Pre-industrial Fantasy STGOD OOC/Rules Thread:

[The Romulan Republic]

Pity we're on other sides of the continent, because my people would actually see eye to eye with you when it comes to being anti-slavery.

[Simon_Jester]

Simon - when you do start to move in earnest against detroit, could you have some summoners flee north? It'd make a useful plot hook for me.

Definitely.

Start of the spring campaigning season in the area (the time when snow is mostly melted and the roads aren't hopeless with mud) would probably be in late March or so. There will be increasing numbers of cavalry raids sweeping around the city and harassing the landward lines of communication north while methodically terrorizing the countryside south of the city. A fair amount of pillaging will take place, because Ohio has the means to funnel supplies almost all the way up to the city in great quantity via canal-boat and lakeshore traffic. They don't need to forage from the surrounding countryside, and driving peasants inside the city fortifications to eat up their supplies is to Ohio's advantage.

[This may happen before Assiniboia can deploy its fleet to Lake Huron, but from the point of view of the Ohioan army, so much the better if they recruit their mercenaries that far in advance; they'll have to feed and pay them for several months before the campaign starts and are likely to take losses from desertion]

Assembling the siege army in an assembly area a few days' march south of Detroit will probably take until some time in, oh, late April or early May with further infantry forces trickling in past that time. Supply is going to be an issue but, again, the shipping exists to do it and Ohio has several dozen galleys that can mostly be committed to securing the coastal traffic from Toledo up along the coast of Lake Erie.

The Army of the North, under the command of Marshal Delaferté, currently musters a strength of twenty to thirty thousand men, and is likely to be reinforced to the tune of sixty thousand or more, quite possibly a lot more, which is why it seems likely that the Marshal will have to either cooperate or cede primacy to a man of higher rank in the nobility (and a marshal's title himself). Princes of the Empire generally don't like taking orders from a marquis.

The siege army will march the thirty or so miles to Detroit from its staging areas in OTL Monroe County, probably taking about two days to get there and begin constructing siege works. Bringing up the siege artillery will likely take longer, during which time the siege army may be able to carry some of the outer fortresses by storm. However, this seems unlikely since the Detroiters will have plenty of time to know the Ohioans are coming.

At this point, the Ohioan siege proceeds gradually, munching its way through the thick belts of trace italienne-style ring and star fortifications around the city. Gradually, that is, except for the regiment (later a regiment-plus task force) of engineers under Colonel Sir Sébastien Lepresque, who goes through the Detroiter defenses like a bandsaw. The man could write a book, and later will, on "the attack of places." Shortly after his book on "the defense of places," anyway.

The Detroiters have no clue what in the umpty hells happened on his stretch of the front, except it involves a suspicious number of extremely cunningly aligned entrenchments. Also, cannonballs doing things that cannonballs really should not be able to do. Sir Lepresque can practically make siege guns sit up and beg, and his men are such enthusiastic diggers that they're probably accused of being half-goblin. Hell, for all I know some of them are.

Even with Lepresque on the scene, the final assault on the city probably won't be ready until, oh, July or August. By this time quite a number of their wizards will have sensibly legged it by any means available, being as how the Ohioans are quite literal and earnest in their intent to burn at the stake all who do not convert at sword-point and never practice magic again.

Or that's the war plan, anyway. There are a few major monkey wrenches on either side, and foreign involvement may change the shape of things a bit too.

[Beowulf]

I've got major Caribbean holdings that essentially require a large fleet for security. This has a negative effect on my army size.

[Raw Shark]

Your comparisons sounds about right to me. One thing that has occurred to me is that my Navy is pretty light on ships of the line, since when I wrote my OOB I didn't think there were any other major maritime powers for battleships to fight, hence the 70 frigates and 100 sloops but only 12 battleships.

I think I may use my first year's 50,000 point expansion (or whatever the figure was) to expand my capital ship fleet.

EDIT: Also, I'm thinking that Orion does not like the slave trade and may begin looking at more effective ways of stopping it than diplomatic protests soon.

I was thinking that you were using ships of the line for dick-waving purposes only, and relying mostly on up-gunned frigates that punch way above their weight class and present a small target profile for most of the real work. What proportion of ship types would be more typical? (please pardon my wading into this with utter ignorance of the topic). I was thinking of having nineteen battleships myself, so I can use an Aztec Calendar naming theme, but a lot of them are kept in ordinary when we're not actively at war, except in the Azores, where we're ever-vigilant against Cordoban shenanigans.

If I remember correctly, the official ruling for passive gains was 30,000 a year for business as usual, plus 20,000 a year if you entertain us with a real shooting war that lasts for 1+ years.

On the subject of the slave trade: So you guys have a wild bug up your ass about other people interdicting your trade, but it's cool for you to do it if you object to the product? Hypocrites.

[Eternal_Freedom]

We don't like pirates interdicting trade, and we don't like slavers either. It's all quite rational, I assure you.

And yes, I was originally only using battleships (that's the Orion name for them, mainly so I don't have to keep typing ship of the line) for dick-waving, but that was before you and Beowulf came along with powerful navies. I'm thinking that we got by on over-gunned frigates and sloops until now, but have decided a major building program is in order to give us a more powerful battle line.

As for proportions of ships, in early 1805 the Royal Navy had 181 ships of the line and 188 frigates, a huge difference from my numbers (12 battleships and effectively 170 frigates of two different sizes).

30,000 points is enough for me to build a full twenty-five new two-decked 74s (each with firepower exceeding the three-decked OTL HMS Victory), though I may leave it at twenty (for 24,000 points) and use the remaining 6,000 for three or four three-decked Flagships. If I said a three-decker was 1500 points, then after my building program was complete I could claim 4 Flagships and 32 battleships, enough for four operational Fleets.

[Imperial528]

Hm, all this talk of navies has me thinking: what of man-powered paddle wheelers?

Perhaps even a ship with a man-powered screw?

We are most definately pre-steam power, but perhaps the old galley could be updated to propulsion methods more advanced than rows of men with oars. Namely, columns of men powering a drive shaft.

[Simon_Jester]

This is debateable. Firstly, screw propulsion is a post-1800 innovation.

Secondly, to make it work you would probably need something like a tandem bicycle, only scaled up with dozens or hundreds of pedalers. Given that you don't have cheap, strong, lightweight steel chains and gears, I suspect that you'd have a lot of breakages and jams in the system transmitting power to the wheels.

Also, oars are actually surprisingly power-efficient. The work done by the rowers is overwhelmingly transferred into moving the boat, to an extent superior to just about any propeller design I'm aware of. Propellers are better not because they are more efficient (and certainly paddle wheels aren't!). They're better because they lend themselves easily to being powered by a rotating engine with more horsepower than any reasonable number of rowers you could fit on the boat. Plus, the engine never gets tired and so can maintain what would be 'sprint' speed for rowers more or less indefinitely.

So basically, the steam propulsion systems on 1800s-era ships lost in efficiency compared to ancient galleys, but made up for it with sheer brute mechanical power and endurance.

The biggest problem with oars as we know them is that they use the muscles of the arm and back as opposed to the physically more powerful and rugged leg muscles, but I'm not sure it'd be worth the effort to overcome that design limitation under the circumstances.
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Re: Eternal_Freedom:

Of course, the Royal Navy had such a massive number of ships of the line precisely because they were planning to fight close blockades and heavy naval battles against (at the same time) multiple major opponents who would all be resisting fiercely. And having so many ships of the line that they could blockade basically every major harbor in Europe such that the French, Spanish, and others literally couldn't get their ships out of port - because once the French started getting out of port, they could unite their scattered fleets into something capable of actually threatening an invasion of Britain.

It was this threat which had Nelson zipping back and forth all over the place in the run-up to Trafalgar; he was trying to not let the French and Spanish unite a big enough fleet to seriously endanger Britain (or his own fleet).

Given that the ratio of force to space is intrinsically much higher, the need for ships of the line is decreased quite a lot. Orion has only one oceangoing opponent close to you, a confederacy whose maritime members probably doesn't have a naval presence much stronger than the 18th century Dutch were relative to the British. Not the 17th century Dutch, mind, who kicked England's ass repeatedly.

There are other enemies but they're farther afield, and in the key case of the Dragon Kingdoms they also have a lot of 'interior waters' which you would want to interdict rather than just blockading a few strategic points. Combine that with the need to project power throughout the North Atlantic, while maintaining an army much larger and hairier than what OTL Britain had at the time so far as I can recall...

And yeah, you'd probably have a lot of frigates and very few heavy ships of the line.

And... Hm. Building those 74s would take time; I recommend either spacing the building program out over a period of years, or retconning that you've had them under construction for a while, or both.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Larger and hairier? Well we do still allow beards for our soldiers...

As for your other points, they are well-taken. Certainly I wasn't looking for rough parity between battleships and frigates/sloops, but 15 to 1 was a bit steep.

As for the points about having had the ships under construction for a while, I'll do just that. After all, I should only have to pay the points cost when they enter service, correct? So, let's see, we'll call it 1800 points for a 100-gun flagship, and the already-agreed 1200 for a 74...hmm, This year I shall have two flagships and ten new 74s entering the fleet, for a total of 15,600 points.

Hmm...I could raise a 22nd Regiment with those leftover points.

[Jub]

Hm, all this talk of navies has me thinking: what of man-powered paddle wheelers?

Perhaps even a ship with a man-powered screw?

We are most definately pre-steam power, but perhaps the old galley could be updated to propulsion methods more advanced than rows of men with oars. Namely, columns of men powering a drive shaft.

Well, it's a rather advanced idea given that the first peddle powered bicycle didn't come about until the 1860's and the first chain driven bicycle wasn't around until 1885. Of course, paddlewheels and even steamships were around prior to our 1800 cutoff, so I don't really see it as that large an issue. Worst case you could have men or animals standing in treadwheels or turning a large horizontal wheel in the manner a team of men might raise an anchor.

I'm not sure if any of this is better than a rowed ship, but if somebody in your navy wanted advancement for advancement's sake you could have a few is test ships.

[Simon_Jester]

I really don't think it would pay off, or people would have done it in real life. Capstans (the horizontal wheels) and treadwheels were both very much in use in medieval times, and capstans were used extensively on ships, after all.

The real issue is turning motive power into motive force; you need a propeller or paddlewheel to turn a rotating force (from turning things) into a linear force (to push the ship). Paddlewheels are grossly inefficient for that, propellers are at least viable... but neither really provides an advantage over plain old oars as long as human muscle is your power supply.

[/harumphing but well warranted Ohioan technical conservatism]

[Esquire]

I'm not going to do this, but I had the hilarious mental image of Dervishes travelling around in their own private fleet of magically-powered paddle-wheelers. Since they spend so much time spinning, you see.

[Jub]

I really don't think it would pay off, or people would have done it in real life. Capstans (the horizontal wheels) and treadwheels were both very much in use in medieval times, and capstans were used extensively on ships, after all.

The real issue is turning motive power into motive force; you need a propeller or paddlewheel to turn a rotating force (from turning things) into a linear force (to push the ship). Paddlewheels are grossly inefficient for that, propellers are at least viable... but neither really provides an advantage over plain old oars as long as human muscle is your power supply.

[/harumphing but well warranted Ohioan technical conservatism]

Capstans! That's the term I was looking for, somehow searching "sideways wheel anchoring raising" just wasn't finding it.

As to it actually working, it probably wouldn't work very well at all.

However, it's just the thing some new age thinker might try for the sake of doing something new. Imagine the series of posts about some madcap naval designer pushing these designs on the military, again and again, each one changed but still a dismal failure. Everything from them being slow, to not being able to mount as many guns broadside, to gear shafts breaking, it could make for a great series of posts.

[Eternal_Freedom]

That's got me wondering now if I could have some naval designer in Orion insisting that turret ships are the future. Heavy guns aren't a problem, I've already established that my Army Siege Regiment has a collection of 120-pounder guns, so mounting two of them on a turret between the main and foremast...hmmm....

[Jub]

That's got me wondering now if I could have some naval designer in Orion insisting that turret ships are the future. Heavy guns aren't a problem, I've already established that my Army Siege Regiment has a collection of 120-pounder guns, so mounting two of them on a turret between the main and foremast...hmmm....

Turrets are pretty advanced. They didn't appear at all until the 1860's, even the barbette wasn't much in use until around this era.

You could try some massive swivel guns trussed up with wires, ropes, pulleys, springs, etc. in an attempt to get a better arc of fire out of a heavy gun.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah you're probably right. Though IIRC, turrets emerged because you needed very big guns to hurt ironclad vessels, and it made sense to give them the best possible field of fire since you could only mount a few of them, compared to dozens of smaller cannon. I think the ships being steam-powered may have been involved as well since ships were no longer dependent on wind direction a broadside-engagement was no longer the most likely form of battle.

[Jub]

Yeah you're probably right. Though IIRC, turrets emerged because you needed very big guns to hurt ironclad vessels, and it made sense to give them the best possible field of fire since you could only mount a few of them, compared to dozens of smaller cannon. I think the ships being steam-powered may have been involved as well since ships were no longer dependent on wind direction a broadside-engagement was no longer the most likely form of battle.

Even then they didn't appear until after somebody built a casemate on a raft and showed off the idea. It's one of those advancements that seems like it could have happened at any time, but just didn't.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Hmmm good point. I'll leave it to simmer for a while methinks.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not going to do this, but I had the hilarious mental image of Dervishes travelling around in their own private fleet of magically-powered paddle-wheelers. Since they spend so much time spinning, you see.

I'm on board with this.

Ohio has... some... thing that vaguely approximates a magical motor for boats and small ships, but the speed and reliability are so bad you'd do better to get out and push row under normal conditions. I'll show it off a bit later. It is not now, and in Ohioan hands alone never will, be advanced enough to compete with sail or oar propulsion for typical applications.

That's got me wondering now if I could have some naval designer in Orion insisting that turret ships are the future. Heavy guns aren't a problem, I've already established that my Army Siege Regiment has a collection of 120-pounder guns, so mounting two of them on a turret between the main and foremast...hmmm....

Turrets are pretty advanced. They didn't appear at all until the 1860's, even the barbette wasn't much in use until around this era.

You could try some massive swivel guns trussed up with wires, ropes, pulleys, springs, etc. in an attempt to get a better arc of fire out of a heavy gun.

Guns on a pivoting mount were around earlier- and I'm not talking swivel guns mounted on a bipod-like pole either, I'm talking a big central pivot on the ground or deck you could rotate the gun around. No enclosed turret, but you get the real advantage of trainable armament.

However, there isn't room to mount effective pivoting turret guns between the masts of a sailing warship. It's not just that the masts themselves get in the way and limit your field of fire (they do, though). It's that there are ropes and pulleys and so on all over the deck of the ship and crisscrossing the ship on all sides. Plus, fire a heavy enough cannon and for all I know the blast might snap a rope or sail and cause a big thing of canvas to comically flop down over your turret masking your fire.

Rigging is structurally complicated and overall restricts your field of fire so sharply that a ship with a full sailing rig will never really be able to mount large gun turrets, or even particularly heavy gun batteries, on its upper deck.
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Other things include:
1) Turrets make the most sense when you have a few individual guns so powerful that you can afford to sacrifice lots of weight and deck space for each gun or small group of guns. Prior to the mid-1800s people didn't make guns like that in real life. It was the incentive to build huge naval muzzle-loaders and breechloaders to fire exploding shells a la the Paixhans gun in the 1820s and later that led to this inflation of gun caliber.
2) Turrets aren't as beneficial if you're not planning to armor your ship, because if the ship isn't armored you don't gain anything by wrapping the gun in a box that won't protect it from enemy fire.

That's an issue in general; a lot of those "could have appeared at any time" innovations are ones that did appear when they did for a reason, just not an obvious one.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Good points. Perhaps I'll have some architect talking about building versions of bomb ketchs for bombarding targets on land.

[Simon_Jester]

You're certainly quite capable of building heavy mortars, and that's the one good way to throw exploding shells with pre-1800 technology.

The Ohioan Navy has a squadron of them on Lake Erie (and one on Lake Michigan); they will be appearing at Detroit along with other appropriately chosen military impedimenta.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I thought you might have such vessels.

On the matter of mortars, perhaps I should amend my description of my Siege Regiment to replace some of the explosive-throwing catapults with heavy mortars instead. I'll keep some catapults for throwing my proto-tear gas canisters though.

Also, is it a bad sign that nearly every time I write proto-tear gas I have to stop myself saying proto-nerve gas instead?

[Simon_Jester]

The vessels are in the published portion of my order of battle.

And, yes. Honestly I have my doubts about the merits of mechanical artillery as a delivery vehicle for gas shells, and had intended to ask you how your siege regiment intended to deploy them, on the assumption that you can come up with a creative way to twist Ohio's arm into agreeing to their presence.

Also, Ohio really wants to buy some of those marvelous cast-iron guns you make, mass-lightened or not although mass-lightened would be greatly preferable. They are not intended entirely for the landward side of the siege.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ha, I thought as much.

We'll have to work out the details of the trade meeting. I suspect that we'll be happy enough to sell you the guns, in exchange for a binding promise not to attempt to reverse-engineer the enchantments on the guns or the powder. We'll even contract for a continued supply of the special gunpowder and shot for the mass-effect enchantment, Naturally with such new weapons there will come a number of advisors to properly instruct Ohioan gunners in the use of them (do your artillery use gunlocks or the slow-match and touchhole method of firing?).

I think that we will also press for allowing a task force from the siege regiment to accompany your attack so that we can test our proto-tear gas in battle, and in the spirit of fostering closer cooperation with an important sort-of neighbor.

[Simon_Jester]

Ohioan musketeers ahoy! Yes, three of them are named Dartagnan, Aramis, and Porthos, why do you ask? Though of course they do not serve the Cardinal.

Also, massively run-on sentences.
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The prototype six-pounder designs being tested by the Grand Master of Artillery have gunlocks and (as was common practice throughout the eighteenth century) touch-holes as well, with the gunlock being preferred for obvious reason. The standard ordnance four-pounder uses the touchhole only.

As to your own guns... To paraphrase Colonel Sir Sébastien Lepresque... actually, you know what? I'm making that a story-post too.

[Esquire]

Ohioan musketeers ahoy! Yes, three of them are named Dartagnan, Aramis, and Porthos, why do you ask? Though of course they do not serve the Cardinal.

Well, obviously. It's in the rules; you can't have musketeers without a trio of initially-hostile friends?

Unrelated note - why not try to buy Ottoman guns? I know it's too late now, but we're a lot closer and our artillery is just as good. Although, to be fair, probably hilariously heretical to Ohioan sensibilities.