as other Mexicans - wanting to live in New Mexico for the purpose of the example, and similar.

Precisely. It's foolish to ally with weak countries that have little marginal value, angering strong countries in the process. The economic consequences of our Ukraine initiative is already hitting Europe hard. Strength should be conserved and wielded where it's most needed, which is clearly Asia. Angering Russia by getting involved in Ukraine opens up a second front, gives China a useful, resource-rich ally and worsens our position overall.

Imo, depending on Russia in terms of energy was foolish long before the Ukraine, and having to look for other options was overdue. I'd surely have preferred if we had followed your tag line and build enough nuclear plants to be independent before the conflict, though. Likewise arming Ukraine is actually a reasonably cheap way of bleeding Russia, and the basic logic of geopolitics dictates, independent of Ukraine, that Russia had to align itself with China if it has any aspirations of defending against westernization and being a superpower. If we were to give up on Ukraine, they could just take it ... and ally with China anyway. In the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has actually shown remarkable weakness (and/or Ukraine has shown remarkable strength). It is reasonable to conclude that this is a good point to invest resources to strengthen your position.

See, that's exactly what I consider a toxic influence from these thought experiments! Sure you can just state, as an assumption, that mechanisms don't matter for the thought experiment. But in the real world, mechanisms always have implied additional risks and as such always matter. And wasting your intellect on thought experiments with deeply implausible assumptions isn't just wasted effort, it actively screws with your intuitions in a way that imo makes your real-world decision making worse in the long term. It's a similar thing to how the often deeply ingrained liberal ideology in most of modern media gives us a long list of bad intuitions, such as a massive overestimate of the prevalence of LGBT individuals, or an overestimate of the prevalence of open, honest-to-god rabid racism, or an underestimate of the dysfunctionality present in poor & unsucessful groups, and so on.

To use this example, if the blue pill actually does nothing and the red pill unleashes a weird virus, then even if I grant that the virus initially may only kill blue pillers, the presence of this new lethal virus is just a completely unnecessary extra long term risk. Likewise, if the red pill actually does nothing and the blue pill infects you with a weird symbiotic fungus, even if I grant that this fungus doesn't kill initially as long as there are enough blue pillers, the fungus is again a completely unnecessary long term risk. This matters!

Christianity certainly used to be more dogmatic. My own parents told me that when a brothel was established in our village, the local church started a campaign were a rotation of people would stake out the brothel and report on everyone who visited it. Wild stuff. They themselves were protesting at the brothel as well, so this is not a hostile report by a non-religious, quite the opposite; They were proud that they successfully got rid of them.

My parents were also living together before marrying which got them into trouble since that was considered a "wild marriage" and the more conservative christians clearly tried to shame them into marrying(which my parents wanted to do anyway). And so on, I can give you a million examples of the church having been not much better than the woke not too long ago, from people who personally were around when it happened. Despite my more positive short description, I also had my fair share of bad experiences with dogmatic christians.

I'm also not claiming that it can never make a resurgence, but it is obvious that in many parts of the world Christianity had a certain position of dominance that they do not have anymore. And I'm cynical enough to attribute their recent mellowing out less to intrinsic do-good-ness than the good old "when I'm power" vs "when you're in power".

Finally, don't misunderstand me, I don't really have much beef with Christianity in particular anymore, and even got some newfound appreciation for it (my daughter even goes to an explicitly christian daycare!). But with age I'm more and more convinced that all ideologies get mean once they're to solidly in power, and I don't believe Christianity to be an exception. There are some genuinely nice devout that I know which are similar to what you're talking about, but most people unfortunately suck more than that.

Yes, I agree, DCC is slowly getting a bit formulaic & morphing into a standard "rebellion against the evil empire" story, but it has subverted my expectations before, so let's see.

Sure, I have personal friends who have chosen exactly this path. And I'd maintain that unless you're elite enough to go to oxbridge or similar, you're better off going to another country altogether. The apartments/houses are lower quality while also being more expensive than comparable places on the mainland, parental money/day care subsidies suck in the UK while income isn't as high as the US to make up for it, and the areas are also generally more decayed.

We've been sick all week, and now our daycare is closed due to sickness. It's everyone, everywhere during this time.

I'm very far from a soldier, but these kind of lopsided exchanges don't really work if soldiers actually get captured in large numbers. So at least for me, it would make me feel uneasy - in the only case were I'm actually likely to be captured (when many soldiers in general are captured), I'm extremely unlikely to be traded. On top, having to face more opponents seems pretty bad, too? But I'm admittedly a more abstract thinker in many ways.

At times. The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo was pretty bad!

That's literally half a century ago. To me it honestly seems like the muslim world has by now more or less accepted the Israel-Western alliance and hasn't had appetite to punish us for it in a long, long while, and the 1973 Oil Embargo (emphasis on 1973) is just evidence in favour from my PoV. I have to admit, I'm increasingly unsure how much point there is in this argument, since we seem to interpret the same evidence very differently and our intuitions and expectations about alternative worlds are our main disagreement, and I don't see how either can convince the other here, it's not like we can just run a simulation of different scenarios.

But what are the second-order impacts of this? If other countries know that we'll sacrifice them en masse for our own interests, why would they ally with us? Is Taiwan sleeping soundly, knowing they're also 'not a treaty ally but we like them' and seeing Ukraine getting turned into the Somme? We don't even recognize that they're a country! And what are the Russians going to do in retaliation? Send assistance to our other enemies? Stir up trouble? Coup various nations in Africa? Once the war is over, a lot of Russians are going to remain very angry with us for getting their countrymen killed with our weapons. Putin will likely be replaced with a real hardliner when he dies.

I don't think Ukraine losing completely is a foregone conclusion, I was pointing out that even granting your assumptions the current war is better for us than the alternative where Ukraine gets curbstomped and de-facto incorporated because we do nothing. Likewise "I'd rather die than be drafted into the Russian Army" is a rather common sentiment for Ukrainians. I don't trust Russian stats either, there is endless stories on their side as well about questionable draftings. We can also prop up Ukraine economically more or less indefinitely, Russia has no such backing. The counteroffensive was too optimistic and much more manpower-intensive than Ukraine can afford, but I think Ukraine has still a decent chance to grind everything into a stalemate. On the issue of retaliation, I have absolutely no confidence in Putin not doing those things anyway. Again, I see a bigger chance in trying to drain him of resources than in just hoping that if we give him Ukraine on a silver plate he'll be nice.

Given that we spent the last few years building up the Ukrainian military, it would be embarrassing to give up on them. But it would be far more embarrassing to lose if we make a major effort, which we have now made. It's the difference between looking impotent and proclaiming one's impotence to the whole world. Ideally, we should've done nothing to start with, then there would be no risk of looking weak, since we never declared an interest in Ukraine. Russia demolishing Georgia didn't make us look weak, we never really tried to strengthen Georgia militarily. But now that we've pursued this loathsome path, it is hard to leave. It becomes more and more tempting to keep doubling down in a desperate hope for victory. Likewise, the Russians will keep intensifying their efforts. They've spent significant amounts of blood on this, they are becoming less and less willing to give up, their demands will increase.

Nope, it just doesn't work. Georgia is far away enough and small enough that even most Europeans genuinely don't care about it, but Ukraine is literally next door for pretty much the entire Eastern Europe, and even for Germans it's uncomfortably close to home. For us, Georgia is a "I didn't even know it's technically Europe" country, Ukraine is a "my grandma's carer is from there and I've always liked her" country. I'm pretty sure Scandinavians, especially Finns, would also care no matter what. It's mostly southwest Europe + France + UK that could possibly not care. Even if the US had never supported Ukraine, large parts of Europe would at the very least rage impotently and probably try to send aid (and remember the occasion). In your alternative world, the west would look impotent and divided, more than in this world. Even worse, it gives Europeans yet another excuse to just not help out if Taiwan ever should get attacked and try to strike a deal with China instead.

Like what? Sure, there are often disputes between countries. Yet they have oil that the West needs. We have technology they need. There are good reasons for us to get along. But if we are totally committed to supporting a state that's hated by the Arab population, that will make allying with Arab states much more complicated and risky.

And we're still getting the oil even in this world where we aid Israel. As you said there's plenty of disputes, do you want me to supply a list? There's plenty of conflicts around (not) punishing blasphemy against The Prophet, around housing "terrorists", some other land disputes... As a counter-example France vs Germany paper over their serious disputes for the most part and many of them have been de-facto forgotten, because they have free movement between them, share most values nowadays anyway and overall cooperate on many issues. On the other hand it's the anti-west hardliners that dictate the tone in the middle east because their culture is already slanted that way and the large value difference causes a lack of sympathy. There is always two different effects to letting a any power do what it wants; On one side, if there's mutual sympathy they may be grateful. On the other side, without mutual sympathy they will interpret the lack of resistance as weakness. With the middle eastern powers I have much less confidence in the first than the latter.

They're being blown to smithereens. Ukraine has already taken WW1-tier numbers of amputations, their casualties and death toll must be horrific, contra the rosy casualty reports from Western intelligence and media. After lying through Iraq and Afghanistan, I don't trust these people if they say things are going well. Ukraine infamously tried to draft a man with no hands six months back: https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/02/26/ukraine-finds-stepping-up-mobilisation-is-not-so-easy. You can see many videos of men running from draft officials, being dragged into cars. This is an army desperate for more manpower - presumably much of it has already been lost. We'll look weak and foolish once they lose. We'll be sending the message to China that if there are temporary reverses at the start of the war, all you need to do is buckle down, mobilize more men and fight on to victory.

Yes_chad.jpg. What did you expect of the war? After a takeover any able-bodied Ukraine is a potential russian conscript. At the risk of sounding maximally cynical, if we consider Ukraine losing a foregone conclusion, we ideally want to take in as many Ukrainian refugees as possible, and otherwise maximum casualties on both sides. In terms of the ammo and other military resources we send them, I don't think they're as valuable to us as you make them out to be; The west is mainly inhibited by a lack of will when it comes to war, not resources or economy. If we want to create them faster, we have a lot of slack to build up the respective industry. On the other hand, Russia is constrained in terms of economy, and they're also burning through a lot of resources (just as manpower). In addition, the war has greatly increased the willingness of Europe in particular to fight. Even left-leaning former pacifists I know are talking about how we need to spend more on the military nowadays, it's nuts. And this is Germany. If Russia starts to make serious gains again I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine's direct neighbours, especially Poland, would start to send their own army after all, independent of what the rest of the west wants. Russia may win the Ukraine war after a drawn-out conflict, but they will have lost a lot of manpower and military stockpiles in the process while Europe will be in an increased state of military readiness.

Just think about the alternative: Since we send no aid, Ukraine crumbles relatively fast. Any attempts at guerilla warfare or resistance is met with the punishment of Ukrainian civilians. The Ukrainian military gets absorbed into the Russian military. Russia itself has minimal losses in terms of manpower and military stockpiles compared to our world. Europe has almost no time to build up any military and, due to the way propaganda works, the willingness to build the military up will be much lower. How is that world better than ours? If I were in Putin's - or Xi's - shoes, I'd see that as a clear sign that the west is weak and would immediately try to see how much more I can get away with.

Not the OP, but "none for the moment" is always a possible answer.

Re: Armor, shields and point defense, the way I'm thinking about it is drawn more from what I know about modern naval combat, and the idea is that no defense is particularly good. The best defense is not to get shot at. Failing that, the defenses are there to make the best of a bad situation, and they all come with significant drawbacks. Armor's too heavy, and I just made a big post about various options for making shields less First-Order-Optimal and more of a specialized, situational defense.

Tbh, while the Three-Body-Problem book series includes a lot of silliness, I think it's right that the most reasonable extrapolation of modern combat into future combat is an ever-widening gap in favour of offense, until almost all war is just shooting at all stars in the general vicinity of any signal you notice, with the purpose of blowing them up and eradicating all life in the system. So in a sense, I may even argue that I'm not just agreeing, I think you're not going far enough. But in games, realism is a tertiary concern for me; Imo, internal consistency is the most important (which admittedly some also call realism, which annoys me to no end) and balancing/variety of gameplay is the second most important.

My main issue is that if you want people to bother with defenses, you need to make them worth it. If armor is just too heavy people just won't run it, if shields build up heat and also depletes easily, people will preferably spend their heat budget on nothing but beam weapons. In the real world people bother even with sub-par armor because they only have one life, but in my experience it just doesn't really work in games. Even if you force them into running some defense, if it's strictly and significantly inferior to offense they will almost entirely ignore it, and for good reason - in which case most game design paradigms will tell you to forgo the mechanic and instead focus your efforts on the mechanics that matters. So if you want such a system, I'd recommend to not really bother with different defense designs, just give ships/components armour and health points and call it a day, spend your effort on weaponry, detection and its interception, hitting and dodging, there are enough other concepts. Most gameplay will then center around positioning as you say, since actual combat will usually be over in seconds.

I'd disagree. PD cannons, whether chemical or railgun, have a basic problem: they use small guns with lower velocities and shorter effective ranges to engage projectiles closing at very high speed. Pushing the engagement distance out as far as possible is very beneficial, but the further out you go, the more you need to compensate for lack of effective accuracy against a moving target with sheer volume of fire. This means your PD guns are probably better off firing very inefficiently in pursuit of marginal increases in effectiveness, because there's no point preserving ammo if the ship gets cut in half by a torpedo. I'd say PD guns should absolutely be limited by ammo, heat, capacitors, whatever other mechanics seem appropriate; fire efficiency is not really something they can afford.

You probably know more about it than me, but I'm not sure this basic logic holds up in ultra-high (sight) range combat such as space combat. If you can see the projectiles coming for quite some time before impact, and they have very limited capability of swerving once they're at high speed, even relatively low velocity bullets may have a decent chance to hit them. If ~10-100 bullets are on average enough to hit a rocket and each bullet is so small that the rocket takes up 1k+ times as much space as a single bullet, PD will naturally have a very good fire efficiency even without prioritising it deliberately. Though if the projectile doesn't include an explosive component, such a PD will probably not have enough kinetic energy to actually do anything.

Sorry for the late response. I have some experience with modding games, though I tend towards mainly balancing & adding smaller new functionalities and not total overhauls like this.

I’m also not sure whether this is the advice you're looking for, but as a general design choice I think it you maximize rich gameplay by using rock-paper-scissor systems and limited use items that can negate advantages with a strong emphasis on combined arms, and that can be risky but possible to be circumvented with skill. My favorite example - not scifi - is anti-tank encampments that shoot any tank to scraps in seconds, but that have middling reloading times and atrocious turning speed and so can still be routed with 3+ fast tanks if you plan a good approach. But if the same anti-tank encampment is properly supported with scouting, that approach is unlikely to work. But the scouting can be circumvented by limited-use smoke bombs … and so on.

I'm normally against one of the weapon categories being the ultimate in any circumstance such as high tech beam weapon supremacy. But with a RPS/limited use counter item system in place, you can have some weapons at a premium while still keeping the other viable. And the key to that is obviously armor/shields/point defense. In my game, all three would work in general, but armor would be especially good against railguns, shields against beam weapons (for theses two it can be vice versa as well), and point defense obviously against missiles, and to such a degree that even if beam weapons are better pound-for-pound at late tech, shields would be so good against them that you more or less have to pack the other categories to get around them. Since thus both attack and defence are strongly related, I’ll further talk about both concurrently. I don't think it makes sense to talk about weapons without also mentioning the defenses they try to get around.

You already mentioned many possible ways for the guns to function differently, so I'll only add a little bit to that. Railguns should be exceptionally good at causing specific component damage but cause low hull/structural damage, missiles cause large-scale hull/structural damage, while beam weapons cause less than either but also cause heat damage. Railguns recoil means that need to be mounted in a fixed position and so have a limited cone of fire, Beam Weapon cones are primarily limited by the position and size of the ship they're mounted on and Missiles can move on their own so they can go wherever they want. Likewise, armor would be primarily like an extra healthbar that gets slowly used up during the fight, and so it is very strong against alpha strikes but increasingly useless in long engagements. Shields would regenerate fast enough against slow rates of fire to be significant but they can still be depleted, so they are average against either. Point defense are the most extreme, they don't get depleted at all (even if you include an ammo system, point defense ammo should use up so little space as to be effectively endless). But you need a full gun per single projectile in a salvo, so they are strong against drawn-out engagements but bad against alpha-strikes. This already has many other implications, such as shields being better on larger ships (because the regen is harder to nullify through focused fire) or beam weapons being better on smaller ships (as they can get >180° cones). Armor and PD could similarly have directionality. A dedicated pursuit ship with extreme forward speed, forward-facing weaponry and armor but helpless if intercepted at an angle can be quite interesting for example. In general directionality and weapon cones add lots of variety and potential for outplaying.

So let's move on to heat. Heat should be a build-up bar that causes increasing damage at thresholds - mainly component damage at first, then organic staff if you model that, then eventually even structural damage. As you mentioned yourself, beam weapons should build up the most heat. Imo the same should go for shields; There is no reason for Armor to build up heat, and pd should build up less than beam weapons/shields. Every ship has a base dissipation and can set up cooling/radiating components, but these have diminishing returns as there should be only a limited number of good locations on any ship for such components.

So what gameplay would this add up to? Let's look at for example engagement length. A short engagement ship (let’s call that a Fighter) may be small, have lots of armor, and it can afford to run lots of beam weapons with minimal cooling (but should also run other weapons, especially missiles as they are naturally good at alpha strikes). It can have very high effective stats with very high manoeuvrability at the cost of not a lot of endurance and needing support/repair between fights. A long engagement ship (let’s call that a Patrol Ship) may be large with lots of shielding and pd with good cooling components, and primarily run railguns as offense on the broadside since it neither uses up ammo fast nor build up additional heat and a mix of support missiles and maybe some beam weapons on the backside (the former to support the broadside, the latter in case an enemy ship gets around). It can keep on going even through multiple fights at the cost of a weakness to dedicated alpha strikes, limited offensive capabilities and being generally more direction-dependent. You can also design an Hit-and-Run Anti-Fighter ship with Shields/PD + Beam Weapons/Missiles, but it would struggle with heat management, or design an Anti-Patrol Ship with Armor + Railgun, but that would have the opposite problem of not appropriately taking advantage of its heat pool (and thus having on-net worse stats overall).

At last, limited use items/actions. As mentioned, they should be mainly used to patch up weaknesses and should be designed for that purpose. For example, the Patrol Ship struggles with alpha strikes and may want to run some kind of smoke-like effect or a short-term shield overload that needs to be timed right. If the opponent just does an instant alpha strike that is easy, but any good opponent will try to start a "fake" alpha strike to get you to use up the ability and then attack in earnest. It's very important for these to be low investment and not too strong however, otherwise negating weaknesses becomes trivial.

So to recap all three elements I talked about add up to increasingly complex gameplay:

  1. Having all components be intrinsically different means that for any dedicated role, there is a unique mix that fulfils that role best
  2. The RPS system then ensures that none of the ships is strictly best, and furthermore opens up categories of Anti-X ships that are good at specifically beating specific categories while being bad at any other dedicated role
  3. The Limited-Use Actions/Items even the field in unfavored match-up, allow for more skill expression and thus reduce the common situation where fights are decided before they start - but since they are, well, limited, it’s still important to position yourself so that you only start fight where you have an advantage

Since you already were talking about the first - intrinsically different dynamics of the weapons - I guess I'm especially arguing in favor of 2. and 3. . You don’t even need a long list of weapon subcategories, and in fact I’d postpone that to later and instead concentrate on making the key trifecta solidly balanced. More variety of low-investment, low-effect Limited-Use items/actions can also be a good way of adding some complexity without screwing up the balance too much.

a system of asymetric information warfare

A pet idea of mine that I have literally never seen implemented in a game and that I still wish to implement at some point myself is the idea of location-based information and information propagation. For example in space warfare, if ships can travel at say 1/2x the speed of light and information travels at the speed of light, and you send out scouts towards an enemy that you suspect is coming towards you, then you can only "see" the opponents at 1/2x of the distance between you and where the scout found them, not the moment the scout finds them. And as you move yourself across the map, you will get more recent knowledge of some parts of the map while the knowledge of other parts gets increasingly outdated to the point that if you still have troops beyond just scouts there they're de-facto on their own and can't meaningfully be supported in time.

Though admittedly such a system makes the most sense in a (historic) 4x games, since I think the speed by which information travelled is a big part of why kingdoms tended to break down beyond a certain size and why capitals tend to be in certain places that is just entirely missing from contemporary 4x games.