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Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

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aceraptor said:
Thankfully we've crippled their motorized/mechanized assets. So they should be slower than our motorized infantry. But their sheer number is still a big problem.

Poptart are you able to tell us the dice roll modification for the Victorians in terms of their numbers now that they will be attacking our line of defense with both 3rd and 2nd Divisions defending it?
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When we roll.
 
[X] Plan Raise Periscope

so thinking about the other prong of the assault, how could they get them to us? It's too far to walk, and the roads are in no shape to drive a large force though. Does the geography work to take a boat at least part of the way? though if that was the plan they may be screwed.
 
random_npc said:
[X] Plan Raise Periscope

so thinking about the other prong of the assault, how could they get them to us? It's too far to walk, and the roads are in no shape to drive a large force though. Does the geography work to take a boat at least part of the way? though if that was the plan they may be screwed.
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Combat engineers pushing through a road and laying pontoon bridges, I assume.
 
random_npc said:
so thinking about the other prong of the assault, how could they get them to us? It's too far to walk, and the roads are in no shape to drive a large force though. Does the geography work to take a boat at least part of the way? though if that was the plan they may be screwed.
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How would a medieval army do it? The roads can't be in much worse state than they were in medieval Europe. In some ways they almost have to be better, even if only because the huge stretches of freeze-thaw-shattered gravel and potholes Where Once Was Pavement make a passable walking surface wide enough for a large column of marching infantry.

The army marches. If they have to, soldiers with tools chop down trees and just fucking build structures to allow the army to cross a river or something. It's not going to be physically impossible for them to cover the distance. If something like a highway embankment or a collapsed overpass gets in the way, well, you've got a shedload of bored twentysomething men with explosives sitting around, you do the math.

The biggest problem is that lacking combat engineering expertise, the Victorians may struggle to build bridges and other structures that can withstand sustained traffic. Or getting their tanks across rivers- if all else fails they can just build and tow rafts back and forth to get a lot of stuff over, but tanks are a bit big for that kind of thing and you'd need barges.

Seriously, the distance the Victorian army would have to cover is like sixty miles. It may take them several days, or even longer if they're really clueless about stuff like pontoon bridges, but there's nothing between Toledo and Detroit that would physically make it impossible for an army to cross. If we don't stop them by armed force (possibly exploiting windows of vulnerability opened by them having to stop and build stuff), the terrain itself won't be much of an obstacle in the long run.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Seriously, the distance the Victorian army would have to cover is like sixty miles. It may take them several days, or even longer if they're really clueless about stuff like pontoon bridges, but there's nothing between Toledo and Detroit that would physically make it impossible for an army to cross. If we don't stop them by armed force (possibly exploiting windows of vulnerability opened by them having to stop and build stuff), the terrain itself won't be much of an obstacle in the long run.
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ah, ok I thought it was more than that. that is very much distance that can be crossed.
 
random_npc said:
wouldn't that be really slow? the warlord of torntao went out of his way to fuck up anywhere to move large units though right?
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I mean yes, but there's a limit to how much you can fuck up terrain enough that it stops tens of thousands of bored, pissed-off guys with explosives permanently.

We're talking "dynamite a freeway overpass so that it blocks the road," not "the Wall from Game of Thrones" here.

After all, the level of sabotage we're looking at is meant to stop the Detroit Army, which is so small and ill-equipped that it can't even compare to us, let alone the Victorian army.

random_npc said:
ah, ok I thought it was more than that. that is very much distance that can be crossed.
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It's like, things would get messy if the Victorians had to retreat overland back to their own territory about 250 miles away- but that's mostly because there's so many of them that they might well loot the countryside of all its food faster than they can march through it on the way back, without resupply from a port.

Here, resupply is going to be a problem for them but not necessarily totally insurmountable; they do have motorized vehicles to haul supplies and a looot of manpower.

Actually stopping them is going to take dedicated action on our part, though it's definitely to our advantage to exploit the trouble they'll have advancing through the terrain, seeing as how said terrain is much worse than the terrain the eastern force is advancing through.

You know, it's ironic. The eastern force would barely be inconvenienced by the obstacles the southern force faces, because they have no heavy equipment to move, except for the rivers; they just need to walk. Even small boats and stolen hand tools would be enough to let them cross the rivers, if not very quickly or under fire. And the southern force would have a field day on the terrain the eastern force faces, because it's flat, the roads are mostly clear if poorly maintained, and there aren't any significant rivers to cross...
 
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Quick question, what would the possibility be of the Victorians bypassing the swamps and such by using aircraft to transport their tanks/troops, whether it be transport planes or helicopters?

Also, another thing that's mostly off topic and just for pure speculation. How difficult would it be to transform a large transport aircraft (C-27, C-130, etc.) into a gunship model, like the AC-130 but less neat and efficient?
 
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MajorKO said:
Quick question, what would the possibility be of the Victorians bypassing the swamps and such by using aircraft to transport their tanks/troops, whether it be transport planes or helicopters?
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Very limited. The VIctorians don't have a strong air transport arm and don't seem to operate helicopters. And despite the fact that their army, with its focus on light, mobile "straight leg" infantry forces that operate with little or no concern for supply lines and heavy equipment and a lot of concern for maneuver and positioning, should be pretty good paratroopers, they don't actually have doctrine for airborne infantry tactics so far as we can tell. I don't expect them to do much parachuting except maybe to insert commandos behind our lines if they think they can get past our air defense network.

Moreover, such operations are extremely fuel-hungry, while the Victorians must be having trouble maintaining large stockpiles of aviation fuel at or near the front.

It also pays to remember that there isn't THAT much swamp involved here. Toledo is more or less on the northern edge of the Great Black Swamp, and the terrain north of the city, while not perfect, isn't just one massive bog for miles and miles. The real problem is crossing multiple rivers where the warlord of Toledo has apparently blown the bridges, and making one's way along highways that have similarly been obstructed and sabotaged.

One of our best opportunities to bleed the Victorians here is by hammering them as they try to force river crossings, IMO.

Also, another thing that's mostly off topic and just for pure speculation. How difficult would it be to transform a large transport aircraft (C-27, C-130, etc.) into a gunship model, like the AC-130 but less neat and efficient?
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Not especially difficult; the original AC-47 was pretty improvisational, for instance, and based off a DC-3, a plane we could readily duplicate. But such aircraft are very vulnerable to AA weapons and interceptor jets; we have the former and the Viks have the latter.
 
[X] Plan Force Preservation
-[X][AIR] The air force is shattered, its pilots badly burnt out. Stand them down and give them a break. In the unlikely event that you need to piss away four planes at a later date, you can always call them back up again. It's not like their odds of making a dent will meaningfully improve by staying geared up.
-[X][NAVY] Enemy air supremacy and foul weather, in shallow-drafted boats with no deck armor? Yeah, no. Pull your gunships back, and await a better opportunity. Time plays to your advantage with both of these problems. The army can endure, but every ship you lose is precious.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Not especially difficult; the original AC-47 was pretty improvisational, for instance, and based off a DC-3, a plane we could readily duplicate. But such aircraft are very vulnerable to AA weapons and interceptor jets; we have the former and the Viks have the latter.
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If we could even get limited superiority though, enough to only be sacrificing dozens of aircrew per week, fixed-wing gunships would be a huge game-changer. The amount of fire they can put down (even the rather improv AC-47) is just insane. They were brutal against the North Vietnamese, imagine using them against actual human waves this time.

I vaguely remember a wonderfully vivid well-written (and horrifying) story about a pair of Cobra pilots in Vietnam encountering Spooky. They'd just pounced on a NVA battalion moving down a trail, tearing into them with grenades and minigun fire, when an order came down to leave them and move on. These guys were pissed, thinking Command was throwing away the clearest shot they'd ever have at the enemy. Then dozens of flares lit up the sky and a hailstorm of tracers started ripping the jungle out from under them, 50-yard circle by 50-yard circle. Their ops box had been handed over to someone capable of putting a round in every square yard of jungle, because it's the only way to be sure.

and let's not even talk about Spooky 2, or "the field artillery got lost, got drunk near an air force base, and the babies are horrifying."

it's a howitzer. a flying howitzer. why.
 
natruska said:
If we could even get limited superiority though, enough to only be sacrificing dozens of aircrew per week, fixed-wing gunships would be a huge game-changer. The amount of fire they can put down (even the rather improv AC-47) is just insane. They were brutal against the North Vietnamese, imagine using them against actual human waves this time.

I vaguely remember a wonderfully vivid well-written (and horrifying) story about a pair of Cobra pilots in Vietnam encountering Spooky. They'd just pounced on a NVA battalion moving down a trail, tearing into them with grenades and minigun fire, when an order came down to leave them and move on. These guys were pissed, thinking Command was throwing away the clearest shot they'd ever have at the enemy. Then dozens of flares lit up the sky and a hailstorm of tracers started ripping the jungle out from under them, 50-yard circle by 50-yard circle. Their ops box had been handed over to someone capable of putting a round in every square yard of jungle, because it's the only way to be sure.

and let's not even talk about Spooky 2, or "the field artillery got lost, got drunk near an air force base, and the babies are horrifying."

it's a howitzer. a flying howitzer. why.
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The thing is, the Victorians don't normally use human wave attacks. That's what happens when Shit Goes Wrong for them.

Basically, I don't expect them to have much more place on our battlefields than they do in real life between peer competitor nations that both have functional air forces. They'd be great for bullying someone who has no meaningful AA defense of their own, but that's about it.
 
[X] Plan Raise Periscope
-[X][AIR] The air force is shattered, its pilots badly burnt out. Stand them down and give them a break. In the unlikely event that you need to piss away four planes at a later date, you can always call them back up again. It's not like their odds of making a dent will meaningfully improve by staying geared up.
-[X][NAVY] Enemy air supremacy and foul weather, in shallow-drafted boats with no deck armor? Yeah, no. Pull your gunships back, and await a better opportunity. Time plays to your advantage with both of these problems. The army can endure, but every ship you lose is precious.
-[X] Write-in: You don't know what the other half of the Victorian army is doing. Make it a priority to get some reconnaissance information on the situation south of the defense lines on the south side of the city, by whatever means seem feasible and not needlessly dangerous. This may include naval action after the weather clears, but not air action with the handful of planes you have left.

To everyone who has voted for Force Preservation: is there anything you don't like about the write-in on Raise Periscope? The rest of the plan is the same.
Horologer said:
It depends on how long it takes the Victorians to realize the Leamington 'offensive' is completely hosed.
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I'm operating on the assumption that they knew from the start it was hosed, and that it was a ploy to distract us.
Simon_Jester said:
The bad weather may hurt the VAF as much as us, but again, that doesn't matter if our ships sink in a storm.
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What I meant. If only we had iron ships to match our iron men!
Simon_Jester said:
Well, my theory is still that this attack is not meant to be decisive, but is meant to maneuver us into committing our reserves and being badly out of position to stop the second, harder attack from the south.
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Yes, but… see below.
LHB said:
Their plans, at least in the book, depended heavily on flanking maneuvers, surrounding the enemy and pushing them into a position where they're hit from too many sides to respond.
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Right, so.

I'm voting for Raise Periscope, but I'm worrying that Toledo is also a distraction. (Not paranoid enough!) Is there anything to stop them from marching troops overland on the north of Lake Erie? That's what I'd be doing, if I was doing what the Vicks are: an Inchon-style (as Lind would no doubt put it) landing to clear the way for an armored thrust following through by the land route. In this scenario, Toledo is a decoy, and the "tanks" there are inflatables. It's stupid and overcomplicated, but Lind would love it.
PoptartProdigy said:
They were running 100-plane sorties, and may or may not have been holding more in reserve.
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Simon_Jester said:
We stated with about fifty. They started with at least a hundred and very possibly more in reserve.
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Thank you!
 
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