Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Slick]

Actually that ties into one my goal vehicles as in a vehicle I think we should have an equivalent of.
Say hello to the Tank Mark IX:
http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww1/gb/Tank_Mark-IX_APC.php

This thing just seems to useful not to have an equivalent.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

There was a near perfect example somewhere, but for the life of me I just can't find it in my browser history. The A7V is a lot more like a bread box than what I had in my brain. The best example I can manage is if you took the StuG III, made it a lot more rectangle like, and had two little bulbs at the angles I'd said out of which the HMGs poked.

The previous idea about having the angled firing ports for the HMG was built off of the idea of a wave of tanks going by, being able to provide overlapping firing support for each other and to better prevent them from being overwhelmed.

Radar is apparently a thing about now timeline wise and could help with longer range communications apparently. Mentioning so it's on the forum.

I'm liking the idea of spending a turn, sometime after this upcoming one, getting out a new rifle and developing a wide variety of munitions for our firearms and guns. Dropping AP rounds, incendiary munitions, FAEs, and cluster shells all in one turn will certainly surprise the Monarchy. We should also see about revising the Trench Gun and our 12.5mm rounds when we do that.

Actually that ties into one my goal vehicles as in a vehicle I think we should have an equivalent of.
Say hello to the Tank Mark IX:
http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww1/gb/Tank_Mark-IX_APC.php

This thing just seems to useful not to have an equivalent.

Depending on how the armored car, the truck, and the tank shapes up, we might be fairly close to shipping something like that out. It's role might end up being covered through sufficient fire support though.

[milo christiansen]

Before we get too caught up in new rifle and munitions we need to spend most of a turn building production, we can't even fully equip the army we have!

[Slick]

Alright might as well attempt to put out various tank types and their...goals I think is the word needed here.
I suppose I'll go from lightest to heaviest just so we're clear this is likely going to be a work in progress.
I'll also see if I can't find some period appropriate examples of tanks later on.

-Tankettes/Ultralight Tanks:[Quantity has a quality all its own]
Vehicles of this class tend to be simple yet effective and can be made in significant numbers


-Light Tanks:[Armored Cavalry Inbound]
Designed to fast be and-depending on the design-mass producible though not the most armored they tend
to have better mobility then other designs.


-Calvary/Cruiser/Fast Tanks:[Speed is Armor]
These vehicles are around medium sized but have traded as much armor as feasible to allow increased speed and
maneuverability.


-Medium Tanks:[The Jack]
Medium tanks are designed to be a compromise but how successful they are varies between designs.


-Infantry Tanks:[Supporting the Advance]
Around medium tank to slightly larger these vehicles trade speed for armor-too an almost comical degree-though it's offence varies
from sub-par to decent their goal is to support the infantry.Some could also be considered heavy tanks.


-Heavy Tank:[Heavy Armor Here]
These tanks are heavily armored and tend mount big guns their here to breakthrough enemy lines or to brawl with enemy armor
though there are downsides they're on the slow side with varying degrees of mobility and there may also be logistical issues but if
you can make it work they're pretty dang handy.


-Super Heavy Tank:[Large and in Charge]
Okay to be honest I'm not sure how to describe these in a flowery way so they tended to be designed as the ultimate breakthrough vehicle
or as a bunker on tracks or both if I can come up with a better description I might change it oh and they to tend to have amplified version of the
problems suffered by heavy tanks.


Okay I think I got the majority of them just so you know I wrote this all in one sitting so sorry for any problems okay.

[milo christiansen]

Anything smaller than medium tank on a battlefield is just asking to get dead. Light tanks and armored cars work OK for some things, but only if you opponent doesn't have anything better or you have some really nice sledge hammers to mount on your eggshells (powerful AT missiles).

Light stuff is for scouts, and we don't really need armored/motorized scouts yet. Once we get everything mechanized then maybe.

What we need right now soon is a good light tank to hold us over until we have the tech to build a good medium tank, and then we stop making light tanks ASAP.

[Slick]

You do realize your using a modern outlook when currently we are more or less in a late 1800's early 1900's setting right now, where armored warfare isn't even a theory, and irl that the first modern tank was a highly successful light tank ie; The Renault FT.

Sorry if I sound hostile.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Before we get too caught up in new rifle and munitions we need to spend most of a turn building production, we can't even fully equip the army we have!

Yeah. And we're going to need even more production to bring out tanks, aircraft, ships, and so many other things eventually most likely.

I'm thinking that we'll try to advance and refine some designs (the Type B, tanks, the 40mm) this turn while making better testing facilities and minimal production advancement. We need production, but setting up the next stage of warfare is what we need to keep them reacting to what we do rather than the other way around.

Next turn, I'm thinking that we should focus on three major projects (Fighter Plane, Bomber Plane, Recruitment Facility) while using the remaining engineers to boost up our production (and make that airfield). It'll probablybe something like a split of 15 to 15 unless our Academy actually gets us some students.

Once we get around 50 engineers, after we get all the newbies and untrained to basic level, I'm thinking that we can set a dedicated force of 20 engineers to producing more production and design related facilities each turn, have 5 work on Special Projects (anything that is more than two decades ahead of the current time period as well as anything that we can't find a direct equivalent of but seems like it would be reasonably possible e.g. incendiary torpedoes that aren't coal based) with the remaining 25 used however we like.

_______

In relation to the current conversation about tanks:

Meta knowledge tells us that tanks are effective. It tells us how to deal with tanks. It also tells us that our opponents have access to the same resources and meta-ideas that we do. It's a matter of when, not if, they decide to make tanks.

The point of working the tank out now and deploying it is to keep them off balance and needing to react. The more they need to react to what we do, the more space we have to push further ahead of them until we are able to strike a decisive victory and begin damaging their infrastructure. Once we start doing that, we've basically won due to the small nature of our respective nations.

Yeah, we'll need to make a medium tank after our light tank. The light tank is going to be effective, but the only counter to their counters of the light tank is to beef it up until it can begin to shrug off their AT equipment.

[Aseaheru]

Responding to a PM here:

As we're going to be given the designs for an airship (possibly its component designs as well? Does the same apply to the armored car?) are we going to be informed what facilities we need to produce them as well? I'd imagine a specially made hanger would be needed but specifics once we get the design would be nice.

Well, first up, no airship, due to the scrub of the update prior to notepad++. However, for stuff from allies, most of the time they will provide their own components in their vehicular gifts.

To make airships, you need a building for it (a hangar or an aircraft factory) and then the lifting gas for it. Which is tied into resources, and will probably necessitate importing or making more.
 An example being fuel. Things can be designed to try to use as little as possible, or for things like flex-fuel engines. You can build structures to help with shortages (coal to gas, distilleries, etc.), or jsut import it. In which case watch out for commerce raiders.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

So we're going to need three or four facilities to make and deploy aircraft then. The Production building, the Specialty Equipment building, the Airstrip (even airships will need space cleared out for them to deploy from hangers), and optionally the Specific Resource Production facility.

Will land based vehicles such as tanks require similar set up, or will direct factory production cover those processes? Not counting fuel of course.

[Aseaheru]

 If you have tanks running on something exotic and special, then you will almost certainly need to produce that special stuff for it. However, most things only need production capacity for their components. So, for a tank, probably the engine, chassis, guns, and any signal equipment or the like you add in.
 Airships are like normal ships in that they need a place to be built specially, but you do not need to build airfields for military units to use. If you want one of your own, go ahead and build it, but if I was going to make you build airfields I would have you build ports, railways, roads, bases, defensive works and anything else that needs building.

-edit responding to PM question-

 Most, but not all, of current resource requirements will be covered. This is mostly due to, say, the possibility of one side needing excessive amounts of hydrogen when nowhere near enough is being produced. So, expect some shortages.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Very good to know about the airfields. We're probably going to want to build one anyway so we can better test our designs (no aircraft should leave our corner of the design board without the prototype being flown at least once).

Those are very good points and I'm glad we don't have to handle thise areas of logistics. We should probably still design that train eventually now that I think of it.

The resources make sense. Would a Munitions Testing Facility count for the production of rarer explosive chemicals and explosive materials, or would that only provide benefit for the construction and testing of prototype muntions?

[Aseaheru]

That would only produce enough as needed for testing and development. On a good day.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Adding to the list of things we're going to need to make:
Chemical Plant(s) (One or more for specific chemicals?)
Gas Refinery(ies) (Might get clumped together with the above?)
Steel Mill(s) (Lots of steel heavy production projects)
Mine(s) (For the eventual processing of)
Aluminium Processing Plant (turns out that the modern method of making aluminium was set up just before 1900, so we've lucked out there. Especially important for flight and explosives.)
Electronics Manufacturer (Silicon maybe? Might be covered through direct production)

There's probably more but there's an idea of things. We probably have some of these already, but will probably need to make more to cover future resource costs.

[3_14159]

Actually that ties into one my goal vehicles as in a vehicle I think we should have an equivalent of.
Say hello to the Tank Mark IX:
http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww1/gb/Tank_Mark-IX_APC.php

This thing just seems to useful not to have an equivalent.

I agree that it's probably useful to have a - possibly marginally - armoured APC. However, the performance of the Mark IX - 1.3km/h speed - seems unlikely to be useful. We might be able to take the Mule truck and produce an armoured variant of it; this'd trade off-road performance and trench traversing, though.

[snip tanks]

Good write-up!
I'd add two examples for the Infantry and Cruiser tank respectively: The Matilda II, at an appalling 26km/h but double the armour of the contemporary German panzers and requiring the 88 to knock out, and the Crusader tank, with its 46km/h top speed but half the Matilda's armour.
As you notice, the examples are British. That's because there've been a multitude of different names and (slight) differences in doctrine. For example, the German Panzer III was - similarly to the cruiser tank - intended to exploit breakthroughs. This explains its size and armament, compared to the Panzer IV which was far heavier armoured and meant to both create the breakthroughs and deal with strongpoints. These roles are similar - though not identical - to the Cruiser and Infantry tank concepts. Later on, I guess, the role of creating such breakthroughs was then headed to - in the case of the Germans - heavier and heavier tanks.

Next turn, I'm thinking that we should focus on three major projects (Fighter Plane, Bomber Plane, Recruitment Facility) while using the remaining engineers to boost up our production (and make that airfield).

I don't believe the fighter plane/bomber plane distinction is going to be necessary at the moment. By concentrating the resources on one plane, we'll probably get a better starting point for later designs.
But I believe it's definitely a good idea to train all of our Newbies to at least basic engineers.

Most, but not all, of current resource requirements will be covered. This is mostly due to, say, the possibility of one side needing excessive amounts of hydrogen when nowhere near enough is being produced. So, expect some shortages.

Do you expect to introduce the resource system next turn?

Very good to know about the airfields. We're probably going to want to build one anyway so we can better test our designs (no aircraft should leave our corner of the design board without the prototype being flown at least once).

I believe that should be part of the airplane design facility.

Those are very good points and I'm glad we don't have to handle thise areas of logistics. We should probably still design that train eventually now that I think of it.

Good point; very good point.

That would only produce enough as needed for testing and development. On a good day.

Still very useful - test the ammunition, then use the common compounds for a large production series.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

My thinking was to use the fighter as a scouting plane while the bombers focused on ground targets, at least until the Monarchy started bringing out their own planes. Focusing on one plane (I'm thinking the bomber) will provide better results. I'll make sure to include that as part if the write up for the facility.