SDNWorld Redux - Casting Call & Planning

[Setzer]

Moonbeam Whatsername? Were her parents hippies?

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh yeah, Miranda Moonbeam. Her parents, or just her pappy (or her mammy) are Paleopacifist hippie Ministers of Parliament and so if Prime Minister Shroom approves having her launched into space, he'll win a lot of leverage with those goddamn hippies in the Parliament - allowing Shroom to carry on with the Runaway Defense Budget.

Unfortunately, Miranda ends up doing shrooms while in orbit - and so that causes Shroomania a lot of embarrassment. No matter, though, as the Shroomanians will one day look back at this and laugh...


Ha-ha!



(Seriously, I was looking forward to continuing this storyline! I hope we can import Common Carter Conolley... or what was his surname again? C-something... C-section.)

[PeZook]

Oh.... Shroomania has a duke of Whales? Awesome! *makes whale sounds*

You had a Duke Of Whales

As for Common Carter Connoway, he's definitely coming back.

I'm thinking as a FASTA janitor with flashbacks to days of greatness

[Mr Bean]

On the World War(s)
It is my intent that the crafting of this semi-useless history is only worthwhile if it can be blended into a consistent whole. In this case we need three things for that.

1. Who done it?

2. Why?(More on that in a second)

3. Which side you were on?



First we need a single historical triggering event, it might be an assassination, it might be a trumped up border clash followed by a invasion, it might be a naval incident. It might be a naked power grab where one side invades the other announcing mere minutes ahead of time that by the way we are at war.

I leave that to the community

The why is easier, Jingoism is popular, religion, local or even a person insult which drags everyone into it, pick one go with it.

The where were you when the bombs fell is the tricky bit. Myself I've already said that Khitan is going to be on the losing side of the Great War, a middle of the game player who joins up for plunder, wins a few battles but in the end of the day loses most of it's fleet to the other side new wonder weapons, gets a few harbor's bombed and has to pay massive reparations for a decade.

Physically my country will stay out of this historical war, even as Khitan acts as staging point and depot for the losing side in the war.


The rest of the war depends on who wants in on it, which two or three countries kick it off, and who writes the thing up. Since we don't have any kind of world map at this point, things are tricky in this regard, we can't have Mexico and Luxembourg declaring war, that makes no sense, but Cuba and Panama? That makes more sense and would drag North and South American in to it, possibly.(It's a long-shot comparison but work with me)

[RogueIce]

Are ALL Carriers going to be 16-pointers, regardless of size?

Because there are some wide varieties, including some of the smaller European-style ski-jump carriers and the Kiev-class Cruiser/Carrier types.

I'd put those at, say, 12 points each since they're quite limited in the number of planes they can carry. These are in a class by themselves from the massive US Nimitz-style supercarriers.

I would say for those, classify them as large LHDs and just tell people "Hey I'm actually using it for this instead" and we can either bitch about it or go "Ok!". There are some frigates out there that could probably be classed as destroyers too, and I'm sure the more knowledgable could pull up any number of similar situations. So we just have to try and be reasonable about it.

Speaking of the whole complexity issue:

I have a proposition on Special Forces type troops, as they seem to be extremely expensive. For Extremely high quility outfits like 1st SFOD Delta 3 points for 60 guys would be moe resonable than 4. They are extremely expensive to train, but 4 points was just too much in my opinion. For guys like US army Special Forces, who do training and such, 1 point per 60 men should be good. For US rangers and the like we need a new category as they are essentially really well trained light infantry. 1 point buying a company would be a decent buy. If they are any more expensive you are just much better off buying paratroopers instead.

I could probably do something like back it 120 troopers instead of just 60. I don't really want to try and add any more categories to the Army/Helo list...it's long enough as it is!

As a word on US Army Rangers type, my original intention with the "Moderate" SF was to simulate more third world-y types of special forces. They're still way better than what you normally have, but they're not quite up there with the likes of the Navy SEALs and so on. I suppose you could lump Ranger types in with the paratroopers with some common sense thrown in; you're not going to have 1,000,000 Rangers, after all. They may be a subset of your paras, but they're a (relatively) small subset.

Same thing I'd say with SF. Your "elites" should be pretty small, and somewhat proportional with your nation's size, wealth, and population. It takes a special breed of person to be a Navy SEAL and you're not going to have 100 million of them. Unless most of them suck. You could have more "moderates" than you do "elites" but eventually there too you'll have a limit unless you want their quality to go down.

For that all I can really say is use your common sense. You're not going to have an entire army of special forces, unless they're special forces in name only and little better than common soldiers.

[Siege]

Would it be acceptable if I equipped my Citidef (national guard) with mostly obsolete junk like UH-1 Hueys and PBN-1 Nomad flying boats? Obviously I can't afford to spend any actual points on that sort of gear, but I don't think it's going to be a realistic threat against anything...

[RogueIce]

Well, if you are planning being a big ship producer like last time, would the Sachsen class be something you'd be selling? Do you know of any older but still capable frigates that would make good sense to own as well?

My "modern" frigates will probably be along the lines of F100s, but I'll have some older models as well (Halifaxes, OPHs, etc). That's one of the ways I'm structuring my Navy: I'll have a good number of modern ships, but also some older ones that are in the process of being replaced by game start. So that means some of my frigates, destroyers, and possibly even cruisers and submarines will be decommissioned and I'll be scrapping, selling, or supplying. Heck I'll be building a new CVN to replace an existing CV at the start of the game so that too (might) end up on the market.

So far as what types I'll be getting rid of, I haven't really gotten that far yet. I would say for this to just send me PMs (so we're not cluttering the main thread with this side deal) and we'll discuss it. This is open to everybody who's interested, so you might not get the exact class you're looking for if I get a good response (I'm not going to have been operating five or six seperate classes obviously) but I'll do my best to help out.

Same goes for the extra points I'll have left over, if somebody wants me to "buy" some older equipment and sell it to them, shoot me a PM.

As far as historical sales, of the type you're starting with them and used your own points for them, that's really just some flavor and obviously not a big deal. A nice little note and maybe an indication for future trade relations but little else.

In the end result, it all depends on what kind of response I get. If it's fairly small and/or consistent in what people want, that obviously makes things easier. I have no problem with "older" ships that I'm just getting rid of, though there will be some limits (I'm working with mostly NATO designs after all). So send me a PM if you're interested and we can discuss it.

[Raj Ahten]

I could probably do something like back it 120 troopers instead of just 60. I don't really want to try and add any more categories to the Army/Helo list...it's long enough as it is!

As a word on US Army Rangers type, my original intention with the "Moderate" SF was to simulate more third world-y types of special forces. They're still way better than what you normally have, but they're not quite up there with the likes of the Navy SEALs and so on. I suppose you could lump Ranger types in with the paratroopers with some common sense thrown in; you're not going to have 1,000,000 Rangers, after all. They may be a subset of your paras, but they're a (relatively) small subset.

Same thing I'd say with SF. Your "elites" should be pretty small, and somewhat proportional with your nation's size, wealth, and population. It takes a special breed of person to be a Navy SEAL and you're not going to have 100 million of them. Unless most of them suck. You could have more "moderates" than you do "elites" but eventually there too you'll have a limit unless you want their quality to go down.

For that all I can really say is use your common sense. You're not going to have an entire army of special forces, unless they're special forces in name only and little better than common soldiers.

My intentions with commando style troops are that I want around 240 guys trained to SAS/Delta standards operating in 4 "Squadrons" with different specialties (Scuba, CQB, etc.). That force would be set up a lot more for direct action type operations. Then I'd want about the Equivalent of a US army special forces Group, which, roughly speaking is around 750 men. My force would be very much like the US Special Forces; mainly set up to train guerillas and what have you. With the shitty conditions on my continent such troops would certainly get a workout in all the brushfire wars in the region. Then I also have a Regiment of Airborne troops that are "Elite" (Or consider themselves so anyway.)

For that whole Package I've set 31.5 points aside, and the airborne Regiment has been paid for separately. I don’t think a force of this size would be out of line for a nation with a military like mine's. As for lumping Rangers in with airborne, that sounds fine to me. It was suggested we just have an "air assault" category that has your infantry costing x2.

Also, there is the issue of reserve troops. I'm just going to pay for them like normal and if they have crappier training or equipment I'm just going to pay them accordingly that way.

[Beowulf]

UH-1s are still in use by the USMC...

[Siege]

UH-1s are still in use by the USMC...

Yeah but that's the UH-1Y, isn't it? I figured that's gotta be a pretty far cry from the versions that flew around in 'Nam...

[DarthShady]

I have made modifications to my OOB. I selected my fighters and MBT and some other stuff. Would you guys please check it out and make sure I didn't brake any rules(such as fighters and MBT generations).

I'm going mainly with Russian stuff.

[Mr Bean]

Reading through the history thread has lead me to make the following.



It's a rough(VERY) rough idea of placement in this new SD.Net, New VS OLD, Plus it has a handy where is the world is Nukeee McSheppard.

Subject to change and hopeful Stas can put it togther in a nice map once he gets back.

[PeZook]

Erm...Shroom is to the west of me, and located across a Channel La Champignon. This position you painted makes the entire Gaymean War completely illogical

[Mr Bean]

Erm...Shroom is to the west of me, and located across a Channel La Champignon. This position you painted makes the entire Gaymean War completely illogical

Horray!
I'm trying to get rough positions here, besides it's only "west" of you if like Australia you we make our own local maps with us on the top, if you flip the map on it's head it makes perfect sense!

See? Flip your monitor over and try it!

[PeZook]

See? Flip your monitor over and try it!

Oh. Well, I'm sorry for not following your genius well enough to figure out where you arbitrarily placed the north

[Karmic Knight]

Oh. Well, I'm sorry for not following your genius well enough to figure out where you arbitrarily placed the north

[Sea Skimmer]

Well looking at that map idea Japanistan could be packed in-between Bean and Lonestar, or west of Sheppard. West of Sheppard might be better for the world as it will greatly reduce the effective striking capability of 17 year old pilots in MiG-19 clones.

[PeZook]

Okay...so...is anybody else going to participate in WWI? If not, I'll wrap it up today.

[Sea Skimmer]

UH-1s are still in use by the USMC...

Yeah but that's the UH-1Y, isn't it? I figured that's gotta be a pretty far cry from the versions that flew around in 'Nam...

Yes the differences pretty big, including a four blade rotor, different engines, all new avonics ect... Also keep in mind the USMC’s UH-1N and its upgraded UH-1Y form are twin engine, while all the US Army Hueys had single engines. Production of new built UH-1Ys was actually started up a couple years ago because of the slashing of V-22 production numbers, which meant merely upgrading existing UH-1Ns wasn’t going to be enough. This new production contract still has a couple years to run.

The problem with using real old aircraft is they get absurdly worn out and have inherently limited fatigue lives, unlike say old artillery pieces or tanks which can be refitted periodically to last forever. Still, I don’t think we need to be very concerned about how many light transport and utility helicopters people have, unless someone is blatantly spamming an unreasonable number of air mobile troops around.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Okay...so...is anybody else going to participate in WWI? If not, I'll wrap it up today.

As a member of the Shroomanian Commonwealth, the Duchy of Langley (or, as it was known back then, the Duchy of Ashford) was a participant. Other members of the Commonwealth would have also been involved as well.

I'm actually envisioning the SDN World equivalent of Gallipoli, involving Ashford and other Commonwealth troops getting their asses handed to them by the coalition of Arab states. I don't know if we're going to be copying real-world history that closely, but if it can be accomodated...

[Siege]

Okay...so...is anybody else going to participate in WWI? If not, I'll wrap it up today.

Feel free to introduce small numbers of San Dorado proto-PMCs on either side (or even both sides) of the war if it's not too much hassle. The city-state itself would be officially neutral, although our trade policies would definitely favour the Shroomanian camp.

The problem with using real old aircraft is they get absurdly worn out and have inherently limited fatigue lives, unlike say old artillery pieces or tanks which can be refitted periodically to last forever.

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. Perhaps I'll just introduce a cheap Huey analogue that's really nothing but a civvie helo with some kevlar armor and a machinegun jutting out the side. Citidef isn't supposed to fight competent militaries, they only have to be good enough to kick the asses of rioting protestors and third world militias.

[Coyote]

Okay...so...is anybody else going to participate in WWI? If not, I'll wrap it up today.

Uhh, sure. I didn't know it was already going on.

[PeZook]

Okay

I just finished the first year of the war ; How about the MESS gets involved when the Shadows sink a passenger ship carrying various overseas nationals?

[DarthShady]

Okay

I just finished the first year of the war ; How about the MESS gets involved when the Shadows sink a passenger ship carrying various overseas nationals?

I'm a bad bad man. (Actually the guys who came before me were bad bad men.)

Quick question: How big of a land area can a Duchy have? I'm thinking my country could be a bit bigger geographically but still a Duchy.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Okay...so...is anybody else going to participate in WWI? If not, I'll wrap it up today.

As a member of the Shroomanian Commonwealth, the Duchy of Langley (or, as it was known back then, the Duchy of Ashford) was a participant. Other members of the Commonwealth would have also been involved as well.

I'm actually envisioning the SDN World equivalent of Gallipoli, involving Ashford and other Commonwealth troops getting their asses handed to them by the coalition of Arab states. I don't know if we're going to be copying real-world history that closely, but if it can be accomodated...

It struck me yesterday that Alexandria might be a good place for something similar. Perhaps some overeager Shroomanian General decided to attack the place without Byzantine support. Note that I already am looking at other diplomatic options beyond attacking Alexandria directly, as noted by my offer to the Abassad Caliphate at Damascus.