Willy Vereb

New Dawn Rising

@MonkeypantsBTW, you said that you have problems with when somebody's profile mentions they are "leaders in X". Presumably you have similar issues with wording like "best in X" or "among the best in X".
I say that you're a bit too sensitive here.
You need to take these with a grain of salt. Given the malleable nature of RPs there's no such thing as absolute best. So anyone who claims that only means that they're "very very good in X". It pretty much implies a kind of specialization or strength of the said faction. Nothing more.
I wanted to say this to you before but I got caught up in other things. Now I did.
Hopefully this could help you in the future.

When Nations Collide #1 - Stoludi (Inkdrop) vs Zwölfberge (Willy Vereb)

@InkdropI'll check your profile again, then.
Better be up to date with facts when I write my post.

New Dawn Rising

I'm going to have to add/update my history to explain how the Han know about things like the PRC and The Ancient Han Dynasty. It relates to the Classicists, of course.

@Nerevarine

Yeah, that works quite well.
Imagine what would happen if they find Mao's Red Book.

New Dawn Rising

@SigmaI just noticed that the Baltic Penisula is no longer claimed.
In that case I would like to take Finland.
Finnish-Hungarian relations is a fun part to exploit *ekhm* explore.

New Dawn Rising

I'm not quite going to be too aggressive yet, although I think I'm gonna be involved in @Willy Vereb's European wars (and probably come out of them badly, so as to give my nation some glory days to harken back to).

Perhaps leaving some turf in North America blank but at least inhabited would give those nations something to squabble over without being too directly aggressive toward each other? I don't think I can quite process enough territory to take anything else on just yet.

@Jig

If you used to be belligerent during the Great War then there must be a good reason why we can maintain good relations or supply arms to you.
Take West Germany, for example.
As remnants of the Nazi Empire they were at first prohibited to own any kind of military, not even a border patrol.
Then the Korean War and generally the rivalry with the Soviet Block gave the NATO enough reason to not only back up West Germany but even promote its military expansion.
If there's a new common enemy then I can see Hungary supporting you.

When Nations Collide #1 - Stoludi (Inkdrop) vs Zwölfberge (Willy Vereb)

@Willy VerebBump?

@Inkdrop

Sorry I was pretty much occupied with other RPs. I think I can make an IC post now.
My unit list is still WIP. How are you progressing with that?

New Dawn Rising

While I am still heavily against Nukes and the Like. Very low-yield, and difficult to manufacture chemical/biological weapons are alright with me. Less damaging then a nuke and provides good story material.

@Sigma

Well, by their nature chemical weapons aren't that easy to mass produce. Granted that didn't stop people from amassing tens or even hundreds of thousands of tons of them.
Then again when you compare it to the literal multi-million metric ton of bombs dropped during WW2 (which is only a fraction of munitions they had at store) it's indeed small.
Especially since that's just the raw gas. Not even counting the delivery systems to be made for them. Creating good chemical delivery system is at least somewhat more expensive than a conventional bomb. And that's not counting logistics and building up the industrial park for it.

As for nukes, very low yield nukes could be a fun deterrent at times.
My idea for the killsat did say that anything at around the level of the Fatman or above.
Sub-kiloton tactical nukes are plausible without triggering the system.

On the other hand arbitrarily declaring that nukes are somehow more difficult to make than in OTL is something doesn't sit with me well.
It's apparent that the game does not support actual legit WMDs so if anyone actually makes them it'd meet tons of opposition in the OOC. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

(Albeit without any nuclear test it's indeed true that designing nukes will be more difficult since there's little to no live data to go by. Although sub-kiloton testings may help at times. Actually with such ruling I expect a growth of interest developing relatively clean sub-kiloton nukes which was possible IRL but had little interest since they were much less efficient.)

EDIT: I can't see the map at all. What happened?

New Dawn Rising

<Snipped quote by Sigma>

I would of claimed it, but didn't want to go crazy with the land area, but you can split it between two people if you like or have an independent polity.

On the subject of WMD's, its worth noting that their intent, after all, is never to be used. If anyone cares to indulge in a variant of Cold War type roleplay in this setting, after all, without the threat of mutually assured destruction, that type of roleplay of brinksmanship becomes near impossible.

There could be pre-cataclysm WMD's out there of varying types, but no doubt difficult to use and most likely known to be far more devastating that even saying you possess one would invite a mass invasion, so you'd be in a position of having a few neutron bombs or something but absolutely no delivery method.

@Taeryn

The problem is two-fold with WMDs, and by that I mostly mean nukes.

1.) Most players don't like Cold War politics at all. The idea of any large scale invasion can potentially escalate into nuclear exchange can seriously hamper the intention of people who might wish to see such events to play out.

2.) Unlike real politicians nukes WILL be used in NRPs. It's like giving a sweetooth the keys to a candy store. And then the one on the receiving end of the nuke is generally frustrated and do not wish to cope with the effects such strike would have on his or her nation in the game.

That's why people don't like nukes and in a number of games this is perfectly okay. That's why I came up with a reason how to avoid such scenarios while avoiding to invoke some equivalent of the Fantasy Gun Control.

Being said, pre-nuke WMD equivalents are fine because as experience tells us with WW2 large scale wars could broke out without everyone and their dear mother poisoning population centers. AFAIK the only ones to utilize chemical weapons were the Japanese and even those were for cleansings rather than actual combat purposes or any sorts of first strike.
Partially because you don't have too many ways to deploy toxic gas more effectively than you'd do with conventional bombings.
And yeah, there's also the whole mutual deterrence thing which was strong enough that even Hitler wasn't crazy enough to break it.
(Granted he was actually treated after a Mustard Gas attack during WW1 so the reason might be also personal)

New Dawn Rising

I'm shortly gonna plough through everybody's sheets and try to work out potential relationships between Jodesia and everybody else. I'll probably struggle to come up with anything for nations that are too far East or too Southern, but I've not looked properly yet.

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

I'm struggling to find details for the Great War beyond a reference to it in your sheet. Depending on when it was (not sure how it took place in the 21st century when this is set in 1520) and what it was about, there could be some historical precedence for my Eastern territories to have weighed-in unsuccessfully, hence their modern-day reticence. Have I missed some crucial detail? Like, are we using Great War for as a synonym for the Cataclysm? I can't see any mention of it in the OP, so I'm not sure if it's region-specific.

Selling equipment to my Eastern Territories would absolutely definitely be a thing nowdays (we're talking, last five years) as the current King is trying to modernise his backward home countries. West Lamonia, however, is probably desperately trying to court the markets in the Americas, and so it would seem more likely that they would arm themselves over there.

@Jig

As I said Great War is the equivalent of WW2 or WW1. It happened one or two decades ago.
I basically assumed that the current date is literally the 1950s, according to the new calendar our nations use. Makes things far more convenient.
I feel something akin to World War is neccessary to make the politics, military hardware and national structure much more relatable to what we plan to play. Which is why I invented the Great War.
BTW, Great War was originally the name of WW1 until the second World War came and the new term retroactively stuck.

<Snipped quote by Willy Vereb>

No wmd's. Just no. Fission power is cool and very appropriate but please no to anything that is nuclear, be it radioactive dirty bombs or true nuclear bombs... Please no.

Or Chem or bio. Unless seriously agreed upon by two parties. (mustard gas can be fun to write about for some reason.)

@Monkeypants

Fear of chemical weapons was the WMD of the time between 1910s to mid 1940s.
I don't really plan to use them for many reasons (OOC reasons, nation's rep and mutual deterrence) but it was worth mentioning since Isotope was getting squeezy at the idea of nuclear propulsion.
In general it bothers me how absurd people's fear of radiation. Especially when you're unknowingly getting exposed to some on a constant basis.
Radiation =/= poison
Their mechanism is rather different and thankfully anything that emits harmful radiation is rather heavily limited by things like inverse square law and particle physics.
The threat of radiation is hardly nonexistent but it only gets truly bad when an actual nuke is involved.

New Dawn Rising

You don't have to make it a lethal dose, you'd still cause light rad poisoning and cancer for all the villagers to go with their birth deformities.

That said, can we not have radiological weapons? I mean, smashing a nuclear reactor into something with a huge warhead behind it is pretty serious and would spread radioactive material everywhere even if it wasn't a proper bomb. I mean there comes a point where you can just have your weapon spew radiation everywhere like an advanced dirty bomb, making the whole no nukes thing null given we were trying to avoid WMD's in general with the policy if I recall.

Up to Sigma tho.

@Isotope

Dirty bombs are neither that lethal nor anywhere close to an actual WMD. If you wish to kill as many people as possible by effecting their biology, toxins and pathogens are still your best bet. Even then nerve gases are hardly economical for such things and actually quite easy to protect against.

While it's a bit more problematic to defend against radioactive pollution it's also far less effective. Generally unless you rack up a huge amount of them to one place it would only effect you through skin contact or ingestion.
Even if a nuclear bomb would accidentally fall on the road next to your house at best you need ask your neighbors to take you in until the cleanup arrives. Radiation does not spread far without some medium carrying it away. And even if it's spread you need considerable amount of it to be anywhere close to dangerous via skin contact, far more so if you want it to endager the target by just being within its vicinity.

For all purposes dirty bombs are more like terror weapons rather than anything effective. Poison gas is kinda the same, especially when the target is at least remotely prepared against it but at least they can be far-far more lethal than radiation. They also cause far worse deformities.

So yeah, a missile with radioactive trail might be an environmental concern, even more so if the missile crashes into the water supply. But thinking those as their main effect as a weapon is a big fat joke. They only terrify people who have no idea how these work.
Again, they can be dangerous and have negative environmental effects. But so is firing lead bullets.