Welcome Bay12
to
IRON BEHEMOTHS
The date is January 1st, 1951.
Two years ago, the Geneva Conventions were signed by your nation. The restrictions set the technological pace of current warfare back thirty years. Among the articles we were forced to sign was the outlawing of treaded and wheeled vehicles, aircraft, and even fully automatic weapons. The bitter combat we’ve fought with
Toskesh has ground to an unwelcome stalemate. It is only recently that the Geneva Conventions have been revealed to be anything but iron-clad; already the Super Powers of the world seek to circumvent the very agreements they’ve pledged to uphold! Although those pledges still carry weight, we can not sit idly by whilst our enemy works to destroy us. It is only by cruel necessity that we must seek to gain the upper hand through clever designs and technologies that will not violate the Conventions, but still continue the bitter task of war. Use your cunning and technical prowess to defeat
Toskesh, for the nation of
Nogrania cannot rest knowing our neighbor to the north still exists!
Here, you will join the nation of Nogrania in a war against Toskesh. However, your job is not to fight or command, but to design weapons of war!This Arms Race is designed as an alternate history off-shoot from WWII inspired by both Iron Harvest and a proposal made by Sensei in the Arms Race discussion thread, wherein the nations of the world decide to band together to make war too infeasible to wage. Obviously we know war is inevitable, which is where you come in. Your job is to design weapons for the Glorious nation of
Nogrania, all of which obey the Geneva Conventions to the letter. War is Bad, of course, which is why we need to end it as soon as possible!
It is the Spring of 1951, in the Pacific Ocean of the Northern Hemisphere. Twelve years ago, the world was plunged into the most violent, bloody war known to man; a war that superseded the bloodshed of what was once called The Great War, The War of the Nations, and The War to End All Wars.
Six years ago, that war ended with the loss of more than 60 million people; more than twice the death of the previous war that had so recently ravaged the world. Two months later the United Nations was chartered to help ensure such a war will not once again be seen by the likes of men.
Two years ago, the nations of the world convened in Geneva, Switzerland for the adoption of additional articles to the Geneva Conventions.
Initially conceived as addendums to the existing articles covering the treatment of the wounded and prisoners during conflicts, the attending nations soon found themselves fleshing out more restrictions to warfare than they’d originally intended. The horrors of war still fresh in their minds, these articles went on to ban some of the most significant advancements in warfare developed in the past several decades. Furthermore, the conventions went on to include the pledges of the worlds existing super powers to support and empower the United Nations to enforce these articles.
Chief among the conventions is the banning of treaded or wheeled vehicles for the transportation of military equipment and personnel, the banning of fixed-wing aircraft, and the banning of automatic weaponry. Civilians around the world celebrated what was branded as the End to All War – after all, what military was willing to return to the brutal, stagnant trench warfare of the first World War?
The two small nations of Nogrania and Toskesh from the island-continent of Serouda are among those who’ve signed. Situated on a large island off the eastern coast of Japan, the two have fought on and off for centuries. For as long as anyone can remember, the two nations have fought one another with varying levels of intensity that ultimately failed to produce a victor. Though technically participants in the second World War, no one can quite agree which sides they fought for or when they joined, as the entirety of the fighting between the two never spilled past the borders of their island. Despite this ambiguity, they were ultimately declared participants of the Second World War, and with a great deal of heavy coercion from the United States, Britain, and Russia, both were coaxed into signing the new Geneva Conventions.
For a time, the conventions worked. With compliance enforced by the newly-empowered United Nations, both Nogrania and Toskesh were forced to abandon their tanks, their machine guns, and aircraft in favor of artillery, bolt-action rifles, and static trench warfare. With technology forcibly set back two decades, neither side was willing to press the conflict and an armistice held the peace. The world started to rebuild and nations started to heal.
Today, that has all changed.
Shaky black-and-white footage has been released of a heavily modified Soviet T-34. The tank, true to the Geneva Conventions, has forgone its treads in favor of something truly outlandish. Four thick mechanical legs sprout from the sides of the tank, moving one-by-one and propelling the vehicle forward.
The USSR has denied the authenticity of the footage and claimed it to be a hoax, but the world is abuzz with rumors of other such developments. Speculations of M4 Sherman tanks propped up on two legs walking about like men have capture the imagination of every American child. British pub-goers swear to their mothers about how they’d seen a Churchill Mk VII crawl through their village on six legs like a giant ant. Rumors across the Pacific tell of giant Japanese suits of mechanical armor, each carrying an entire aircraft engine on the back to power the limbs. Politicians decry the lunacy of such impractical designs yet accuse rival nations of attempting to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, all in the same breath.
The End to All Wars suddenly didn’t look so certain.
With the possibility of war on the horizon once again, the nations of Nogrania and Toskesh have quickly re-intensified their military spending.
is a former
British colony. They speak
English, are stationed in the Jungles to the
South, are
Capitalist, use the
Imperial System and feature a
Democratically Elected Council of incumbent politicians known as the High Council.
The game will be primarily played in this thread, but discord channels are available.
The
Nogrania Strategic Command is open to players from Nogrania.
The
Toskesh Strategic Command is likewise open to players from Toskesh.
The
United Nations Peace Negotiations is an optional place where you can communicate peacefully with the enemy nation and work to achieve a peaceful resolution to this vicious war, and also hurl insults at the enemy.
The
Recruitment Center is where you will join either Nogrania or Toskesh, giving you access to their discord channel.
Click
here to join the discord!
The Rules:
Preamble:The rule system is shamelessly ripped from Sensei’s
Intercontinental Arms Race game. If you haven’t read it, feel free to look it over whenever you get the chance. It's definitely worth the read.
Turns:The game is played in turns, which are broken up into phases. During each turn you will design new technology and revise it. Each turn represents one season - or three months - and there are four turns each year: starting in
Spring, then progressing to
Summer,
Autumn, and
Winter.
The Design Phase is your biggest phase, where you design a new technology. Simply write a proposal, or vote on an existing one - you only get one design each phase. Remember to include your votes in a quote box for easy counting, as I will always pick the most recently updated vote box for writing the design phase. You will then see the results of your design, based on a die roll and a difficulty which I assign (see difficulty, below).
The Revision Phase is your opportunity to fix problems or make changes to your existing designs. This works like the design phase, but the changes you can make are smaller (see difficulty, below). You can also attempt to reverse-engineer enemy designs, if you have gained ground in a theatre where the design which you want to reverse-engineer was fought. As a general rule of thumb, attempting new designs (as opposed to modifying existing designs) through Revision will result in +1 difficulty or more, depending on whether it’s an attempt at something you’ve never done before.
The Strategy Phase is where your team votes on up to
two territories to attempt to advance this year and pick where to deploy your National Effort designs and War Heroes (see map, below). You can only advance in territories you pick; if your opponent picks a territory you didn't but your side still wins, you will not advance.
The Battle Phase is when you wait to see your Battle Report. I will write a summary of the fighting which demonstrates how effective your new technology is, and where your armies will gain or lose ground. Once the battle report is posted, the turn is over and the next one begins.
Once you understand these basics, you can skim some of the other, more detailed rules.Resources and Expense:Most pieces of equipment have a resource cost, expressed in Ore and Oil. For examples, see starting equipment, below. Ore represents the total amount of physical effort and mineral resources which an item costs, and oil represents its use of chemicals and energy. If something is big, requires a lot of labor, or difficult to build, it will have a high ore cost. If something uses lots of energy, 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 is relatively impoverished and has limited resources. Your capitol is industrialized and able to provide 2 Ore and 1 Oil. As repayment from your part in WWII (despite not knowing exactly which side you were fighting on) the U.N. provides you with an additional 1 Ore and 1 Oil per year. These two resources - as well as any other resources you might gain - require a Transport Capacity to utilize. This is also listed in your Equipment section in each battle report. You can gain resources by taking certain sections of the map and 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 increases in expense and can't be issued to everybody. The total amount of resources a design costs more than what you have is called the Resource Deficit.
Cheap: 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.
Expense: A resource deficit of up to 2 makes a design Expensive, meaning it can only be issued to officers, or 1 in 10 men.
Very Expensive: A resource deficit of 3-5 makes a design Very Expensive, available to only about 1 in 100 men or just a few per theatre, depending on the nature of the design.
National Effort: 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 big that can provide a big bonus to the fight.
Theoretical: A resource deficit of 10 or more is Theoretical, and cannot actually be built. If you made a design that is Theoretical then your side is sitting on a blueprint for something you can’t actually afford to deploy.
Complex: In addition to the price of a design, some technologies can also be Complex or Very Complex, being new and difficult to manufacture. Designs featuring them become one or two levels more expensive, respectively.
Consider expenses when planning your designs! 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. That Expensive gun you were using? It’s now Very Expensive and you can only afford to give it to 1 in every 100 men, rather than 1 in 10.
There are also exists Unique Resources. These are minerals such as Titanium or Manganese, which can be used in designs to grant it additional bonuses – such as easing production, or providing additional armor. As time goes on these resources may be discovered in areas on the map, or your side may find an exporter that they can purchase from. These resources do not directly decrease the cost of a design; for example, let’s assume your team has a ship that uses 6 ore and 3 oil. Revising the ship to use your teams Titanium resource to replace the steel in the hull will cause the ship to cost 6 ore, 3 oil, and 1 titanium. Remember - ore does not only count for the amount of resources used, but the amount of physical labor and production that went into it! A design that requires a resource you do not hold will instead count as a -1 resource deficit; for example, if your side has 3 Ore and a design that costs 2 Ore and 1 Aluminum, that design will be Expensive. If your side has 3 Ore and a design costs 4 Ore and 1 Aluminum, it will still be Expensive.
The last thing about resources to remember is that you have a limited Transport Capacity (see Starting Equipment, below) which determines how many resources you are capable of claiming from 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). Your homeland's resources do not consume transport capacity.
The map is divided up into
regions, which are further divided up into
sections.
These regions are:
Jungle: Nogrania's capitol is located here. Dense vegetation and many streams and rivers blanket this hot, humid region.
Frozen Swamps: Toskesh's capitol is located here. Wet, soft ground and bodies of standing water periodically freeze solid in this cold, swampy region.
Mountains: A mountain range protects the western side of the island from the worst of the storms. Roads and paths are cut into this rocky area and form natural choke-points with lots of cover.
Badlands: Not quite a desert, this dry, rocky area is relatively flat with shallow hills, little water, and extreme temperatures going from hot to cold as the seasons change.
Fjords: The eastern side of the island is broken into ragged fingers of land. Most farming and settlement happens here, with plenty of ports and landing zones along the coasts. Relatively dry ground, but navigation is difficult.
Eastern Seas: The only side of the island where the waters are calm enough for ship travel. Relatively shallow, and can get choppy as the seasons change.
Your control of a region will be written as a fraction. For example: [Badlands: Nogrania 2/3, Toskesh 1/3] shows that Nogrania has majority control of the Badlands region. Your army may only advance along the lines shown between regions on the map. During the battle phase, you will attempt to advance in up to two of the territories available to you. If your army wins in a region, you will gain a section in that region. Holding a region will give your side a point to their Economic Development Track (see below) or may provide other bonuses. When either side reaches the enemy's home region, they will fight through an entire region (3 sections) before reaching the capitol. A single victory at the capitol will end the game. It is also possible to attempt to land directly in the enemies capitol from the sea once all five sections are under your control; your advance will have a landing penalty, and if you win then you probably could have marched in on foot anyways.
Combat is generally abstracted into "+1's" from the GM's perspective. Depending on how fancy your piece of equipment is, it could provide a larger or smaller bonus, or receive penalties if the enemy develops a counter. On occasion, both sides could be so evenly matched in a theatre that neither side has a clear advantage. In this event, I will flip a coin and the winning side gains a "
War Hero" - a single man or woman whose brave actions on the battlefield tipped the scales just enough for that side to win. A War Hero can be thought of as a National Effort design that has a humble "+1" effect to whichever theatre they're in. In the event you lose ground in a theatre they are employed, the War Hero will go either MIA or KIA.
:
Your nation is rapidly moving into the future, in no small part due to the growing influence of the outside world. New factories spring up like giant pop-up books, and trade deals shine like gems in day-to-day business. This development is reflected by the Economic Development Track.
Initially this track starts out with 0 of 3 points completed - as the game progresses, your nation may be presented with the chance to gain additional points to fill out the track, either through events or by holding an entire Theatre (other than your home territory) on the map for a single turn. When the track is completed your nation will gain an additional Ore, Oil, or Unique Resource. Your nation will need to have the Transport Capacity to utilize this new resource. Once completed, the track will reset with a higher point goal. The first reward will be an Ore resource.
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You will choose one of these!Your capitol is on top of a Unique Resource which is plentiful enough to be widely used in your weapons and technology. You must vote and pick which resource your nation is exploiting; additional unique resources may become available on the map or through trading, but this specific unique resource will not be lost until your capitol falls.
The following are available:
Cobalt: Able to be mixed into superalloys, there has been some talk about the use of cobalt in the development of cutting-edge jet engines. It’s useful for high-temperature components and is highly resistant to wear and corrosion.
Titanium: Highly resistant to corrosion and with a fantastic weight-to-strength ratio, this difficult-to-work metal is highly useful for a wide range of weapon applications. It’s hard to get large amounts of it, though, so we won’t be able to make an entire tank out of it – even if tanks were still legal.
Manganese: Much like cobalt, manganese is most useful when mixed into superalloys. Mangalloy (commonly referred to as “unworkable” due to how hard it is) is useful for armor reinforcement. Components made with mangalloy are quite hard to destroy.
Aluminum: Most of our planes from the previous war use this metal to cut weight, despite not being particularly hardy. Even with fixed-wing fighters and bombers being illegal, we might still find some use for this metal in designs that need to be light and quick. This resource is particularly plentiful, and picking it will give our side 2 Aluminum resources.
Tungsten: This metal can be mixed with steel to form High Speed Steel, which finds its use in drills, blades, and saws that can cut through high-carbon steel quite quickly. It can also be used to form high-density alloys which may find use as kinetic energy penetrators.
Gold: Though it finds some use as electrical components, gold doesn’t have particularly many uses in weapons. It can be used to decorate your weapons, though, and make them look impressive and Baroque.
Additionally, your team will need to pick a color to represent their faction on the map, and eventually design a flag to represent them in the U.N. Council.
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The following rules apply to armored land vehicles, with thickness for reference being Rolled homogeneous 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 and ironclad ships.
7) Extreme, 200+ mm, or composite equivalent.
8 ) Composite only, we might never get this high in this game.
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 level 0 armor is still armor and can stop stuff like 9mm pistol rounds or small shell fragments, but won't stop rifle rounds or a particularly determined soldier with a can opener.
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Naval combat will take place on the eastern side of the island, as the weather on the west side is so bad that none but the largest of ships can avoid being capsized. The Ocean region is five territories long; one that encompasses the Jungle, one that covers the Frozen Swamps, and three along the Fjords. Having control over a section of sea that is adjacent to a section of land controlled by the enemy will grant your side a bonus to the combat there that turn, both through off-shore bombardment and landings (if applicable - if you don’t have landers or ships with big guns, your naval bonus will be limited). You do not need to control all the Ocean territories to gain this advantage; you just need to be advanced further than the battle on the ground.
If your nation controls all five sections, you can attempt to land directly in the enemy's capitol. Unless you have an overwhelming bonus or some crazy tech that gives you enough of an edge, this landing will be extremely difficult. Additionally, controlling all five sections will allow you to apply your naval bonus to the enemy’s home territories, if the front line is advanced that far on the ground.
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 Easy, but Normal as a revision. Simple revisions are still perfectly capable of being Easy. 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.
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 blimp, it will always be vulnerable to attack no matter how many guns you strap to it. If you specify a walker 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 a flamethrower with severe bugs will probably result in dead users. 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.
Easy:
An easy-difficulty design would be one that pushes either no new ground in terms of technology or engineering, or makes an elementary advancement. If something is likely to be easy, 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 easy.
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.
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 radio which uses a new more effective encryption, a new type of engine for vehicles, 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 big bug, but the main advancement in technology may be accomplished to a limited degree.
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. It may also be your first foray 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 or worse.
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, but a second attempt will probably cement your understanding.
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 usable example. Your designers simply couldn't get anything produced in time, and your progress this year is wasted.
2: The design suffers a serious bug or bugs which make it nearly useless. For example, a rocket explodes on the launch pad. At this level of success or higher, attempting another similar design might be Hard rather than Very Hard.
3: The design suffers severe bugs which might prevent it from being very useful, but a working example is produced.
4: The design suffers moderate to severe bugs.
5: The design succeeds, maybe with a minor to moderate bug.
6: The design succeeds.
Extremely Hard:
An extremely hard design represents the upper edge of what you’re able to accomplish in a turn, and even then things may not go right. This would be a technology you have no experience with that has no real-life equivalent, or perhaps something that’s just so complex in nature your engineers will need to sit down and puzzle it out for a while. This would be designing a method to enrich uranium, or designing a nuclear reactor. It could be developing Kevlar before its discovery in real life, or attempting to build an intercontinental missile without any rocketry technology under your belt. A good rule of thumb is that if you need to wait about a decade or more for it to be discovered, it will likely be Extremely Hard.
1: Your engineers are still discussing theory and trying to do as much research on the technology as they can. No actual work has been done. Many are sure it’s not even possible, but if you keep paying them they’ll keep trying.
2: Your engineers have a few tentative designs drawn up, most of which possess some flaw or gap in our knowledge. On the bright side, they’ve at least made some progress, as tenuous as it may be. Depending on the technology, another attempt might be Very Hard rather than Extremely Hard, but not likely.
3: We have a reasonably decent understanding of the principles underlying the technology, and we are poised to begin actual development. At this level of success or higher, attempting another similar design would be Very Hard rather than Extremely Hard.
4: The design has produced a very buggy prototype that can work as a proof-of-concept. It is by no means ready for military production, but we’ve proven that it can be done.
5: We managed to get a design out we can use, but it suffers a number of severe bugs and will cause headache for whoever is unfortunate enough to be using it.
6: The design has succeeded, but suffers a moderate bug that will need to be addressed before it can reach its full potential.
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 decades (plural) later, 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 an artillery piece that fires living soldiers behind enemy lines. 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, but even that is not guaranteed.
5: You don't build a working example of your design, but your understanding in this field grows like succeeding on a normal design. It is suggested that what you want to do is possible, to some degree. Depending on the nature of the design, you might be able to try it again at Extremely Hard difficulty next year.
6: Depending on just out-there your design is, you make a significant breakthrough which will later allow you to attempt it again at Extremely Hard or even 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 rifle powerful enough to use as a weapon, but it requires a power source the size of a semi-truck trailer.
:
Keep it at a reasonable length, please. A good design says what the name is, what advancement it’s trying to accomplish, key bits of detail like caliber and engine size, and a small –
small – bit of flavor text. I don’t need to hear about how amazing it is, and how it will revolutionize the war, and how much better it is over the last iteration of the design, or the backstory that went into designing it. If you want to advertise your design to other players, please keep that sort of text separate so I can easily figure out what I’m rolling for. Conditional statements are tentatively allowed, within reason. Saying “we try to give the design Super Heavy armor all the way around, but the target goal is to keep it below 6 ore” is pushing it, but I will likely ignore anything more complicated than that or anything that is conditional on difficulty.
Below is an example of a good design:
MBT-50 “Heartbreaker”
The Main Battle Tank 1950 “Heartbreaker” is our next generation tank. It features a 100 mm barrel, a sliding block breech, and torsion-bar suspension. The frontal armor is Heavy, with Medium on the sides and Heavy on the turret. Ammo is stored in racks in the back of the turret with flooded ammo storage. The crew size is 4; a driver, loader, gunner, and commander. The engine is the same 9-cylinder radial “SuperBully 9000” diesel engine we used in our last tank, but with a better cooling system. The periscope has an integrated 8x scope that uses our new laser range-finder. The rear compartment features a mini-bar fully stocked with Scotch.
Below is an example of a bad design:
MBT-50 “Heartbreaker”
The Heartbreaker is the best tank available in the world, even surpassing the tanks available to any of the existing Super Powers. It is designed to be faster, stronger, and more lethal than anything that’s come before it. The design was named after the lead engineer’s husband was killed by an enemy tank; this tank will be painted jet black and seek to avenge her shattered heart. This black color should make the tank extra-effective at night and give us a bonus advantage to night combat.
Going off the principles of tank design found in the Soviets T-34’s during WW2, the Heartbreaker likewise makes intelligent use of armor design. Slanted armor is angled to the extreme so that all shots will glance off it. The intended cost is 3 ore, 2 oil, and will feature Extreme armor on every conceivable surface and reach speeds of 45 mph. This is so that our tank can outflank and shoot enemy tanks from the rear, where their armor is much weaker. As a matter of fact, this is now the doctrine for our tank commanders who will use our new Heartbreaker; outflank and shoot enemy tanks from behind. Using this INCREDIBLY SIMPLE combat tactic, there is no way the Heartbreaker can fail to win in literally every theatre – and I do mean EVERY theatre. Our Ship commanders are ordered to have at least one Heartbreaker on board to shoot at enemy ships and act as hardened turrets. The most interesting thing about the Heartbreaker is that (word limit reached, continued in next post)
This is a bad design. Do not write your designs this way.
Do not write your designs this way. If you
do write designs like this, I will not apologize if the result doesn’t adhere to every one of your details no matter how well you roll.
Additionally, designs that target your infrastructure or general “Quality” improvements are outside the scope of this game and are not acceptable design choices. An example of this might be an “Officer Training School” design in order to ‘have better officers than the enemy’, or a “Ore Refinement Factory” to try and make all your designs cheaper or gain an exotic material type, or any “Seal Team Six” type design to develop spec-op troops. The logistics of your production, training, and elite troop creation is handled by the generals, and they are already performing that job adequately. Your team is the
Design Team. A better choice that fulfills the goals of the above designs might be “Officer-to-Squad Radios”, or a new type of tank that uses ceramic armor to lighten the ore cost, or “Plastic Explosives” for your infiltration teams to use.
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In past Arms Races, there is the inevitable point where someone goes through the designs and revisions, tabulates all the rolls for both sides, and gets outraged when they discover that the winning side has rolls that are an average of 0.2034 higher than their own.
This is why Iron Behemoths will feature a card-based roll system. Both sides have two decks, one for each their designs and revisions respectively; when a roll is needed, a card will be pulled at random from their respective deck. The result will be 1-6, same as a die roll, and be discarded after drawing. Ultimately, both sides will average the same results as the game goes on; one side may start out a bit stronger, but things will even out as time goes on. The amount of cards in each decks is secret, but I assure you if the game goes on long enough both sides will average the same rolls. Decks will be reshuffled once emptied.
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Topic: Arms Race: Iron Behemoths - Nogrania - GAME OVER (Read 53604 times)