Print

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

[piratejoe]

Meet the Fokkers (2): Piratejoe, NAV
-Name it "Crossguard" (2): NAV, Piratejoe
Seadragon (0):
Salamander Bomber (0):

[Happerry]

Meet the Fokkers (3): Piratejoe, NAV, Happerry
-Name it "Crossguard" (3): NAV, Piratejoe, Happerry
Seadragon (0):
Salamander Bomber (0):

[ConscriptFive]

Meet the Fokkers (4): Piratejoe, NAV, Happerry, ConscriptFive
-Name it "Crossguard" (3): NAV, Piratejoe, Happerry
-Name it "Mofo" (1): ConscriptFive
Seadragon (0):
Salamander Bomber (0):
No Project (0):

In other news, my research on airborne radios of late 1915 is looking ugly.  It's probably going to be a spark and crystal system (about a mile range and dodgy voice quality), weighing up to 100 pounds with a power supply, and occupying most of an observer cockpit (of which we only have the overpriced emu for the foreseeable future).  A continuous wave (CW) system would be nice (twenty mile range and decent voice quality), but would still be pretty expensive hardware this early in the war.  The spark and crystal systems the ground forces are using might not even be able to receive CW transmissions, defeating the whole point of the radio.  Even then, there were issues about needing a good headphone and mic that can still function in an open cockpit.  Did I also mention the antennas were literally 250 feet of copper wire dragged from a tail spool?  A common menial task at RAF airfields was to send enlisted men with ladders to dig wire out of the trees from pilots who forgot to rewind their antennas.  I'll still write it up as a requisition for the sake of duty, but I'll probably vote against it.  If we get just two more dice after the project, the Sky Crusader Armor and VRAC production cost revisions are a much more immediate and feasible need.

[NAV]

We could still requisition parachutes. Sure, they are a bit bit bulky and heavy. But the real reason they were't used much in WW1, it was thought that they encouraged cowardice and bailing out of your aircraft at the first sign of trouble instead of attempting to fly it home. We don't have to worry about that. Our pilots are daring.

I think we should spend our requisition on either parachutes or a survival kit. Something to help pilot survivability, since we are starting to amass pilots worth surviving.

[Jerick]

I think we should spend our requisition on either parachutes or a survival kit. Something to help pilot survivability, since we are starting to amass pilots worth surviving

Requisitions are for existing equipment used by the army or the navy. Parachutes are not something we can requisition we'll have to use a revision to get them. A survival kit on the other hand I'm not sure about. If it's stuff that the army uses we might be able to requisition it but I suspect Cindaros will be wary of letting us requisition packages of different stuff as that might be exploitable.

[piratejoe]

I believe we will be Requisitioning a radio all things considered...even if they aren't the best right now. Maybe we could upgrade them ourselves with a revision later on. Eh, either way it will be useful for recon aircraft.

[ConscriptFive]

While researching WW1 aviation commo, I actually came across a key item we could easily req from the Army as well as immediately and cheaply field...

http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47273

Army Requisition: Signal Flare "Very" Pistol

Other than incredibly tight formations and erratic manuevers, our aviators current have no means to communicate mid-air.  To solve this shortcoming, we will requisition signal flare pistols from the army.  The flare pistol should be a single shot device, easily fired with one hand.  The flares should come in a wide variety of colors, to enable a wide variety of single shot signals.  Flares should be available in two brightness's: standard for air-to-air signalling, and ultra-bright for air-to-ground signalling.

And as requested...

Army Requisition: Trench Radioset

As impressive as telegraphs and telephones are, the future is wireless.  Recent advances in triode valve vacuum tubes have created impressive continuous wave (CW) radio sets.  These CW systems have an order of magnitude improvement of range on conventional spark systems, and provide nearly telephone level signal quality.  We have heard through our Army ties that the Signal Company has recently acquired CW sets and the Sky Crusaders would love to give them someone to "make contact with."  We would prefer a system under 100 pounds with a power supply.  High-quality microphones and headset would also be greatly appreciated.  The antenna/aerial shouldn't matter too much as it'll need to be fully re-engineered for aviation use.

It's kinda unlikely that a tertiary power would even have CW radios this early, but there it is.  Barring a natural 6, I'd assume the GM would probably throw us a spark system.  Conventional spark systems have a range of under a mile, and the quality is mostly good enough for morse only.  Even when Marconi got the CW radios up in planes, they had to develop entirely new microphones and headsets for speech to be intelligible from an open cockpit.  Here's a whole book chapter on how much of a pain it was:

http://marconiheritage.org/ww1-air.html

[piratejoe]

Thinking about it, other than hand gestures our pilots don't have any way to communicate with each other. the Flaregun wouldn't be a bad idea.

[evictedSaint]

Thinking about it, that makes sense.  A giant short-range a radio won't be much immediate help, but a flare would be.

We should req a flaregun, instead.

[piratejoe]

May as well make this a proper thing to make it easier for Cnidaros

Meet the Fokkers (4): Piratejoe, NAV, Happerry, ConscriptFive
-Name it "Crossguard" (3): NAV, Piratejoe, Happerry
-Name it "Mofo" (1): ConscriptFive
Seadragon (0):
Salamander Bomber (0):
No Project (0):

Requisition Flare gun (2): Piratejoe, eS
Requisition Radio (0)

[Jerick]

Meet the Fokkers (5): Piratejoe, NAV, Happerry, ConscriptFive, Jerick
-Name it "Crossguard" (4): NAV, Piratejoe, Happerry, Jerick
-Name it "Mofo" (1): ConscriptFive
Seadragon (0):
Salamander Bomber (0):
No Project (0):

Requisition Flare gun (3): Piratejoe, eS, Jerick
Requisition Radio (0)

[NAV]

Meet the Fokkers (5): Piratejoe, NAV, Happerry, ConscriptFive, Jerick
-Name it "Crossguard" (4): NAV, Piratejoe, Happerry, Jerick
-Name it "Mofo" (1): ConscriptFive
Seadragon (0):
Salamander Bomber (0):
No Project (0):

Requisition Flare gun (4): Piratejoe, eS, Jerick, NAV
Requisition Radio (0)

[piratejoe]

After staring at the most recent Battle Report for a hour, and considering a few things, I have a few plans. If we are able to make the VRAC A.1 cheaper we should get two squadrons of them and send them to the north to completely destroy our enemies airforce there and stop them from cutting off our advance while we have all our Rhinos focused on the south and center, mostly the center. We also should start thinking about assigning them to more places, such as the Cranve Forest, or Zhenji Mountains sometime soon. Something that wouldn't be a bad idea would be sending aircraft to help take Mizogorod. Anyway, I think we have what we want to do for our project and Requisition down, so other than planning for the revision and deployment phases we have time to discuss plans.

[ConscriptFive]

I think I sold the flare gun pretty well.  They were literally primary comms during WWI, and both sides fought a lot of creative uses for them.  Beyond mere abort signals, the Germans actually had a protocol with flare rounds so an spotter plane could walk artillery fire in four directions on a target.  My favorite one for Verusa daring though, was basically buzzing a trenchline and firing the flare at the to mark the exact location the infantry should launch a bayonet charge *right now*.

As for the radio, keep in mind that unlike other Arms Race games.  Potential tech requisitions actually advance without us.  Give it a few months and let the Army make their radios better and cheaper, rather than us burning dice on it.  It should be noted in most countries, the Navy is more high tech than the army, especially in terms of radio equipment.  They'd probably have something higher performance once we get our relations with them up.

Meet the Fokkers (5): Piratejoe, NAV, Happerry, ConscriptFive, Jerick
-Name it "Crossguard" (4): NAV, Piratejoe, Happerry, Jerick
-Name it "Mofo" (1): ConscriptFive
Seadragon (0):
Salamander Bomber (0):
No Project (0):

Requisition Flare gun (5): Piratejoe, eS, Jerick, NAV, ConscriptFive
Requisition Radio (0)

As for strategy, we need to rally the north flank, hold the center, and support the island advance.   The artillery officer event just buffed our balloons back into relevance, so spread one per theater. They specifically requested photo-recon in the islands, so there's one Rhino-P with another Rhino air superiority.  Three armed Rhino's left, two up top, one mid.  Maybe put the bombs back on one of the Rhino's up top or play it safe and keep them off.  (They drop a new air superiority fighter design on our bomber = they all die).

19 PP - 3 Project PP - 8 Maint PP = 8 free PP for new squadrons and equipment

Whether to even field the VRAC Emu's still depends if we can get their maintenance cost down.  Why maintain one Emu long-term if we could instead maintain three Rhinos?  We're still waiting for them to field their first aircraft design and I thinking superior numbers of Rhino's are a safer bet until they show their hand.

Assuming decent rolls such the flares + flight suits are free, that's barely enough to field a VRAC Emu (currently 6/3) if the revision actually works.  Or we can field an armed Rhino (4/1) then use the remainder to warehouse another set of bombs and un-mothball a balloon.

Again, this all depends on how our rolls go, but that's what I'm seeing happening this turn.

[piratejoe]

Honestly, a part of my plan hinges on the VRAC A.1 going down in price, so of course it depends on what happens, we just have to be hopeful that we don't get yet another 1 on our roll for it.