Talk:2300 AD

Comparison to Soviet
The article says: "There is also (seemingly) a leaning toward Kafers being analogous to the Soviet juggernaut, with technology that is less technologically sophisticated than the West but mass-produced and effective."

I find this hard to agree with. The deathsled hovertank is at least on par with the most modern human hovertanks in the game. Similarly, the Behemoth is superiour to human main battle tanks. The thud gun is superior to human assault rifles. Thanks to the Ylii Kafer computer technolgy is superior to human computers. In Star Cruiser (the system for space battles), a Kafer ship can usually out-fight a human ship of the same class. I know of no text in any of the books that calls Kafer technology more mass-produced than human technology. However, Kafer technology is sturdy, rugged, reliable and big by human standards -similar to the cliched image of Soviet military technology. This is because Kafers are larger and stronger and prone to hitting their equipment to make it "smarter". I believe the guys at GDW know Soviet military technology far too well to make such a crude and unfair analogy. These are the guys that wrote Twilight 2000 and many wargames featuring Soviet technology.

-Sensemaker

I'd have to agree... I can see, perhaps, some superficial comparability to commonly perceived (in the west) soviet "mindset", perhaps as a selling point or to make the Kafer more "accessible" to the market's imagination... But, if anything, I'd say the technological superiority early on was a storyline means of of both challenge and motivation for the players and the "humans" as a story element.

-Honor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.54.14.127 (talk) 10:17, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I think the similarity between Soviets and Kafers are less than between Klingons and Kafers. All those "evil empires" were IMO modeled a bit after the then-conception of the Soviet empire, but used also other pictoresque concepts, like Bushido in the Klingons. GDW succeeded in making the Kafers a truly alien race similar to no earthly nation. Considering the normal SciFi-"Humans in Funny Suits"-approach to aliens that leads to about every alien race to be found somewhere in cultural history (Mongols, Imperial Japan, Korea, Zulu...), this elevates 2300AD from most other SF products. --93.197.180.159 (talk) 12:24, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Kafer, Bug and Beetle
I corrected this:
 * (The game writers coined this name based on the German word Käfer, meaning "bug", not on the Afrikaans ethnic slur "kaffir".)

A bug is a German "Wanze" (although the english word may refer to a broader spectrum of insects). A "Käfer" is a beetle. And yes, the Volkswagen Beetle in German is the "VW Käfer" (abbrevation spoken, "Vau Weh Käfer" - please don't try to pronounce that in English), which makes it IMO rather obvious where the name comes from (in the pre-Internet times, it was still quite easy to get a translation of "Beetle" due to the car). I think the wrong translation indeed comes from Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". --93.197.180.159 (talk) 12:24, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Title of this article
I noticed that the title "2300 AD" of this article does not conform to Wikipedia standards in that, as the title of a stand-alone work, it should be italicized. I don't know how to fix that by editing the article. OperaJoeGreen (talk) 18:43, 18 March 2011 (UTC)