StarDestroyer.Net BBS

For the Moderators consideration:

Pre-War OOB's of the Border states.

I need a decision on how much of this has been destroyed in combat and how much remains.

The OOB's:

The Republic of Sargonia:

Navy: None

Air Force:

32-4th Generation Fighters
40-3rd Generation Fighters
2-Tankers

Army:
180-MBT 2nd Gen
360-AFV [non-MBT] 2nd Gen
72-Medium Towed Artillery
72-Field Towed Artillery
96-Medium Air Defense Artillery
12000-Conscript Infantry

The Independent Republic of Sjenska:

Navy: None

Air Force:

40-4th Gen Fighters
80-3rd Gen Fighters
4-Tactical Bombers
2-Tankers
16-Trainers

Army:

240-MBT 2nd Gen
480-AFV [non-MBT] 2nd Gen
48-Medium SP Artillery
72-Medium Towed Artillery
144-Field Towed Artillery
16-Medium Air Defense Artillery
48-Light Air Defense Artillery
48-Attack Helicopters
16000-Conscript Infantry

The Former Zagor Empire:

Navy: None

Air Force:

120 3rd Generation Fighters

Army:

360-MBT 2nd Gen
480-AFV [non-MBT] 2nd Gen
64-Field SP Artillery
108-Medium Towed Artillery
20000-Conscript Infantry

The Republic of Rohan
Note: It was not involved in a war, peaceful annexation into the USSR.

Navy:

4 Corvettes

Air Force:

80 3rd Generation Fighters
2-Tankers
24-Trainers

Army:
360-MBT 2nd Gen
720-AFV [non-MBT] 2nd Gen
64-Field SP Artillery
108-Field Towed Artillery
32-Medium Air Defense Artillery
24-Attack Helicopter
10000-Conscript Infantry

I'm assuming you've been keeping an eye on the situation and therefore that you know who attacked who. If not, ask and I'll direct you to the relevant posts.

Beowulf wrote:Ah, so you apparently missed the fact that we still bought SSNs in huge numbers.

Hmm, so my decision to focus on ASW warfare as a primary driver for the design of my SSANs was the correct one. Thanks.

I have 34 Seawolf class subs alone.

Wow; that's more than the USN ever dreamed of having, even during the Cold War.

Recognizing that you might try some sort of rocket launch torpedo-jitsu, I made sure to include the fact that Sea Lances were developed.

Ah, how nice.

The conventional Sea Lance can only reach out to 32 nautical miles; and drops a Mark 50 lightweight torpedo.

My Sea Stallions can lift a Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo to about 70+ nautical miles.

Your shooters are outranged by quite a bit.

You've assumed stupidity on the part of the combatant commanders, going "Oh! CVBGs! They'll be operating alone, without any other other several hundred MESS ships, clearing the water of SSANs!"

I'm going by what the players have been doing; operating their CVBGs piecemeal one by one. Secondly, I don't think you really know how damn hard it is to sanitize an area of enemy submarines, especially ones quieter than an Ohio.

Unless you get lucky and get a hit on active sonar, or someone drops a wrench....

As opposed to the realistic method of the aforementioned mass of SSNs combing the area for your damned large subs, along with surface ships busily pinging away.

I don't think you truly understand submarine operations at all. You can't just assign your billion SSNs to go and sweep the seas clean of my SSANs. You have to keep several in reserve, to guard against the IRT; CSR, and Japanistan. They might try SOMETHING.

Then you have to keep some in reserve for sanitization duties at your ports and
naval bases to keep an enemy SSN from sneaking in and sinking your ships at
anchor.

With such a huge fleet; several will be in overhaul at any one time; while on the other hand, since Shepistan set the date and time of action, their overhaul cycles could be coordinated to put as many boats to sea as possible.

Finally, each SSN needs a clearly defined kill box to operate in. Otherwise, your own submarines will be torpedoing your own submarines. Submarines don't have IFF transponders. So that means you have to draw an arbitrary box in the ocean, assign it to a single submarine, and then restrict all other surface ships or submarines from that box.

Why?

Because there's no way for your surface fleet to know that the SSN they found is friendly; they'll attack it because it's an unknown submarine in wartime.

Sure, bistatic radars can detect stealth aircraft, but can they track them?

The bistatic radar alerts you to the proximity of a stealth aircraft; allowing you to localize their rough area; which you then sweep with lots of radiated power, or to point metric length radars at.

Stealth is not some magic bullet.

You defeat it through three ways:

1.) A forementioned bistatic/multistatic arrays.

2.) Sheer power; which increases the signal strength of the return.

3.) Metric length radars -- the RAM coatings and shapes of stealth craft work great against centimetric radars; but are horrible against metric length radars; and you can't make RAM that stops metric wavelengths and still be light enough to fit onto a plane -- to do that you would need a fundamental breakthrough in physics and material design to get teh orders of magnitude of reduction against metric wavelengths needed.

Guess what almost all long range search radars are? Yup. Metric; because the metric wavelengths are less affected by range and atmospheric attenuation than the shorter centimetric wavelengths, allowing longer ranges for less radiated power.

MKSheppard wrote:

Beowulf wrote:Ah, so you apparently missed the fact that we still bought SSNs in huge numbers.

Hmm, so my decision to focus on ASW warfare as a primary driver for the design of my SSANs was the correct one. Thanks.

I have 34 Seawolf class subs alone.

Wow; that's more than the USN ever dreamed of having, even during the Cold War.

And? If it weren't for the fact that they came up with the idea of making a "cheaper" sub, the rest of the 688s would probably be replaced with Seawolfs as well, or another, better design later down the road.

Recognizing that you might try some sort of rocket launch torpedo-jitsu, I made sure to include the fact that Sea Lances were developed.

Ah, how nice.

The conventional Sea Lance can only reach out to 32 nautical miles; and drops a Mark 50 lightweight torpedo.

My Sea Stallions can lift a Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo to about 70+ nautical miles.

Your shooters are outranged by quite a bit.

The limitation in range is due primarily to fact that the sonars can't cope with longer. The solution is to salvo them around the projected location.

Designation systems wrote:At some time in the mid-1980s, a conventional alternative to the nuclear payload was proposed, too. This was to be the then new MK 50 torpedo, known as ALWT (Advanced Light-Weight Torpedo). The projected conventionally armed submarine- and surface-launched missiles were designated as UUM-125B and RUM-125B, respectively. Because of the limited search range of the torpedo, effective range of the RUM/UUM-125B would be reduced to about 65 km (35 nm).

There's no physical reason why the torpedo can't be lofted to maximum range. Sure, not as individually as effective, but quantity has a quality all its own.

You've assumed stupidity on the part of the combatant commanders, going "Oh! CVBGs! They'll be operating alone, without any other other several hundred MESS ships, clearing the water of SSANs!"

I'm going by what the players have been doing; operating their CVBGs piecemeal one by one. Secondly, I don't think you really know how damn hard it is to sanitize an area of enemy submarines, especially ones quieter than an Ohio.

Unless you get lucky and get a hit on active sonar, or someone drops a wrench....

Lots of ships gives lots of chances to be lucky.

As opposed to the realistic method of the aforementioned mass of SSNs combing the area for your damned large subs, along with surface ships busily pinging away.

I don't think you truly understand submarine operations at all. You can't just assign your billion SSNs to go and sweep the seas clean of my SSANs. You have to keep several in reserve, to guard against the IRT; CSR, and Japanistan. They might try SOMETHING.

Then you have to keep some in reserve for sanitization duties at your ports and
naval bases to keep an enemy SSN from sneaking in and sinking your ships at
anchor.

With such a huge fleet; several will be in overhaul at any one time; while on the other hand, since Shepistan set the date and time of action, their overhaul cycles could be coordinated to put as many boats to sea as possible.

Finally, each SSN needs a clearly defined kill box to operate in. Otherwise, your own submarines will be torpedoing your own submarines. Submarines don't have IFF transponders. So that means you have to draw an arbitrary box in the ocean, assign it to a single submarine, and then restrict all other surface ships or submarines from that box.

Why?

Because there's no way for your surface fleet to know that the SSN they found is friendly; they'll attack it because it's an unknown submarine in wartime.

Thank you for stating the obvious.

Sure, bistatic radars can detect stealth aircraft, but can they track them?

The bistatic radar alerts you to the proximity of a stealth aircraft; allowing you to localize their rough area; which you then sweep with lots of radiated power, or to point metric length radars at.

Stealth is not some magic bullet.

You defeat it through three ways:

1.) A forementioned bistatic/multistatic arrays.

2.) Sheer power; which increases the signal strength of the return.

3.) Metric length radars -- the RAM coatings and shapes of stealth craft work great against centimetric radars; but are horrible against metric length radars; and you can't make RAM that stops metric wavelengths and still be light enough to fit onto a plane -- to do that you would need a fundamental breakthrough in physics and material design to get teh orders of magnitude of reduction against metric wavelengths needed.

Guess what almost all long range search radars are? Yup. Metric; because the metric wavelengths are less affected by range and atmospheric attenuation than the shorter centimetric wavelengths, allowing longer ranges for less radiated power.

Ok, and how big is a metric wave length radar? Last I checked, they were generally the size of a small office building, minimum. Stealth is not a magic bullet, but it significantly reduces normal radar ranges. So lets say you get a paint off a F-22 in multi-static mode, and bump up the power so you can continue tracking. Quadrupling the output power will only increase the detection range by the fourth root of the power increase, or 40%. So lets say it can detect a F-16 at 200 nmi. A F-15 has a RCS of about 10 m^2. A F-22 has a RCS of .001 m^2 (best guess from the only public statement of the size of a marble). So you'd normally be able to detect at about 20 nmi. The extra 40% range only brings you to 28 nmi. Meanwhile, your flying bi-static array will need to be flying distances apart from each other on the order of the same distance they're trying to detect at.

Beowulf wrote:Ok, and how big is a metric wave length radar? Last I checked, they were generally the size of a small office building, minimum.

Going to bed now, but I couldn't let that statement pass without an immediate rebuttal.



See that? That's a metric-wavelength radar. Wow. It's so big.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but punitive limits on military size were one of the things that pissed off the Germans enough to allow Hitler to become their leader. We don't the same thing happening in Shepistan, with Shep getting deposed by hard-liners who want to continue to fight against the MESS.

The gist of my proposal:

- Army limited to no more than 150,000 active-duty personnel with no more than two tank divisions and two airmobile divisions; no airborne units allowed
- Gendarmerie limited to no more than 75,000 personnel and not allowed to have any hardware larger or more heavily armed than armored cars, small patrol boats, or basic utility helicopters
- Air force limited to no more than six wings of interceptors, with each wing having eight twelve-plane squadrons for a total of 576 interceptors, and no more than two wings each of tactical and strategic transports; no strategic bombers allowed
- Navy limited to no more than six cruisers of maximum 10,000 tons displacement and no more than twelve SSKs; no SSNs allowed; no limit on destroyers or smaller surface craft; only aircraft allowed are helicopters and prop-driven maritime patrol craft

Any problems with it? Any loopholes that need closing off?

As to what should be done with what gets cut from Shep's inventory should the treaty go into effect, just sell it all. No need to let it go to waste by scrapping, and the extra cash can go towards reconstruction efforts. Swords to plowshares, as it were.

It'll be figured out as it's figured out.

If you want to continue, we can simply state that Japanistan and Canissia have destroyed one another in a violent, brief war, and that's that.

Coyote wrote:If you want to continue, we can simply state that Japanistan and Shepistan have destroyed one another in a violent, brief war, and that's that.

Fixed.

Dudes, why did you ruin the game again?

That aside, "golden subs" like Seawolf were a hard strain on the USN budget even in Cold War times, which is why they were cut short - and the US has a GDP and military budget much greater than any of our nations.

As for downing and/or pinging stealth aircraft, that's not impossible at all, and Yugoslavia is a prime example.

P.S. This world should NOT be ruined, or most of the players will lose interest.

I call upon the Moderators to forcibly stop the war between Shepistan and the MESS and arrange some sort of truce.

P.S. Also, if Shep wants a war, the CSR can always do it (something like the Argentine conflict, and we'll see from there). If the MESS is no fun, perhaps I could be his sparring partner in the wargame (darn my capsized military, but it's still more or less powerful)

So, as the dust settles, when the fuck are we?

I'd say due to extremely violent fighting for the last 1-2 months, Shepistan lies in ruins while the MESS forces suffered the losses Shep managed to inflict on them. End of war, Shep is overthrown a-la Wilhelm, Shepistan submits to enemy forces. Insurgency starts in the nation while it falls to economic abyss.

I am generally opposed to moderators stepping in because other players were dissatisfied with how one of them was creative and ingenious enough to try some new, surprising tactics. Guys, why don't you just use your long-range bomber forces and cruise missiles to mine every single Shepistani port? His SSANs have to resupply somewhere: just run a series of airstrikes dumping thousands of mines around his ports.

Now, getting back on topic: punishing a player for being creative with his forces isn't exactly cool. Face it: Shep guessed correctly what the MESS would do, designed his subs around this and deployed them. He even agreed to lose one sub to MESS SSNs, and may agree to loose more if you are a bit more creative with what you got. So far, you just plain ignored his subs in the opening days of the war,going straight to bombing his industry instead.

Of course, most people don't seem to want and play this war out, since they feel the sheer amount of knowledge Shep displays will easily outdo them, and frankly: some (moi included) find it quite boring after a while. So, IMHO, what a moderator should do, is declare the winners and losses on both sides and ascribe a timeline. Then we can continue the game from the sinking of that Tian Xia carrier, and engage in proper peace negotiations once the deadline comes.

I agree, but Marina resigned from moderator duties.

I also agree with the fact that while wargame got boring, Shep's thinking should be worth a little more. He tried the best he could since he knew it would come to this.

I also think that the players not involved in the Shep-OD war could comprise a Mod Council now that Marina resigned, and salvage the game. I spent much more effort in designing my nation this time, I won't stop.

Oh, another thing. FASTA roll call

Frankly, it appear I didn't make any notes

I am reasonably certain the following countries are contributing:

- PeZookia (duh) - 7 billion
- Byzantium - 20 (??) billion
- Shroomania - 20 (??) billion
- San Dorado (unknown amount)
- Vineyards (???) (unknown amount)
- Canissia (unknown amount)
- Cascadia, Wilkonia, IRT: tracking stations, contract work

I remember calculating the cash and figuring out we'll have enough monies invested by 2011 to finance the Moon missions, but i'll need to do it properly.

She resigned because inevitably, if we end up with war with Japanistan, we will nukes, bioweapons, and stuff flying everywhere.

And the game ends.

Stas Bush wrote:I agree, but Marina resigned from moderator duties.

She did? I must've missed it...

Well, that sucks...

We could have a vote, then. Somebody will have to propose an outcome, though.

PeZook wrote:I am generally opposed to moderators stepping in because other players were dissatisfied with how one of them was creative and ingenious enough to try some new, surprising tactics. Guys, why don't you just use your long-range bomber forces and cruise missiles to mine every single Shepistani port? His SSANs have to resupply somewhere: just run a series of airstrikes dumping thousands of mines around his ports.

Now, getting back on topic: punishing a player for being creative with his forces isn't exactly cool. Face it: Shep guessed correctly what the MESS would do, designed his subs around this and deployed them. He even agreed to lose one sub to MESS SSNs, and may agree to loose more if you are a bit more creative with what you got. So far, you just plain ignored his subs in the opening days of the war,going straight to bombing his industry instead.

Of course, most people don't seem to want and play this war out, since they feel the sheer amount of knowledge Shep displays will easily outdo them, and frankly: some (moi included) find it quite boring after a while. So, IMHO, what a moderator should do, is declare the winners and losses on both sides and ascribe a timeline. Then we can continue the game from the sinking of that Tian Xia carrier, and engage in proper peace negotiations once the deadline comes.

Sure, Shep had lots of good ideas, but let's face it, not everyone has the time to come down and scribble something, or make a move.

As I mentioned in the other thread, that I motioned that we impose a rule upon wargaming players to RP their own actions and not others.

Because quite frankly, we were working on a response to Shep's submarines, but next minute we find another carrier sunk.

And since I'm not involved in the war, you can't expect me to write anything, right?

You are all horrible people.

PeZook wrote:We could have a vote, then. Somebody will have to propose an outcome, though.

I think we need to form a council when things like this come up, a group that everyone agrees to the impartiality of at the time, and they get to decide the outcome.

edit: PeZook:

Until the Pathogen data gets released, I'll be contributing 18.6 Million Dollars (Roughly Greece's Contribution to the ESA.

P.S. So what if Japanistan goes batshit and starts a war with the MESS?

What will it do? ICBMs don't exist, and lobbing large amounts of other agents will not do the same amount of destruction as nukes, which don't exist so far. Japanistan doesn't have a bomber force to devastate the MESS homeland, and the more nations he needs to attack, the more spread-out his force will be and the greater are his losses.

Japanistan will just lose lots of it's forces in a war with the MESS, and the MESS, Japanistan and Shepistan will see their militaries heavily damaged. End of story.

"Biodeath everywhere"? Regardless of actual belligerents in the conflict? In that case we should have never let Skimmer play in the first place, or bio- and chem-kill him first just as soon as the game started, later augmented by nuking him with salted bombs and absolute disregard for his citizens.

I say we wipe Shepistan and Japanistan off the map by act of god or Q or something.

Skim is by far more rational than Shep. I mean, comparatively, he didn't even lift a finger in Game 1.

Lebensraum!

Logical Response!

Shadow + Hitler = Shitler

Ok, here's my proposal. Last I checked, there was to be a conference in Cascadia. My proposal is this: We all go to the conference, Skimmer and Shep included, to go there and flesh out what we intend to do, how we are going to keep our distance from each other, and to propose a mechanism by which before any war starts, all parties are obligated to sit down and talk face to face.

Also, side note: Make Cascadia a neutral territory.