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Glorious Arstotzka

17 (16%)

Glorious Moskurg

13 (12.3%)

Ingloriously Didn't Play

76 (71.7%)

Total Members Voted: 106

[andrea]

The archer resists change simply because many people are convinced it already performs the intended function. Wasp nest , I believe there are plans to make a new carrier after we get the jungle ( or after our advance gets repelled)

[Taricus]

The Dolphin is working as intended, so we can cross that off the list. Though I do agree that we do need to work towards either ERA or NERA soon.

[evictedSaint]

The Dolphin is working, but wasn't for a long time - even though we really needed it.  And the Archer doesn't get any love because it's "boring" and doesn't work.

Do you notice a trend?

[Madman198237]

I very much agree with Evicted here. We've not fixed the carrier (So far no call to do so, which is fine), ERA is still a wasted revision in everyone's minds, and here we are developing a MRLS. Seriously? Fixing ERA might have made our tanks resistant to that silly autoloader (Even though I don't support ERA). We've not, as he pointed out, done anything to our steel coffins on the high seas, though they desperately need it.

Let's shoot big. If we don't get this jet fighter this turn, with the credit and using the revision, then we have clear incentive to back up our choices and push for it next turn. Whittle has been pushing this jet concept for most of a decade at this point. The technology isn't unknown. We're developing it for ourselves. Yes, it's gaining some improvements, but we expect the improvements to have issues. When they have issues, we then go ahead and fix them in a revision, and a design, and a second revision, whatever it takes to give ourselves a huge leap in technology over the heads of the Cannalans. We can't hurt ourselves any more than discarding our strengths and we can't doom ourselves any better than undershooting and thus having nothing to fix (If we go for the weak fighter, and get it at an OKish level, we won't be making a better one in a revision, and will thus be stuck with an OK fighter that the ADHD portion might just go "OK it's fine let's get moar rockets guys" or whatever floatplane bad idea is floating around now.

[Taricus]

Yeah, the last turn was a shitshow with getting the Sarukh. Sure it helped in the jungle but so would ERA or NERA. But a point of notice is that if we overspecialisse we do risk losing the war, we do need to come up with counters for their stuff and do those well enough to force them to counter those designs.

[Madman198237]

We can't pull off a conventional navy to counter theirs.
Not unless we manage to go full-on Iowa-class battleship and pull an Essex out of our collective rears.

This turn, do the hard but worthwhile jet fighter. Think about it: It's not all that unreasonable for this game. If highly-directed anti-explosives explosives built into the hull of armored vehicles was very hard on a revision, we ought to be able to pull off a Very Hard with a jet fighter given our experience with airborne forces and complex piston-driven engines (AKA the science of mixing exploding gases and compressed air). We should have massive advantages to air designs, just like they have advantages to designing naval things. Hence, Lexington class in a single turn.

EDIT:
Oh and by the way, if we make an F-82 Sabre type jet fighter in two turns, all their air forces will become nearly entirely obsolete. We'll be able to murder them at sea (Probably use a revision for special high-octane fuel. It might give the Haast enough of a boost to use Wasp Nest carrier decks. And if it doesn't, or we don't have a revision when we finish the jet fighters, then we use a turn to build a new carrier capable of utilizing jets and Haasts---the ultimate duo)

[Chiefwaffles]

Hey, if they can pull that carrier out of their asses we should be able to do the same with our navy.

[Madman198237]

No. They have a general with bonuses to naval stuff. We don't.

They have far more ships and designs at sea than we do. They have so much more experience we can't match them.

But we're darn sure better than them at aircraft. We haven't yet put a design into making a modern fighter aircraft and yet our revised old one is better than they best. And cheaper. We have the ability to go beyond average and easy, and we'd better do it. Air power is our key strategy, like sea power is for them. Let's make use of it. Ground tech comes second. A close second, but second. WE MUST be winning in the air, undoubtedly winning in the air, before we work on ground technologies.

[Chiefwaffles]

1.) I was kidding
2.) We can't rely on one thing as a crutch. We may not be able to beat them easily head-on in a navy bit we have a navy and an air force. At some point it'll be much more efficient in terms of actions/effectiveness of to upgrade our navy instead of our air force.

[Madman198237]

In fact, it will. In about two turns, depending on our accomplishments with this design.

We'll need a better carrier after the jet. A carrier capable of launching said jet, as well as the Haast. After the carrier, we might want to invest in a cruiser. And I mean a 6" gunned light cruiser similar (But not as heavily armored, most likely. I've not looked at its specs recently) to their Khorne. Modern navies have been using better light warships for two decades. I think its time we joined them.

[Parsely]

This has been gone over before, but I reiterate that I don't see the point in artillery ships when aircraft are a superior form of firepower in almost every way, being able to sink ships and deter enemy aircraft as well as support ground troops without risking an expensive hull. This is especially so considering their naval design advantage. Our aircraft are effective at deterring their ships as long as they aren't badly outnumbered. The problem is not the inadequacy of our artillery on the Archer, which would do nothing to fix the problem of their naval aircraft reducing the power our naval air force.

Some ways we could consider properly countering this is by developing:
- dedicated anti-air vessels to reduce the effectiveness of their air presence
- submarines for killing enemy carriers to eliminate their air presence
- better carriers to increase the effectiveness of our air presence

What we should not be doing is trying to outpace them at developing artillery ships. We can't win by playing catch up, we need to continue to develop the hard counters, which is what we did with the Wasp Nest in the first place and it worked great.

[Madman198237]

That's the thing: Building a superior light cruiser isn't about artillery firepower. If it was, I'd be trying to build the Dreadnought. Or, rather, the Michigan or one of the other American designs that had centerline turrets only. Especially the later oil burners.

EDIT:
Duh, forgot to make my point :|
A light cruiser does commerce raiding and AAA protection as well as shooting at any light warships that get too close. So, it's a logical naval expansion for later. Especially if we build one that's just swimming in AAA and a few heavy gun turrets.

[evictedSaint]

It's possible we're losing focus here, so let me pull the conversation back to the Design at hand.

This Design ultimately boils down to two options:
1) Start small, build smaller, less powerful engines with less effect but safer difficulty.  Short-term investment.
2) Start big, build a large, powerful engine with greater effect but more dangerous difficulty. Long-term investment.


I am a proponent of option 2.  That being said, I'm simply glad we've agreed to try jets this turn - convincing people to try was the biggest hurdle to overcome.

[Chiefwaffles]

That's mistepresenting it!
I don't care about short-term. Better difficulty is important for long-term, and difficulty is directly related to experience gained.

At impossible, experience gained is drastically reduced, with lower rolls giving little to none. Very Hard is much more better for this and we can make better designs in the future (like a better Sobriety) much more easily.

[andrea]

The Thunderbird is not necessarily smaller and less powerful. Sure, the engines are smaller, but they are 2.