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[Devastator]

When the GM said it was Very Expensive, you 'correct' him.

Well duh, he had forgotten to take into account extra resources given to us by Chinese rebels.

A bombsight is more complicated and expensive than a scope, and you don't have cheap optics

We don't have a cheap scope. Optics strangely, doesn't appear to be a tech, and hence, don't appear to have a cost.

That is the key to Arstotzkan strategy.  If you roll bad on a feature, it matters very little, as you can just try again the next turn.  If you have five or six features, you can pretty much count on getting a couple of them, and it allows you to get very lucky.  If you botch it, you get an okay device anyway, not a pile of junk.  There is no drawback to going for more features.. it's simply more features that you can succeed with.  If you go for one feature, such as a radio, a bad roll means you get nothing.

It doesn't always work. Look at our tank, which we couldn't use due to expense of added features.

Optics is expensive for Moskurg, who put it into play first.  If it is free for Arstotzka, that is an oversight.  If you don't have it at all, then you shouldn't have the bombsight, much less a free bombsight.

You spent three actions on that tank.  Moskurg spent four actions on the radio, and three actions on it's semi-broken fighter.  The difference was we only made a couple of rolls for each, and thus ended up with something that was unusable due to a few bad ones.  In your case, you made four or five, and thus had a useful tank after only a few rolls.

And as for the RR, thanks to certain decisions, our soldiers had literally zero man-portable explosives.  Filling that gap, with anything, no matter how bad, was of some use.  It couldn't shoot fast or accurately, required to be set up before firing, misfired often, and couldn't penetrate medium armor except under ideal circumstances.  It was only a minimally useful weapon.

As for the bomber getting through, well, without radar, I wouldn't expect otherwise, in all honesty.

The MK-47 doesn't work because we rolled crap on one of maybe two rolls, and were creating a somewhat too-advanced weapon.  If we had a bunch of people looking at early battle rifles and making designs based on them, with examples, and you know, didn't name it after a year two decades ahead, it might have had a better chance.

One last thing, it was interesting that you get one roll for the rocket projectile, instead of a roll for the rocket engine, a roll for the propellant, and a roll for the rocket itself, being your first rocket..

[Andres]

One last thing, it was interesting that you get one roll for the rocket projectile, instead of a roll for the rocket engine, a roll for the propellant, and a roll for the rocket itself, being your first rocket..

We've had the propellant ever since we designed the mortar, the rocket itself was extremely simple, and the projectile was basically a grenade with fins. The only new thing we added was the rocket engine.

Arstotzka offers a peace treaty to Moskurg where Moskurg unconditionally surrenders and Arstotzka wins the war.

[Devastator]

One last thing, it was interesting that you get one roll for the rocket projectile, instead of a roll for the rocket engine, a roll for the propellant, and a roll for the rocket itself, being your first rocket..

We've had the propellant ever since we designed the mortar, the rocket itself was extremely simple, and the projectile was basically a grenade with fins. The only new thing we added was the rocket engine.

Umm.. mortars aren't rockets, and don't use rocket propellants, solid, liquid, or otherwise.  If the projectile is a grenade with fins, that would be ineffectual against armor, and certainly require multiple hits to knock it out, even without slatted armor.  As it is far more effective than a single grenade, the bomb is not a simple grenade.

Even if it was such, you could still screw up the fuse, for instance.

Everything is simple if you present it as such, and nobody objects to it.  If you were to design a jet engine, for instance, and seperate it into parts such as the turbines first, you would have many, many more chances to screw it up and fail it.  If you just present it as a 'jet engine', you get one roll that actually matters.  Then make all the secondary rolls for bonus effects or abilities, so that you get a success even if you fail.  That's what your RPG is, it's taking a dozen important items and compounding them into one roll, so you don't need a dozen successes to get a good item, only one.

If you do things like that, it's ultimately subjective how many steps there are, and if you have a team ready to pounce if the opposition does anything dodgy, and the other team that doesn't, you will win.

[evilcherry]

One last thing, it was interesting that you get one roll for the rocket projectile, instead of a roll for the rocket engine, a roll for the propellant, and a roll for the rocket itself, being your first rocket..

We've had the propellant ever since we designed the mortar, the rocket itself was extremely simple, and the projectile was basically a grenade with fins. The only new thing we added was the rocket engine.

Umm.. mortars aren't rockets, and don't use rocket propellants, solid, liquid, or otherwise.  If the projectile is a grenade with fins, that would be ineffectual against armor, and certainly require multiple hits to knock it out, even without slatted armor.  As it is far more effective than a single grenade, the bomb is not a simple grenade.

Even if it was such, you could still screw up the fuse, for instance.

Everything is simple if you present it as such, and nobody objects to it.  If you were to design a jet engine, for instance, and seperate it into parts such as the turbines first, you would have many, many more chances to screw it up and fail it.  If you just present it as a 'jet engine', you get one roll that actually matters.  Then make all the secondary rolls for bonus effects or abilities, so that you get a success even if you fail.  That's what your RPG is, it's taking a dozen important items and compounding them into one roll, so you don't need a dozen successes to get a good item, only one.

If you do things like that, it's ultimately subjective how many steps there are, and if you have a team ready to pounce if the opposition does anything dodgy, and the other team that doesn't, you will win.

Also a Rocket motor is definitely more complicated than a perforated tube.

[Devastator]

Also a Rocket motor is definitely more complicated than a perforated tube.

It's more than that, really.  The only thing the mortar helps with is designing the launcher.  It doesn't do one damn thing for the engine or the charge or the fuel.  It would help with the base of the weapon or the tube the rockets fit into.

[10ebbor10]

I think main Moskurg problem is  ignoring resource shortage while designing stuff. When you have less ore then your opponent your way is wooden aircrafts, light tanks\open tank destroyers and so on.

Wooden aircraft, we did that with our Wasp. Which GM permanently make that shit. Hence the Yellowjacket which the GM doesn't seem to buy into (and he's definitely lawyered to believe in "the bomber always get through" doctrine).

Actually, not really. The bomber was supposed to fly higher than your crafts, but it turns out it can feasibly barrel through enemies. Neither planned nor advocated for. But in any case, "the bomber always gets through" doctrine firmly applies in this situation, with you having no means to detect bombers, and the bomber being quite fast.

That being said, I can't remember you, or anyone, complaining about said fact when you had the only bomber.

Yes and it still cannot stop Tank steamrollering. We only get a real push in the desert when we got the breaker.

What did you expect, an infrantry weapon to completely eliminate tanks, in a wide open battlefield that greatly benefits the latter?

Ah, yes. The Recoilless rifle which is subjected to some horrendous lawyering. I still can't see why we can't get something as simple as a peforated tube right after 4 phases. Hell it can even be homemade while a rocket motor is much more advanced science!

It actually wasn't. The GM didn't reduce the performance of the RR in either conflict. I mean, in the second it almost got buffed. The problem is you're expecting a design to do more than it can, so no further design actions will really improve it.

Besides, you act like our RPG is some miracle weapon. The thing just plain doesn't work. It's accurate to 100 meters, and the warhead doesn't work half the time even if it wasn't negated by your armor.

To be fair GM is a firm air superiority = GG to the other side fan. But then shouldn't Moskurg got air superiority while Arstotzka got the bombers through occasionally?

I haven't noticed air support being that effective. I mean, we had air superiority for ages, didn't do much.

Optics is expensive for Moskurg, who put it into play first.  If it is free for Arstotzka, that is an oversight.  If you don't have it at all, then you shouldn't have the bombsight, much less a free bombsight.

Optics does not appear to be a technology, neither for Arztotska nor Moskurg. Besides a bombsight is a drastically different thing than a scope, so it is perfectly possible to design one that works while still having crappy scopes.

You spent three actions on that tank.  Moskurg spent four actions on the radio, and three actions on it's semi-broken fighter.  The difference was we only made a couple of rolls for each, and thus ended up with something that was unusable due to a few bad ones.  In your case, you made four or five, and thus had a useful tank after only a few rolls.

Not actually what happened. The two revisions were both single "fix this one thing" actions. It's just that we happened to succeed, and you happened to fail.

And we stole your radio, just like you stole our tank.

One last thing, it was interesting that you get one roll for the rocket projectile, instead of a roll for the rocket engine, a roll for the propellant, and a roll for the rocket itself, being your first rocket..

Strangely enough, it wasn't our first rocket. It's something that puzzled me when it was first designed, but our mortar is not a mortar. It's actually a rocket.

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.

The warheads were developed seperately as part of the grenade project (which backfired quite a bit, since apparently an RPG is more complex than a rocket + grenade ). And the end result wasn't very spectacular.

[Kot]

ITT: We prove that metric system wins over filthy imperial any day.
Also biased dice and GMs, eh?

[Sensei]

I feel the need to clarify that I don't think Moskurg has been drastically affected by retroactive rules changes. Indeed, while things are looking pretty grim now, they came very close to putting Arstotzka on the defensive a few times, and there's even still a chance they could push back. Paratroopers were not a large factor in the proceedings of the 1931 battle, what was actually a bigger factor was Moskurg's expense credit on tanks expiring. Arstotzka's bomber sights do not have lenses, but it's a lot better than just aiming from the pilot's point of view as done in Hornets and AS-DBs. I see there's a lot of debate on what constitutes a discreet technology too: I want to say that regardless of how designs are phrased, I do my best to judge when an item involves one or more new technologies and apply it fairly to both factions.

[Devastator]

Optics is expensive for Moskurg, who put it into play first.  If it is free for Arstotzka, that is an oversight.  If you don't have it at all, then you shouldn't have the bombsight, much less a free bombsight.

Optics does not appear to be a technology, neither for Arztotska nor Moskurg. Besides a bombsight is a drastically different thing than a scope, so it is perfectly possible to design one that works while still having crappy scopes.

If that were true, Moskurg tanks, artillery and aircraft would all be equipped with them.  It isn't, therefore they aren't.  If you declare optics to be free, all Moskurg's stuff should have it free as well.  They don't, therefore it isn't, therefore you're wrong.

You spent three actions on that tank.  Moskurg spent four actions on the radio, and three actions on it's semi-broken fighter.  The difference was we only made a couple of rolls for each, and thus ended up with something that was unusable due to a few bad ones.  In your case, you made four or five, and thus had a useful tank after only a few rolls.

Not actually what happened. The two revisions were both single "fix this one thing" actions. It's just that we happened to succeed, and you happened to fail.

Not quite what I was getting at.  What happened was you put your tank roll for.. new tank, new cannon, new engine, new engine tech, new engine tech.  You then failed one or two of the last roll, getting you the new engine tech despite failing the roll for it, because as an 'option', a failure means you get it unreliably but still get it.  That would then make one design phase act for three (or more) design phases, almost regardless of the individual success or failure.

And we stole your radio, just like you stole our tank.

What was actually stole was (fuel injection {expensive}).  IOW, one-quarter of one design phase.

One last thing, it was interesting that you get one roll for the rocket projectile, instead of a roll for the rocket engine, a roll for the propellant, and a roll for the rocket itself, being your first rocket..

Strangely enough, it wasn't our first rocket. It's something that puzzled me when it was first designed, but our mortar is not a mortar. It's actually a rocket.

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.

The warheads were developed seperately as part of the grenade project (which backfired quite a bit, since apparently an RPG is more complex than a rocket + grenade ). And the end result wasn't very spectacular.

That's interesting.  Mortar shells are very, very much not rocket-propelled grenades; Sensai was absolutely right to treat them differently.  Describing them as 'like' rocket-propelled grenades, and then using that description to justify them being actual rockets, without, you know, actually having to make actual rockets is just the sort of thing that cheeses me off.  That's another design phase doing the work of three or four of them, or at least intended to do so.  The use of primer and propellant are straight off wikipedia, and it's not mentioned that the propellant in mortar shells is a deflagrating propellant like cordite or gunpowder.. which is very much not a rocket propellant.

At the end of the day, a mortar isn't a rocket, and if it was, it wouldn't be any good as a mortar, due to the massively less predictable range and trajectory of a rocket as opposed to a mortar shell.

[andrea]

The mortar actually gave us rocket propellant tech, in the tech list. And the civilian report explicitly said we had a rocket club working with modified mortar  shells.

[10ebbor10]

If that were true, Moskurg tanks, artillery and aircraft would all be equipped with them.  It isn't, therefore they aren't.  If you declare optics to be free, all Moskurg's stuff should have it free as well.  They don't, therefore it isn't, therefore you're wrong.

Not really. You didn't include sights of any kind in the design of those vessels. Anyway, as has been confirmed by the GM now : Sights and scopes are different, and the sight is included in the design.

Not quite what I was getting at.  What happened was you put your tank roll for.. new tank, new cannon, new engine, new engine tech, new engine tech.  You then failed one or two of the last roll, getting you the new engine tech despite failing the roll for it, because as an 'option', a failure means you get it unreliably but still get it.  That would then make one design phase act for three (or more) design phases, almost regardless of the individual success or failure.

Not quite. What the design included as new was :

New Tank, New cannon, new engine tech.   The other engine tech was already developed for our planes.

And compare and contrast with your tank which was :

New Tank, New Cannon, New cannon tech

And we stole your radio, just like you stole our tank.

What was actually stole was (fuel injection {expensive}).  IOW, one-quarter of one design phase.

Nope, you got the improved fuel injection tech, and the rest of the tank as well.

That's interesting.  Mortar shells are very, very much not rocket-propelled grenades; Sensai was absolutely right to treat them differently.  Describing them as 'like' rocket-propelled grenades, and then using that description to justify them being actual rockets, without, you know, actually having to make actual rockets is just the sort of thing that cheeses me off.  That's another design phase doing the work of three or four of them, or at least intended to do so.  The use of primer and propellant are straight off wikipedia, and it's not mentioned that the propellant in mortar shells is a deflagrating propellant like cordite or gunpowder.. which is very much not a rocket propellant.

At the end of the day, a mortar isn't a rocket, and if it was, it wouldn't be any good as a mortar, due to the massively less predictable range and trajectory of a rocket as opposed to a mortar shell.

That is the GM's description, not ours. There was no intention of our side to make it a rocket. The design request was this :

Tube mortar that can be carried and served by two men. A simple tube with a bipod and a plate at the base (to absord recoil), the AS-1911 is fired by dropping the bomb, fitted before firing with an impact-sensitive primer- into the tube.

That being said, I don't see why a rocket should take 3 or 4 design phases. I mean, we didn't need to design improved gun powder to make our guns work, or improved alloy's, or improved explosives.

[Devastator]

I feel the need to clarify that I don't think Moskurg has been drastically affected by retroactive rules changes. Indeed, while things are looking pretty grim now, they came very close to putting Arstotzka on the defensive a few times, and there's even still a chance they could push back. Paratroopers were not a large factor in the proceedings of the 1931 battle, what was actually a bigger factor was Moskurg's expense credit on tanks expiring. Arstotzka's bomber sights do not have lenses, but it's a lot better than just aiming from the pilot's point of view as done in Hornets and AS-DBs. I see there's a lot of debate on what constitutes a discreet technology too: I want to say that regardless of how designs are phrased, I do my best to judge when an item involves one or more new technologies and apply it fairly to both factions.

Ahh, so the bonus is due to a seperate bombardier, then.  That makes more sense.  It's still extremely inaccurate, all the same.  Level bombing is just not precise by any sense of the word.

Anyway, I'm complaining about this to make some things clear:

1.  Why Moskurg is losing.  Arstotzka did not magically make their design phases more effective, it was part of a consistant strategy to pile as much effectiveness in each turn as possible.  They are winning because they are playing the game far, far better.  Another thing I haven't mentioned much is their near-complete lack of duplicating previous efforts.  If you can add a +2 to something while removing an already existing +1, Moskurg would do it.  Arstotzka would instead make a +2 that would stack with the already existing +1.  Take a look at the three Moskurgian machine guns, for instance.

2.  Arstotzka has gotten away with plenty of dodgy stuff, for all the heavy complaining about anything which Moskurg fields that's even slightly effective.  I'm not going to call it 'salt', or any other invented modern term to avoid describing what it is.. being critical of what you and your opponent fields is a normal method of determining what is the best option, or what is actually true;  That is the basics of how science works.. you try to disprove theories as hard as possible, and the right one is the one left standing.  Arstotzka did that, and Moskurg didn't.

3.  Sensai has been remarkably fair, although I don't think Moskurg ever had a chance from the beginning due to player mismatch.  Team Moskurg has been shooting themselves in the foot extensively throughout the game.  I do think that Arstotzka has gotten away with much more, but that's a result of fielding much more due to packed design phases.  If a failure on an addon cannot make the design fail, then there is no reason to not pack them in there, and that is what was done.

One last bit, your automatic cannon is ridiculous and in all honesty, is the kind of thing that should be failing an immense number of times.  It was quite common for automatic aircraft cannon to jam on many, if not most, sorties, jamming perhaps for every fifty or so rounds fired, and taking quite some time to repair and refeed the cannon again.  And those were the successful designs.  That would make it dreadfully ineffective at infantry or anti-infantry use, as if you have to spend ten minutes fixing the cannon for every ten seconds of firing, it simply wouldn't work.  You cannot suppress someone with a cannon that doesn't fire.

[10ebbor10]

I found nothing the indicate that tendency to jam anywhere.

[Devastator]

Not really. You didn't include sights of any kind in the design of those vessels. Anyway, as has been confirmed by the GM now : Sights and scopes are different, and the sight is included in the design.

* Devastator notes that sights are, indeed, now free.

Not quite. What the design included as new was :

New Tank, New cannon, new engine tech.   The other engine tech was already developed for our planes.

And compare and contrast with your tank which was :

New Tank, New Cannon, New cannon tech

I would like you to tell me what new cannon tech was included in our tanks cannon that wasn't included in yours, which was basically 'same as Moskurg's, but slightly bigger.'  If you mean the turret, there was turrets on the old tank, and we had electrical experiments from the endless parades of radio failures.

And we stole your radio, just like you stole our tank.

What was actually stole was (fuel injection {expensive}).  IOW, one-quarter of one design phase.

Nope, you got the improved fuel injection tech, and the rest of the tank as well.

* Devastator notes that Moskurg's new plane should be Expensive, and really, really should have dominated the air when it was designed, instead of flipping a slight disadvantage into even.

If we recieved the whole tank, that also raises the question as to why we didn't field some of the Arstotzkan tanks along with our own.

That's interesting.  Mortar shells are very, very much not rocket-propelled grenades; Sensai was absolutely right to treat them differently.  Describing them as 'like' rocket-propelled grenades, and then using that description to justify them being actual rockets, without, you know, actually having to make actual rockets is just the sort of thing that cheeses me off.  That's another design phase doing the work of three or four of them, or at least intended to do so.  The use of primer and propellant are straight off wikipedia, and it's not mentioned that the propellant in mortar shells is a deflagrating propellant like cordite or gunpowder.. which is very much not a rocket propellant.

At the end of the day, a mortar isn't a rocket, and if it was, it wouldn't be any good as a mortar, due to the massively less predictable range and trajectory of a rocket as opposed to a mortar shell.

That is the GM's description, not ours. There was no intention of our side to make it a rocket. The design request was this :

Tube mortar that can be carried and served by two men. A simple tube with a bipod and a plate at the base (to absord recoil), the AS-1911 is fired by dropping the bomb, fitted before firing with an impact-sensitive primer- into the tube.

That being said, I don't see why a rocket should take 3 or 4 design phases. I mean, we didn't need to design improved gun powder to make our guns work, or improved alloy's, or improved explosives.

You did need to research improved alloys and explosives at several points in the game.  Rocket propellants should be on the list.  If you don't think rockets are hard, there is a great book you should read called "Ignition!  An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants."

[Devastator]

I found nothing the indicate that tendency to jam anywhere.

I know.  I'm talking about the real world here, where automatic cannons, even very good ones, jammed an awful lot around then.  (and, to a lesser extent, machine guns and automatic rifles.)