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Glorious Arstotzka

17 (16%)

Glorious Moskurg

13 (12.3%)

Ingloriously Didn't Play

76 (71.7%)

Total Members Voted: 106

[Kashyyk]

I'm seriously worried that the Zheleznogorod will be an over-engineered, under-performing piece of crap that will require the revision to be even halfway useful. The Coastal Gun and Pattern C should be easily effective with just a design, leaving the revision free for a large Cargo Ship. Further, the Coastal Gun addresses a gap in our forces, compared to all the other designs, which are iterative improvements.

[Powder Miner]

A wooden deck is a hell of a lot less able to handle any sort of mishap with a jet, though, especially one as ridiculously hot-burning as the Thunderbird. If you want to project our air force a turn ago without many problems go with the Pattern C, but skipping out on an armored deck makes the ship much more vulnerable and makes launching jets a more problematic enterprise.

The Pattern C is still much more palatable to me, however, than the coastal gun, which has remarkably little utility -- it doesn't actually affect navy-navy fights, but it doesn't actually on its own sway land combat, either -- all it manages to do is mitigate naval advantage over defensive land combat, which is something that mitigating naval advantage would do anyway along with other things!

[NUKE9.13]

Coastal guns are a gap in our forces, yes. But not all gaps need filling. Planes are better than artillery.

[Parsely]

A wooden deck is a hell of a lot less able to handle any sort of mishap with a jet, though, especially one as ridiculously hot-burning as the Thunderbird. If you want to project our air force a turn ago without many problems go with the Pattern C, but skipping out on an armored deck makes the ship much more vulnerable and makes launching jets a more problematic enterprise.

They haven't been bombing our decks anyways, so why should we armor our decks? And unless the exhaust is directed downwards a wooden deck is fine for landing a jet.

E: And another thing about the Zheleznogorod: have no illusions, you are sacrificing a lot of space by turning a hangar deck into a flight deck. You need to carry few enough planes that you can make space on both decks. This would totally sabotage the point of making a bigger carrier, which is to carry more planes.

[Kashyyk]

I disagree. All gaps need filling. If we focus on nothing but aircraft and related support units, then all they have to do is design Anti-Air and we're screwed. Having as few gaps in our lineup forces them to counteract more different things.

Besides, aircraft can't hold ground. they can't even exert constant force over an area. A coastal/naval gun can.

[Parsely]

I disagree. All gaps need filling. If we focus on nothing but aircraft and related support units, then all they have to do is design Anti-Air and we're screwed. Having as few gaps in our lineup forces them to counteract more different things.

Besides, aircraft can't hold ground. they can't even exert constant force over an area. A coastal/naval gun can.

Except AAA sucks at countering aircraft because it's static and has to fire from really far away (inaccurate). AAA is a deterrent, it's for when your planes fail to stop the enemy's planes. Just look at the Seaweed; that thing didn't stop us from running roughshod over their fleet, the Santos did.

[Kashyyk]

By anti-air I don't just mean AA guns. Anything that kills planes counts. And any of those things will be effective against our air focus, but not against coastal/naval guns, or anything else that isn't air based.  Crippling Overspecialisation is a thing after all.

[Parsely]

Somehow Nuke's vote was doubled on both the double-decker and the Pattern C, so I corrected it here.

(3) UFS-CV-40 'Tiger Star', Pattern A: evictedSaint, Andrea, Madman198237
(3+1) UFS-CV-40 'Tiger Star', Pattern C: GUNINANRUNIN, NUKE9.13, Kashyyk, Wolfhunter107
( B3 'Compensator' 300mm Coastal Gun/Naval Cannon: Kashyyk, khan boyzitbig, Taricus, strongpoint, Nav, 10ebbor10, Baffler, voidslayer
(7) UFS-CV-40 Zheleznogorod B: Kot, Mulisa, Azzuro, Piratejoe, Stabby, Powder Miner, Sheb

By anti-air I don't just mean AA guns. Anything that kills planes counts. And any of those things will be effective against our air focus, but not against coastal/naval guns, or anything else that isn't air based.  Crippling Overspecialisation is a thing after all.

That's only relevant if the specialization actually gives us a disadvantage. So far all our investments into aircraft have paid off in spades, as evidenced by the enemy's reactions to our moves. There's little they can do to catch up to us as long as we maintain our edge, the Santos being an exceptional case because their naval bonus applies.

[Powder Miner]

We're not playing hour by hour, over a three month period, aircraft sure as hell are (and, in game, HAVE BEEN) able to exert a constant force.

[VoidSlayer]

I understand that a strong air force is incredibly useful, but we have seen time and again that the enemy having a navy is incredibly disadvantageous to us.  We should have been doing this a year ago.

[Powder Miner]

So the answer to enemy naval advantage hurting us is to... not actually answer the naval advantage? You're countering a singular asset of naval warfare here, but both our future landings and our shipping are still going to be hurt by their navy here, the coastal artillery does not actually help us that much.

Hell, it's especially galling because if we either lose the plains island or secure the northern island, we then have to complete landings to even gain access to new fronts -- and the artillery will be completely useless for this purpose, as it won't actually change their naval advantage there.

[Parsely]

The coastal artillery is not going to deter their navy from walking all over ours and neither will a cruiser, a multi-turn investment on our part, that they could counter in half the time with half the effort, since they're better sailors and have an advantage in designing boats to slap artillery on.

Which is why we need a modest but cleverly designed carrier like the Pattern C, because we don't need a design advantage when we can out-think the Cannalans.

Which is why it disappoints me that the Z is leading in the carrier votes, a vessel that if it was the same size would surely store fewer planes than the Pattern C because it expends a deck's worth of space for an extra runway that isn't needed when a short catapult in front of the conning tower would be adequate for launching a jet.

[Baffler]

The coastal artillery is not going to deter their navy from walking all over ours and neither will a cruiser, a multi-turn investment on our part, that they could counter in half the time with half the effort, since they're better sailors and have an advantage in designing boats.

Which is why we need a modest but cleverly designed boat.

Meanwhile the Z is leading in the carrier votes, a vessel that if it was the same size would surely store fewer planes than the Pattern C because it wastes a deck's worth of space for an extra runway that isn't needed when a short catapult in front of the conning tower would be adequate for launching a jet.

What makes you think what's essentially a scaling-up of the Archer will be a multiturn effort, but also that a full-sized fleet carrier incorporating lots of new technology will go well on the design alone? And for all our planes "running roughshod" over their fleet, it hasn't exactly materialized as a naval advantage. It's pretty clear we need to change our strategy.

[Powder Miner]

"It hasn't exactly manifested as a naval advantage" except for the occasions when their advantage was threatened even from being a naval advantage until they built carriers of their own which brought them solidly to MNA because of the now much less prominent air advantage which had been in fact manifesting?

[Parsely]

What makes you think what's essentially a scaling-up of the Archer will be a multiturn effort,

but also that a full-sized fleet carrier incorporating lots of new technology will go well on the design alone?

And for all our planes "running roughshod" over their fleet, it hasn't exactly materialized as a naval advantage. It's pretty clear we need to change our strategy.

Because you're building a gun right now that you're going to spend another design on to make a boat to attach it to. That's a multiturn effort.

Because we built the Wasp's Nest in a single turn and the Pattern C will be even easier because of that existing technology.

Yes it did. In Summer and Winter 1939 the Cannalans had only a basic naval advantage because of our planes, but we were foiled by the Santos in Spring 1939.