The nations of Deutschia and Russoland are largely insignificant nations that sit in on an island in the middle of the Atlantic. The only people to ever actually take interest in the place are the evident colonists who were very lost, and some scientists, because the island despite its size has a truly remarkable range of climates, some of which were thought to be impossible to coexist.
Of course, the two colonies have been at war since they learned about the other. The parent nations have forgot about their existence by now, or at least deny any relation. This is mostly so they don’t have to support the them in any way.
What do you need to know about the nations?
Deutschians speak english but with a really bad stereotypical german accent, drink proper beers instead of flavourless vodka, and are always serious. Deutschian humor is no laughing matter. They live down south. Their ruler is Kaiser [Team’s choice].
The people of
Russoland are fierce and strong. They prove this by choosing to live in the tundra of the north, drinking manly vodka instead of piss colored beer and speak english with a stereotypical russian accent. Ruled by Czar [Team’s choice].
DiscordOne day, during one of the ceasefires one advisor on both sides had the same idea. “What if we send over a designer to ruin their weapons program?” And so both nations did. But due to a random clerical error happening on both sides on some very similar paperwork, both sides sent over their entire design department to the enemy. The war then got hot again and communications were cut off. This is where you come in.
Welcome to Reverse Arms Race.You and your team of designers are stuck in the enemy capital, where everyone believes you belong. Your goal? Make your actual nation win the war. For this reason you will design weapons, vehicles, contest entries and many more things with a single purpose in mind: Fail as hard as possible.
Do remember, that you aren’t the only parts of this process. There are many engineers, interns, upper management and whatever else that may look at your work and find fault. Designing the same thing over and over, or calling for “the worst materials you can find” without it being justified is liable to get some oversight on you. That could lead to bad things.
The Rules:Turns:The game is played in turns, which are broken up into phases. During each turn you will design new technology, revise it, and assign your armies. Each turn represents one year. Once the second world war starts, it will slow down to seasons.
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 votebox and link to it because bay12 has inferior forum software that doesn’t even support tally tools. The design with the most votes will be attempted. Then you will 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.
The Strategy Phase is nonexistent. You are designers. This might be replaced by Contest Submission Phases when relevant.
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 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 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 continent you start on provides 3 Ore, and 2 Oil.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. Some technologies Complex, being new and difficult to manufacture, and designs featuring them become one level more expensive. 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.
On map (below) there are resources of Aluminum and Titanium, which can help you justify their usage to command.
The map is divided up into regions, which are further divided up into sections. Your control of a region might be written like: [Plains: Russoland 3/4, Deutschia 1/4], assuming the "plains" region has four sections. Your army may only advance along the lines shown between regions on the map. During the battle phase, you will advance along 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.
Capturing the enemy Capitol means the nation who holds it won.
From top to bottom:
Russoland capital (Tundra): [Russoland 4/4]
Mountains: [Russoland 4/4]
Swamp: [Russoland 4/4]
Prairie Island: [Russoland 4/4]
Plains: [Deutschia 2/4, Russoland 2/4]
Burned Jungle: [Russoland 4/4]
Not Burned Jungle: [Deutschia 4/4]
Desert Island: [Deutschia 2/4, Russoland 2/4]
Forest: [Deutschia 4/4]
Hills: [Deutschia 4/4]
Town Island: [Deutschia 4/4]
Deutschia Capital (Large Hills): [Deutschia 4/4]
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 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 but uses an extra Ore, 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 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. These will have a mandatory spending period. That is, if you win a credit that makes your stuff cheaper, you get freedom to choose when to spend it, but if you wait too long the leader will spend it for you.
Expense Credit: An extra resource of either ore or oil.
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. Basically a write in, but I might veto.
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.
In this game, the military leaders of both countries will actively check your progress and may make requests sometimes. These can be ignored but that will not make them happy.
As you play through the game, they also might grow suspicious of your actions. How? Redesigning the same gun over and over, telling engineers to build a tank out of trash or painting the “enemy” flag on your HQ. You get the idea. This will lead to punishments such as:
Oversight: Someone will be sent from HQ to watch what you do during the turn. This means you will have to stay in character. You don’t necessarily have to succeed at anything, but claiming to drink the wrong drink, dropping the accent or even suggesting that you want to make anything but the most perfect design is sure to bring consequences. This includes your thread and Discord chats.
Foreign Aid: Sufficiently disappointed leaders will call in foreigners to help out. This includes but not limited to: Mercenaries to win in a lane, scientists to complete a tech.
Executions: You want to avoid these. Hars, and getting enough will lose you the game. No precise numbers on it yet because it’s hard to balance, but it will be hard to achieve and you’ll need at least 3 to lose the game. I advise not finding out what number I settled on.
Anything else I might come up with: Feel free to suggest things.
You should be warned that I've seen it all before, and I have very little patience for arguments which stall the game. Many of you have also played before, I expect you to understand by now that keeping the game smooth, on schedule, and argument free is probably a greater concern of mine than whatever you are arguing about: I expect you to be mature and adopt the same attitude.
1. Don't be salty! If at any time you find yourself having an urge to mouth off at another player, step away from the keyboard, go outside, and take a breath. Seriously. Players who repeatedly get angry or passive aggressive will be asked to leave. If you have an issue with the way the game is being run, DO NOT expect a tantrum to get you what you want.
2. Keep in mind that I am not a historian, so there will sometimes be mistakes and inaccuracies. Even in the best of circumstances, minor inconsistencies are a common occurrence. If some piece of equipment is imbalanced/unrealistic, I might consider changing it if you bring it up once -AND ONLY ONCE- and politely state your argument. However, I will err on the side of consistency with my own game, I do not like to go back and change things. Sometimes it is more important to simply keep the game running smoothly than other concerns.
3. Do not accuse me of being biased. You are biased.
4. 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!
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Topic: The Reverse Arms Race: Main thread (Read 1899 times)