2014 STGOD OOC Commentary Thread 1

[Beowulf]

Hold a second, what's this 'Chengdu Security' thing? Forced labor for rent?

Prisoner labor. They do get paid. It's fairly crappy pay though.

[madd0ct0r]

Maddoctor, did you also accept the help of the engineer bataillon I was offering?

um, yes, they're accepted. sorry, I must have blurred over that whilst reading your post. Whale of a time. (i honestly thought you were sending only the navy as the least helpful help Rheinland could send which would also give you free rein to keep an eye on any large scientific fishing vessels in my waters)

my policy as a player is a clusterfuck is an opportunity to players to engage (and if they don't want to they can bury the story line with a 'engineers are still working out in Champa, nothing interesting')
my policy as a small fairly powerless country is never to turn down aid since you don't know who a refusal might offend later.

[Simon_Jester]

I have a policy on stealing made-up San Doradan character names from bit players in SDNW2, unless you'd rather I avoid doing so...

Like, from players? No, no objections, but you'll probably run out of names quite quickly... Interesting idea though.

No, I mean characters. Winters was a marketing executive for a railroad company or something.

Same way I named a destroyer after that scientist of yours in SDNW4.

[Thanas]

Maddoctor, did you also accept the help of the engineer bataillon I was offering?

um, yes, they're accepted. sorry, I must have blurred over that whilst reading your post. Whale of a time. (i honestly thought you were sending only the navy as the least helpful help Rheinland could send which would also give you free rein to keep an eye on any large scientific fishing vessels in my waters)

No no, while we are smug bastards we at least try to be helpful smug bastards.

New IC post coming up in a few hours, introducing the last of my main characters. After that, another IC post detailing the grand policies of Rheinland for the year.

[RogueIce]

So a minor clarification for Eternal_Freedom and whoever else cares: that raid against AVALANCHE and the involvement of the SRS Chimaera supporting the 501st Ranger Regiment - with, of course, the full cooperation of the Eulican (NPC 21) government - is public knowledge to anyone who pays attention to news coming from the Shinra Republic. I wasn't as clear as I should have been on that point, so my bad there.

The only bits that aren't public knowledge are:

1) The "full cooperation" being bought shortly ahead of time with a suitcase full of cash, reinforced by another suitcase full of cash afterward because we didn't tell them it was a snatch-and-grab. Luckily, it turns out a country run by corrupt oligarchs is easily bribed. That said, while it isn't public knowledge per se anyone who knows how things work in Eulica could easily guess.

2) The other snatch-and-grab we performed against Odaka Matsusuke, influencing him to go with the Komradi smugglers and selling the lot out to the Fusoans. That, obviously, is very much top secret. Only ourselves and, of course, Fuso know. Since Matsusuke was a non-military man, the official Shinra policy would be to not turn him over for almost certain execution; we only do that if we can find one of the vanishingly few ex-Nipponese military officers still left. That said, we have no love for former upper class Nipponese "gentlemen" sitting on their stolen money. Which is why we did what we did, but on the sly.

Getting a favor with Fuso and messing with Komradistan are bonuses.

So all that being out there, I'd imagine Fuso would have a reason to keep it quiet, because there's always the possibility of us working together to further our mutual interests on the sly in the future. Especially if we know they'll be A) discrete and B) their people don't have loose lips. Of course, that's all up to how Shinn elects to play it. We certainly hope he sees the value in his continued discretion.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ok thanks for clarifying that, I'll edit my story post to avoid having my OSA guys look totally stupid

[Steve]

TG, was that ship of your's traveling with Orion's carrier?

There's a reason I don't have a carrier showing up at all, it'd probably be 10 or so days minimum before one made it, and that's if I had them in the central Pacific.

[The Romulan Republic]

Just put up a brief post about the election of my country's new president. Will respond to the nuclear incident shortly.

[Simon_Jester]

Random question: did anyone's backstory lay claim to Togo, the great Japanese admiral of the turn of the century?

[The Romulan Republic]

By the way, did anyone come up with names for the countries that border Corona? And if not, does anyone mind if I make up names for them?

[Steve]

Mad, does that "all offers accepted" bit extend to the offer of a carrier group to assist in humanitarian operations?

TRR: If there's not a name on the ruling thread list, there is none, so go ahead. If Siege had names and forgot to put them I'm sure he'll let us know.

[Simon_Jester]

Man, the waters off Champa have sooo many carriers headed for them... the Umerian Navy is probably going to have to put out an all-points bulletin on its attack submarines just to keep track of them all.

Seriously, my guys got there the day after the accident, but that's because we're literally next door and traveling by plane- I tried to honor a realistic timescale for getting heavy equipment there by rail.

Ships only go so fast- freighters can only make about 30-35 kilometers an hour, and warships somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty or sixty. A carrier battlegroup can move maybe fifteen hundred kilometers a day, going flat out all day. If you look at the map, that is roughly one half of one of those latitude/longitude squares. Less, even.

So think, realistically, of where your carriers would be parked. If you're one of the big boys you have like nine of the things, three of them on station. Three for the whole world. Where would you put them? How long would it take the nearest carrier battlegroup to get near Champa from there? Could easily be a week. Freighters could take even longer to show up. Anything you want to rush in is going to have to fly.

Thanas could probably have a carrier there in, oh, 2-5 days, because it's not that far from his home waters and he's got a strong incentive to have a naval presence in the equatorial ocean between the UOCSR and the southern continent. Rogue, likewise it'd be believable, we already know his carriers operate that far west and again, the Umerian coast is close to his home waters in strategic terms. I admire Beowulf's restraint in saying it'd take a while to get there though I'm vague on who these people are he's proposing to "hire."

But ships from Orion or Arcadia, are, realistically, going to take over a week, probably more like two weeks or even more just to cross the enormous stretch of ocean between them and Champa; it is literally on the other side of the world from them. And the world is a big place.

[Gill]

So then I guess the seasick servicemen of the Belkan Army won't be as late to the party as I previously thought they would?

Not like they'd do much good on the technical side of things, but surely shooting at escaped radioactive mutants would be productive, right?

[Simon_Jester]

I like your style.

Anyway, it's not that they're moving fast, it's that it's effectively a race to get there first. Colonel Stone and his (lead battalion) of combat engineers started out closer than almost anyone else and took the fastest available transportation; the rest of his regiment has twice as far to go and is moving at about one tenth the speed. Other people in airplanes will be there within a day or two, depending on how fast they mobilize... but stuff arriving in ships is going to take a while.

It's like, if there is a natural disaster in Bangladesh, the Indians can probably get stuff there fast, but if people in South Africa or Japan or France want to help, then either they fly things in or they have to wait a while.

[Steve]

E_F stated his carrier was going back home via the Central Ocean from port visits or something, so he was in the area.

This is why I made sure to say that the initial arrivals will be the NERT team.

I should also note that we haven't seen a CVN yet, we merely prepared to if asked for one. Given there are now four planned to be there, maddoctor deciding he didn't need yet another to coordinate would be understandable.

I'm not sure what airlift assets have been made available, but it looks like transport aircraft and refuelers to extend their ranges will be more useful than yet another carrier group at this point.

[Steve]

Since carriers take so long, Cascadia is offering to airlift in needed supplies as quickly as possible.

And the seeds of a diplomatic scuffle are planted!

[Beowulf]

Ships only go so fast- freighters can only make about 30-35 kilometers an hour, and warships somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty or sixty. A carrier battlegroup can move maybe fifteen hundred kilometers a day, going flat out all day. If you look at the map, that is roughly one half of one of those latitude/longitude squares. Less, even.

Most warships are going to be dependant on oilers eventually. You may be able to outrun them in the short term, but you'll need to not outrun them by too much in the long term. Most of those are essentially freighters, and will make 20kts or so... But they normally travel slower for maximum range. Maybe 3/4 that. Warships will make 30kts, possibly up to 35kts. But again, slower for maximum range. One of those lat/long squares is 30 degrees, or 1800 nautical miles (going along the equator, or along a line of longitude). So, yeah, one half of one of those squares for a warship, maybe a one quarter for a freighter. And you're going to be going freighter speed for most of that time, unless you've got port calls lined up to refuel your ships. You could make 2 squares before refueling, or about 6 days travel... but if you want to go faster, you'll gulp more fuel down. Probably down to only 2 days between refueling at max speed.

So think, realistically, of where your carriers would be parked. If you're one of the big boys you have like nine of the things, three of them on station. Three for the whole world. Where would you put them? How long would it take the nearest carrier battlegroup to get near Champa from there? Could easily be a week. Freighters could take even longer to show up. Anything you want to rush in is going to have to fly.

Thanas could probably have a carrier there in, oh, 2-5 days, because it's not that far from his home waters and he's got a strong incentive to have a naval presence in the equatorial ocean between the UOCSR and the southern continent. Rogue, likewise it'd be believable, we already know his carriers operate that far west and again, the Umerian coast is close to his home waters in strategic terms. I admire Beowulf's restraint in saying it'd take a while to get there though I'm vague on who these people are he's proposing to "hire."

The mercs Tianguo would be hiring are based out of Fiji. I think I still underestimated the amount of time for them to get there. I don't have access to the map at work.

[Steve]

This is why Cascadia is looking to go for all nuclear-propulsion carrier groups.

[madd0ct0r]

question - could a nuclear carrier 'charge up' battery or fuel cell powered escorts?

[Beowulf]

question - could a nuclear carrier 'charge up' battery or fuel cell powered escorts?

Mu.

In theory, yes. In practice, battery energy density is so low you'd be charging up way too often, and having to restrict electrical loads (like radars). Also, that's a shitload of power being transferred. Say you wanted to be able to have the power of 2 LM2500 gas turbines available at all times. That's 60MW. Times 24 hours, and a .75MJ/kg energy storage for batteries... and you end up with the battery bank weighing 7ktons.

Fuel cells might be a bit easier, but practical systems don't use fuels that can be regenerated on ship. Hydrogen could be... but it's far too bulky to be practical. Also, power density still sucks. Diesel electric subs use fuel cells for AIP... but they use units measured in kWs. You'd end up with a speed below 10 kts. Submariners especially love to call such ships "Targets". Also, such a ship could never keep up with a carrier conducting flight operations.

[Thanas]

This is why Cascadia is looking to go for all nuclear-propulsion carrier groups.

Aren't nuclear escorts hilariously expensive?

[Steve]

I don't recall. Certainly they're more expensive than non-nuclear at current fuel prices. But if fuel prices go up further they become more attractive. Plus I imagine it's an economy of scale.

[Beowulf]

This is why Cascadia is looking to go for all nuclear-propulsion carrier groups.

Aren't nuclear escorts hilariously expensive?

Higher procurement costs, but much reduced fuel costs. Stats I've seen show an increase of $600 million for procurement, but a lifecycle increased cost of only 19%. For the added flexibility, that might not be a bad tradeoff.

[Thanas]

Ah, found the revelant pages I remember reading back then:
General comparison - nuclear has greater endurance but less flexibility and redundancies, and requires more maintenance


CBO

The initial costs for building and fueling a nuclear-powered ship are greater than those for building a conventionally powered ship. However, once the Navy has acquired a nuclear ship, it incurs no further costs for fuel. If oil prices rose substantially in the future, the estimated savings in fuel costs from using nuclear power over a ship's lifetime could offset the higher initial costs to procure the ship. In recent years, oil prices have shown considerable volatility; for example, the average price of all crude oil delivered to U.S. refiners peaked at about $130 per barrel in June and July 2008, then declined substantially, and has risen significantly again, to more than $100 per barrel in March of this year.

CBO regularly projects oil prices for 10-year periods as part of the macroeconomic forecast that underlies the baseline budget projections that the agency publishes each year. In its January 2011 macroeconomic projections, CBO estimated that oil prices would average $86 per barrel in 2011 and over the next decade would grow at an average rate of about 1 percentage point per year above the rate of general inflation, reaching $95 per barrel (in 2011 dollars) by 2021. After 2021, CBO assumes, the price will continue to grow at a rate of 1 percentage point above inflation, reaching $114 per barrel (in 2011 dollars) by 2040. If oil prices followed that trajectory, total life-cycle costs for a nuclear fleet would be 19 percent higher than those for a conventional fleet, in CBO's estimation. Specifically, total life-cycle costs would be 19 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear destroyers, 4 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear LH(X) amphibious assault ships, and 33 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear LSD(X) amphibious dock landing ships.

So apparently they cost more to build and cost more to maintain. I don't know, but if that causes my destroyer fleet to shrink by one third (and that is generous, assuming they only take 10% more to build) I'd rather remain conventional.

EDIT: Of course, one could potentially save money on replenishment ships.....Hmmm.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Steve: Yes, That_Guy's ship was heading for a link-up with my task force, hence why it's clsoe.

General: Well, shit just got real in Orion.