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10 yrs ago
I'll be away on a trip for a few days so my activity will be low
11 yrs ago
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I don't get all this hype about airships and flying things. Shoot it full of holes and it crashes to the ground all the same. None can pass the Iron Ring by air without the Hegemon's permission .-.
Anti-air defenses in WW2 were way too inefficient for that.
When the Germans began their V-1 attacks, they launched circa 100 missiles a day.
In comparison hundreds of fighters and even more ground defenses wasted tens of thousands of munitions and even then about 10% slipped through.
Worse, technically the percentage is even lower since only some 2000+ missiles ever got close to Britain out of the 8000+.
So the actual interception percentage is somewhere around 60-70%.
We talk about relatively dumb fired missiles, controlled by gyros and some good calculations beforehand.
They were also slower than Spitfires or other competitive fighters.
This is the most famous AA feat in the entire WW2.

So yeah, there are low but quite considerable chances that somebody can just fly past your borders. Be glad if they don't decide to just drop a few bombs if they are at it.

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

The thing about this though is that amusingly everyone is forgetting the reason why people don't use airships for war (unless that is intentional):

You fire a cannon or a rocket at it, it pops, and your entire massive machine that you spent a billion dollars on falls out of the sky because there's no effective way to repair the breach and you can't put enough armor on it without weighing it down too much to move. You make the balloon bigger, you have to add more armor and you don't escape the same problem.

Airships should not be heavily armed for the simple reason that the more stuff you put on it, the more you lose when it gets destroyed. And how on earth could an airship support both an airstrip long enough to take off of and *checks character tab* 300 planes? Just seems a tad too unrealistic to me.
You are pretty badly informed on this front.
No, airships were pretty much the tanks of air combat during WW2.
You could pretty much put the ship full of holes and it could still get back safely to home.
Things were complicated further because airships were capable of far higher altitudes than aircraft so any kind of interception on them was running with rather low hit probability.
Things only turned around by the invention of incrediary projectiles as it ignited the hydrogen by some dozens of shots and then the airship blew up in a blazing glory.

We have a noncombustible gas which weighs only half of hydrogen (somehow...) so incrediary projectiles aren't a concern. And as I said, gas leaks are otherwise are too slow to be such a big problem. I think you are forgetting that the main point of these airships to be filled with gas at standard pressure. You only make the ship heavier if you add pressure to the chambers which is definetly not the point.

On the other hand it's true that no matter what an airship would not be able to carry as much stuff as a naval ship does. Airhips have fairly strict weight limitations and you can't really armor them because they have such a huge surface area. Then again, we have mechs and other fantastical elements. I think it's better if we take everything with a grain of salt.

To be blunt I think it's really stupid to say, "We didn't have a major war, therefore there would be no arms race and nations would not have developed *insert technology here*".

What's the point of saying that the tech level is what the real world was at during the 1940's if we don't have all the stuff that was created as a result of WWI? Wouldn't not having that studf make us behind 1940 in tech?

And as in for jet engines, @Voltus_Ventus I don't remember you ever giving a reason why you banned them. Granted I probably wouldn't have gotten jet engines anyways so I don't care much, I'm just curious as to your reasoning.
Well, without immediate incentive like a war people would be still competing and such but without direct experiences some nations may not even realize the true importance of aircrafts, most nations won't.
Jet engines were in development regardless, though. But without a war going on the nations are unlikely to push the research until they can get the jet plane.
Even if jets are availible it took Germans about 2-3 years during the war to actually get a jet plane. So yeah, I like to take the situation on jet fighers as "not yet".

As for what 1940 tech means, it's up to interpretation. We are running on an alternate history which even has fantasy elements. Also as you could read my and ASTA's reactions in the OOC, most nations are actually having stuff in their military which was made in 1942-43 or even later. So yeah.
Another thing is that due to various reasons you can expect a fair number of schizo tech examples here. Robotic horses are advanced even by modern standards yet a nation has them in great masses for their cavalry.

Anyways, the problem with jets could be that on paper they make typical propeller aircraft obsolete in air combat. Then again that's a misconception since jets were only semi-successful during WW2 and even after that they had maintenance and reliability problems until the 60s.
Not to mention that your typical jet fighter with missile locks and such is really a thing by the 70s and preferably later.
So yeah, having jet fighters doesn't make anything OP.
This is like limiting firearms in medieval fantasy, missing the whole point that guns were a thing even before anyone began creating plate mails.
On the other hand I agree that it'd be better if jets fighters are developed only later and even then they'd be relatively rare.
Like I said if we ignore everything but the basic specs: jets > props
Which may be problematic if some nation has great number of jet fighters. It'd start a kind of arms race between players and in the end we pretty much get typical Cold War era weapons in really short time.
That's not something I would want.

On the tech dispute, I would argue to keep the limit because if you raise it people are just going to put up even more advanced stuff to account for it. And most of it doesn't lie that far out of WW2 if at all, though some things (like flying aircraft carriers) should probably be nipped in the bud.
I wouldn't mind if we would keep this at 1940ish levels but I can adopt if we do it differently.
I already adjusted my "main" interceptor's speed to mid-late WW2 prop levels (or somewhat above, just look at the engine to weight ratio) and added various hardpoint options which very a pretty typical thing by this time.

As for air motherships, there's nothing too off about them.
Mothership concept in itself is known since WW1. And we have a "super gas" lighter than hydrogen and noncombustible so there's even more reason to invest in airships. They seem to be pretty much the "thing" of this setting. I can barely count the nations who don't own them and the number of nations who arm them up like battleships is similarly large.
Voltus_Ventus for example has airships with armament similar to the Iowa battleship, although hopefully not as armored.
<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

There you go, lack of a previous conflict would mean that no one knows the significance of air superiority and thus jet engines would have been neglected.
That's what I think, too. Lack of conflict means that nations don't compete with each other so much in speed.
Albeit both my nation and the Avians are quite developed in terms of air force and try to make the best of them.
My elves also have sensitive ears and likeness for speed.
After some research I deducted they'd mostly use ducted turboprop engines and the difference between turboprop and turbofan (AKA jets) is a thin one.
I keep them having turboprops for now but the breakthrough in jets is within the doorstep.
I'll reason some of the delay with the fact supersonic fans (something which happens for near-every turbofan engine) would produce more noise which is exactly what the elves don't want.

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

I think I'll put the the time period to the mid 1940's 44-47 maybe, as it seems that all the technology we have is semi encompassed in that era.
I'm fine with that but then by that time some nations may already have reliable jet engines.
Granted, the lack of grueling competition may mean that nobody is forced to use these and even in real life where WW1 and WW2 happened the jet engines didn't truly replace propeller-driven fighters until mid 1950s or so.

EDIT: You might want to ditch the WWII-era technology limit. With that I'm seeing in the CT, we're at the Korean War/Vietnam War stage of military technology.
Yup, that's more or less what I said to him.
I don't mind if he raises the tech limit but then the rule against jet fighters may look almost silly.
Plus it gives you less means to upgrade your tech later.
WW2 had a rather interesting escalation in arms.

So even if it's a bit of pain I try to highlight all these issues and then leave @Voltus_Ventus to decide what to do with them.

Can I ask a mod to delete this?
@Willy Vereb For my sake, because I'm dense, can you give me examples?
I'll do that in PMs just to avoid things escalating in the OOC.
Like I said no offense to players and it's really just my intention to keep things where you still have sufficient range to improve in this RP.

Guy, guys.
I should remind everyone that we are only at 1940.
Many of the famous developments in World War 2 are years away.
If your nation specializes in a certain thing I can understand
But also keep in mind there's no war currently going on which forces nations to upgrade their weapons as much as possible.
Almost any cannon over or near 100mm must be a howitzer or a warship-mounted battery.
Armored vehicles still need better engines so that they could ever begin mounting bigger guns and armor. They are practically APCs by the typical standard.
Assault rifles and the need for intermediate cartridge doesn't even begin to be developed until years later and it enters by the war's end.
Rockets are workable but it takes some years before they scale them down effectively for a bazooka.
Anti-tank explosives were just seen use. Delivery systems are in the works.
Jet engines are somewhat in development but they eat fuel like crazy.
Propeller airplanes were far from reaching their zenith. 250 mph was considered decent while 300+ mph was fairly impressive.
Fighters only equipped machineguns and heavy MGs since escalation didn't require them to carry anything else.

And I could go on.
Basically I think a few technologies we have is actually a wee bit too OP.
Of course it's up to the GM to decide but I mentioned the above examples exactly because some nations did violate them.
As far as things are, nobody should feel the need to up arm themselves this much, neither have the technology to support it.
I admit, I may be also guilty on a few of these but I'll scale down some things if required.
Anyways, I only posted this to raise awareness to the issue.
The rest are in the GM's hands.
@Voltus_Ventus


Re-quoting this for the GM to see.
@Murtox@Cyclone

We can work out a history in PM if y'all want, I'm definitely open to it. Most treaties and such of import would likely be a decade+ old, however due to Marianna's instability.

@Willy Vereb

I'll address your points later once I am at my actual computer, but I will say that there is a reason for the equipment Eisenkreis has, assuming that is, that I am the one you were referring to =P
Actually you weren't the one I was referring to in that particular post but if it comes to that I can answer to everyone in detail which parts did I find a problem.
Thing is though I am not the GM and I certainly don't wish to start a long argument.
So I'll be waiting for @Voltus_Ventus response.

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