Also discussed in the Discord was what tech we want to develop first. Options mentioned included;
-Radar, on the basis that air superiority will be our key to victory.
-Missiles, to have some truly long-range weaponry.
-Torpedoes (specifically ones droppable from planes), to counter their significant naval advantage.
-Coastal Guns, ditto.
-Probably others but I forget.
Personally, I think we'd be better off designing a ship, so that we have at least some semblance of a navy. Something like this;
Forenian Destroyer-Class 01 'Unity': Following the end of the war, the rapid military-tech buildup slowed considerably, as efforts were mostly dedicated to rebuilding civilian life. One area where progress was made, however, was in the navy, as the new United Forenian government realised that, being an
island continental nation, not having a navy was a bit embarrassing- not to mention dangerous.
As such, engineers were sent abroad, to study naval design, and a decommissioned destroyer was purchased from [FOREIGN FRIENDLY NATION] to be studied and reverse-engineered. Though the tech might be dated somewhat, it is a hell of a lot better than a cargo ship with a single cannon on it.
The resulting vessel is Forenia's first modern warship. At 100m
* long, with a displacement of 1250t
*, she is best classified as a destroyer. She is armed with 4 B2 Destroyers
* (modified slightly for naval use) and a single Bumblebee as AA, and has two torpedo tubes which do nothing, as Forenia has no torpedoes. The designers insisted that everyone else had them, so they should too. She is powered by two steam turbines, fed by three water-tube boilers (oil-burning, like the model 52), driving one shaft each. She is only lightly armoured (for a ship), so as to get maximum speed and manoeuvrability.
The goal for this design is to be a fast, light, and cheap ship that may not be capable of outgunning Cannalan vessels, but is at least capable of outrunning them. The use of encrypted messages to coordinate and of radio-interception to learn the enemy's plans should allow them to swarm lone vessels with greater numbers, whilst avoiding larger groups.
The option was floated to, ah, 'screw the navy' and focus solely on air-power. Based on what I read of the game over on Spacebattles, I don't think that'll be an option. It may work for defending islands we already hold, but in order to land significant forces by air, we would need to already control the island- meaning we can never advance. At the very least we need a navy to land the materials necessary to build airstrips.
The argument was made that they are too far ahead of us in terms of navy, but I think most of their ship designs are fairly primitive, so even by using decades-old tech, we should be able to compete.
It was suggested that it would take too many designs to create a decent ship, but again, by using decades old tech, we reduce the difficulty of the design considerably, meaning we should be able to design an entire ship in one go. I'm also operating under the assumption that we will get the extra design phase to catch us up to the Cannalans (whose game lasted one year longer)
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Topic: Arms Race, OOC [Completed] Now with Arms Race III, against another forum! (Read 234481 times)