Post by The Astronomer on Jan 10, 2017 0:27:56 GMT
You could drive a car through a market square but there was no regulation limiting people to horses-drawn carriages for that sort of reason... far as I know, at least. With the way energy usage has progressed so far I don't see a reason to think it would start to be seriously regulated going forward. If it were, though, merchant vessels might operate like red seal ships, where only trusted persons are given captaincy*. Perhaps at the point of privately-owned nuclear devices we'd see a massive spike in 'power control', though it depends on how government changes by that time too. Just looking at the in-game factions I'd say Nippon Prime is likely to have this kind of control while Liberty Exchange and USTA ships are likely to be totally and mostly unregulated respectively.
For military ships, I can see them being limited by treaties to certain dry masses and other parameters like number/yield of nuclear warheads if advances happen anywhere near as quickly as on this forum. In that context the community's extreme minmaxing is quite appropriate.
*What counts as a 'trusted person' would also depend on the nature of a future government.
Why not announce the experiment 'for SCIENCE!'?