It’s been 20 years since the Last War has ended, the final 100 year conflict between nations, or the remnants of them, the conflict that ruined the world as we know it. The history books that we’ve found speak of a war that predated the Last War, one where men of flesh sat shivering and dying in trenches for 8 long years until all the nations of the world had no men left to send to the slaughter. Wracked with revolution and ruined economies the nations settled into an uneasy peace for almost four decades, but they did not spend those years with idle hands.
Instead they worked to replace the men of flesh with the men of iron, unfeeling emotionless machines whose only purpose was to advance and destroy all in their path and advance the frontlines at the orders of their own machine leaders, with machine leaders above them and more above them, all set in place by stone faced men with cigarettes hanging between their lips as they typed lines of code into interfaces long into the dead of night. Code that would cause those machines to activate the machines under them in an infinite loop of failsafe button pushers to make sure that even in the event of the death of the high command and all living things in the nation itself the war would still be carried on to victory by the machines of war they built to fight for them.
The war they prepared for them did come eventually, the men who typed out that deadly code only living to see the first year of the war before the final pressing of the button. Across all the nations of the world huge multi engine bombers rose from underground airfields carrying their payloads of nuclear and chemical death, under them cities turning to heaps of slag and the people inside them to naught but ash. This was not noticed by the machines of war, them still having their unending orders to continue the fight and so they would do. Locked in their endless conflict for 100 long years until finally the great automated factories hidden underground ran out of resources to build new ordinance and new machines to combat with, as wires and diodes rusted away and great thinking computers breathed their last. A precious few humans survived the war, squirreled away in hidden bunkers across the land, though they arose into a world of death.
The once vibrant fields of green their ancestors who entered the bunkers a century ago spoke of now gone and replaced with an endless war zone bombed into oblivion by automated attack craft and criss crossed with thick bands of barbed wire and unexploded ordnance, the sweet fresh air replaced by a noxious yellow tinted gas that fills every corner of the earth burning lungs and any exposed skin, and the oceans made acidic to all but the aquatic machines that still patrol them even years later, drawing power from an unknown source. These few surviving humans have retreated to the great mountain peaks at the center of the continent, the elders calling them the ‘Alpinia Mountains’ and the continent they’re on ‘Europa’, drawn to it by the promise of safety from the gas and rumors of a green space still being present there. The people having arrived and setting up homes on the great mountain peaks, traveling between them in home made aircraft high above the gas, made with salvaged machinery and sheer determination.
While safer from the hazards of the lower world there are still the scars of the world here that make living dangerous.
It seems the great AI thinking machines were not idle in their century long war, having devised many tools to defeat their eternal foes. One of these being a fungus that eats through most low yield explosive compounds like smokeless gunpowder and making it defunct forcing any projectile weapons to use basic homemade propellants leading to mixed results. Another being an acidic atmosphere that eats through aluminum alloys forcing the homemade craft of the survivors to be made of canvas and wood or be large lumbering beasts made with thinly pounded steel plates covered in reson that can barely support their own weight.
These two decades later have seen the rise of a pair of powers in Alpinia. To the east stands mighty Gothia, a people who settled from the north lands, their Kaiser claiming to be the descendant of a great king of the old world. To the west is Sicilia, immigrants from a large island to the south that braved the great ocean to reach the peaks of Alpinia, run by a coalition of merchant families that go back hundreds of years before the Last War. For years they have shared the fertile valley that rests in the center of the mountain range which feeds both people, in recent months burgeoning populations and a breakdown of talks has resulted in open conflict.
This is the first time either nation has been forced to fight another person since their founding, the opening stages of the war being them ferrying troops to the mountain tops to fight over them but after pilots on both sides have begun to take lighter mail-planes out and attacking these transport craft with homemade weapons both nations leaders have pushed their craftsmen to make dedicated combat aircraft to use, this job now falls on you.----------
The game will once again run on Sensei's dice formula.
Results:
1 or less: You cannot make a working example on schedule.
2-3: The plane/weapon has significant design flaws or missing features.
4: The plane/weapon has some minor flaws.
5: The plane/weapon performs exactly as desired, or required only minor compromises.
6-7: The plane/weapon is a strong example of performance, reliability, or both.
8 or more: You stumble on a design which is particularly clever, performing beyond expectations in some way.
These are somewhat approximate! Keep that in mind, some things will be more iffy to judge than others. Potentially there will be
Difficulty:
+3: An extremely simple task.
+2: A very familiar design.
+1: A design which is familiar to you or already common on the market.
+0: Average.
-1: A design which is ahead of its time.
-2: A design which is very complicated, ahead of its time, or both.
-3: A design which stretches the limits of your capabilities.
-4: A design which it's unlikely anyone in the current era could make, such as relying on materials which are not readily available.
I don't blame you for not doing more than a general skimming of the large opener above so I'll cover a few base points that are and aren't covered by the opener.
-The world is ruined beyond repair due to a 100 year war fought by automated machines.
-People survive on mountain tops high above cloud of noxious gas that cover the surface world. What remains of the Alps Mountain Range, or 'Alpinia' in this world, harbors the last known foliage and fertile soil to grow plants in.
-Technology has regressed from an atompunk 1960's to diesel/steampunk 1910/20's ramshackle amalgamation of whatever can be thrown together
-Chemical warfare has spawned fungus that eats explosive compounds besides very simple ones which are unstable and home made, as well as an atmosphere that eats most light metals like aluminum.
-The main form of travel is through homemade aircraft which can travel over the toxic surface world.
-Most of the engines used in the fliers are cobbled together from parts scavenged from wrecks and made using old half broken machinery.
-High quality parts for repeating arms are rare, and the use of homemade gunpowder leads to mixed results.
Both sides will share the same starting technology and will be given a pre-game turn to make 2 designs and a single revision, afterwards switching to 1 design per turn. After their design they will revise it or or another of their things, then the combat phase where I arbitrarily decide who wins or loses. Then the cycle begins again.
Standard Pattern Volley Rifle: A long single barreled muzzle loading rifle favored by air-mail pilots for its reliability firing 8 special 70. lead balls with a hole drilled through them, allowing them to be loaded in back to back with a blackpowder charge in-between them, when the first charge is ignited the flash travels down the hole in the center of the ball igniting the next one allowing all 8 shots with a fire rate of 60 rounds a minute. Cheap + and Small Handheld
Standard Kite Mail-Flyer: A dual seater canvas biplane with an engine mounted in the nose, used by the air-mail service of both nations, crewed by a pilot and navigator. In combat the navigator uses a Volley Rifle kept resting in their lap during flying to attempt to shoot down enemy biplanes while the pilot maneuvers around. Decent maneuverability and speed. Cheap and Plane Sized.
Salvaged Engine: A basic engine running off of any liquid that burns, made from engines parts scavenged from the wastelands and whatever parts can be made with basic hand power tools brought up to the mountain tops from broken factories. Expensive.
There are 9 zones to combat over plus the two capitals, Gothia to the east and Sicilia to the west.
1 - Rusted AI radio listening post: An old rusted bunker, the machinery long dead and used to salvage old machinery. Occasionally beeping can be heard from machinery hidden deep inside the mountain....waiting.
2- Stellar Observatory: A small mountain outpost with a large Pre-War telescope which is a center of trade.
3- Zen Monk Retreat: Weird monks live here in solitude who worship one of the gods of the old world, they sell good cheese.
4- Hole Town: A town constructed inside a weirdly large perfect circle hole through middle of mountain, theorized to have been made by a machine weapon during the war.
5- Vertical village: built by survivors the village is along the side of a mountain, popular for its hanging plant gardens and red-light district.
6- Isolated AI backup computer bunker: The interior of this bunker has long been rusted away leaving behind machinery to salvage and be re-purposed by survivors as a sprawling shanty town and gambling den, a few thinking modules are locked away behind complex locks only capable of being opened by one of the old machines.
7- Land Before Time Village: A village frozen in time from even before the Last War these people's way of life has not changed for 400 years.
8- AI hanger: full of rusted old fighter craft and automated service machines frozen in place loading ammunition into fighters guns and nuclear payloads into the bellies of great bombers, another popular spot for salvage
The Green Place: A vibrant valley in the center of the mountain range, here villagers from both nations plow rocky ground and grow the precious food that feeds both sides, if this land was to come under attack by either side there would be no turning back...
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It is the year 120 After War, Turn 0You will join one of two teams and make 2 designs and a single revision, each team shares the same starting tech as the other. Then the game will start proper as your first two designs are pitted against the other teams. You may design engines, weapons and aircraft. You may also revise your current aircraft.
In the east stands
Gothia ruled by a Kaiser said to be descendant of an Pre-War king. They control 6,7,8:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177864.0In the west stands
Sicilia ruled by a series of merchant families for the last hundreds of years. They control 1,2,3:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177865.0Discord link, this should never expire:
https://discord.gg/qFStVdvBYP
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Topic: Arms Race for Aerial Superiority: Pre-Game Turn 0 (Read 437 times)