Welcome to AIAR, perhaps better referred to as "choose your own arms race"!
In this game, you are tasked with gaining control of Neu Salsburg, a small island nation recently made independent, stuffed with surplus weaponry, and only just emerging into the 20th century itself.
The world has gone silent. Reports of plague, of death, of renewed war have reached us. No outside ships have been spotted for months. The few brave souls who sailed to investigate have never returned, and tensions have risen to a breaking point.
The old government is gone, swept aside by two new. Cults in all but name, they worked together to defeat the assembly's forces and now turn on each other. For dominance over Neu Salsburg, to choose the course of her people, and to gain control over access to the old world.
Turns are bi-yearly, and will probably have four phases, consisting of production/construction/allotment(ABC), design/revision, rituals/expeditions and a reports phase. Events will also occur fairly regularly within the reports phase.
During the production/construction/allotment(ABC) phase the players vote on what to spend their tokens on, allot the contents of their stockpiles to their armies, and assign what production center to do what work(which will take a turn, or two if it was already 'tooled up'). Each side will start with 10 tokens, although events in game may increase or decrease this. One token may be used to start construction, revise a piece of equipment or plan an expedition, two or four are used to start designs, two are used for starting research on a ritual or relic, and any number of tokens may be spent each turn to continue development of a project.
During design/revision, players vote on what designs and/or revisions they work on that turn. Two tokens are required to start a design, although four may be spent to make it a "rush project" or spent in any number after the first turn of work to improve any aspect of the design. They may also spend one token to revise a design, completed or not. For more details, please check the section on Design & Revisions
Isolated and now alone, almost everything used must be produced locally or gleaned by scavenging.
Tokens represent effort, which may be focused on certain areas, such as research on Rituals and Relics, development and revision of equipment designs, having buildings built to produce more material or materiel and on launching expeditions to look for relics or loot the ruins of the rest of the world. Each side starts with 10 tokens to spend per turn, but some events can change this.
When materiel is made in factories it goes into a stockpile and not the hands of the troops. The Allotment phase is where each side may arm its troops. Note that this is a one-way system, materiel goes out, not in. Expeditions also require materiel to function.
Factories, ones main source for materiel, require two things to operate, these being possession of materials and tooling.
Materials are simply tokens stating that one has access to the resource in question and include iron, steel, timber, aluminum, copper, brass and hydrocarbons. Relics also count as materials, although they are consumed. Each piece of equipment has one or more materials required for it. However, due to bodging, recycling, and scrounging, lacking a material does not mean you may not produce an item, simply that it is made slower. The first material missing reduces total by 50% of its value. A second, by 100%. A third would reduce it by 150% of its value, a fourth by 200%, and so on. You will not loose materiel from your stockpiles from lack of material.
Population is a resource that is nonrenewable. Each side starts with a total of 25 population tokens. More population may only be gained via expeditions.
Composite items(vehicles) also require their component parts as materials to be produced unless they are specifically designed to have said components be optional.
Construction
Construction takes two forms: The construction of new production facilities and the construction of infrastructure. In each case the location, size and type of construction must be chosen, the single token spent, and in the case of factories, dockyards and material gathering facilities, a token of population spent(Factories and dockyards operate on a basis of 5 lines of production per population). Depending on the extent of the order, the construction may take several turns.
Examples of constructions include:
Production Facilities
>Factories
>Dockyards
>Anything that gathers, creates, or converts materials.
Infrastructure
>Ports
>Airfields
>Roads/Railroads
>Fortifications
Each design in such a format has 6D6 dice rolled, two for quality, two for cost, one for initial development, and one for initial bugs. Rushing a design(spending four tokens) rolls three dice for progress and two for bugs.
When adding extra tokens to an inprogress design, players may specify which two areas to improve on out of those four, with focus on bugs reducing them, focus on quality generally improving it, etc.
Large designs, such as any form of vehicle, require components to be in development at the same time or completed. Any form of firearm requires ammunition allready designed or designed alongside it. A design will not be completed without associated ammunition.
Examples of components include but are not limited to: Launchers. Countermeasures. Radios. Engines. Turrets more advanced than a tripod.
Revisions roll 4d6, one for each qualifier. They function on a different scales than the qualifiers for designs, and will always take one turn or less.
Rituals and expeditions are the special focus of the game. Each side being a cult, and each side knowing what the gods will do should they be awoken results in a balancing act of being powerful enough to counter the enemy and maintain low enough awareness to be safe. Expeditions, meanwhile, send armies to locate and recover resources from the old worlds, be they people, technology, weapons, or artifacts from the Ones Before.
There are two things to keep in mind. Power, a measure of how much arcane ability is available to be used, and Awareness. Awareness is bad. Should it reach a critical point the gods will awaken, and earth will be consumed. Thats it,
game over.
Rituals are designed during this phase. These have a number of D6 rolled in a manner that shall not be shared in the categories of
Quality,
Time,
Casting Cost and
Awareness Cost. Any amount of tokens may be put in to increase speed, however they may only go to completing the project, and may only be given after the initial research. it takes two tokens to begin research on a ritual.
Relics, also known as Artifacts, are one of the other key parts of the system. Some prior civilization apparently lived on Neu Salsburg and left large quantities of these artifacts when they vanished. When first found, the function of the artifact is unknown. Research is conducted on them much in the same way as it is conducted on rituals. Once research is completed they are treated as a standard resource.
Expeditions are the final special component. The world has been destroyed, but that does not mean that there is nothing out there. Indeed, large stockpile from the war before still wait, untouched. Peoples, surviving it all, remain.
One token may be spent to begin planning an expedition, which will take two turns. During this time assigned resources will not be available for other purposes. Expeditions, depending on their destination, require naval or army units to be assigned. Equipment may be assigned to expeditions to improve their odds, which will be returned to the pool after the expedition.
Expeditions may uncover weapons, technology, populations, resources to be exploited, or relics.
Armies march on their stomachs. Thankfully, that is not your department. What is your department is keeping the armies supplied, meaning having enough transport capacity assigned to said unit to meet its logistical needs number. This could be done via ship, truck, train, aircraft, hovercraft... How each side chooses to do it is entirely up to them.
Equipment is also a part of logistics. Each piece of equipment has a number of levels of availability to the unit assigned, as follows:
-Standard Issue (Every soldier has one, atleast in theory)
-Fireteam Level (Every fireteam has one of these. A SAW in the USMC, for example)
-Section Level (Every section has one of these. (The SVD and PKM in late Soviet armies are examples)
-Platoon Level (Long-range radios, light mortars)
-Company Level (Medium Mortars, light artillery)
-Battalion Level (heavy artillery)
-Regimental Level (Static air-defense systems)
-Divisional Level (Superheavy artillery)
As a unit fights, equipment may shift down levels as losses occur, determined by exactly how the combat went(losses always take away a level of all equipment, victories and stalemates take away a level of equipment based on what actually fought). Equipment may reduce this, be it by making it cheaper to reinforce, reducing losses entirely, or automatically salvaging enemy equipment directly into the stockpiles.
Each level of equipment costs one unit to bring up one level.
Each piece of equipment increases the units logistics requirements by its weight per level of ubiquity.
Ammunition and other consumables are grey areas; Ammunition, provided the design is possessed, is assumed to be created in numbers enough to have no issue with supply. Explosives come in two categories, general-use explosives that act as ammunition and have a cost in logistics(and are removed at the end of each turn of combat), and special purpose explosives which have no logistical cost but do require production(and are, again, depleted totally on use). Handgrenades are an example of the first type, while land mines are an example of the second.
Success or failure in landbased combat is based mostly on adding up the values for every army at each range fought at (from CQC's 50m or less to Extended's 501+m ranges, and passing through Short, Intermediate, and Long ranges) and, essentially, comparing them against eachother. Just what the outcome of the battle is depends on the difference in numbers; if the difference is less than 5 the battle is technically a stalemate. A difference of 6 to 10 results in a retreat, and above 10 is a shattered retreat. In shattered retreats half of all equipment is lost, in retreats, one eighth. These losses are rounded up.
Some equipment is designed such as to require setup time in combat, affecting attacking forces. There are three levels of setup time, being
, Fast, and Laborious.
Naval units, consisting of ships and airships, operate in an almost completely different manner than land forces. First, they operate out of bases, which must be large enough to house them. Second, they sorte based on missions, going after one target(or defending one point) for a turn and then returning. How far they may do so is based on their range.
Ships do fight at ranges going by the same name as the land ranges, but represent distances 100 as great.
Ships also possess armor, and cost based on said armor, tonnage of base hull, and so on.
Ships with a large enough logistical capacity may be used to transport material for armies, or armies in their entirety. In the case on embarking troops, logistical requirements are doubled.
Naval bases have limited capacity for naval units, based both on size of ships and on total logistical requirements.
First off, vehicles are expensive. Even a light truck has the same logistics impact as autoloading rifles. However, said truck can, even at the lowest levels of ubiquity, supply enough to fuel itself and five levels of self-said autoloaders.
Armor is based loosely on the Arms Race standard: Various thicknesses of armor and various materials its made of give a point to armor value, while generally also increasing logistical costs. Armor increases the total value of a vehicle in the same manner as ranks in ubiquity(with 1 armor doubling values), so for example a weapon value of 5 on a vehicle with two effective ranks of armor will result in a total value of 15.
Logistical costs in general are based on a number of factors:
>Chassis type
>Armament
>Armor
While infantry arms may well have some armor penetration values, the best place to speak of them are here. When a vehicle is in combat, it uses armor to further increase its combat value.
In any event, armor penetration on a weapon negates levels of armor by their value. This normally comes at a cost of decreased power overall, as most anti-tank weapons achieve their capability by increasing velocity, decreasing the amount of potential payload to do damage to anything else.
Infantry carriers have another massive bonus when it comes to armor: they protect infantry inside, increasing its combat effectiveness. This essentially works by adding the sum of the weapon values at the level of ubiquity multiplied by the modified armor value of the carrier.
Body armor works much the same way as armored personnel carriers, with less overall protection. Even the most modern of body armors only confer a total end rating of 1 armor.
Aircraft, including tethered balloons, are either assigned to a land or naval unit; or to a theater of operations. Airships are not treated as aircraft, but instead as naval units.
Aircraft do not work in the same range brackets as infantry arms, but instead vary in effectiveness based on range from the fight. Flying for two hours to get to combat reduces effectiveness when compared to a 10 minute flight time afterall.
Airfields have limited capacity for aircraft, while aircraft that donot require airfields place additional strain on logistics.
The map is divided into multiple zones, each with multiple subzones. The exact number of zones may change depending on actions of each side. For example, expeditions may be sent to secure a foothold on the lost world, creating entirely new zones, while new settlements may be founded, creating new zones out of old ones.
Movement within a region is effectively unlimited per time period. Movement between regions is limited to 1 unless modified.
Railways, Ships, and Aircraft, solong as they have sufficient capacity, can move an army to any region they are connected to.
Vehicles may increase speed, but have complications. Many vehicles have a minimum level of infrastructure requirements. Typically, vehicles with higher mobility are slower. Furthermore, transport in this manner requires vehicles able to transport troops to be in numbers sufficient, noted by the capacity modifier of the vehicle.
Horses are an interesting choice. Unlike nearly all other forms of movement enhancer, horses do not require roads to go full speed. Furthermore, they can be used as both transport and as combat vehicles(albiet limiting what equipment can be used in the process). Choosing which form it takes depends on what else the unit is equipped with.
>Want to move by motorcycle? Unless its a special one, this requires ubiquitous availability. Trucks are platoon level, IFVs are between squad and fireteam levels, depending on the vehicle.
Raw materials are expected to be able to be moved about at will within a region. Connection between requires specialized infrastructure, be it roads and trucks, rivers/canals and boats, airships, or pipelines and powerlines. Vehicles assigned to that purpose must have sufficient logistical capacity to allow users of materials to work fully(One lot of materials is valued at 50LP, and shortages of the material reduce effectiveness of said material by 1% per LP, capped obviously at 50%)
Expeditions come in two types: Local and International. Local expeditions take place on the standard map and are mostly concerned with resources or relics, international expeditions go out into the world.
Pay for the expedition, assign an army and potentially ships as needed, assign extra equipment as desired, wait a turn, get the results.
In each case, a series of target numbers determine the findings. Certain pieces of equipment can lower these target numbers, as will prior expeditions.
EXAMPLE ONE
>Combat is being fought exclusively at CQC ranges.
>Side E has equipped its troops with M16s, M14s, and M4 Sherman tanks equipped with howitzers(using smoke and HE). The tanks are at Company level, the M14s are at Platoon level, and the M16s are Standard Issue.
>Side Z is armed with FAMAS(Standard Issue, no rifle grenades), AIFVs(Company level) and RPG 7s(platoon level, though only possessing fragmentation rounds)
>In CQC only the M16, the M14 and the FAMAS have any effective value in combat. The M16's value of 2 is effective a 16. The M14's value of 1 is made a 5 by availability, and the FAMAS, with its value of 3, results in a value of 24. This means that the scores are 21 for side E and 24 for side Z.
>As a result, the battle is technically a stalemate. What a waste.
EXAMPLE TWO
If the battle had been fought at short range, things would have been rather different. Both sides would have access to all their weapons, for a start.
In this scenario, points are as follows:
Side Totals
Side E: 3/24(M16), 2/10(M14), {4/12(Smoke)}{8/32}(105mm Howitzer)/{5/20,-1AP}(Pintle M2)/{4/12}(Coax M1919A4)(M4 Sherman)
Side Z: 3/24(FAMAS), 7/35(RPG7), {7/28(HEI-T)}{6/24,-2AP(SAPHEI-T)}{4/12FN-MAG}{AIFV)
Side E thus has a total of 110 to Z's 123, prior to armor calculations.
The Sherman has an average of 6 armor, while the AIFV has an average of 2. Taking into account the modifiers of the armor-piercing ammunition on both sides, this is modified to 4 and 1, respectively. This modifies the value of said vehicles to 380 for the Sherman and 128 for the AIFV itself. THe AIFV being a troop carrier, it adds to the values of the infantry arms, giving a bonus of 80, giving new grand totals of 414 for side E and 267 for side Z.
The results? Near total destruction of side Z. They manage to pull back with enough AIFVs and RPGs for battalion level work and rifles for troops at the company level. Some of their lost equipment may well be picked up as battlefield salvage.
Major News Concerning the Sovereign Nation of Neu Salsburg!
March, 1920 | Reports come over the radio of a new wave of the Spanish Flu. Death tolls are reported to be in excess of 75%. Fishing ordered halted, ports closed.
April, 1920 | Government troops block off civilian access to Neu Salsburg Bay Island, citing "military requirements for effective quarantine"
June, 1920 | Radio signals from the outside world go off air or are reduced to static. Government refuses to comment. Famine looms.
July, 1920 | A food riot turns bloody as protesters shot. Mass arrests of "religious agitators"
August, 1920 | Open revolt breaks out, lead by two religious factions. Famine is well in effect.
December, 1920 | With summer, the two factions leading the revolt march on Neu Salsburg. Almost all governmental resistance crushed. Shortly after the storming of The Castle fighting breaks out between the two factions.
January, 1921 | Our story begins...
Turn zero information
During turn zero, interested players are asked to vote(above) for the quirks to be employed in this arms race. Each player votes for three, and two will be selected, barring a tie amongst the leading options. That done, after a period of one week or when ten people have voted, players will be asked to choose between two teams, there to fight eachother, outside threats, or theoretically both. Fighting will be done via designing, construction, and allotment of weapons, equipment, vehicles and similar things to their sides armies, and improving the island to the point where it can fight a war without importing everything from the rest of the world.
Infrastructure is the name of the game, as is logistics.