Pregame Design Phase of Turn 2:Monteriggioni Vetreria 15-foot 'Spyglass' Rangefinder
With so much of our national budget directed to the navy, naturally our glassworking would be excellent. Truly, we have the best of all the important industries in the world. Our glassworking experts have come up with glass precisely machined enough to produce rangefinders of large size and high precision and ease of use. Our rangefinders are made to a higher spec than the present standard, with clearer fields of view and better magnification, as well as having a longer-than-average width, which means a longer usable range. The superior machines also mean fewer failures when producing rangefinders and therefore less wasted material. Finally, we've standardized our rangefinders, so that all ships carry the same, standard, fifteen-foot-wide high-grade rangefinder. This one, in fact. This very one. This rather expensive, but very impressive, rangefinder.
What? The marketing campaign was really good.
Effectiveness: 6 | Cost: 6 | Bugs: 6
The Monteriggioni Vetreria "Spyglass" is a magnum opus. Really, it is, and there is not a better word to describe the rangefinder. It is one of if not the largest in the world and, honestly gives far more than we ever could need or want, able to get a good view of ships and shot with extreme detail even that which is merely peaking over the horizon. Of course, it is unrealistic to believe our guns will actually be able to fire at such extreme range that the spyglass offers at this moment in time, but even then, it is quite good. Despite this, it is fairly costly and intricate, though even then a good deal of clever cost cutting measures have been put in place without harming quality. Needless to say, it is quite likely this will be with us for a while...
Tre Montagne Acciaierie Armor Steel
Fundamentally, the best way to not die is to not get hit. However, sometimes you get hit anyway. In fact, a lot of the time you get hit anyway, because your enemy is doing their best to try and hit you. Dodging isn't always good enough, so surviving the hit is the next best thing. And the best way to survive the hit is to keep the projectile on the outside of the ship, through possessing sufficient armor. And the less mass of steel gets you to the "sufficient" mark, the better your ship can be at doing other ship things, like dodging incoming fire or carrying bigger guns to shoot the enemy with. To that end, we've invested heavily into the armor industry, which is important because very few people outside of a navy have reason to order hundred-ton ingots of steel and the hammers necessary to beat them into eighteen-inch-thick plates several meters long and a couple tall.
One particular steelworks, in the scenic mining town of Tre Montagne, has hit upon a combination of factors that work quite well for us. They produce armor steel of the Krupp type, using water-jet cooling and extremely long periods of heating and carbonizing and annealing and so on. To make the long story not nearly as long, they are pretty darned good at armor plate, and are capable of achieving an impressive depth of the hardened face of the armor plating, at least by 1890s standards. This gives added resistance to armor-piercing shells, particularly for thinner armor plates.
Effectiveness: 2 | Cost: 3 | Bugs: 1
Unlike our amazing glasswork, it seems our steelwork is much to be desired, the Tre Montagne Acciaierie Armor Steel is...lacking in a number of factors. While the production process is noticeably cheaper compared to our structural grade steel, the actual quality is certainly not equivalent. First of all, it is noticeably brittle and prone to cracking when hit, and with this comes splinters. In fact, all it's issues revolve around that one issue. It was made specifically to be hard and durable, yet something in the production process continuously makes it so hard that it weakens the material by making it far to brittle to effectively work as armor. Furthermore, the plates have a weak spot where they meet another plate, and a strike along the area's that individual plates of armor meet will damage both just as badly if it was to only hit one...If these issues were fixed, it'd probably be useful, but until then, all it has going for it is how it's cheaper, and even then it's not enough to really weren't it...To say we were disappointed with theses findings is an understatement.
It is now the Design Phase of Pre game Turn 3. You have 6 dice remaining to spend on Designs, ships, or simply Save for the next turn.
Naval
Early 2/3/4/5/6/7/9/10/12 inch guns
Triple-expansion engines.
Early steam turbine engines.
Steel hull construction.
Single Casemates.
Single and Double gun turrets.
Decent Rangefinder
Composizione B Steel.
Montagne Acciaierie Armor Steel
Basic Damage control techniques.
Marines & Installations
Defensive guns (Uses same calibers as naval guns)
Magdala N90 Fucile (Basic Bolt Action Rifle)
Sette d'oro 87 Rivoltella (Basic Revolver)
10,000 Displacement Dry docks.
Author
Topic: Refit and Repair 2. Magna Mongadizafra, Spring, 1896, Revision&Refit Phase. (Read 19403 times)