On the Island Continent of Janal, the nations of Nafuna and Karikhita have fought each other for hundreds of years. Neither managing to ever truely defeat the other, but recently, unbeknownst to the other, around the same time, both nations made contact with the rest of the world, and, a glimpse of all the new technology that exists was given to them. And with it, they plan to finally end the conflict once and for all. Will Nafuna retake their rightful home? Or will the Karikhita prove that nothing can stop the Khan? Whatever the outcome, the world is mostly ignoring the conflict, watching more important things...for now at least.Q What the hell is this? A An arms race game ripped off from Sensei like all the others.
Q Are you mad?! Running an arms race game!? A Yes, I know I'm probably going to regret this and go into hiding and bring shame.
Q How do I join? A Just say you join in one of the nations treads, thats all
Q 1890? Isnt that a bit early? A Yes, it is, because you start out with matchlock guns. You know, the things from the 15th century.
Q Which side is Moskurg and which is Arstotzka? A I know this might turn you away, but neither is, unless you go off of the biome they are in.
Below this is rules and such that are mostly shamelessly ripped right off the intercontinental arms race game, which you probably should join if you haven't already and joined this. Just note some of it is different, like the map.
Most pieces of equipment have a resource cost, expressed in Ore, Wood, and Oil. For examples see starting equipment, below. Ore represents the total amount of mining effort which an item costs, and oil represents its use of chemicals. If something is big, or uses rare metals, it will have a high ore cost. If something burns a lot of fuel, or uses very high-grade fuel, or uses exotic chemicals then it will have a high oil cost. Costs represent what is needed to supply a company's worth of men, or about 100 men. This means, that prices given might be for 100 rifles, 50 motorcycles with sidecars, or 5-10 tanks or planes, or even a single ship.
Your nation has limited resources: The chunk of the continent you start on provides 3 Ore, and 2 wood, although Oil can be gotten later, along with more materials. This is also listed in your Equipment section in each battle report. You can gain resources by taking certain sections of the map, and then holding them for one turn without losing ground. The map section, below, describes the resources available. If a design costs resources which you don't have, it becomes expensive, and can't be issued to everybody. The total amount of resources a design costs more than you have is called the Resource Deficit. A design with no resource deficit is Cheap, this means it can be issued to every soldier, or as often as your generals decide is tactically sensible. A resource deficit of up to 2 makes a design Expensive, meaning it can only be issued to officers, or 1 in 10 men. A resource deficit of 3-5 makes a design Very Expensive, available to only about 1 in 100 men. A resource deficit of 6-9 makes a design a National Effort, you can only field one at a time- so this is only worthwhile if it's something like an enormous battleship, a nuke, or mecha-godzilla. A resource deficit of 10 or more is Theoretical, and cannot actually be built by you (although, some nation with the resources might be able to use it). Some technologies Complex, being new and difficult to manufacture, and designs featuring them become one level more expensive, Very complex designs are things so new and revolutionary to you, that making them is very very difficult for your current factories or smiths, and thus, are two expense levels higher. Consider expenses when planning your designs! Also, if you lose access to resources, any designs which become more expensive will immediately see the effects- equipment which doesn't have enough fuel and spare parts will need to be decommissioned.
There are also special resources. Using them in your design adds the requirement of the resource to the cost, however unlike the other arms race, adding, say for example, titanium to a aircraft as outer paneling as part of a design will make it cost 1 less ore, however, adding special resources to a design wont reduce the cost unless it is a major part of the design, like in the example
You have a limited Transport Capacity (see Starting Equipment, below) which determines how much resources you are capable of claiming from other territories you control. Your TC is given from the single vehicle which gives the highest TC in each mode of transportation (land, sea and air). Resources from the two territories adjacent to your capitol do not consume transport capacity.
The last thing about resources to remember is that you have a Industrialization progression, not all territory is fully producing ore or oil that they have, due to the fact you start out with picks. At the start you wont have oil, although you wont need it at the start, or even be able to produce it, but oil will become important later on.
The map is divided up into regions, which are further divided up into sections. Your control of a region might be written like: [Plains: Karikhita 3/4, Nafuna 1/4], assuming the "plains" region has four sections. Your army may only advance along the lines between regions on the map. During the battle phase, you will advance along two of these lines, and if you win in these regions, you will gain a section, or two if you are doing extremely well. Many regions have resources, and you will only gain those resources once you have held all sections in a region, and kept them for one turn. You will also be attacked in two regions, and the enemy may gain ground- but if you beat them in any area where you did not choose to attack, you will not gain ground. Conversely, if they beat you in an area they are only defending, you will lose no ground. Karikhita's Capitol to the north, and Nafuna's Capitol lies to the south of the
island continent. When either team reaches one of the enemy's center regions, they will fight through an entire region (4 sections) before reaching the capitol. A single victory at the capitol will end the game.
As you can see, Karikhita lies on the north side of the map, and Nafuna lies on the south of the map. Islands to the west of both nations are also being fought over by both nations. The Village land, swamp, and island mountain are where both nations forces currently meet.
The following rules apply to armored land vehicles, with thickness for reference being Rolled Homogenous Armor, steel armor standard throughout WWII.
Weapons capable of penetrating armor have "Armor Penetration" values, which are hidden. A round striking armor has a penetration value at medium range, with a +1 bonus for close range and a -1 penalty for long range. Armor values are as follows:
1) Thin, <10 mm (all measures approximate and used for historical reference)
2) Light, 10-24 mm
3) Medium, 25-50 mm
4) Heavy, 51-100 mm
5) Extra Heavy, 101-150 mm
6) Super Heavy, 150-200 mm. Only historical example I can find is the Maus tank, O-I, and ironclad ships.
7) Extreme, 200+ mm, or composite equivalent.
8 ) Composite only, we probably will never get this high in this game, but it could happen.
Materials give a bonus to that value. Cheap, mild steel is -1, RHA is 0. Aluminum is -1 but lighter, Titanium is lighter with no such penalty, and alloys like manganese steel, composites or more exotic armors may be +1 or higher with various effects on the weight and cost. Good spacing and angling can give a further bonus (which might be wholly or partially negated by APBC rounds or an opponent's good marksmanship).
When building armor, you can specify the thickness and material of the armor in different areas, as well as attempt to research new materials and techniques. Thicker armor also presents an engineering challenge in general; making thick armor is a technology on its own.
Keep in mind that 0 armor is still armor and can stop stuff like 9mm pistol rounds, or small shell fragments.
Landing Strips for aircraft are either Long, or Short. Small aircraft can use a short airstrip, while larger ones, such as bombers, may require a long airstrip. In this game, most landmasses will offer a long air strip, while a few locations as well as aircraft carriers (unless you make something stupidly large) will only offer short landing strips. Sea planes can also land at harbors you control. Unless aircraft are explicitly capable of long-range travel, they normally need to land a refuel at each region they pass through. Depending on the circumstances, having a landing strip close to the region in which combat is occurring may grant a bonus to air combat, especially in the case of aircraft carriers.
The fights which take place on the sea don't represent a distinct territory; only land is gained and lost. However, each turn the effects of your naval efforts are calculated and can change your performance on land. Depending on how well you perform, one of the following traits is assigned: If your naval strength is Equal to the enemy, nobody has an advantage. If you are doing noticeably better, you have an Advantage, and have the benefit of outnumbering the enemy when fighting for islands. If you are doing better than the enemy in multiple aspects, you will have a Large Advantage, which confers the previous benefit as well as reducing enemy transport capacity at sea by half, rounded up. Naval advantage can also determine whether you have opportunities to use tactics like shore bombardment effectively, provided you are equipped to do so at all.
The following difficulties apply to both Designs and Revisions, (henceforth just "Designs" for brevity) but revisions will usually be about one step more difficult than designs in addition to being limited in scope. For example, making a whole new design for a simple rifle in a new caliber would probably be Trivial, but Easy as a revision. Simple revisions are still perfectly capable of being trivial. Difficulty is mainly judged by three factors: What the best similar example of a technology you have built is, how long ago you built it, and what progress the outside world has made in that area. It's usually easy to make incrementally better designs, and the longer your factories build something, the better your engineering bureau grows to understand it. Real world countries serve as a frame of reference for what is cutting edge technology, it is very hard to get ahead from them, but it is also assumed your engineers might be able to spend some of their time learning from books, academic papers, photos, films and lectures available to the general public- although their reading comprehension is not to be relied on. Lastly, it is important to make a distinction from advances in engineering and advances in military doctrine: For example, assault rifles depend on using smaller caliber bullets than normal rifles so they can be controlled under automatic fire, and it took real life countries a long time to realize this. However, you are able to make them far ahead of time because they are not actually difficult to manufacture.
In addition to having "bugs" as a result of a poor die roll, some designs will simply have inherent drawbacks. For example, if you build a bomber with no top-facing guns, it will always be vulnerable to attack from above, or if you specify a tank design with lots of armor, a big gun, and a small engine, no die result is going to cause it to go fast. The consequence of bugs also depends on the nature of the design, a radio with severe bugs might just stop working and be hard to fix, but an aircraft with severe bugs will probably result in dead pilots. If a design makes simple advances in multiple areas, a poor result might only advance in some of those areas, where other areas suffer bugs or do not advance.
Keep in mind that, as with all things in this game, design results are subject to a lot of, well, subjectivity. These are merely guidelines which I follow.
Trivial:
A trivial-difficulty design would be one that pushes no new ground in terms of technology or engineering. If something is likely to be trivial, it should be done during a revision so as not to use up a design phase. An example might be adding an existing cannon design to an existing ship design which previously used a different kind of cannon. While revisions involving new technology are harder than designs involving new technology, revisions involving combining existing technology are often trivial.
1: On a roll of 1, there might or might not be a minor bug, depending on whether I can think of a bug that makes sense. If I can't think of a good one, the design succeeds as planned.
2-6: The design succeeds as planned.
Easy:
An easy design would be one that makes only a very small step in technology and requires some new engineering effort, such as making a new tank with thicker armor or a bigger gun or engine than previous tanks, but without any particularly new ideas involved, or a rifle designed to fire faster or be more accurate than its predecessors. It might also be several trivial changes in one design.
1: The design suffers some kind of bug, how severe it is depends on what sort of bug I can think of that makes sense. For example, perhaps a tank's ammunition is stored in a vulnerable spot or the new cannon jams often. Or the whole thing is just a bit rubbish.
2: The design probably suffers some kind of bug, but probably not too severe, or it just isn't as effective as you hoped.
3-4: The design succeeds as planned.
5-6: The design might accomplish something better than planned. For example, the geometry of a tank's armor might make it more effective than normal for its thickness, or a rifle might be extremely reliable even when caked in mud.
Normal:
A normal design advances your technology one "step" in a certain area, making it noticeably better. For example, you might build a cannon which fires shells about 50% larger than your existing ones, a machine gun which uses a new more effective type of action, your biggest ship yet, and so on. This is often the difficulty of a revision to remove a bug in an existing design.
1: The design suffers a pretty severe bug and the main advancement in technology probably isn't accomplished.
2: The design suffers a bug but the advancement in technology might be effective, or it works without any notable problems except that it isn't remarkably effective.
3: The design succeeds. It might suffer a minor bug, but it won't be crippling and probably won't affect future uses of the new technology.
4-5: The design succeeds.
6: The design might accomplish something better than planned. As with bugs, this depends on whether I can think of a way this makes sense.
Hard:
A hard design advances your technology by a couple "steps", such as building a new cannon more than twice as large as your previous largest one, or advances technology in multiple areas, such as building a tank with a new type of armor and new cannon and better engine than your previous one, or begins into a new field of technology but one which you would reasonably have access to, like your very first shaped charge explosive or radio system. A hard design might also be a design which was deemed Very hard or Impossible and failed before, but your team learned from the experience. Getting a technology advancement in a revision is usually Hard.
1: The design suffers multiple serious bugs or a bug which is difficult to fix, and the design is not very useful until these are corrected. It might not advance the technology as planned.
2: The design suffers a severe bug or multiple less serious ones. It might not advance the technology as planned.
3: The design suffers a noticeable bug, which future designs using this technology might have to deal with, or works in principle but isn't very effective.
4: The design succeeds. If it's a new type of technology altogether, it might suffer a minor bug.
5-6: On a roll of 5, or 6, the design succeeds.
Very hard:
A very hard design is something which world powers struggled with for years to get right, like radar or jet engines. It represents the very cutting edge of technology. You should expect to fail the first time you attempt something like this, but it can be worthwhile nonetheless. A revision which attempts to make a leap forward in technology might be Very Hard.
1: The design fails to yield a useable example. Your designers simply couldn't get anything produced in time.
2: The design suffers a serious bug or bugs which make it nearly useless. For example, a rocket explodes on the launch pad.
3: The design suffers severe bugs which might prevent it from being very useful, but a working example is produced. At this level of success or higher, attempting another similar design might be Hard rather than Very Hard.
4: The design suffers moderate to severe bugs.
5: The design succeeds, maybe with a minor to moderate bug.
6: The design succeeds.
Impossible:
A design with the "impossible" difficulty stretches credulity, or is out of your depth. If any real life countries attempted your design, they didn't succeed until a later time period if at all, and the engineering complexity involved is staggering. Alternatively, your design takes a flexible view towards the laws of physics. If you attempt an Impossible design, you risk wasting your turn. Examples might include a tank which is much bigger than your previously largest tank, but also uses less resources. Other examples would include being the first country to put a satellite into orbit well ahead of Sputnik, creating a working powered exoskeleton, or building effective laser weapons.
1-4: The design fails, probably with nothing to show for it. You might gain some small understanding of the technology with which you were attempting to pervert nature or flaunt physics.
5: You don't build a working example of your design, but your understanding in this field grows like succeeding on a normal design.
6: Depending on just out-there your design is, you make a significant breakthrough which will later allow you to attempt it again at Very Hard difficulty, or get a severely buggy working example. Depending on how badly you ignored the laws of physics, your working example might or not look like what you actually intended: For example, you might make a laser powerful enough to use as a weapon, but it requires a power source the size of a semi truck trailer.
From time to time, you will be given Credits as a reward for various tasks. For example, you might produce propaganda to attract tourists and make money, earning an expense credit. Or, you might do a favor for the British, and in turn they share their research, giving you Research Assistance. Each of these is spent only once.
Expense Credit: Makes one designer cheaper by one expense level, for one turn only.
Espionage Credit: Allows you to undergo one act of subterfuge, such as sabotaging an enemy design, or stealing enemy plans. More creative tactics are also an option.
Research Assistance: Allows you to roll 2 dice on a design or revision, and take the best result.
Design/Revision Credit: Grants an extra design or revision outright. Might not be used in this game.
1. I am not a history professor even if I like it, if I get something wrong, please tell me about it, if some piece of equipment is imbalanced/unrealistic, I might consider changing it if you bring it up and politely state your argument. However, I don't like back tracking on things like designs, and will try to be consistent.
2. Do not spy on the other team's private thread, or try to get into their private discord channel. Trust me, playing fair is more fun for everyone! PS, you can read the one first post of each side that I made before you join, but that's it.
3. Have fun.
Mongol Sabre A old sword design that has served us well even after all these years, It can be used on horseback just as well as it can be used on foot. Costs 1 Ore -Cheap
Composite Bow A favorite of both our own troops and our enemy, it is a simple bow that is able to pack much more of a punch then a self bow, it comes a quiver. Costs 1 Wood -Cheap
Halberds A two-sided blade mounted on a pole that is 2 meters tall, it can be used by particularly strong individuals on horseback but the average person can only use it on foot, it would be very good against our enemy's chariots, if only they actually used them for melee, still, good for melee and charges, although it is time consuming to make. 2 Ore -Complex, Expensive
Matchlock Rifle A simple mussel loaded rifle with a matchlock system where a wick is used to ignite the gunpowder in the pan. Its very difficult to make ourselves, and the match needs to remain lit making it prone to go out in windy situations, sadly making it unusable by our horse riders, and in rain or mist its more or less a fancy club. The glow of the match burning also can give away the gunners position in the dark. Costs 1 Wood, 1 Ore -Very Complex Very Expensive
Khopesh A classic short sword design we have not forgotten even after all these years, the major difference between it and the original is the use of steel instead of iron or bronze and it is much sharper then what we had before. Costs 1 Ore-Cheep
Composite Bow A favorite of both our own troops and our enemy, it is a simple bow that is able to pack much more of a punch then a self bow, it comes with a quiver. Costs 1 Wood -Cheap
Shield A simple Shield using wood and covered with leather that is able to protect the user against blows by ground troops or protect against arrows. Costs 1 Wood -Cheap
Armored Chariot Unlike our foe, we do not ride atop horses in battle, instead, we use chariots. These particular chariots are armored and quite sturdy so they wont have an unlikely chance of being set on fire. It is only used by skilled archers, as we have limited numbers of them due to the required skill needed to make them. Costs 2 Wood, 1 Ore -Complex, Expensive
Matchlock Rifle A simple mussel loaded rifle with a matchlock system where a wick is used to ignite the gunpowder in the pan. Its very difficult to make ourselves, and the match needs to remain lit making it prone to go out in windy situations, sadly making it unusable by our horse riders, and in rain or mist its more or less a fancy club. The glow of the match burning also can give away the gunners position in the dark. Costs 1 Wood, 1 Ore -Very Complex Very Expensive
KarikhitaNafunaThere is also a Discord.