Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Nadaka]

Note: the update will be completed tomorrow night. I am almost done, but I need to get some sleep for work in the morning.

[RAM]

I think that the command airship would require carrier airships for rapid air0defence. There is nothing quite like being dropped from altitude right next to it to get a plane defending something quickly. Their performance could be boosted using low fuel capacity as they would be dedicated carrier-defenders...

I would have thought that we could probably get our 40mm up to 1 round a second and that would probably be sufficient for the light tank role, creating a new 25mm seems sort of redundant.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Interesting how the war will go. My speculations

Capia's is proud of its navy  that consists of 3 5000t cruisers, 5 3000t frigates, 10 1000t destroyers, and no more than 20 200t ships, it has nothing in the same class as our PT boats. Its airforce appears to be at least 1000 biplanes of the old design used by Morovia purchased starting before our conflict and accelerating afterwards. Its infantry is approximately 35k with extesive artillery support by 50mm, 75mm and 100mm  cannons. They have tanks, but they are slower than ours.

Likely advancement since that time
1) Few more naval vessels
2) More artillery, maybe something heavier
3) New tank with powerful gun (They are artillery based nation after all)
4) AA guns
5) New aircraft roughly equal to zephyrs

Naval war:
I hope that we'll do a nice initial blow... If not all we can hope for is coastal guns, fleet of Righteous, new subs and air support... Our navy is not only outnumbered, it's badly outdated and optimized for ASW not for surface combat

Land war: I expect heavy losses to enemy superior artillery. We have no modern howitzers and they surely do (naval power must have good guns). We are likely behind for a decade or more designwise in that field (that makes our attempt to make uberATgun even more doubtful, as we got no enough experience) Tanks, I dunno... Think we have advantage number-wise, but not sure about quality
Infantry I expect that we are ahead here, SVA-10s, SMGs, simple RPGs.. All looks nicely. Add mobility to that... What I dislike - too few mortars and, especially, grenades ( Would really prefer factory making it to factory making SMGs)

Air war
Here I expect that we will rule as we are ahead for years. Zephyrs should rape their  older biplanes, New fighter should rape zephyr equivalents, fleet of older biplanes will work in ground attack and drop supplies roles... Sadly we haven't managed to build something to use paratroopers on large scale, only some small airships. And we can't deploy gilders at all(Not if our new fighters are powerful enough to tow them, something I doubt) Thanks to the "important" new tank chassis, AT gun and uberbattlebus projects for severely limiting our paratrooping like that.

To RAM
__________________
We need 25mm for many others projects, and our future light tanks  shouldn't worry much about enemy tanks, so lighter, faster turret, for dual AA\ground support role is nice to have.
And 40mm gun is absolutely unsuitable for arming fighters. That's not a dogfighting weapon

As for carrier defenders... It's too hard to supply modern fighters like that. And docking midair will be almost impossible , you need to match speeds to dock, but stalling speed of fighters is far lower than max spped of airships. The best thing possible - fighters will be attached to carriers to save fuel, but will still need to land on airbases and may be reattached only when carrier is landed... but such scheme gives no clear advantage over fighters  shifts

[RAM]

The supply issues shouldn't be much more serious than any airship supply issues. The issue with the fighters is figuring out a docking system. We can create very light, relatively low-speed fighters for the task. Building an actual runway would likely be impractical, although if it was only catering to light aircraft then it might be possible using light materials. One could try some sort of bag, hook, or net if the aircraft we specifically designed to use it, or even some sort of railing that the aircraft uses as a runway but threads through a device on top of the aeroplane. Once you had such a device, then you could try to incorporate it into resupply efforts so that the airships would only have to dock to collect crew.

[3_14159]

Land war: I expect heavy losses to enemy superior artillery. We have no modern howitzers and they surely do (naval power must have good guns). We are likely behind for a decade or more designwise in that field (that makes our attempt to make uberATgun even more doubtful, as we got no enough experience) Tanks, I dunno... Think we have advantage number-wise, but not sure about quality
Infantry I expect that we are ahead here, SVA-10s, SMGs, simple RPGs.. All looks nicely. Add mobility to that... What I dislike - too few mortars and, especially, grenades ( Would really prefer factory making it to factory making SMGs)

Well, we also have the intelligence about Morovia with "Their new Tank Destroyer is in the same class as our K-1, and shares some common patterns with the Capian tank, one was obviously based off the other.", so probably slower than the K-1 and similarly armoured. Armed, we will have to see. Infantry, I agree with but I dislike our still low numbers of armoured cars.

Air war
Here I expect that we will rule as we are ahead for years. Zephyrs should rape their  older biplanes, New fighter should rape zephyr equivalents, fleet of older biplanes will work in ground attack and drop supplies roles... Sadly we haven't managed to build something to use paratroopers on large scale, only some small airships. And we can't deploy gilders at all(Not if our new fighters are powerful enough to tow them, something I doubt) Thanks to the "important" new tank chassis, AT gun and uberbattlebus projects for severely limiting our paratrooping like that.

Agree on the air war. Additionally, that will probably allow us to partly neutralize their artillery and tanks.

What I plan to propose next turn

Use unfinished airship aircraft carrier design and re-purpose it as flying headquaters

Fit radar in it. Fit powerful radio room. Add room for HQ stuff. Add machnegun turrets for it's protection. (but it should be protected by fighters, always), add equipment to allow it to dock helicopters.  ( to supply airship midair, mostly) Have gilders attached to it as the emergency escape option for the staff, abandon aircraft carrier role because that's not viable for heavier aircrafts

Our very own low tech AWACS

I'll critique the HQ elements in there. My vision would more be an intelligence and coordination platform, with the actual HQ on the ground, usually. Generals are hard to replace. Although,the mobility... hm.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

HQ doesn't have to hold generals, but it should have some officers to coordinate air war, mostly defensive air war. I'd prefer to have few of that airships and keep them deep in own territory where only long range fighters can pose a threat (and those should be intercepted before they reach the airship)

Problem is that conventional escort may not work, because Airships are damn large targets and enemy may easily opt to arm it's fighters with long range inaccurate stuff like rockets or high caliber guns... Main form of protection for those airships aren't close escorts, but interceptions of whatever that tries to come near to it

[tryrar]

....I'm trying to think of things we really need right now, and all I can think of is improving our sonar detection ranges. Anyone else have ideas on things we need? Obviously we'll have a clearer picture after the update with the opening salvos against Capia, but in general, what other things could we add/improve?

[Ukrainian Ranger]

I think we'll have some Capian designs to reverse engineer, like 100mm guns that I hope to  copy for our own use

Also, I think maintaining advantage in air is what we need concentrate on,

Upgrading current engine to make it lighter and more fuel efficient while retaining same shape and power will boost all of our modern aircrafts ( fighter, dive bomber and 4 engined monster) without serious design efforts

Developing helicopters is also a perspective direction, especially for the Navy, it's definitely more easy to make a helicopter carrier than aircraft carrier

[tryrar]

True, though we'll still want aircraft carriers

[Ukrainian Ranger]

And we need nuclear bomb or two...

[tryrar]

heh. Yeah, while that'd be nice, that's ONE tech I'll say "OH HELL NO" to

[RAM]

Helicopters certainly would be useful, but they are a little, slightly really, redundant with airships. Early models would likely be very vulnerable also, but still useful...

Well, my artillery proposal would likely look like this:
A rifled howitzer with a calibre of 320mm. Use two heavy metal engineers to explore superior materials and structures in construction.
 Attempt to use a hollow structure or puncturing to lighten the barrel. Feel free to produce multiple prototypes.
 Attempt to include an ammunition feed to allow later rounds to be prepared while the gun is being loaded.
 Include an armoured skirt to protect the crew from counter-battery shrapnel and small-arms fire.
Priorities from highest to lowest:
 Capable of being practically relocated.
 High-explosive shells.
 Greater than 25 kilometre range.
 > 3 rounds per 2 minutes.
 < 900 square metre accuracy.
 Shrapnel resistant.
 < 30 kilometre range
 < 2 rounds per minute
 > 625 square metre accuracy.
 Armour-piercing shells.
 Self-contained and towable.
 Mosin Nagant resistant.
 < 40 kilometre range.
 Sonic Shells.
 < 4 rounds per minute.
 > 400 square metre accuracy.
 Self-propelled.
 Air-fired GVS-14 resistant.
 Air-burst shrapnel shells.
 < 60 kilometre range.

Thoughts?

[Taricus]

...Would be better as an improved ship gun RAM. That kind of caliber is kinda impractical for land warfare.

[tryrar]

Agreed. I'd rather go for an improved 160mm to mount in the Hammers if you're wanting to go for better artillery(bonus being we can replace all current 160mm used in our navy with the new ones)

Edit: Speaking of which, I'm also gonna re-add the Glorious refit. We have the drydock space for it, and it'll definitely extend service life of our largest ships

Edit: NVM, reading fail, since by my count the refit idea went through

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Capable of being practically relocated.

That's a problem... The only way to practically relocate 320mm gun - put it on the ship. Another is railroad, but it's not a very  practical in fact
This thing has a size of a house. That's a 280mm gun