SD.Net World Redux Comment Thread III

[MKSheppard]

Since Stas blew deniability by launching an attack right after the tanker explosion...tsk.tsk...oh well.

Best part is, since the PERMIT is the first SSN built by me, she's got 21" tubes; so everyone will think it's another CSR sub rampaging

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Since Stas blew deniability by launching an attack right after the tanker explosion...tsk.tsk...oh well.

Best part is, since the PERMIT is the first SSN built by me, she's got 21" tubes; so everyone will think it's another CSR sub rampaging

Dolphin phone? *click click click*?

[Norseman]

I thought there are only 134 vessels flying Astarian flag... but if there's 134 vessels doing all cargo traffic to and out... Well, his naval trade was just crippled.

If you damage around ~20 ships out of 134 and sink around a dozen - though to be fair some of them might be military vessels - out of a fleet of 134... ouch.

I think my submariners just reconsidered. The more carnage, the better.

BTW you can't possibly sink 20 ships in Kings Port, for the simple reason that it receives 883 ship visits a year. That means 2.41 a day. It takes 18-24 hours to unload a container ship, that means there is at most 5 ships in harbour at any time, and maybe another 5 in the immediate area.

However I have a longer reply to make in a moment.

[MKSheppard]

An idea I came up to coordinate efforts between our two boats to avoid accidental torpedoing etc. Basically every few hours, our sub(s) transmit a random biologic noise (as apporpriate for the environment), with a certan frequency range spiked; which stands out as "Hey, this is me".

[MKSheppard]

BTW you can't possibly sink 20 ships in Kings Port, for the simple reason that it receives 883 ship visits a year. That means 2.41 a day. It takes 18-24 hours to unload a container ship, that means there is at most 5 ships in harbour at any time, and maybe another 5 in the immediate area.

Except there are more vehicle types than just container ships, just as bulk cargo ships, etc etc. Also, there will be other ships lying at anchor, while they undergo overhauls, etc or repairs of engines etc.

[K. A. Pital]

And what is the hand over rate for the Akula II Mods?

Five every year.

As for the attack, if I understood correctly, Astaria has a total of 134 cargo vessels operating the naval traffic.

An explosion of a ship in-harbor would result in a dozen ships damaged, plus the ~12 I took out with the submarine RK-55 launched CMs (several RK-55s may have failed in-flight - also, a naval vessel may have taken ones that targeted itself, down with it's defenses if it was a military ship and it was running while in-harbor).

Such a crippling blow to Astaria's merchant fleet. Just the thing I wanted. Not to mention the damage to piers, and smaller vessels.

If Astaria operates around 130 freighters, there are around 200-300 various tugboats and auxillary craft. Over 20 of them may be sunk or damaged as a result of this attack.

[Norseman]

BTW you can't possibly sink 20 ships in Kings Port, for the simple reason that it receives 883 ship visits a year. That means 2.41 a day. It takes 18-24 hours to unload a container ship, that means there is at most 5 ships in harbour at any time, and maybe another 5 in the immediate area.

Except there are more vehicle types than just container ships, just as bulk cargo ships, etc etc. Also, there will be other ships lying at anchor, while they undergo overhauls, etc or repairs of engines etc.

That still doesn't add up to 20 ships, even if we assume that 10% of the fleet is at all times undergoing repairs, and that 20% of those do it at Kings Port that is only 2.7 ships, and to be honest that ought to be rounded down. So say 12 ships within easy reach if you attack, certainly no more.

I have some interesting factoids about Astarian shipping in my next post, nothing new really, except for announcing a deal that was made a while earlier, but ... well... We'll see.

[Norseman]

First of all Astaria has the exact same loading practises as any other country. It's a first world nation with strict safety regulations. However...

How to put it...

This post is contradicts canon facts about Astaria, facts that I've made abundantly clear. Hell it ignores facts that you, yes you Shep, have yourself used to argue with Stas earlier on!

That fact is as follows: 135 ships handle all cargo with Astaria, those ships are all owned by Astarians. In short this could not possibly be a foreign ship. You yourself accepted this. Steve accepted this too, though he argued that there'd be foreign ships around Velaria. Truth be told none of you objected to the idea that all Astarian trade was handled by 135 ships.

More on the implications of that number later on.

So having cleared up the fact that there are no foreign ships in Astarian harbours the question is how big would an Astarian bulk freighter be? Well earlier on during the Shroom Viking incident I went on record as to the size of the largest Astarian oil tankers, so that's approximately the size of an Astarian bulk freighter. Larger ships are modern container vessels.

Of course that could still be a respectable boom right? It could be an Astarian ship headed from a foreign port to an Astarian harbour? Sure it could, but it wouldn't be carrying fertilizer.

The reason for this, and Skimmer and others can vouch for this, is that Astarian foreign trade is government trade. Private enterprises are not involved, aside from the odd smuggler and rogue trader, and he is not about to come home with a cargo of fertilizer. Basically Astarian trade is barter, cotton, tobacco, gold, silver, and diamonds to San Dorado and the IRT, in return for machine goods, electronics, high level advisers, and so forth. With Japanistan I agreed to supply concrete in return for Japanistani goods, specifically Bulwark Against Imperialism anti-cruise missile defences.

Ah yes, concrete, or cement rather, a bulk cargo, a bulk cargo that is manufactured in South Velaria (limestone and such, natch). So in return for a certain bulk cargo Astaria would be getting weapons... hum... Three guesses as to whether or not the Astarian regime would prioritize fertilizer or moving as much cement as possibly to Japanistan.

But wait you say, couldn't they buy fertilizer in Japanistan? Maybe, I find it doubtful, Astaria has extensive hydropower and therefore makes its own fertilizer, South Velaria ditto though not so developed. I could see a few ships going to South Velaria with fertilizer, though I doubt it; crops such as rice, grain, and what have you would be more interesting since we're building up supply dumps in case of war.

So in short going by perfectly canon statements, that no one has so far seen fit to contradict, there is no way that any ship foreign or otherwise would be in an Astarian port carrying fertilizer.

However that is not my only argument by far, I have three other arguments that really put the kibosh on the whole idea of a fertilizer shipment.

First any export of fertilizer is out since there's sort of a war footing on, and people want to use the facilities to make munitions, only producing enough fertilizer to supply local farmers (in Astaria or Velaria).

Second any import is out, not only for the reasons mentioned above, but also because the Astarian regime refuses to allow import of anything Astaria can make itself. A prime example of this is the cars, Astarian cars are basically 1970s style crap. They could easily have imported cheap cars from the IRT, but since they can make an insufficient number of slightly too expensive cars themselves...

Third, and this is the good one. If you did the numbers you would notice that 135 ships of 23K deadweight each isn't enough to handle what the Astarian domestic trade ought to be. In fact the total Astarian shipping could handle roughly 53% of what their domestic shipping alone ought to be. Think about the implications of this...

Shipping is a luxury, only the most valuable goods can be shipped, bulk goods are right out. Whenever possible local alternatives must be found, or railways be used instead of shipping. New, large, ships are invariably container ships so as to be able to quickly move expensive worthwhile cargoes.

Not much room for bulk freighters there, and when you then consider that what little bulk capacity there is, is now being taken up shipping cement to Japanistan. Well...

And yes all of this is part of a government program to make Astaria less reliant upon shipping, for the simple reason that enemy navies would invariably be able to ruin Astarian shipping at will. It is in fact part of Astarian overall paranoia.

A solution to the current scenario

Since all of the above is canon, no one argued with it when I presented it, or its been cleared with another player, a question arises: Why would the CSR and Shepistan think that a large container ship held fertilizer?

The answer of course is simple, it's only a large container ship by Astarian standards, by most other standards it's a handysize ship. So yeah it could easily be taken for a bulk freighter, it might even be disguised as one. The reason is that even the IRT weapons and electronics manufacturers might be a bit leery of dealing openly with Astaria, so instead of marking the cargo as "Electronics by Tonkin Industries," it's labelled "fertilizer."

It wouldn't be entirely in vain though, I imagine that this attack would cause quite a bit of damage to a valuable military cargo.

Oh by the way from now on we'll be chucking explosives into the water at irregular intervals. Bit costly but worked marvels against the Italian frogmen.

[Norseman]

You know I feel like you are deliberately taking advantage of the fact that I can't churn out posts every five minutes. I'd appreciate the courtesy of having a chance to actually do something before you start blowing shit up again. I mean hell by the time I have the chance to put out *one freaking post* you lot would probably have described the annihilation of Astaria!

So here's the deal, I will act in accordance with my last post on the comment thread, I will take the facts there for granted and act accordingly. I would kindly ask that you hold up untill I've had the time to actually catch up in time, and make the three ****ing story posts that I mentioned earlier on. The ones that would let me catch up, wrap up the Pezook story thread which by the way has sucked up all of my time. As I recall Stas you agreed to do so earlier on.

Three posts, that's all I ask for, and I promise you that aside from the obvious (e.g. sending out subhunters after the attack), I'm not going to take unfair advantage of you.

[MKSheppard]

That fact is as follows: 135 ships handle all cargo with Astaria, those ships are all owned by Astarians. In short this could not possibly be a foreign ship.

It's not a foreign ship.

Because I knew a foreign ship would never be allowed into an Astarian port. So I had to find an Astarian ship to act as a floating bomb.

Normally, I'd just put the limpet mines onto the ship when she was loading up in a foreign harbor, and then detonate them via a radio command or timer. However; this would have been very dangerous; because I assumed that BOSS would have any ship carrying explosive items like Oil, Chemicals, Ammonium Nitrate, etc anchor well offshore of a harbor, while it was inspected for sabotage; making a pre-planted limpet charge out of the question. So I had to plant the charges while it was being unloaded.

So having cleared up the fact that there are no foreign ships in Astarian harbours the question is how big would an Astarian bulk freighter be? Well earlier on during the Shroom Viking incident I went on record as to the size of the largest Astarian oil tankers, so that's approximately the size of an Astarian bulk freighter. Larger ships are modern container vessels.

That makes no sense. Bulk cargoes are subject to the laws of economics; why would you be using WWII sized ships with a mere 15,000 DWT, with a crew of about 25 men; when you can move 2.5 times as much cargo for the same amount of crew and fuel costs only marginally higher than the 15,000 DWT vessel?

Second any import is out, not only for the reasons mentioned above, but also because the Astarian regime refuses to allow import of anything Astaria can make itself.

If that's the case, kiss goodbye to your economy. Autarky never works. EVER. That road leads to ruin.

Third, and this is the good one. If you did the numbers you would notice that 135 ships of 23K deadweight each isn't enough to handle what the Astarian domestic trade ought to be. In fact the total Astarian shipping could handle roughly 53% of what their domestic shipping alone ought to be. Think about the implications of this...

That the ships have to be bigger?

Why would the CSR and Shepistan think that a large container ship held fertilizer?

Because you know, it's not that hard to identify what kind of cargo a ship carries; there are a ton of ways to do that; photographs of it; someone on the foreign dock checking the cargo being loaded, etc etc. With only 134 ships, the job of our intelligence agencies is a lot easier...

[K. A. Pital]

The reason for this, and Skimmer and others can vouch for this, is that Astarian foreign trade is government trade. Private enterprises are not involved, aside from the odd smuggler and rogue trader, and he is not about to come home with a cargo of fertilizer. Basically Astarian trade is barter, cotton, tobacco, gold, silver, and diamonds to San Dorado and the IRT, in return for machine goods, electronics, high level advisers, and so forth. With Japanistan I agreed to supply concrete in return for Japanistani goods, specifically Bulwark Against Imperialism anti-cruise missile defences.

In that case we would pick a ship that would be carrying something else explosive. There's a lot of common explosive goods.

Yes, there's not a lot of cargo ships in harbor par se - around 5-6 large vessels at one time - but tugs and auxillaries also count. In short, the damage would be tremendous.

Do you really think we would fail to choose a ship with explosive cargo? DUDE, you are shipping freaking weapons from Japanistan. That alone should be very, very explosive.

In short, your anti-fertilizer rant is not really meaningful. Any other explosive cargo could have been used.

P.S. To add to what Shep said - autarky on a small island? Without naval traffic? Kiss goodbye to the economy. Continental powers can rely on railroads, etc. but you?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm curious. Won't this Shepistan + CSR vs Astaria bring in the issue of that Treaty of Friendship where Japanistan is liable to intervene?

[MKSheppard]

I'm curious. Won't this Shepistan + CSR vs Astaria bring in the issue of that Treaty of Friendship where Japanistan is liable to intervene?

What happens between friends stays between friends. As far as the world knows, this is a dastardly CSR plot. Even my sinkings of merchantmen is not going to raise any "huh?" because I'm using 21" TTs not my monster 40" TT to do it.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What happens between friends stays between friends. As far as the world knows, this is a dastardly CSR plot. Even my sinkings of merchantmen is not going to raise any "huh?" because I'm using 21" TTs not my monster 40" TT to do it.

Well, once things go into ... biological weapons, questions will be raised. There are only so many countries that stockpile those.

[Norseman]

Second any import is out, not only for the reasons mentioned above, but also because the Astarian regime refuses to allow import of anything Astaria can make itself.

If that's the case, kiss goodbye to your economy. Autarky never works. EVER. That road leads to ruin.[/quote]

YES! EXACTLY!

Why do you think that Astaria has such an ass backwards economy? Why would an educated European style population have a GNP on average of $7500? Despite having massive natural resources! Why is the economic growth basically nil? All of that is a direct resource of the autarchy, it is completely fucking over the Astarian economy and its done so for a long long time.

Note that the truly explosive stuff is all bulk cargoes, and we just established that I am not carrying any bulk cargoes due to shipping cement to Japanistan.

Also I don't import *weapons* from Japanistan, I import anti-cruise missile systems. Sure you could blow up one of those ships too, but they don't have tens of thousands of tons of explosives. So what explosive cargo are you going to look for next hmmmm? Sure blow up Japanistani anti-missile systems, that'd be a few hundred tons at most. That is also *the* most explosive cargo you're going to find in any Astarian harbour.

So no you're not getting a nuclear kaboom in my harbour, there is no cargo that could create such a kaboom. You can get a few hundred tons to go boom, but that's all.

Once more that is my last word on the matter. We can argue further about other attacks once I have completed the three posts that I need in order to catch up.

EDIT: Oh and Astaria is larger than France.

[K. A. Pital]

Sure you could blow up one of those ships too, but they don't have tens of thousands of tons of explosives.

Who said about even needing "tens of thousands"? 2600, 2300 or 1400 tons would be pretty fucking bad on their own. I also heard the word cotton.

So no, it's not a nuclear explosion. However, it's more than enough to inflict large damage: ships in harbor will be partially sunk or damaged, and port facilities likewise. Massive fire would erupt, putting it out would take time. The port operations would be disrupted for a time.

[Norseman]

Look... Stas, everyone, try to see things from my point of view...

In the last weeks I've had to wrap up two major webpage projects, the company I work for has gone under, and I'm now trying to write job applications to get a new one. In short I haven't really had time to pay much attention to this game, and most of the time I do have I've spent working with Pezook's story.

However I'm not going to appeal to my personal sob story, but rather to basic fairness; yeah you can pretty much pummel Astaria while I'm away and/or unable to respond. That goes against the spirit of the game though. I'm also fairly sure that any moderator would cry foul, if we still had one which I wish we did, at the idea of pummeling new attacks on a player before he's had a chance to even begin replying to the last one. Which is in fact what you're doing to me right now.

If Steve, or Phong, or any of the other nations got that kind of rapid fire tag-team treatment so that they were unable as players to respond, people would scream bloody murder. Indeed I remember that Shep wasn't too pleased about somethings they tried to push during the war with him.

So I'm asking for the same basic treatment as anyone else gets, and that means that I need time to respond to what you've already done. I also need you to stop adding more stuff that I have to respond to, because if you do I won't ever be able to get anything done.

Basically lay off untill Wednesday, all of you, after that you can do whatever you want, but untill I'm done with Pezook and my three post story thread I can't and won't take account of anything that happens between now and Wednesday.

EDIT: In fact to help with my chronology, would you mind terribly if I date the attack on Kings Port to after the last of my three posts? I mean date it to occur say 36-48 hours after my third post? That way we could pick it up after the end your attack. Given that there is some minor matters in my third post that you might have to react to I think that's the easiest way of handling things.

[K. A. Pital]

Sure, no problem.

[Norseman]

Sure, no problem.

If you could keep Shep calm too that'd be nice

[Siege]

Siege, you do realize that we've got ways of telling if a body is the right body or not? How exactly was the mercenary planning to get away with this?

How would you know you've got the right commander Gotti when you don't have the dentals/dna/fingerprints etc. of the real commander Gotti on file? I imagine Klavostani merc companies would be rather hesitant to provide you that information. Besides, it doesn't actually matter much to the situation if the man is who his nametag says he is. The gas is all that matters, and SinTEK is just going to hush up that there are two cylinders missing. Case closed, I'd say.

[Master_Baerne]

Siege, you do realize that we've got ways of telling if a body is the right body or not? How exactly was the mercenary planning to get away with this?

How would you know you've got the right commander Gotti when you don't have the dentals/dna/fingerprints etc. of the real commander Gotti on file? I imagine Klavostani merc companies would be rather hesitant to provide you that information. Besides, it doesn't actually matter much to the situation if the man is who his nametag says he is. The gas is all that matters, and SinTEK is just going to hush up that there are two cylinders missing. Case closed, I'd say.

I was working under the assumption that the man's family dentist back in Klavostan would have the records on file. The unwillingness of the dentist to provide the records is irrelevant, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would ask the Klavostani government for help obtaining them. The BIS's standard procedure is to identify all high-value bodies - and the commander of a mercenary unit recently involved in the death of a BDN ship's crew certainly counts.

[Siege]

I was working under the assumption that the man's family dentist back in Klavostan would have the records on file. The unwillingness of the dentist to provide the records is irrelevant, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would ask the Klavostani government for help obtaining them. The BIS's standard procedure is to identify all high-value bodies - and the commander of a mercenary unit recently involved in the death of a BDN ship's crew certainly counts.

Hmm. I myself assumed that Klavostan, where mercenary groups are so rich and powerful they can afford to operate LHDs, would be under immense pressure not to release such information, particularly not to foreign governments hostile to the military contractors.

In any case the point is moot, even if it later becomes apparent that Gotti didn't die, he still managed to escape, so his ploy worked for a while.

[Shroom Man 777]

Guys, lay off Norseman - how would you fellows feel if you had other players ganging up and blowing your shit every week with impunity, and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it?

Besides, his storyline with PeZook is way more interesting than one-sided LAEM curbstomps.


And why the hell is Stas working together with Shep? Sweet Jesus Christ! What the hell is going on?!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Guys, lay off Norseman - how would you fellows feel if you had other players ganging up and blowing your shit every week with impunity, and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it?

Besides, his storyline with PeZook is way more interesting than one-sided LAEM curbstomps.


And why the hell is Stas working together with Shep? Sweet Jesus Christ! What the hell is going on?!

Well, it was that way when OMSK still existed.

[Master_Baerne]

I was working under the assumption that the man's family dentist back in Klavostan would have the records on file. The unwillingness of the dentist to provide the records is irrelevant, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would ask the Klavostani government for help obtaining them. The BIS's standard procedure is to identify all high-value bodies - and the commander of a mercenary unit recently involved in the death of a BDN ship's crew certainly counts.

Hmm. I myself assumed that Klavostan, where mercenary groups are so rich and powerful they can afford to operate LHDs, would be under immense pressure not to release such information, particularly not to foreign governments hostile to the military contractors.

Ah, but that's the beauty of it. It's not Klavostan that has the information, it's Gotti's dentist. Someone we can likely pressure into giving us the records, and who was likely overlooked if the mercenaries made an effort to conceal such information.

In any case the point is moot, even if it later becomes apparent that Gotti didn't die, he still managed to escape, so his ploy worked for a while.

Very true.