SDNWorld Redux - Casting Call & Planning MK II

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh no... no no no no no No No No NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!




At least point that WRETCHED PENINSULA of his AWAY from me!


I swear, Skimmer. I'll play nice. If you do so too.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

My suggestion, is that FUN launches its space bound rockets in Crimson Star Republic.

[Shroom Man 777]

Also...

A suggestion for the location of Shepistan/Old Dominion.

You could flip it so that the Old Dominion is pointing North, and then put them South West or South East of Tonkin. So they can be... like, a pseudo South America. With Shepistan having a location similar to that of Argentina, relatively.

[PeZook]

I could easily do that, if Lonestar and Shep are OK with it.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

It would be bloody ironic if you park Zor between Shepistan and Japanistan in the middle of the ocean.

[Shroom Man 777]

Zor will hate you forever


I REALLY don't feel comfortable with such a HUEG Japanistan looming there. AND we've got Bean's Khitan so close by, who knows what schemery might go on betwixt the two!

Fuck it, I might have to increase my amounts of submarines and other patrol vessels. My water! They will not break my water!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Zor will hate you forever


I REALLY don't feel comfortable with such a HUEG Japanistan looming there. AND we've got Bean's Khitan so close by, who knows what schemery might go on betwixt the two!

Fuck it, I might have to increase my amounts of submarines and other patrol vessels. My water! They will not break my water!

It's YOUR FAULT that you let Khitan break away!

[K. A. Pital]

i need to know, are nuclear weapons banned or not?

Moderators please? The REF thread says nuclear industry, but no nuclear explosions.

[KlavoHunter]

i need to know, are nuclear weapons banned or not?

Moderators please? The REF thread says nuclear industry, but no nuclear explosions.

I do believe they are banned, in the sense that "All major nations have forsworn their use, and will kick your ass if you start making/using them."

[DarthShady]

I have sea access.

Thanks PeZook.

Japanistan....hm....I hope he can play nice.

[Setzer]

Well, the MESS does seem to have quite a lot of powerful members. Somewhat unbalanced, power bloc wise.

I don't think that's exactly unprecedented in reality.

Besides, Phong was telling me about some of the ASVS STGODs where there were the hyperpowers, and then there were the little "powers" that just prayed none of the big boys got bored and decided to crush them one day. So apparently this isn't the unusual by STGOD standards, either.

Doesn't Setzer happen to be in the Navy?

He is, and is even a part of the usergroup, though not terribly active in there.

Yeah, I joined the group thinking I'd have a lot more to talk about then I actually do. I probably haven't made more then ten posts there, at most.

[Shroom Man 777]

PeZook, talk to me!

*holds hands beside head, like telephone*

I think it would be cool if the ruler of Shepistan was, like, totally, (Super) SULTAN SHEP!

[Lonestar]

I do believe they are banned, in the sense that "All major nations have forsworn their use, and will kick your ass if you start making/using them."

The Old Dominion respects the rights of all nations to seek the tools they need for their national defense.


Is all I am saying.

[Czechmate]

That division is huge. How many ships will it take to transport all of that? I would say easily 2 Wasps, and a few other LPDs like the San Antonio or the British Bay/Albion class.

That division is big…it can take heavy losses and keep fighting, and by the time the Marines finish adding all the support elements it needs to become a Marine Expeditionary Force and not just a division, it would have over 30,000 men. That’s what it takes to bring a whole army in miniature, not just some fighting men, across a beach and onto shore.

In terms of shipping, way more then you’re thinking. In 1991 for the projected amphibious landing in Kuwait the USMC assembled 17,000 men to mount the operation, but this actually only amounted to two brigade landing teams plus one separate battalion landing team, not even a complete division. 31 major amphibious ships carried the force. At the time it took every amphibious warfare ship,in the USN, about 50 at the time, to transport one combat ready Marine Expeditionary Force!

Today’s amphibious ships are on average bigger, and Marine units are a bit smaller but your still looking at 30 ships to transport the division, probably close to 40 to transport it with all its attachments and air support. That means a divisions worth of life means buying a new amphibious warfare ship ever year to keep up numbers because each ships hull life isn’t longer then 30-40 years

If you only used big ships amphibious assault ships like Wasp, you could get 20,000 men into just 6 expensive ships… but you wouldn’t have nearly enough space to transport all the marines equipment, supplies and the necessary landing craft to move all that stuff onto the beach.

Now a dozen mixed amphibious warfare ships (buy 1 new one every 3 years) will let you assault land something like a very big brigade against the enemy, thats a pretty potent force for making a landing on any coast you want. You can bring in follow on forces MUCH more cheaply by packing them in RO-RO freighters and flying in the manpower.

No nation in the modern day could hope to land an entire division by sea. You're more likely to be landing the actual combatant third-to-a-half of the division with assault transport vessels (LHDs, LSDs, LPDs, LSTs) and bringing the rest in vessels like the Bob Hope-class AKR or by air.

The days of division landings ended when equipment and bureaucracy became so complex that actual fighting soldiers in a division were outnumbered nearly two to one by POGs.

More reasonably speaking, you could divide that monster division into a couple of landing brigades, one of which could be sealifted in perhaps a dozen total LHDs, LPDs, and LSDs, plus a shortish train of AKRs. I could actually work this out into a sealift chart for the Make Your Own Military thread, I suppose.

[PeZook]

Zor has specifically requested to be as far away as possible from both Shep and Skim, hence I will be placing him on the other side of the world from them

Lonestar, Shep: Are you okay with the idea of appending the New Continent to the southern tip of MESSarica?

[DarthShady]

Behold the new and Improved flag of the USSR. Shamelessly stolen from RA3. It was too awesome.



I hope nobody minds.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Shroom and PeZook, I'll fly over to PeZookia and Shroomania for a chit chat after the MESS meeting.

[Shroom Man 777]

We'll be at PeZookia for the FUN meeting. You can have a FUN observer status, even though you're not formally in the FUN, since you're an informal ally and heavily involved in Old Continent affairs an such!

[PeZook]

Cool

As far as the space program goes, we have two options:

1) Develop heavy boosters from the ground up, perhapsbasing them on some medium-lift boosters already present. Build the infrastructure necessary, do the rest like before.

Pros

- We'll need the superheavy boosters eventually, so it'll be good to have several launches under our belts right now

- A single-launch system lowers risks

Cons

- Expensive as hell

2) Use existing medium-lift boostersto assembled a moon spacecraft in orbit in several launches

Pros

- Cheap (er)

- Fast (er)

Cons

- No superheavy boosters for use in later colonization

- Larger probability of failure due to an additionat docking step (perhaps multiple extra docking steps)

- We still have to do docking tests, only more

The first bit can easily cost us more than 200 billion dollars just to get us five simple lunar landings. The second option will becheaper, perhaps 150 billion bucks or so, but less flexible. A Saturn-V or Ares-V 100+ tonne booster is an invaluable tool if you actually want a moon base.

[Shroom Man 777]

Why are we looking at moonbases when we probably haven't even a man in space? The US and NASA and the Russians built many kinds of rockets, they didn't go straight for Saturn Vs or those Russian super-rockets.

[Coyote]

We'd have to run this by Marina, of course, but since this is supposed to be comperable to modern Earth, it stands to reason that similar (if tentative) steps into space have been taken.

I'd say it's safe to assume that we've had people in orbit, set down on one of the moons at least (if we're using the same solar-system basis we had before), and probably had a couple of simple Space Stations that served their purposes and have since been de-orbited (like the Mir and Skylab).

So there's probably some exploration we can capitalize on, but nothiong definitive we have to step into and deal with (like the politics of a Terranovan ISS for example).

[PeZook]

Why are we looking at moonbases when we probably haven't even a man in space? The US and NASA and the Russians built many kinds of rockets, they didn't go straight for Saturn Vs or those Russian super-rockets.

Actually, that's not true: The Moon programs had the goal of a Moon landing in mind from the beginning, and thus development of the superheavy boosters commenced right at the start of the manned launch programs. You can see it easily if you read up on the American program and check out the launch vehicles they used. It was pretty much known from the start you'd need 120+ tonnes in orbit thanks to the Rocket Equation, so it was obvious you'd need a big enough booster. It's just that developing rockets takes a long time, so it was done while testing smaller (Mercury) and bigger (Gemini) capsules, the procedures, docking systems etc.

Every rocket before that was pretty much a prototype to gain experience necessary for the big-ass boosters.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Before we start launching, can we at least expect a fairly reasonable policy from Skimmer regarding airspace or something explicit?

[PeZook]

Before we start launching, can we at least expect a fairly reasonable policy from Skimmer regarding airspace or something explicit?

Skimmer said before he claims airspace up to 30 000 kms over Japanistan, but that he's willing to share it in the interest of science, so I think we can negotiate permissions for overflight of Selene missions.

[Lonestar]

Lonestar, Shep: Are you okay with the idea of appending the New Continent to the southern tip of MESSarica?

I don't care. be advised that Shep is going to stick some disputed Islands off the coast.