Small Arms Commission Quest

Geography Post because Author is a lazy bastard.

@NothingNow gib threadmark.


BIGASS MAP


See the guys in the middle, surrounded by solid purple? That's us. We're awesome. To the southwest, that's the Empire of Bahlkchavian. They're kinda a bag of dicks, and we 'won' a war with them about ~15 years before Quest Start. To the solid east bits between us and The Sea, that's a very large conglomerate of tiny-ass city-states with a very large diplomatic presence somehow. Current noises from the Diplomatic Branch indicate they've been doing sneeki-breeki shit over there for the past fifty-odd years trying to get your disputed areas (outside the solid purple, inside dotted purple) to stop dicking around with the whole "we're nominally independent" thing that they've got going on. Needless to say, the state of affairs there isn't good, considering the actions of Raki (northern unclaimed coastal mountains) and Versitanos (Southern unclaimed mountains, assorted island areas to the east) which are pretty much "gib clay for ethnonationalisms".

To the far East, we have... a whole lot of nothing, and Raichu, which has issues in other places and the Wessel Crowns aren't really worried about the area they have claimed that was released to the Raichu some seventy-odd years ago. North of that are the Caragians, who relations are more than a little frosty with because they keep trying to step in on the Wessel Crown's client states in the Archangians (off map) and inflame tensions in the Raki area.

To the southeast, on the Akablir Peninsula (which is a good bit bigger than what's on this crappy map) there's the Irromidian Empire. Nothing really happens between the Wessel Crowns and them, mostly because fuckhueg mountains. They do have a pretty strong ethnic base in the southern coastal areas, though.

Off-map, we have the Pyotr Abresu, who are the owners of a truley obscenely large archapelago and global trading magnates par excellente; as well as our friends and allies la Merezude, who live on four-ish islands and compete with the Pyotr Abresu on a regular basis. They buy a lot of Wesser Crowns weapons and technology, so relations are pretty warm, along with a formal defensive pact for the both of them.

With the selection for field trials made, letters and orders are hurriedly dashed off. While it might be delayed to let the Handel team design a 20kg tripod, it was only delayed by a month.

With the batch of new guns, and refit kits for the Handels, it's finally time for six months of field testing to begin.

Two Topani Maschinengewehr (now fitted with two drain caps and a fill cap!) are sent off with the 3rd Machine Gun Abteilung in the Fürst zu Kreißch's III Korps, to be compared against the M.853. They see fairly unremarkable service, but over the six months of testing fire a quarter million rounds without unexpected failures or any notable issues. They're effectively a decent drop in replacement for the M.853 with some slight quirks here and there, and the unit has no real complaints. The crews involved actually request to keep the guns because being able to level the guns out is a massive improvement over the M.853, especially in the artillery role. Also, because the gun is delayed blowback instead of short recoil, the coffee the section made with it was noticeably better.

Two Handel Schweres Maschinengewehr are sent off as part of the Gemeinsame Armee portion of the Werser contingent of the Five-Nation Alliance, with the mission to relieve the Annobon Legations on the Island of Thile which had been under siege. The weapons gave good service (with no major failures in combat,) although not as good as the Balzac Heavy Machine guns or the Holborn guns brought by the Balkh and Kubachi contingents. Overheating can be a problem when dealing with human wave attacks, and while stopping intervals meant that the guns were in action longer than the other guns before running out of ammunition, the machine gun crews panned the performance of the guns in direct fire. The new tripod did enable them to operate as light artillery however, which was a more effective use and allowed the guns to cool off properly between fire missions.

I Garde Kürassier Regiment was assigned two Schneider Maschinengewehr for testing, and promptly hated them. While they were light and mobile, they could not be fired from horseback, and in general made the new machine gun section fight like infantry. They provided poor service (frequently double-feeding or failing to eject,) and restricted magazine capacities made the guns less than ideal for use as proper machine guns as well. And then one of them had a barrel rupture because of a squib bullet. Thanks to the Arbatescu based action the operator was safe, but this understandably soured the section on the Schneider Maschinengewehr.

Two Frankengatsch Leichtes Maschinengewehr are sent off as part of the Gemeinsame Armee portion of the Werser contingent of the Five-Nation Alliance, with the mission to relieve the Annobon Legations on the island of Thile which had been under siege. The weapons gave good service (with no major failures in combat,) and were generally comparable to the Balzac Portatives of the Kubachi marines, although Company Anton of III. Seebataillon's Montels (assigned as part of a Seebataillone experiment in the use of 'assault-phase' machine guns) gave even better performance. The general after action breakdown was that while the larger magazine capacity was great on paper, the Frankengatsch's pan magazines took fairly long to reload compared to other light machine guns, and though they can be stored loaded indefinitely, were a bit more difficult to carry thirty of than the Montel's box magazines (this probably helped Company Anton in being the only part of the expedition that didn't worry about running out of ammunition.) That said, the better cooling helped out in intense actions where the other light guns would have seized up from the heat. The ability to mount a yoke for use on a pintle was greatly appreciated however, with the Frankengatsch guns proving to be much better suited for anti-air and anti-balloon use, or as the armament of a motor launch than the other machine guns in use by the expedition.

Two Montel guns were assigned to the Herzog Florian's Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 14, and used in anti-bandit operations in the western mountains. The machine gun section of the battalion readily adapted to the lighter weapon, and reports that it provided good service, being able to keep up with the rest of the unit and provide enough fire if need be. Rapid barrel changes allowed for relatively sustained fire, although the unit reports that most engagements with bandits were over before a Montel gun could finish off a second magazine. Reliability was not a problem if kept lubricated, and box magazines were simple to carry and keep protected. On the whole the unit's main complaints were that it was much harder to make coffee, and that at least one more gun needs to be provided to a Montel section to allow for continuous fire from two guns.

With the results of trials in, it is time to select a substitute standard Heavy Machine Gun, and possibly recommend the adoption of a Light Machine Gun or two for specialist troops.