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[somemildmanneredidiot]

Thinking on the turn after this upcoming one, as we'll be delaying planes by a turn to try to get a suitable engine. I'm thinking we could do something like 130HP engine, Recruitment Facility, Direct Recruiting/Design Refinements, Various Production Buildings (15 engineers).

We were able to directly shop around for recruits before though I don't have the numbers on that at the moment, so that is something we could do.

Spoiler: Intelligence Related Designs (click to show/hide)

Balloon Observation (including winches to quickly lower in case of attack)
Binoculars
Invisible Ink
Photography (monochromatic to start, miniaturization afterwards I'm thinking)
Covert Storage Containers
Numbers Stations
Encryption/Decryption Methods for Radio
Steganography Development
Surveillance Aircraft (specfic development and refinement once other things go online)

It'll take a while before we're in a position where we can reasonably develop many of these, but this should be a solid list of what we can reasonably do for our tech period.

[Amperzand]

A massive portion of all aircraft in WW1 were scout/observation planes.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Makes sense, my thinking was spending some design actions to bring together technologies to have a better observation plane and potentially doing the same with airships.

[Slick]

Wait why do we need a 40mm gun?

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Right now our Type Bs are armed with 1 75mm Ratio and 2 37mm black powder Revolving Cannons (and a bunch of HMGs). The 40 mm autocannon will significantly increase the Type B's power and ability to get shells out. In addition to that, the 40mm can be used as a more intermediary and faster firing artillery piece on land, as well as serve as our first tank gun.

Due to its faster firing, it should also serve well as the basis for our artillery AA guns.

Basically, it's an upgrade of something we already have in the field that will provide a lot of versitility. Once we get resources sorted out, we're probably going to spend a fair amount of development making sure that we have lots of artillery to support the field and prevent the Monarchy from taking back ground.

Something I've noticed is that we don't really have a strategic plan. We've been hopping from one thing to another without the clearest focus. I think we should decide on strategies for each front and area of focus (Land, Sea, Air, Economy, Misc) so that we can better tailor our designs and goals towards those points.

Spoiler: Some ideas on that (click to show/hide)

Land: Mechanized Action. Once we get the tank started up, we can shift into a design and production focus around having our tanks being the meat of our land forces with infantry and artillery support. While they maneuver to deal with our armor, we can make significant gains and set up to have the answer to what they try to bring out in answer before they even start producing them.

Sea: Shut Them Down. We enjoyed naval superiority once and I would much like to enjoy it again. The Type B should serve as the core of our navy, with it having a nice mix of arms and maneuverability, once we solve the turret issue. We can design one or two supporting ships (a small torpedo boat to harass their Z-Classes and shipping at the very least), but improvements on the Swordfish should be sufficient to force them back into their ports. Once we have them bottled up, they'll be significantly restricted resource wise.

Air: You Get Support and You Get Support,  Everyone Gets Support! We're not going to win the war with aircraft. We're simply not in the right tech period for them to have the same effect we imagine aircraft having in today's age. What they can do is help provide information, harass targets, and bypass lines in support of land and sea operations.

Economy: Exporting the Problem. All of the previous areas are going to rely on signficant resource expenditures and factory production, which we might not have. Besides developing our infrastructure to handle all of it, if we can become the supplier of a signficant good or two (I'm thinking aluminium as it's only fairly recently become a reasonable mass production as well as something else), we can much more easily afford to import rarer materials. If we're able to shut down or raid Monarchy shipping as well, then all the better. We might end up needing to design and create our own shipping transports.

Misc: While radio has been a solid development, we should invest in more methods of information gathering and sharing. Artillery kills people, but knowing where to fire kills more.

[Slick]

Why not just use a 37mm gun that's uses smokeless powder.

And with your phrasing things-at least to me- it sounds like your expecting an auto-cannon which would be impossible to mount on a tank.

If your going with a quickfire gun then again why not just use a 37mm gun.
For auto-cannons we could probably do a pom-pom:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QF_1-pounder_pom-pom

[Aseaheru]

 Slick, you mind clarifying what you mean by "an autocannon which would be impossible to mount on a tank"? This interests me.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Because we don't have a 37mm gun that uses smokeless powder and will need to design one anyway, so we might as well get a bit more bang for our buck so to say. I'm not understanding a difference between the 37mm and 40mm that would make the previous preferable.

I'm trying to think of a reason why a 40mm autocannon couldn't be mounted on a tank, as there wouldn't be any casing to remove from said tank. If anything, it would make the gunner's job easier due to the loading mechanism, such that they could spend more time firing and less time loading.

@Aseaheru: I guess Slick autocorrected to Stirk?

[Slick]

Most autocannons larger then 20 mm or so would simply be to big to be mounted on a tank turret at this time heck the reason the M3 Lee had a sponson mounted main gun was because nobody could make a turret large enough for it, an that's a normal gun , and if we do manage it in all likelihood it won't have an enclosed turret.

Look heres the 37 mm Gun M3 and the 37mm Gun M1:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37_mm_Gun_M3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37_mm_Gun_M1

If you look at the two of them and likely any pictures of em you'll find that the autocannon has some size compared to the normal gun I think thats' the wording I'm looking for.
Edit:
In fact here's a picture of the inside of a M42 Duster this uses twin 40mm guns note that this is an early Cold War vehicle:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Notice how much space is used by the guns.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Worst comes to worst, we design the 40mm autocannon as the base, and if we can't get the tank to work with it, we can redesign it as a quick fire for tank use, allowing us to use the autocannon and have a tank gun.

Looking at the picture, I'm not really seeing what the big deal is. Presuming that they managed to shrink the size of the guns rather than increase the size with additional parts, one of our 40mms would probably be around 1.5 times the size of one of their guns, if not smaller. We'll just have to make sure that the design can handle the gun before deploying it.

[Slick]

Do you see how much space is used upped in the design?
And that's a Early Cold War design.

Again sorry if I sound hostile.

Edit:
Unrelated to this current discussion but are links to Deviantart allowed because there is some good stuff there that might
be helpful?

[somemildmanneredidiot]

I honesty am unable to conceptualize whether that is a lot of space used up or not. It's contained within the turret? I know it looks like it's a fair size larger than the Renault FT's gun on Wikipedia, but as the one in the picture is apparently a 8mm machine gun and does not show the 37mm variant, I'm unable to have a concept of the difference.

We'd already acknowledged that we were probably going to need to have a larger tonnage than 10 tons, so accommodating for the space needed for the autocannon doesn't seem like the most difficult thing in the world.

How much more does an autocannon tend to weigh in comparison to quick fire and regular fire versions?

[Slick]

That isn't a cutaway that is the actual turret which is open topped.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

I honestly don't understand the problem. As in, please explain the problem to me, I do not understand the issue of the moment. Feel free to link to anything, to my knowledge the only restriction on links are in relation to pirated software being a big no-no.

Don't worry about sounding hostile. You haven't ever sounded hostile and at "worst" you've sounded passionate, which is not a bad thing. The worst that could happen is a PM in relation to a comment asking about how one caused offense or something.

[Aseaheru]

 The duster was an SPAA form of the Walker Bulldog.