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[Happerry]

This game takes place in fictional Universe, almost entirely, but not quite, unlike ours. The year is 1942, and the second world war rages. The German obsession with rocketry, long quietly mocked by other nations, has proven its worth beyond its founders wildest dreams. Rocket powered Komet fighters have proven devastating to RAF bombing raids, and the British Isles have been terrorized since the war begin by Flying Bombs.

The US Army's long dismissal of the military potential of the German rocket programs is proving dire and costly... and then the first German Atmospheric Skip Bomber struck Washington itself.

Luckily for Army High Command, one member had seen the threat, and had long been funding the Roswell Project, headed by Goddard, mainly through skimming the money off other, more popular projects. With the sudden and repeated proof of the dangers of German Rocketry, the Project was quickly used as the core for a new military service. The US Army Space Corps.

While the Roswell Project had managed to successfully make several manned launches, they lacked any space adapted weapons, space combat adapted designs, or even pilots trained for zero gravity combat. Still, this was more then anyone else who wasn't German had.

Today is the first day of your new job, as the unlucky person put in charge of the Space Corps, and expected to lead them into, at the very least, preventing the Germans from continuing to drop high powered bombs onto American soil.

Spoiler: Installations Under your command (click to show/hide)

Various administrative and research buildings
A small launchpad, able to service four craft at once.
A small factory  [Up to 400 Production Points]
A test range

Spoiler: People Under your command (click to show/hide)

-Design team Alpha
    -10 Novice engineering teams
-Design team Beta
    -5 Novice engineering teams
-Design team Gamma
    -5 Novice engineering teams
-Design team Delta
    -5 Novice engineering teams

Spoiler: Our Glorious Space Force (click to show/hide)

-10* Single Person Test Vehicles.

Designer notes:
I will be using plenty of abstractions and best guesses. So when giving details, please say what's special about them.

I will occasionally come in with demands from the government and military to develop a general/specific type of thing. You are otherwise permitted to design any kind of hardware you like. Note that the more outlandish technologies you propose may be impossible, have severe drawbacks, or take far more resources than you have to develop. Even for entirely reasonable projects, there will be some element of chance where what you want to produce will end up costing more or less than you anticipated, or what you get may not exactly match your proposed design.

Design of new ships is a large project, design of new large weaponry is a medium project, and modifications of either and small weaponry design are a small project.

Rules
1. All proposals must be bolded
2. All proposals must have an unique number
     -In case of accidental duplication, please split in 6a and 6b, or add one to the end of the queue. Don't move up everything else. That causes confusion
3. All proposals must be marked as a Large, Medium or Small project.
4. Design proposals begin at 1, for each year
     -Proposals continued from last year will be placed in italics, and include the year before the number. (Only do this for proposals that were worked upon).
5. Production proposals begin at A, for each year.
6. Other proposals, like reorganization of the team or political war plan suggestions will be marked using the Greek alphabet
7. Proposals and Votes are unlimited. Please don't abuse this.
8. Each proposal that doesn't follow these rules will be terminated with extreme prejudice.
Example: 1. I propose we mount lasers on space sharks
                         1943:1 Seeing as the project wasn't finished last year due to a shark shortage, I propose we continue with mutated Orbital Bass

1: All rules for proposals apply except the following.
2: Modifications to proposals will have a number in the format of proposal.sub-proposal.
3: A modification may be supportive (default) or a counter (must be explicit).
4: You can vote for a Proposal and it's supportive subproposal, but not for a proposal and it's counter subproposal.
1.1 I think we should go all the way and mount the National Ignition Facility on the head of a sharkasourus.
1.2 I counter propose that we should instead create lasers that shoot beams composed of sharks.

Format for votes
1: you must specify the proposal number explicitly.
2: you must use the word vote.
3: Each user should make all of their votes with one post if possible
4. You should edit in your vote into the proposal tracker (template below). Always use the latest quoted example.

Spoiler: Proposal tracker (click to show/hide)

1. Short description of proposal here (1 Line max) Votes here. Include first 3 letters of name and add to total number
   1.1 Short description of subproposal here (1 Line max)
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.


A: Short description here
  A.1: Short description of sub proposal here
B:
C:
D:
E:
F:


Alpha: Short description here
  Alpha.1: Short description of sub proposal here
Beta:
Gamma:
Delta:
Epsilon:
Zeta:

[Happerry]

Reserved.

[RAM]

Embrace communism!!!

1. I propose a medium project of developing pressure chambers and heat-resistant flaps to redirect the flow of propellants so as to use our main thrust for steering.
2. I propose the small project of converting a Single Person Test Vehicle into a self-propelled projectile. This will be primarily a research project to determine the difficulties present in maintaining predictable flight-patterns in unmanned vehicles.
3. I propose a medium effort be directed towards researching new fuels to enhance the efficiency of delivering vehicles to space.

[Andres]

((Maybe an example proposal in the OP would help? Anyway, here goes.))

4. I propose a small project to make blowtorches that work in space. This will let us have boarding parties to steal German tech.
5. I propose a small project to make low-penetration guns that work in space. So that our guys can board the Germans and kill/capture them with decreased chance of breaking the valuable insides.

[10ebbor10]

Do note however, that at the moment combat will not occur in space, the silberfogel, which is what the germans are throwing at us, is merely stratospheric, and also a glider with no power to change course. We thus need to develop a system capable of intercepting planes at that altitude.

6. Large project : B-42 Stratospheric Denial Platform

Obviously I vote for this.

Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)

An alternative and enlarged version of the B-29 (whose first flight was in 1942) , this design has an increased wingspan, 2 additional engines, and no defensive weaponry. All payload is instead dedicated to a barrage of rockets which it can throw up in the path of the Silbervogel as it comes in for a bombing run...

The 2 additional engines are mounted in pusher version in the tail to reduce drag.

[Happerry]

Er, let me clarify. The Bomber does have engines and can undertake powered maneuvering. It's just that fuel is, well, a limited resource, so it saved fuel by skipping off the atmosphere a few times to get back around the world to Germany. It approaches at, and is initially launched to, a higher altitude which it descends from in order to gain velocity for the whole skipping thing, and to properly direct its bombs to land on what it wants them to land on. Even if targeting is still limited to 'about the general area of a city' currently.

Anyway, the B-42 modification would be an acceptable project, but it'd have to try intercepting them when the bombers are descending to actually do the whole bombing thing, so it might have limited effectiveness. Probably would be cheaper then a real space ship though.

For best results, you'll also want to research space adapted weapons, as you don't have any right now and just taking stuff designed to work in an atmosphere and throwing it into hard vacuum may have... unexpected results.

(This is set in the verse of a tabletop space combat game, so you can assume you'll actually need space ships sometime.)

Since we had a request for examples...

Example 1 : "I propose creating an adaption of the test launch vehicle for bomber interceptor work. It should mount several machine guns and have the life support needed to linger for several hours out in space, so it can intercept approaching bombers.'
Example 2 : "I propose the adaption of machine gun type X for use in space, for use on the suggested bomber interceptor."
Example 3 : "I propose that design teams look into solar power, so that we are not limited to deadly and unstable liquid fuels for use in our craft."

Currently the Germans have no known actual space fighter designs, but currently no one is shooting at them up there, so... You also don't have any examples or eyewitness reports of the bombers, so you aren't sure exactly how they're designed or if they have defenses. Once you get something up there to shoot at them, this will change.

[OREOSOME]

PTW

[10ebbor10]

How accurate is this going to be. Because if this is quite realistic all weapons we're going to need is a shrapnel bomb, which will be both unavoidable and undefeatable.

[Happerry]

Accuracy rating is 'Nazi Death Disks From The Moon. With Death Rays.'

Shrapnel bombs could be researched, but so can armor, and honestly the small Shrapnel Bombs the current single man craft could carry aren't going to have a large radius of damage. They could be employed, but they really aren't anywhere close to being 'instant death everything' weapons.

(Even if this was a more hard science game, I doubt they'd be instant death of the unavoidable and undefeatable variety. Sure, right next to them would suck, but space is big, shrapnel is small, and each individual shard is unlikely to penetrate a warship's reinforced hull, considering that they're going to be armored against machine gun bullets at the very least...)

[Andres]

You know, I just realised that space blowtorches and space boarding guns are useless if we don't have space marines.

7. Train Space Marines. That is all.

[10ebbor10]

You fail to grasp just how mindboogling fast space is. A shrapnel bomb launched in the opposite orbital direction would hit that target at about twice it's orbital speed. For LEO that means impacts of around 15 km per second).

And considering kinetic energy is m*v²/2,..., that matters a lot.

A 10 gram object at that speed has the same impact as a modern tank gun firing a 2.2 kg kinetic energy penetrator.

[Andres]

Would a fire extinguisher in space work as a propellant? If I understand correctly we're not going for full-on realism here.

[10ebbor10]

Would a fire extinguisher in space work as a propellant? If I understand correctly we're not going for full-on realism here.

Action equals reaction, so yes.

It would also be completely impractical and useless.

[tntey]

8. I propose we create a zero gravity room if we currently don't have one to train space marines

9. I propose we research better and more long lasting fuel

[Happerry]

You fail to grasp just how mindboogling fast space is. A shrapnel bomb launched in the opposite orbital direction would hit that target at about twice it's orbital speed. For LEO that means impacts of around 15 km per second).

And considering kinetic energy is m*v²/2,..., that matters a lot.

A 10 gram object at that speed has the same impact as a modern tank gun firing a 2.2 kg kinetic energy penetrator.

You fail to grasp that at this point people are doing navigation and aiming by eye, pencil, and notepad. Speeds are low, ships are designed with the expectation of damage, and the bombs would be being launched from spacecraft maneuvering so that they can actually hit the target, which means trying to match it in speed, or at the very least not going full speed in the other direction that its going. It is very hard to do space fighting when you are going so fast you only see the other ship for a few seconds, you know?

A cluster bomb would be lucky to actually hit anything with a large fragment, much less come down on someone from dead in front of them coming full speed in the other direction.

8. I propose we create a zero gravity room if we currently don't have one to train space marines

You seem to lack anti gravity devices. If you want a zero gravity room, I advise you to make a space station. Or try to research gravity control.