2014 STGOD OOC Commentary Thread 1

[Steve]

With the game due to begin at the end of the month and the Concept thread at fifty pages, time for a new one.


In reply to Thanas' remarks:


I imagined Klavostan was pretty capable as well, since it built its navy to face Cascadia's.

As for using Yamamoto, that was a placeholder name and can be changed if desired, but I thought it fit.

I'm not sure why you're saying "like six nations": they gained Klavostan and the three faced down Cascadia, Rheinland, Orion, and Fuso, and Fuso was really just a beefed up Philippines at the time, and from what I gather Orion wasn't much either, it just had enough naval power to fight the cruisers and what-not the Britonians kept in South America. Both sides had to worry about other powers jumping in, so that probably offsets. As things go, it's fairly even-ish, with a world where, presumably, there was no counterpart to the Washington Naval Conference (At least not with regards to fleet sizes).

[Thanas]

It just seems as if the majority of Nippon was not focused where it should be - saving their army in Rheinland and keeping its most important ally alive. Especially considering Klavostan etc it would have made little sense to focus most of their resources east at that time. If Fuso was just a propped up Philippines then just a few divisions should have done the job.

As to Yamamoto, I would prefer it indeed if we could change the name to avoid a historical copy. After all, Nippon is not a carbon copy of Japan and all that.

[Steve]

I'll defer to you on an alternative name.

And from what you put, their army on the mainland was gone within the first couple of years due to being blitzkrieged along with the Britonians. There's nothing to save save Britonia itself, hence needing an ally to tilt the balance navally, and hence taking what they can get; the Klavostanis, who attach conditions.

I'm just trying to put everything together; Shinn has Nippon winning early naval victories "with forces returned from Britonia" (which you're against, from what I've seen), so I replaced those forces with "new construction". Cascadia being unable to deal with the Nipponese invasion of Fuso is easily explained by being wrapped in a land war, and a desperate one, with a rampaging maneuver army that's overtaken most of the south of the country.

If you want we can divorce Klavostan from alliance with Britonia and Nippon, but that still leaves the issue of Nippon attacking Fuso, and the expansion of the war in the Pacific.

[Thanas]

I'll defer to you on an alternative name.

And from what you put, their army on the mainland was gone within the first couple of years due to being blitzkrieged along with the Britonians.

More importantly, it was lost because the Navy "only" managed an inconclusive battle and was unable to win local naval supremacy. That led to the loss of the army in half a year.

Maybe I failed expressing this properly, but Rheinland probably had enough industry to come close to the output of Britonia and Nippon combined - before they unleashed their bomber offensive. Now, consider the situation - they are in a standoff. The naval battle is inconclusive. The Rheinland fleet-in-being is being repaired and ready to strike. The Rheinland subs are wreaking havoc on Britonian and Nipponese shipping. In that scenario, they need every capital ship they got and every escort to just keep their sealanes working.

There's nothing to save save Britonia itself, hence needing an ally to tilt the balance navally, and hence taking what they can get; the Klavostanis, who attach conditions.

Is Klavostan stronger than Cascadia and Fuso combined at this point? Otherwise it makes no sense why they would go for it.

One reason might be that they wanted to get Fuso's resources and needed them for some reason (oil fields might work). But this would require new resources that just went into exploitable status in Ostrheinland a few years ago as I am not willing to put Ostrheinland at the mercy of a Fuso embargo in our time.

I'm just trying to put everything together; Shinn has Nippon winning early naval victories "with forces returned from Britonia" (which you're against, from what I've seen), so I replaced those forces with "new construction". Cascadia being unable to deal with the Nipponese invasion of Fuso is easily explained by being wrapped in a land war, and a desperate one, with a rampaging maneuver army that's overtaken most of the south of the country.

If you want we can divorce Klavostan from alliance with Britonia and Nippon, but that still leaves the issue of Nippon attacking Fuso, and the expansion of the war in the Pacific.

No, I don't mind Klavostan forming an alliance if the particulars are satisfied that I outlined above.

[Steve]

More importantly, it was lost because the Navy "only" managed an inconclusive battle and was unable to win local naval supremacy. That led to the loss of the army in half a year.

Maybe I failed expressing this properly, but Rheinland probably had enough industry to come close to the output of Britonia and Nippon combined - before they unleashed their bomber offensive. Now, consider the situation - they are in a standoff. The naval battle is inconclusive. The Rheinland fleet-in-being is being repaired and ready to strike. The Rheinland subs are wreaking havoc on Britonian and Nipponese shipping. In that scenario, they need every capital ship they got and every escort to just keep their sealanes working.

Hence why they go for aid, and the best offer they get is Klavostan, which had the attached condition of wanting to go after Cascadia.

Is Klavostan stronger than Cascadia and Fuso combined at this point? Otherwise it makes no sense why they would go for it.

What I figure is... I don't think anyone has us in a full Great Depression, but quite likely there was a prolonged economic hard time in the 1930s, which limited the attempts at industrializing Fuso and could have resulted in years of lost build time for Cascadia, which they only reversed when the Klavostani fascist government started going into overdrive on construction. But the Cascadians hadn't fought a war in years, not since the turn of the century and the proto-WWI conditions of that war, so they were building an army to fight in the trenches while Klavostan was motivated to look to maneuver warfare with armored and motorized forces. So even if on paper Cascadia was a larger country, Klavostan had a devastating potential, and would nearly realize it.

I can imagine that Britonia was extremely reluctant, but Nippon might have seen it as a chance to grab Fuso or at least valuable parts of it, gaining them more resources to rebuild their fleet with.

Ultimately, it was probably presumed that Cascadia would be knocked out of the war quickly, allowing the Klavostani fleet to sail for Britonia and tilt the balance against Rheinland again. But the Cascadians, despite territorial losses, proved more robust than expected. It took Nippon's new construction, and the daring use of air power, to hit them hard enough to essentially force Cascadia to give up on holding Fuso itself for the time being, allowing Nippon to invade an ill-repared Fuso and secure vital resources to expand their war economy (and make up for Rheinlander sub sinkings).

Thus we would be having 1942 as the year everything reversed: Patton's counterattacks throwing back the Klavostani spearheads, the fighters of Rheinland being reinforced and able to blunt the bombing campaign, and the Cascadians getting a new carrier-focused Navy out on the seas to challenge Klavostan locally and eventually counter-attack Nippon, much to the bitter grumbling of Britonia.

One reason might be that they wanted to get Fuso's resources and needed them for some reason (oil fields might work). But this would require new resources that just went into exploitable status in Ostrheinland a few years ago as I am not willing to put Ostrheinland at the mercy of a Fuso embargo in our time.

I wouldn't say it's so much that they didn't have what Fuso had, but that taking the islands of Fuso, or at least most of them, would offer Nippon even more resources so that their economy didn't tank while they build up the fleet for another go at Rheinland.

In the present day Nippon is probably able to sustain itself fairly well. There may be some materials it can't get enough of for its local economy, but everyone would be like that in some way or another.

No, I don't mind Klavostan forming an alliance if the particulars are satisfied that I outlined above.

[/quote]

The way I see it, the main issue is determining exactly what Nippon had to offer in the fighting.

You've said that you wanted Rheinland to have been the equal of the two put together, but given the vast geographic distance and the fact that Nippon's defenses couldn't be brought to bear in any likely war between Britonia and Rheinland, wouldn't it make sense to have it where Rheinland was the equal of Britonia and what Nippon could reasonably spare given the requirements of defending its own home islands? I can still see them putting more than half of their fleet into the Britonian theater, sure, I think I brought up the idea of Nippon's fleet being divided between "Western Striking Force" - the ships that served in the Britoinan-Rheinland theater - and the "Main Striking Force", which constituted Nippon's naval forces to guard the home islands.

Hrm... what if... how about we say that West Striking Force got pretty much all of the dreadnought-battleships; only some older battlecruisers and 13" armed battleships were kept with Main Striking Force, old coal burners and such that wouldn't be able to engage the newer ships of the Rheinlander Navy. Instead Nippon's MSF became more of a carrier force, the idea being that they would harass attackers until Britonian and Nipponese dreadnoughts could come to the rescue (that is, this would be their war plan if someone attacked Nippon during peace with Rheinland). When the fighting broke out, Kido BUtai was all Nippon had in terms of offensive power, but ersatz-Yamamoto had trained his force to be more lethal with what they had, so when his superiors let him go on the offensive you have the Nipponese carriers blasting apart the Cascadian West Pacific Fleet at Chuuk even though, in terms of older battleships, Cascadia had the numerical advantage,

[Thanas]

Hence why they go for aid, and the best offer they get is Klavostan, which had the attached condition of wanting to go after Cascadia

I don't think the sequence works. You need something else to make sense of it, especially since you plainly do not have Klavostan as this great nation dominating its continent. You should rather IMO put it this way - to continue the war, Nippon needed resources, most likely minerals and oil. The only way to get these was Fuso. To get Fuso, they needed to have Cascadia out of the way and keep them focused elsewhere. To do that, they turned towards Klavostan.

You've said that you wanted Rheinland to have been the equal of the two put together, but given the vast geographic distance and the fact that Nippon's defenses couldn't be brought to bear in any likely war between Britonia and Rheinland, wouldn't it make sense to have it where Rheinland was the equal of Britonia and what Nippon could reasonably spare given the requirements of defending its own home islands?

I don't think you quite understand what I am hoping to achieve with the bomber offensive. I want it to be the thing that destroyed the population centers of a nation that had once been settled continously for thousands of years. I want it to be the thing that forces Rheinland to give up its very heartland and relocate even further north. Which is why we now got the north dominating the south when for most of the history it was exactly the opposite. Even with the Rhein valley boom industrializing the north in the 19th century the south was still the most populous one.

Essentially, the pyrrhic victory by Rheinland in the 80 years war pretty much reduced the south to the desolate wasteland it now largely is. Winning, the nation lost its better half and turned from a nation on the cusp of being the world power into "just" another large power. That is the tragedy of Rheinland and of the people on both sides who refused to negotiate for peace.

I can still see them putting more than half of their fleet into the Britonian theater, sure, I think I brought up the idea of Nippon's fleet being divided between "Western Striking Force" - the ships that served in the Britoinan-Rheinland theater - and the "Main Striking Force", which constituted Nippon's naval forces to guard the home islands.

Hrm... what if... how about we say that West Striking Force got pretty much all of the dreadnought-battleships; only some older battlecruisers and 13" armed battleships were kept with Main Striking Force, old coal burners and such that wouldn't be able to engage the newer ships of the Rheinlander Navy. Instead Nippon's MSF became more of a carrier force, the idea being that they would harass attackers until Britonian and Nipponese dreadnoughts could come to the rescue (that is, this would be their war plan if someone attacked Nippon during peace with Rheinland). When the fighting broke out, Kido BUtai was all Nippon had in terms of offensive power, but ersatz-Yamamoto had trained his force to be more lethal with what they had, so when his superiors let him go on the offensive you have the Nipponese carriers blasting apart the Cascadian West Pacific Fleet at Chuuk even though, in terms of older battleships, Cascadia had the numerical advantage,

Works fine enough, just make sure that the death ride we discussed earlier still works.

[Simon_Jester]

Spectre: Swing-wing aircraft otherwise similar to the F-4 Phantom. Again a foreign purchase, but the country the Umerians bought it from has probably stopped making them. Still in limited use because it makes a pretty good 'dumb attack' aircraft.

Would these have been purchased as complete units, or built on license? If it's the latter, maybe the Spectre was designed in Apelia (under a different name, probably) and sold to Umeria as a sort of final test stage prior to domestic adoption? A lot of second-line Apelia equipment dates to the late 60s-early 70s, in real-world time, so it would fit.

Speaking of this, there was a proposal (F-4 FVS) for a swing wing Phantom. The wings got moved from the the bottom to shoulder mount, with improvments to landing speed and manueverability. There is some precedent for an aircraft being designed and sold for foreign military use, but it's usually stuff that never goes in service in the originating nation's military. Even then, being used by their own military is a good selling point, and helps with foreing sales.

Swing wing designs aren't to save space on carrier decks. It's always easier to just have the wings fold. It's less stressful on the joint that swing wing. It is good for improving both top speed and approach speed. Another downside is that it's hard to stick munitions on the moving wing sections, so most munitions end up in or on the fuselage, or under the wing glove.

Actually, the F-4 FVS is the version I'm basing this on. TimothyC did sterling service helping me find obscure aircraft designs to base my military on, and I'm not sure I've acknowledged him adequately, but this is one of them.

Then again I'd be perfectly happy to just fly an F-4 clone outright. It's clumsy and bulky compared to modern aircraft; it only persists in Umerian service because it can carry nine tons of munitions while no other Umerian fighter can carry more than two or three.

There's probably a twin-engine bomber somewhere in the progression that I haven't included yet that can do so, but I doubt it could fly off carriers and it's bound to be less capable of defending itself air-to-air than an F-4 is.

[Eternal_Freedom]

To answer a point for a little upthread, yeah Orion wasn't exactly a major player in the Great WAr. We were heavily involved, but more against the Britonian colonies and garrison forces.

[Force Lord]

Granadia was busy with the First Four-Year Plan during the 1936-1940 phase. Said plan was to prepare Granadia for total war in the south and east.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I've got a preliminary OrBat up. I should note it is preliminary, and subject to change. That's why I didn't include numbers, since I'm not sure how much I will actually have yet. Got to work that out really.

Also...while the navy is split to each Island, imagine it more like the 1st/2nd/3rd/etc. fleets, instead of full scale navies formed into a super-fleet.

[The Romulan Republic]

My OrBat is slowly coming along, though I'm not sure about the numbers.

Edit: It turns out that the name I used for a fighter, the Golden Eagle, is the name of a real fighter. I have to think of a new name.

[madd0ct0r]

My orbat is drifting a little.

I know I want low level conscription, and an institutional corps focused on disaster work. In times of war, the corps report to the military, in times of other crisis, it's the other way around. Cross training and mixed training are encouraged - an infantry soldier is expected to know what to do with a sand bag, and a corps man is expected to be able to strip and maintain a rifle.

So branchs:
Army, mostly defensive, some mortars and tanks, experimental hovercraft apcs
Navy - Brown water, main job is chasing fish poachers away. 8 frigates, large number of small river craft.
Air Force - minimal. most expensive and least useful in defence (since outgunned aircraft can't keep the skys)

Land Corps -
Arms - large body of conscripts, used for things like roads, bridges ditch and embankment repair. The access to this muscle has delayed mechanization improvements with old farts in the parliment blathering about 'character development'. Modern roads and bridges is starting to change this.
Water - again, a large body of conscripts, with light boats, a couple of hospital ships, supply ships and their ilk. Has experimental solar barges converted from old tankers.
Air - better funded then the air force - search and resuce helicopters, lots of work going into loitering drones.

I guess I need to work out conscription levels, and budget.

[Steve]

I don't think the sequence works. You need something else to make sense of it, especially since you plainly do not have Klavostan as this great nation dominating its continent. You should rather IMO put it this way - to continue the war, Nippon needed resources, most likely minerals and oil. The only way to get these was Fuso. To get Fuso, they needed to have Cascadia out of the way and keep them focused elsewhere. To do that, they turned towards Klavostan.

That actually works just as well, so I'm sold on it. I figure Klavostan had a hefty price tag; recognition of conquering the Cascadian states below the Colorado and the Rio and conquest of Patagonia, and probably Britonian economic concessions in their South American colonies. The fact that such an alliance would, presumably, swiftly lead to at least some Klavostani battle squadrons showing up in Britonia and giving them the advantage again was enough to secure Britonian support, but would be spoiled by two things: Cascadian victory in the Battle of the Asturians with the loss of two Klavostani dreadnought-battleships and others being damaged (notably, the best of the lost Klavostani ships is lost due to a Cascadian torpedo bomber from the CRS Enterprise, which was acting as fleet support) and the interception of their battle squadron by Rheinlander wolfpacks due to the Klavostani naval code being broken (Cascadia breaks it and shares the codebreaking with Rheinland), causing the loss or critical damaging of several more ships. As a result, instead of a balance-tilting Klavostani detachment to the Britonian-Nipponese fleet, it's a damaged battle fleet that will take up vital yard space if they're to be restored to usefulness.

(Note: the actual deployment of Klavostani ships will only be on agreement with Klavo and yourself, it's just an interesting possibility in my head).

I don't think you quite understand what I am hoping to achieve with the bomber offensive. I want it to be the thing that destroyed the population centers of a nation that had once been settled continously for thousands of years. I want it to be the thing that forces Rheinland to give up its very heartland and relocate even further north. Which is why we now got the north dominating the south when for most of the history it was exactly the opposite. Even with the Rhein valley boom industrializing the north in the 19th century the south was still the most populous one.

Essentially, the pyrrhic victory by Rheinland in the 80 years war pretty much reduced the south to the desolate wasteland it now largely is. Winning, the nation lost its better half and turned from a nation on the cusp of being the world power into "just" another large power. That is the tragedy of Rheinland and of the people on both sides who refused to negotiate for peace.

Okay. But I'm not sure why you felt I was undermining that? It sounds like it'll have an interesting effect on Rheinland's behavior at game-start, especially with the country still not recovered from the war.

Works fine enough, just make sure that the death ride we discussed earlier still works.

That would still be intact. You're talking about the death ride when Rheinland was invading those western islands in prep for invading Nippon proper?

[madd0ct0r]

Noting how Qatar uses Al-Jazeera to further it's own interests, which countries have a special interest in the media?

[Thanas]

That would still be intact. You're talking about the death ride when Rheinland was invading those western islands in prep for invading Nippon proper?

Yeah, either then or when the mainland was invaded. Whatever works better.

Noting how Qatar uses Al-Jazeera to further it's own interests, which countries have a special interest in the media?

Rheinland has two state TV channels but they and all other media of Rheinland are free to report on what they like.

[Siege]

There's at least one and probably more satellite stations (haven't settled on names yet) based in San Dorado that beam media all over the world. These stations invariably blend news, advertisements, entertainment and propaganda to a point where it's nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The city is a major producer of pulpy trash entertainment designed to appeal to the largest mass audience, and almost everything transmitted will be slanted (sometimes subtly, sometimes less so) to promote the interests of the largest corporations.

[Esquire]

Apelia has the opposite of an interest in the media, actually - thanks to cultural taboos*, editorials are viewed as slightly rude to highly offensive, so Apelian news reports are very, very bare-bones. For example, our coverage of the whole missing Malaysian plane situation would have gone something like "plane disappears over ocean, passengers feared dead, cause not known at this time. More details should they become available and prove important," repeated maybe twice.

*Namely, a huge emphasis on personal relationships instead of institutional ones. If you want to know what's going on in Cascadian politics, you ask your coworker, who asks his Cascadian sister-in-law, who calls her family back home to ask around instead of turning on the television. A friend can offer you information s/he thinks you might want to know, but a stranger doing so on the air would be very presumptuous. Businesses which need to know about foreign events tend to operate massive networks of correspondents and contacts, giving private companies a slight edge in competitive fields since they can trade on family relationships developed over generations.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Orion has the Orion Broadcasting Service and at least two independent TV networks. Being well-educated scientists we see the news as a place for reporting news, not opinions.

[The Romulan Republic]

Corona's media is mostly unregulated (freedom of speech is protected by the constitution) but I suspect Corona will be flooded by San Dorado's media, despite the dislike of a lot of the locals.

[Esquire]

Okay, wow, that got out of hand. I've got a history post up in the OOB thread - RogueIce and Romulan Republic, feel free to let me know if you disagree with anything in the last section. I put together a quick version of me trying to steal Corona's colonies like we talked about the other week. Careful, though, it's a lot longer than I originally intended.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'll check it out.

[Esquire]

Fantastic, let me know what you think.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm concerned about the battleships. Corona's navy doesn't have battleships or carriers.

Would it be credible for a navy with nothing stronger than cruisers and submarines to defeat a small fleet of old battleships?

[Esquire]

Fairly easy, I'd think, especially if you had any ships on the larger end of the cruiser scale. A new heavy cruiser would probably beat an obsolete battleship, and all the modern Apelian ships were off fighting the Shinrans.

[The Romulan Republic]

Hmm.

I could see Corona exploiting that. Ie boasting "Our heroic navy defeated a fleet of battleships." while not bothering to mention to the uninformed public how obsolete those battleships were.