Year is 1931. Alternate timeline.
is attacked by frost giants which have lain sleeping under the permafrost until now. They smell Arstotzka's massive salt supply, and they hunger.
I will be putting as little effort as possible into this and stop updating it when it ceases to entertain me or I have something better to do.
AS 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-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 placed 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.
-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-F14A: A 7.62mm, semi-automatic rifle. It is an open bolt blowback action, and uses a 12-round box magazine which protrudes below the gun. 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, but this is mitigated by using a full size and weight barrel compared to the original carbine version. The blowback action is now more reliable, though still open bolt. Also available as a carbine.
-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.
-AS-MC16A: A stands for Andres! The action is reworked for cheaper manufacturing, but works as well as the original. The stock is redesigned entirely for a pistol grip and foregrip, and made of lightweight aluminium, the butt is an open frame. The weapon handles considerably better with this new arrangement. Hollow point ammo is not successfully developed during this revision phase, but your engineers do design a new magazine. This is a 54-round magazine which consists of two drums feeding together into one magazine insert. It gets in the way of the shooter's view a bit, but MC16's are often fired from the hip anyway. Oh yeah, and it looks like a pair of, well, you know. Soldiers have some creative nicknames for the gun already. Costs 2 ore.
-AS-AC18: An advanced primer ignition autocannon, which ignites cartridge primers before the round is fully chambered. It fires the new, large, 20x100mm round, fed from a top-mounted 25 round C-shaped magazine with a powerful spring, usually armor piercing, about 600 times per minute. The weapon is quite large with a simple action but heavy barrel, weighing over 40 kilograms, and it requires being mounted to a carriage, foundation, or vehicle to fire with accuracy, although recoil is reduced by the nature of its action. It is dependent on a careful balance between the force of the shell and the force of the action, which means that different ammo types cannot be interchanged without recalibrating the gun. It has a terrifying ability to punch through armor and emplacements. Costs 3 ore due to its size and the size of its ammo.
-AS-LM20: A landmine! Consists of an explosive, metal shell and button. Armed by removing a key. The mines are cheap and simple, and reliably kill or dismember infantry who step on them.
-AS-1924: A light machine gun using 7.62mm rifle rounds. It is gas-operated, with a box magazine, a bottom-fed 25 round rectangular mag or 60 round drum. It includes an aluminium stock, magazines and fixtures, which are lighter than wood fixtures used on previous guns, though the barrel, action etc are steel. It is easily man portable at 8 kilos, allowing one man to carry the gun and a decent amount of ammo, though AS-1924 gunners are still often accompanied by a man to spot and carry additional ammo. It can be fired while standing or kneeling, with its pistol grip and overhead foregrip, but is most accurate when used with a bipod. Sustained fire (through multiple magazines) can cause overheating. Shoots around 500 rounds a minute. Costs 3 ore.
-AS-G27: Having previously made landmines and mortars, grenades are no problem for Arstotzkan engineers. The basic AS-G27 is is an oblong ball that fits comfortably in the hand, and when a ring is pulled, this starts a four-second fuze. The casing breaks into fragments when it explodes. The AS-G27I is incendiary, the AS-G27S deploys smoke. The AS-G27AT is cylinder shaped, with magnets on one end. It contains a hemispherical shaped charge. A soldier can penetrate medium armor with it, but they have to run right up to a tank to stick one on. The amount of chemicals needed for grenades gives them a cost of Oil 2. Each grenade weighs around a kilogram.
-AS-RPG28: A rocket-propelled grenade, fired out of a launch tube. The grenade itself consists of a conical shape with a narrow tube of propellent out the back, and fins in the middle of the tube. The grenade fits into a launch tube, about 3cm in diameter and a meter in length, up to the fins. The launch tube is a simple tube with one handle. To ignite the propellant, soldiers remove a pin, which is attached with a little chain and carabiner clip to a simple lever on the launch tube handle which serves as a trigger. The launch tube weighs three kilograms, and grenades themselves weigh another three. It is accurate enough to hit a tank out to almost 100 meters, after which it drops quickly. Rockets are available with warheads based on each type of grenade, including a crude flat-ended RPG28AT shaped charge. This doesn't fly very well and requires a very square hit to be effective, so can mostly only be used at short range against flat armor. Requires 2 ore.
-AS-O30 Optics: Simple scopes, which can be fitted to any appropriate sort of gun, in 2x, 3x, or 4x magnifications. They include a little rubber eye shroud. They are Expense to make, but even so the manufacturing quality is a bit dubious and the lenses are a bit small, leading often to dark, blurry pictures. Uses a painted-on crosshair with range-finding markers, in 100 or 200 meter increments custom to the type of gun on which they are to be fitted.
AS 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.
-20x100mm Autocannon round
-Armor Piercing Steel Bullets
-Flak Shells
-Flares
-Incendiary Rounds
-Rocket-Assisted Shells (More range, for DT25 and AS-1912)
-Belt-fed loading
-Changeable Barrels
-Solid Explosives and Propellants
-Light Mortars
-Artillery
-Hydro-pneumatic Suspension
-Vehicle Armor
-Treads
-Detachable Magazines
-Petrol Motors
-APIB Action, compatible with belt feed
-Crude Batteries (Lead-Acid)
-Aluminium production
-Armor (Medium and thinner)
-Fuel Injection
-Turbo Charger
-Radio
AS Soldiers:
-Patient: Arstotzkan soldiers excel at waiting in ambush, and carefully shooting from afar, giving them and advantage in long-range engagements.
-Uniform AS-GU23: The new 1923 Arstotzkan uniforms come in patterned camouflage colors, grey/white, beige and olive. In order to completely placate High Command's thirst for glory and keep the dice in the dice bag, the inside of the uniform is sewn red and gold with Arstotzkan flags. A soldier can simply fold their uniform inside-out and convert it from battle camouflage to parade regalia (you advise soldiers NOT to do this on the battlefield). The armor plates and helmet are made from Glorious Aluminium, which reduces their weight. Includes all the pockets and bandoliers a soldier could ask for, and one right on the elbow that nobody asked for. Costs 2 ore.
-Andrei Zhuyev, ace pilot. Lost track of his kills.
-Commander Emilovich, Master Tactician
-IP-R25: This is based off of stolen liberated designs for the Moskurg Model 3 Radio. Like the Model 3, it is a vacuum-tube audio-transmitting radio with consists of the 14-kilogram radio itself and an equally large box of batteries. To move, it needs to be carried by two men, but can be set up for use relatively quickly. It can also fit in most vehicles without affecting performance (or take up the entire sidecar on an M17 bike).
-AS-DC29: An Arstotzkan device design to solve Moskurg's cipher. It is basically a Tiger's Whisper, with its own code card with the numbers 1 through 26. It uses a typewriter mechanism to stamp each number onto a ticker tape. The numbers on the ticker tape are the simple cipher version of the Moskurg message, which is relatively easy to solve by hand. In addition it includes a counter for each letter, displaying the frequency in which letters occur which helps solve ciphers faster. An average Arstotzkan officer is clever enough to use this to crack a Moskurg message in five to ten minutes. With a stolen code card, it can also act exactly as a Tiger's Whisper would, where communications officers must write down each letter as it appears. It is Expensive to make, and fits into a very heavy backpack.
AS Ground Transportation:
-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-M17A: A motorcycle which seats one passenger, and a second in a sidecar. The petrol motor is Arstotzka's first, with three in-line cylinders. The motor is cheap, small and relatively powerful. On its own, the bike is capable of more than 80 kilometers per hour, cross country, and 110 on a road. The bike is was previously notorious for being difficult to ride and having structural failures, but these problems have been ironed out. The sidecar is available with an AS-1910, sometimes on a pintle mount to aim at aircraft. Costs 1 Oil, 2 Ore.
-AS-HV19: A heavy truck, built for logistics. Uses a cabover design, giving it a short, tall and square cabin- drivers climb up three steps to enter it. Includes six large, pneumatic tires- two wheels under the cabin steer, and four close to the back of the bed drive. A simple spring suspension system makes a very bouncy ride, amplified by the height of the cabin. Under the cabin is a fairly large eight cylinder engine, which belches black smoke from two exhaust stacks that go over the back of the cabin. The bed is five meters long and consists of a simple frame that can hold a hopper, tanker, or trailer hitch. Other things might easily be built to fit there, but engineering didn't get around to that. Gets up to 80 kph on a good road, and can carry eight tons without too much trouble. Unarmored. Conveys a 1 logistics bonus. Costs 2 ore, 3 oil.
-AS-MV21-AL: This is an armoured car, designed to be maneuverable in tight quarters and offroad. The frame, armor and engine block are all built from aluminium for reduced weight. It sits on four big tires, the rear ones shrouded by armor, on hydropneumatic suspension. It is powered by a V-6 motor, which gets it up to 70 KPH on a good road. Its shape is tight and rectangular around the crew cabin, which holds only a driver and gunner, to minimize the quantity of armor needed. The engine is in the rear, and includes the lightest (thin) armor in the slats over the radiator. The front armor is medium and most of the armor is light. A belt-fed AS-AC18 gun fires from the top of car, with the gunner's hatch open. The gunner hatch acts as armor to each side when open, but the gunner is still somewhat exposed compared to a tank turret. The car costs 4 ore and 2 oil.
-AS-T25: A medium tank, built to fit under medium thickness RHA. The armor is sloped shallow in the front, and this slope goes about halfway down the tank's length. The turret and crew hatch are on the flat part of the top of the tank, in the back, leading to a design that looks like a bit of a wedge. It is powered by a 12 cylinder, fuel injected, turbo charged motor. The new turbo charger is a super charger powered by exhaust, it provides the most benefit at high engine ranges. The turbo slightly increases fuel use. It can get up to 55 kph. The gun, a new AS-DT25, fires 50mm rounds, with a screw breech. It is fairly accurate and quite powerful. The turret is hand cranked and a bit on the slow side. It can fire about 20 times a minute and includes AP rounds. The treads are on hydropneumatic suspension, which improves accuracy while the tank is moving. Includes a coaxial AS-1924 and one on the exit hatch with a pintle mount. Costs 5 ore, 3 oil.
-AS-MAT26-50: A light tracked platform for the DT25 gun originally designed for the AS-T25 tank. Moves on a simply 8-cylinder motor and treads. It has thin RHA armor in the front only, with the rest open to the air. The DT-25 gun has an extended barrel with a muzzle brake, and is mounted on a front-facing armature with good side-to-side and vertical angling, for direct fire. It's bigger than the original, but outside of a turret this is fine. It include an AS-1924 for good measure against aircraft. Costs 4 ore, 2 oil.
AS Air Force:
-AS-A19C: Several staff members were fired and replaced. The new C model of the AS-A19 makes up for its heavy frame with sturdy, lightweight aluminium brackets, and some metal parts are replaced with aluminum. This and larger control surfaces make the plane much more steady, and not prone to suddenly pulling in one direction or the other, without being heavier. For good measure, a cross is added to every joystick to exorcise malevolent spirits. Control surface trim is added as well, which corrects for the effect of the rotary engine and makes the plane easier to fly in general. The aircraft remains heavy and a bit ungainly, but is much more safe to fly and should perform better in dogfights. Now costs 2 ore, 2 oil.
-AS-DB-HF-23: An airplane built entirely from aluminium. This lighter, sturdier frame allows the plane be reasonably fast with a 9-cylinder radial engine and make aggressive dives and recoveries for bombing, with half a ton of bombs. The radial engine is designed entirely around an AS-AC18 which fires through the prop shaft, necessitating a relatively heavy and thick prop shaft. It has decent maneuverability, with its metal design allowing for strong forces on the wings and tail, and large control surfaces, but it is best at dogfighting while not carrying a bomb load. Costs 4 ore, 3 oil.
-AS-HF-24: An airplane built entirely from aluminium. Based on the AS-DB-HF-23's light and sturdy frame, with bomb mounts omitted in favor of four lightweight AS-1924 machine guns, modified to accept belts. Two barrels visibly protrude from the front of each wing. The radial engine is designed entirely around an AS-AC18 which fires through the prop shaft, necessitating a relatively heavy and thick prop shaft. Unlike the DB version, it is fuel injected which is terribly complex and a bit heavy but allows more power for the same fuel. It has decent maneuverability, with its metal design allowing for strong forces on the wings and tail, and large control surfaces, but it is a bit heavy. Costs 4 ore, 3 oil
AS Navy:
-AS-CV22: A steam-powered ship, worthy of sea travel. Uses two AS-51 S steam engines, which each power one screw. The vessel is around 60 meters long, and carries cargo enough to provide +1 logistics. It mounts an AC-18 on the bow for air defense, an an AS-1910 on top of the con tower. Costs 6 ore.
AS Resources:
1 Unyielding Thirst for Glory
X Ministry of Integrity. Provides X spies. X is classified.
4+1 Ore. Tanks are Expensive, typically. Arstotzka is receiving ore from Chinese rebels.
2 Oil. Products which use more fuel than a car are expensive.
You have just received word that the frost giants have been seen climbing out of the snow and ice, they are real (at least that is what High Command says, you have not seen one yet). Moksburg cowards nowhere to be seen. You can mostly design weapons and maybe do other stuff.
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Topic: Arstotzka Versus the Ice Giants (Read 3787 times)