First, the fun festivities! Which country has the most Glorious flag?Arstotzka:
(Sorry Aseaheru, I'm counting Andres' expression of pride over his last flags as a determining vote, since he submitted them. And they don't have artifacts.) For the record, every Arstotzkan soldier has two of these on their head. On little sticks.
Moskurg:
It's a tough call. Arstotzka has cyrillic, and glory as a stated motivation. Moskurg has swords as well as a tiger. Ultimately, I must say I like the detail on Moskurg's flag. Agent codenamed "Tiger Fucker" joins their ranks.
The Antegria ContractMoskurg has declined to submit a weapon for Antegria's machine gun contract, planning to align themselves politically with the allies. Arstotzka submits the AS-1910 Mag. Antegria is happy to have a cheap, reliable machine gun and puts it into production immediately. Already, an oil tanker is bound for Arstotzka and the oil will be available for 1917 production. Antegrian AS-1910's are of slightly poorer workmanship than the genuine article, but they work. Arstotzka earns a mixed reputation among the arms market, but at least their name is known.
About Research FacilitiesThe GM is never going to give one of the teams 2 design slots and the other 1. It's simply not going to happen.
Yeah, that's pretty much the case. It would make too drastic a power gap. My original plan was (and potentially still is) to give both nations an extra research facility when it starts to look like keeping up to date with their full variety of military hardware is too difficult. However, I've found that one design and one revision per turn is enough work (in terms of my own reading and writing) that I might not want to do two per nation per turn, lest the game slow to a crawl.
What I may do is offer Design Credits and Revision Credits as rewards for... well, we'll see. Possibly capturing enemy technology on the battlefield, possibly special espionage actions. These would let you do one extra design or revision in a year, but only once per credit.
Penetrating 20mm of armor? Absurd!How do you think our glorious nation can afford so much steel armor? Let me let you in on a little secret, friend. It is actually an alloy with a disturbing amount of nickel and tin. At least, that's also going to be my explanation next time I'm caught naming a slightly unrealistic armor thickness and performance. Your armor technology will become more effective per-thickness as it ages and improves though.
If I make too many mistakes of this nature, I will simply be forced to show my "Not a bloody firearms historian" badge.
A New-ish Cost SystemFirst, I'm establishing numeric labels for expense levels: 1 is Expensive, 2 is Very Expensive, and 3 is A National Effort.
Inexpensive equipment could be given to every soldier, if you want. Cheap vehicles means everyone can ride around in one instead of marching. Expensive equipment can be given to officers, or one per squad (5-10 soldiers). Expensive Vehicles means a pretty good number can be used for support. Very Expensive equipment can be used by special squads only, about 1 in 100 soldiers. Very Expensive vehicles are few and far between on the battlefield, or there are only a couple squads. Your nation can only deploy one National Effort at a time. It had better be an aircraft carrier, or a nuke, or a giant walking robot if you want this to be worth it. If you have multiple weapons at a price tier, then soldiers/squads choose one for the situation. Some weapons, EG crewed machine guns and artillery, don't benefit much from being Inexpensive because there aren't many situations where you'd want everyone using one.
You might gain an Expense Credit for a certain type of unit, reducing the expense by 1- for example, if High Command desperately wants an airplane, they'll offer an expense credit for it, which might reduce your new bomber from A National Effort to Very Expensive. Monetary gains from trade will be represented this way.
Instead of labeling things as "Expensive because of being large", or what have you, I'm going to name an ore an oil requirement numerically for products. This way I won't have to update item descriptions as a nation's resources change. For example, a car might cost Oil 2, Ore 3. If your nation has Ore 2, Oil 1, a product which costs Ore 3, Oil 2 gains two expense levels, becoming Very Expensive. If it's also Complex, that's three expense levels (A National Effort). A second expense level is gained when the cost of single resource exceeds your supply by 3. For instance, if you have 1 ore, then 2 ore is Expensive, 3 ore is still Expensive, and 4 ore is Very Expensive. Ore represents total mining effort, so if you have a gun made of a rare or difficult to mine metal (let's say titanium) it might have an ore cost of 2 or 3 despite being only a rifle. If a large truck can be made mostly from low-quality steel, it might be cheaper. See also: 20mm armor that gets penetrated by small arms fire.
I might add technology later to increase the resources available from your home territory- I'll think about it. As usual, I'm still working on this whole system, constructive criticism is welcome. The main gap I still have is that I have no idea what it means for a train to be Expensive, or Very Expensive. For now I'm ignoring train cost and assuming that new technologies are either cost effective or considered failures automatically.
1916 Battle ReportNow with resource costs! If an item is not stated to have an ore/oil cost, assume it to be 1 (effectively zero, countries will not have less than 1). Tell me if it looks like I missed anything egregious.
Arstotzka's army now contains the following:
Weapons:
-Nosin-Magant: Officer weapon. A Russian Mosin-Nagant rifle, brand new ones roll off the assembly lines, and then a highly skilled team changes the letters with chisels. A bolt-action rifle with a five-round clip which fires 7.62mm rounds. Good accuracy, but with iron sights which have a post adjustable up to one kilometer, designed for long-range but inaccurate barrages. Good stopping power against infantry. Detachable bayonet.
-AS-1891: [Obsolete] General infantry weapon. The first weapon manufactured in Arstotzka. This is a muzzle-loading rifle: it is loaded by disassembling a 7.62mm round for the mosin, pouring the gunpowder down the barrel, dropping the bullet down the barrel, and placing the primer. Stopping power and accuracy are poor. Unfortunately, most infantry are forced to use these.
-AS-1909: General infantry sidearm. An Arstotzka-made semi-automatic pistol, firing 9mm. It has a 10-round magazine and can fire quickly with moderate accuracy, at short range. Moderate stopping power. Unfortunately, if fired quickly, it jams about once a magazine (Shoddy, -1 Expense).
-AS-1910 Machine Gun: [Updated Below] Arstotzka's first belt-fed machinegun, firing the same 7.62mm rifle rounds already produced for the Nosin-Magant. The belt-feed mechanism is robust, making it heavy but very reliable. Each round has good stopping power. The machinegun is operated with two handles due to its recoil, making it incapable of aim as precise as a rifle, but when the barrel is cool, bullets generally fly straight. It is air-cooled, and the barrel tends to overheat somewhat quickly. Your engineers have compensated for this by giving each crew two detachable barrels- when one overheats, it can be removed and thrown in the snow. It is heavy- it must be in place on a tripod or other mount to fire, and requires three men to move. It also requires three men to operate continuously. Costs 2 ore.
AS-1910 Mag: This updated AS-1910 replaces a belt feed with a large 50-round detachable drum magazine, which fits to the side of the gun where the belt feed was. While not capable of continuous fire like belts, this requires less crew to manage. The two handles used to control the weapon are replaced with a pistol grip and overhead handle, which is a marginal improvement in control. Costs 2 ore.
-Nosin Single: [Obsolete] A bolt-action 7.62mm rifle with no clip, based on the Russian Mosin-Nagant. It has comparable performance to the Nosin-Magant, except that a new round must be inserted to the chamber every time the weapon is fired. This is simple enough that it can be distributed to all of your troops.
-AS-1911 8cm Mortar: This is a light mortar, consisting of a simple tube mounted on a tripod, and mortar shells which are dropped into the tube and fire off when they hit the bottom. The shells themselves are the more important part of the weapon. They are sort of like rocket-propelled grenades, consisting of a metal shell around some explosive, and a primer and propellant at the back.No longer suffers from horrible jamming.
-AS-1912 Artillery A: A field gun firing 80mm shells, loaded through a sliding bolt. The action is not dissimilar to a bolt action rifle, where the old casing is ejected when the bolt is opened. It is large enough (and its ammunition large enough) to be Expensive, and is drawn by horse on two big wheels. It can fire about 12 times a minute, and has a hydro-pneumatic suspension system: it doesn't go off target between shots, and the barrel moves into the frame every time it is fired. Aims between 0 and 90 degrees vertical. It has several kilometers of range. Costs 3 ore.
-Sawed-off Shotgun: General infantry sidearm. Most officers use this instead of the unreliable pistol. Fires twice before breech loading, very effective at short range, ineffective otherwise. Poor armor penetration. Uses 12 gauge shells. Expensive due to requiring imperial equipment.
-AS-F14: A 7.62mm, semi-automatic rifle. It is an open bolt blowback action, and holds seven rounds in its internal magazine (resembling that of the Nosin)- with more than that, clip loading became unwieldy. Unlike the Nosin, the bolt has a small, non-rotating handle on the side of the gun. It has adjustable iron sights. The weight of the moving action makes the gun difficult to control compared to the Nosin, and it has shown some problems with the mechanism becoming dirty in field testing.
-AS-MC16: This is a sub-machine gun, firing the 9mm pistol round. It uses a new, closed-bolt blowback system perfected from the AS-F14. This system is reliable and keeps dirt out of the gun. The bolt system takes up about fifteen centimeters, all of which is past the trigger, then a magazine, a 30 round drum, inserts into the receiver from the left. The barrel after the receiver is short, about twenty centimeters, and has a slotted metal hand guard. The stock is wooden and stops at the receiver, where brass is ejected from the bottom of the gun. The short barrel gives poor accuracy, especially when hot, and the 9mm bullets have much less range than a rifle or machine gun. The system fires about 400 rounds per minute. Its complexity makes it Expensive.
Technology:
-Metric system. Meters, kilograms, liters!
-Breech-loading
-Muzzle-loading
-Bolt action
-Clips and Magazines
-Cold Weather Engineering. Arstotzka-made equipment is designed and tested in the cold tundra, and does not become unreliable due to cold climates and snow.
-7.62mm Rifle rounds. Largish round for small arms with good stopping power.
-9mm Pistol rounds. Small rounds with moderate stopping power and not great range.
-Belt-fed loading
-Changeable Barrels
-Solid Explosive and Propellants
-Light Mortars
-Artillery
-Hydro-pneumatic Suspension
-Vehicle Armor
-Treads
-Detachable Magazines
Soldiers:
-Patient: Moskurg soldiers excel at waiting in ambush, and carefully shooting from afar, giving them and advantage in long-range engagements.
-Uniform: AS-U13, The new uniforms for 1913. They include flak vests protecting the front and back, and a sturdy steel helmet. Instead of being scarlet and gold, they are issued in beige, grey and olive colors for camouflage, with small flag patches. As did the old uniforms, they include numerous pockets, and a bandolier which can hold full clips of rifle bullets for easy access. Unfortunately, High Command issued an order stating that the uniforms are not glorious enough, and are to have a pair of small flags attached to each helmet, like a winged valkyrie helmet. This compromises the camouflage effect considerably.
Transportation:
-Horses: Soldiers ride sometimes horses to battle, but prefer to fight on foot in cover.
-AS-51 Steam Engine: [Obsolete] The heart of the south! Built in Arstotzka, this engine pulls trains of food, ammo, and resources.
-AS-51 S: A new steam engine, based on the original model 51, includes a superheater system, where steam from the boiler is routed through the furnace to be heated further before being used. This is considerably more efficient than the old design and offers more power for the same amount of coal. In preparation for war, the trains are fitted with armor around the boiler, and the cabin window are fitted with hatches that can closed, and have narrow slats for viewing.
-AS-T15: This is a steam-powered tank using the AS-51 S steam motor from Arstotzka's steam locomotive. In fact, it's mostly the enormous locomotive engine, which a rectangular armored shell. The armor is shaped in a half-cylinder, like an airplane hangar, except the front is cut at a 45 degree angle. Exit is through a hatch on top, which breaks up the smooth shape of the tank along with a couple chimneys. The armor is 20mm throughout. The only open space inside is towards the front of the tank, the engine is located in back and the sides along the engine are used for storing coal. The front of the tank has a gunner on the right side firing an 80mm cannon with a narrow, tank destroyer-like arc of fire. There isn't room for a lot of ammo. The driver sits in the left front, and there is an AS-1910 gunner on each side aiming through slats in the armor. Packed in between all of these people is a coal shoveler. The tracks are set on six rigid train wheels and follow a flat shape on the bottom of the tank, with a large wheel in the front and back. The tank becomes incredibly hot inside due to the coal boiler, hot enough to cause weapon malfunctions and heatstroke. It can exceed 50 degrees celsius in prolonged use, and the soldiers assigned to test it nickname it "The pressure cooker". Being mostly engine, it can reach 13 kph. The track system is complex, making it Expensive. Costs 4 ore.
-Some civilians have automobiles, but they are little use on snowy roads outside of cities.
Resources:
1 Unyielding Thirst for Glory
X Ministry of Integrity. Provides X spies. X is classified.
3 Ore. Tanks are Expensive.
1 Oil. Products which use more fuel than a motorcycle are Expensive.
Moskurg's army now contains the following:
Weapons:
-Horsekiller 1912: General infantry weapon. A breech-loading rifle with a long 60-inch barrel, which fires enormous 60 caliber rounds. Has great stopping power, and is heavy and cumbersome. Famed to stop a horse in one shot, regardless of where it hits. Rounds will go very far, and can still kill far after they become inaccurate. Now updated with good sights, a comfortable foregrip and no bayonet, but the shotgun-style breech-loading prevents quick follow-up shots
-Horsekiller Carbine 1912: General infantry weapon. A shorter variant of the Horsekiller, used by cavalry while riding horses. It has the same stopping power, but average weight and questionable accuracy. Now with good iron sights, and a better grip, but the barrel is a little short for the heavy bullet and it's often fired from a galloping horse anyway.
-Five-Shooter: General infantry sidearm. A five-shot revolver firing large 30 caliber rounds. Single-action, with a lot of kick and trigger pull, means it has poor accuracy, but good killing power against infantry.
-Sawed-off Shotgun: General infantry sidearm. About half of soldiers use this instead of the five-shooter. Fires twice before breech loading, very effective at short range, ineffective otherwise. Poor armor penetration. Uses 12 gauge shells.
-Scimitar: Officer sidearm. Elite soldiers receive a scimitar, a deadly curved sword which can be used on foot or horseback. Of course, requires getting close to the enemy.
-M1 Stallion: This is a belt-fed machine gun using the enormous, thundering .60 caliber round, exactly twice the diameter of the .30 caliber or 7.62mm rounds. It is a cumbersome weapon, with a large box for the mechanism, and a narrow water-cooled barrel with copper heat sinks. The range and stopping power of the .60 caliber round is undiminished, but the gun only fires about 180 times a minute, relatively slow for a machine gun- because of its size, it might be better described as an autocannon. The gun hits in very tight groups for a machinegun, but it is heavy and can only be pivoted slowly, meaning only very skilled gunners can be accurate at long range. It normally moved by horse on a small wagon, although the new lighter model can be carried in parts by a crew, and is crewed by a team of four or five men. It is complex, and costs 2 ore.
-Bombardier: A 3.6 inch howitzer. This is a simple artillery piece with few more bells and whistles than a medieval cannon, modernized with a breech load (a hatch on top of the barrel swings open) and rifling, so as to fire pointed shells with brass cartridges accurately at range. The spent brass is ejected manually, with a lever. Its size makes it horse-drawn. A skilled crew can fire about 10 times a minute, through the gun moves a little when fired, so it can bombard inaccurately at its full rate of fire or (with a skilled commander) come close enough to often hit trenches and emplacements at about half the rate of fire. It can out-range any rifle on the field, but not accurately. Costs 3 ore.
-Model 1 Service Rifle: A .30 caliber rifle, loaded from a 5-round clip much like the Mosin-Nagant. However, early experiments with bolt action suffered from difficult chambering new rounds, and the engineering team instead opted to make a lever-action rifle. Moskurg shooters favor this design, which keeps their hand close to the trigger. Includes iron sights, with an accuracy and stopping power very similar to the Nosin. It can fire somewhat faster, however, at the cost of some accuracy. Includes bayonet lugs.
-M2 Brumby: The Brumby is an air-cooled, .30 caliber machinegun designed to be carried by one man. It is operated by a gas piston under the barrel, and feeds from a belt. It includes a tall rear post sight, the barrel is cooled with shining, unconcealed copper heat sinks, and an innovative "belt box" for use on the move. Unlike previous machine guns, it uses a pistol grip instead of a pair of handles. It shoots around 400 rounds a minute with an effective range of around 300 yards, and weighs 26 pounds with a loaded belt box. It can be operated by a single soldier, ideally prone, or a crew to string belts together for continuous fire. The complexity of its mechanism makes it Expensive.
Technology:
-Imperial system. Inches, feet, miles, pounds! And especially calibers and gauges.
-Forged blades. Swords are a specialty!
-Breech-loading
-Revolvers, Single-action
-60 caliber bullets. Just enormous for small arms! Excellent stopping power. Loud, hot, and kicks hard.
-30 caliber bullets. Still really good stopping power, but much easier to control.
-3.6 Inch Artillery Shell
-Howitzer
-Hot Weather Engineering. Moskurg-made equipment is designed and tested in the hot desert, and does not become unreliable due to hot climates and sand.
-Belt-Fed MG [Expensive]
-Water-Cooled Barrel
-Flamethrower [Partial]
-Petrol Engine
Soldiers:
-Fierce: Moskurg soldiers have an advantage in melee combat and close quarters.
-Moskurg 1914 Armor: Moskurg soldiers wear flowing blue linen with a scimitar stitched onto the chest. Steel vests and helmets are added, to protect against shrapnel. Blue-and-silver glory improved with silver cape.
Transportation:
-Horses: Moskurg soldiers are skilled cavalry, and ride close to the enemy to use their inaccurate weapons and swords.
-Model 51 Steam engine: [Obsolete] A Moskurg invention definitely not stolen from Arstotzka. Large shipments of ammo, resources and supplies are moved by trains pulled by one or two of these engines. Has a bad habit of overheating, occasional boiler explosions.
-Model 52 Steam Engine: The engines have been converted to oil-burning, which should make them cheaper to operate. Several key failure points have been re-engineered. This should enable more resources to be gained from our mines. Now with 95% less explosions! Uses 2 or 3 oil, I don't even know.
-Struunk I: Your engineers have managed to build a motor on par with the ones used in the (rather outdated) civilian vehicles you've been confiscating. As before, it gets up to 30 MPH on roads and 15 cross country. It has 8mm armor all around, slightly angled, with 15mm armor on the front of the engine and cabin. The 8mm armor is still dubious protection against normal rifle rounds. It includes a Brumby in the passenger seat and an M2 Stallion in the turret. The turret has a DC electric motor running off of the car's double capacity battery, and a backup hand crank (the turret will drain the battery if rotated constantly). Costs 3 ore, 2 oil. The complexity of the motor makes it Expensive. Costs 3 ore, 2 oil.
-SPAT: A self-propelled gun vehicle consisting of a petrol engine, caterpillar tracks, and a forward-facing Bombardier howitzer with just enough armor plating to hide the crew behind. The motor here is the same one as the Struunk I. The treads are a new development, and fit over a four-wheeled system with two driving wheels. They are prone to coming loose from the wheels from time to time. The armor is 15mm think, with a gap in the middle for the gun to rotate, rise and lower. Ammunition sits in racks behind the armor. The vehicle has a top speed of about 8 mph. The gun is just a Bombardier, fixed to the SPAT on a frame which pitches and yaws on a pair of hand cranks. The SPAT has a set of jacks to use when firing, which improve accuracy considerably by preventing the vehicle from shaking. The complexity of the motor makes it Expensive. Costs 3 ore, 2 oil.
-Some civilian automobiles are available which may be requisitioned for military use, if necessary.
Resources:
1 Overwhelming National Pride
X Bureau of Cleverness. Provides X spies. X is discussed at private dinner parties, to which the truly loyal are invited.
2 Ore. Most Vehicles or carriage-mounted weapons are Expensive.
2 Oil. Products which use more fuel than a car are Expensive.
I'm pretty sure I didn't label the Struunk as being Very Expensive. It was, or at least it was in my head, which is why its performance was described in anecdotes rather than a broad description of performance. I apologize for the confusion. Maybe you can sue me for a research credit in the Bay 12 Courtroom or something.
Now, onto the main event. The Moskurgs, who are definitely not Moskburgs, spent the entire year fine tuning their SPAT, Self Propelled Anti-Tank, which is really just a mobile Bombardier emplacement. If they sort out the motor expense, and the unreliability, they can phase out horse-drawn Bombardiers entirely. The Arstotzkan engineers have been working to introduce a revolutionary sub-machine gun, the AS-MC16. It's currently expensive, but it might still playable a valuable part in this year's fighting. They also added some proper recoil compensation to their artillery.
I'm sure you're all dying to hear about the armor and trench fighting in the plains, so naturally I'm going to start in the jungle again. The AS-MC16 is Arstotzka's answer to the M2 Brumby here. Typical Moskurg tactics involve getting as close as possible to Arstotzkan troops before opening fire. Officers wielding MC-16's rack up a significant number of kills, in mobile fights and close range ambushes. The rapid fire and large magazine allows a single soldier to attack a number of enemies at close range where kills are assured. The gun does suffer some jamming, but the mechanical work is the tightest Arstotzka has yet accomplished.
Arstotzka gains ground. Some of the fighting is in areas patrolled by Struunk I's, while the Struunk armor is imperfect a Struunk crew is mobile with two machine guns, and if it encounters a group of Arstotzkan scouts on the move, has them significantly outgunned. The AS-MC16 is no use against armor. Struunk patrols are sometimes interrupted by roads full of artillery craters.
In the mountains, the new AS-MC16 sees the least use. There are simply too many long-range engagements and officers prefer an F14 or a good, reliable Nosin. The stalemate here continues. Agent Hairy Pickle attempts to rig Moskurg mining explosives to destroy their own mines, making 14 identical time bombs, which are disarmed on 13 occasions by the fast actions of brave Moskurg demolition engineers, and on one occasion by spilled coffee.
The plains play host to some interesting developments. The SPAT is specifically designed to destroy the AS-T15, marking the first armor-to-armor warfare. Both vehicles have more firepower than armor, so when one encounters the other, it is a question of who can get an accurate shot off first. The AS-T15 has a slightly faster and more accurate gun, but usually the victor is whoever is on the offensive. The SPAT is also much more able to rotate, and beats AS-T15s in sidelong engagements. Both armored vehicles are still vulnerable without close infantry support. Unless Arstotzkan troops are pinned behind their tank with a machine gun, they can take rifle shots at a SPAT crew through the armor gaps. The fates that await an AS-T15 surround by Moskurg infantry have been discussed at length previously. Arstotzka has an armor advantage overall, but the AS-MC16 is also a big deciding factor. In fights close around tanks or in the trenches, Moskurg troops are shocked by a sudden and ferocious assault from the new machine gun so portable it can be used in trench fighting. Arstotzka gains ground in the trenches again, the fight is now well in their favor there.
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Topic: Arms Race, OOC [Completed] Now with Arms Race III, against another forum! (Read 235016 times)