Whew. First things first, from a lurker back when this was all kicking into high gear, glad to have you back! Second, while I've not dug too deep into our internal stats, I don't think we can fully accept the FCNY's demand, much as it pains me to do even without knowing the actual situation there. We know we are first on the chopping block of a revanchist Victoria...
Uh, I know this comment is from a while ago, but I feel compelled to point a few things out.
1) Any rational-ish attempt at Victorian strategy (and Gideon Blackwell is mostly rational) must take into account that New York is a huge thorn in Victoria's side if there is a systematic uprising of American powers against Victoria.
2) Whereas Victoria would need to launch a large scale campaign requiring extensive logistical support just to reach the core territories of the CFC, which has deep layers of territorial buffers through which it can fall back while remaining viable as a state... New York is
right there and could plausibly be crippled by a single (admittedly brutally meat-grinding) offensive.
I don't think it's actually TRUE that we have any certainty that Victoria will attack the CFC first and New York second; New York has very reasonable concerns that the temporary pause in their rearmament campaign will see the Victorians go "hey, maybe we should just attack New York before they finish loading up on more firepower"
literally any day now. Because frankly, the Vicks would be right to do exactly that if they're trying to figure out a way for all this to end well for them. It does NOT end well for them if New York turns into a heavily armed fortress that's sitting there at the southern extreme of their territory even as they face the CFC integrating a lot of the stuff within striking distance of their western border.
On top of this... I haven't read up on all that's happened since Poptart dropped the update on December 18th, I just haven't had time. But my honest impression is that USA.PLC is doing something really dumb here. Something that gives them a reputation for breaching a contract in a way that badly screws over someone who's already paid them a lot of money. I'm not sure we'd even WANT to do business with them under the circumstances. Because if New York can't trust them to actually finish shipping an order they've already contracted for, then we can't trust them to, say, actually go on shipping us the spare parts they agree to ship us.
Maybe this has been addressed and I'll catch up on it, but really, we should just not be poaching munitions out from under a FCNY contract. And hell, we shouldn't be
able to, under the circumstances, for the same reason that if you sign the papers to buy a car and write the dealer a check, then when you show up the next day to pick up the car they can't just tell you "so sorry, we got a better offer." That shit can happen
before the deal is finalized, but if it happens after, you're not dealing with serious professionals who deserve to be trusted.
Reminder to everyone that Minnesota is about to be a problem, as Minneapolis wants to pick a fight with Bemidji, and is instituting a draft.
We might need arms *NOW* to deal with the conflict happening on our Ally's doorstep rather than when Victoria feels they can maybe attack FCNY.
Re this, I'm pretty sure we can handle the situation in Minnesota with the stuff we've got. Unlike Victoria, we're not worried about Minneapolis being heavily supplied by foreign arms manufacturers. About the worst probable case of what Minneapolis is packing would look like Toledo, I think, and we absolutely could have handed the Toledoans their heads if they were fighting us alone.
