IF not the MONOLITH then I might do a capitalistic hellscape somewhere.

Oh my, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and MGS4 inspiration? Yes please. Would a military contractor company (fancy for mercenaries) that became so wealthy and bloated that it is now effectively an independant entity with its own industries, R&D departments and military bases on private islands and other remote locations be a good fit for this world?

I will keep watch of this, tentative interests on this.

Oh my, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and MGS4 inspiration? Yes please. Would a military contractor company (fancy for mercenaries) that became so wealthy and bloated that it is now effectively an independant entity with its own industries, R&D departments and military bases on private islands and other remote locations be a good fit for this world?

TL;Economics is hard and scary: Yes but also not really depending on what company you're talking about and operating under what conditions

Basically because of how international politics, business - and when you merge the two, business subsidies - work, getting something to this point is, to put it mildly, not really possible in the "80s cyberpunk megacorporation" kind of way...

...but you know as well as I do that there's always loopholes to use and abuse in the system. So, to answer my own question, we gotta break it down bit by bit:

Would a military contractor company (fancy for mercenaries) that became so wealthy and bloated that it is now effectively an independant entity with its own industries

It really depends on the industry in question. It might be acceptable in the case of an umbrella/shell corporation which in turn owns several subsidiary companies all under the same industry of broadly "Defense" (i.e. They own one small arms company with one name, another aerospace company under another name, a PMC under yet a different name, but are all operated by the same parent company), but because of how funding and grants work in defense - alongside this tiny little document called The Geneva Suggestion Convention - mercenaries de jure replacing entire defense industries would, in all likelihood, cause a lot of backlash both inside the Military Industrial Complex as well as throughout the general public. Most companies in this era with that kind of influence tended to get broken up pretty quickly, thanks to some antitrust laws. However, there's nothing really stopping anyone from making an umbrella corporation and using plausible deniability throughout the defense industry proper to at least maintain some distance from "The Guys Who Made Your Hunting Shotgun" and "That Mercenary Group On CNN Who Pillaged The Iranian National Gallery Last Week".

You also have to get all that money from somewhere. That "somewhere" is usually governments proper. Most funding from defense contractors comes from those sweet, sweet government grants, and without them, most of our own real-life giant corporations wouldn't be able to sustain themselves to nearly the same degree. With that in mind, it might be an interesting idea to have your PMC proper act as a sort of "army-for-hire" for less well-off/third-world countries, in which you make money and you also take the blame for all the shit that you got ordered to do, and the governments which hired you get to save money via your contract fees and not having to deal with all hubbabaloo of officer schools, training, pensions, maintenance...yeah, you get the gist.

and military bases on private islands and other remote locations be a good fit for this world?

You can already buy private islands out in the middle of the Pacific and Caribbean. Though, do note that these are usually for private, individual ownership, much like how you buy a plot of land out in bumfuck Wisconsin so you can fulfil your lifelong dream of owning a chicken farm. You can technically avoid this by saying that this is owned by, say, the CFO or CEO of the umbrella corporation themselves, and they simply allow the operations of the company to happen on these islands, but keep in mind that both:

• The person who owns the island is paying for any and all expenses out of their own pockets, and can't write them off as taxes for part of the company.
• If shit does down on this island, the person who legally owns it is accountable for it, which is going to cause one hell of a legal headache for them if it's their company in question who committed the fuckup.

How is that map going?

@Dog Current WIP of the world map. Stuff is all due to change, of course, depending on how the lore works out. But as of right now i'm mostly basing it off of Cold War-era maps.

mercenaries de jure replacing entire defense industries would, in all likelihood, cause a lot of backlash both inside the Military Industrial Complex as well as throughout the general public.

Of course, it's not my intention to make a mercenary army that's omnipresent and somehow able to stand up to a first world country's military like it's often portrayed.

However, there's nothing really stopping anyone from making an umbrella corporation and using plausible deniability throughout the defense industry proper to at least maintain some distance from "The Guys Who Made Your Hunting Shotgun" and "That Mercenary Group On CNN Who Pillaged The Iranian National Gallery Last Week".

Yeah I thought this would be necessary in some form. Umbrella corporation it shall be then, plus I like the legality shenanigans and shady connections atmosphere. The only downside is that I'll have to come up with a lot of company names.

With that in mind, it might be an interesting idea to have your PMC proper act as a sort of "army-for-hire" for less well-off/third-world countries

Pretty much exactly what I had in mind. Army-for-hire is the perfect term, since it comes as its own combined arms force.

do note that these are usually for private, individual ownership, much like how you buy a plot of land out in bumfuck Wisconsin so you can fulfil your lifelong dream of owning a chicken farm. You can technically avoid this by saying that this is owned by, say, the CFO or CEO of the umbrella corporation themselves, and they simply allow the operations of the company to happen on these islands, but keep in mind that both:

The person who owns the island is paying for any and all expenses out of their own pockets, and can't write them off as taxes for part of the company.
If shit does down on this island, the person who legally owns it is accountable for it, which is going to cause one hell of a legal headache for them if it's their company in question who committed the fuckup.

Couldn't the land be owned separately from the business by an LLC? That way the land and the business going on on it are legally separated?

Couldn't the land be owned separately from the business by an LLC? That way the land and the business going on on it are legally separated?

I suppose it could, since companies IRL do make "shadow companies" that basically only exist for the purposes of getting tax breaks, so it's plausible that some random real estate company bought out the islands in question and just write it off. Though, doing this is suspect for the government to accuse you of inside trading/cartels, and if there's one thing that can take on a PMC, it's a lawsuit from the IRS.

TL;My Answers Are Too Long: Yes and RPing the potential consequences could be kinda cool too

Perfect. I look forward to it for some quality techno-thrillering. Speaking of, is there actually a cold war going on?

Perfect. I look forward to it for some quality techno-thrillering. Speaking of, is there actually a cold war going on?

I'll say there's a "soft" Cold War going on. The Cold War in our timeline was very stop-and-go, and had a lot of periods where tensions would get really high, followed by relaxing relations when there wasn't as much to be worried about. I'm going to go out and say that the RP would likely start in a very relaxed Cold War where relations are probably good enough with one another to allow both Warsaw Pact and NATO countries to at least travel/trade with one another (There were much bigger fish to fry in the years after The Visitation, so I imagine that the current global scenario is just leftover from that period), but depending on how things go, tensions could begin heating up once more.

Alright, that's great. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this, consider me very interested.

Are nations like the U.S allowed?

Are nations like the U.S allowed?

Yeah, someone already asked if they could play the USSR over Discord and I gave the go-ahead for it, so if you're interested, go right ahead.

Map's finally done. Again, I can quickly make edits as need be.

Alright, can't say I ain't interested. Might write up some barebones sheets and see what sticks to my writer's block wall.

@Yam I Am
Largely done my sheet, you can see the edits on the post. Any word on a discord for this?

I just noticed something;
Thus far, there are two fictional groups and two real world nations. The fictional groups are a religious organization and a science/tech corporation, while the real world nations are imperial America and communist Russia. The opposite groups are composed of opposing parties.
This is gonna be a fun RP.

Opposites attract. You will learn to fear theocratic transhumanist nazbol Russo American alliance.

Fun fact Russian cosmism is basically literally that and was popular amongst many Soviet thinkers.