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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition

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What convinced me to vote for Final Crash Militarization is that it's spending 5 dice on Kuznetsk Basin Mine Expansion giving us fairly good chances of completing it, we are going to try to trade Coal to France, a bigger surplus will potentially mean more income. It's best to maximize the amount of stuff we can get out of a trade agreement with them. Norilsk on the other hand isn't particularly critical or advantageous to do right now in comparison.
 
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So to clarify something about the military trial options that are currently up. They are all doing trials for things either ahead of time or just doing things that OTL did not focus on like MG's. They will make your military stronger if you can produce them/roll well, but there is no hard time table that you need to take them at this point. Those will come in later turns/be explicitly pointed out.
 
Nice. Though, we should definitely still do them, or at least the Machine Gun. One of Vasilevsky's thing was better infantry, so I want them to be as beefy as possible.
 
[X] Plan Final Crash Militarization

We would fuck up history real good if we smashed the Nazis when they invade.
 
If Stalin isn't able to purge all our larger, talented officer cadre (maybe instead of shooting them they'll get routed to the GULAGS?) and we roll over Finland in the Winter War the Nazi's might take us seriously, for better and for worse. Supposedly our terrible performance there and not because they were high on victory and Sho-Ka-Kola convinced them they could take us. Alternatively, they think that Finland would naturally get crushed because they were puny nation, but combined might of Europe will make short work of subhuman soviet and OTL happens.

I'm confident we can build up faster and better than they can because we're actual experts and they are nazi German capitalists if they delay thing for a bit to build shiny toys that overstretch their supply lines even sooner, but if they actually try for total mobilization in preparation for Operation Barbarossa the invasion might be more loaded for bear...but the Americans arrive sooner in invasion timetable.
 
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Shard of Victory said:
One of the bigest soviet problems was complete lack of modern machineguns. Maxims were not suited to WW2 battlefield.
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DP-28 was good enough, as well as its' tank version. Their aviation MGs (Berezin UB, ShKAS) were up to the task, as well as DShK. The only niche not covered is rifle-caliber MMG (until introduction of SG-43), and not for the lack of trying (for example, DS-39) - their MGs of that kind suffered from teething problems, and were not produced in mass as a result.

Usage of Maxims was also enforced by Barbarossa - old MG is better than no MG, and they couldn't put production on hold until they deal with problems of their MGs.

Though, of course, if we stumble upon PKM in late 30's... No-one would complain. No-one of ours, anyway.
 
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Vote called for
[X] Plan Final Crash Militarization
Infrastructure 6 Dice
-[X] Ural Rail Lines, 6 Infra Dice (60 Resources)
Heavy Industry 8 Dice
-[X] Stalingrad Metallurgical Plant, 2 HI Dice (60 Resources)
-[X] Zlatoust Planned City, 1 HI Dice (15 Resources)
-[X] Kutznetsk Basin Mine Expansion, 5 HI Dice (75 Resources)
Light and Chemical Industry 6 Dice (5 idle)
-[X] Pharmaceutical Plants(Sulfa), 1 LCI Dice (40 Resources)
Agriculture 6 Dice
-[X] New Socialist Towns(Stage 4), 3 Agriculture Dice (30 Resources)
-[X] Set up a Weather Bureau, 3 Agriculture Dice (60 Resources)
Services 6 Dice (5 idle)
-[X] Expansion of the Schooling Program, 1 Services Dice (5 Resources)
Military 6 Dice (+4 Free Dice)
-[X] Alternative Basic Manufacturing, 6 Military Dice (180 Resources)
-[X] Production Line-Shift to SVT-34, 3 Free Dice (60 Resources)
-[X] Construct Officer Academies (Stage 4), 1 Free Dice (15 Resources)
Bureaucracy 2 Dice (+2 Free Dice)
-[X] Attempt Trade Agreements(France) (2 Bureaucracy Dice, 2 Free Dice)

Rolls Incoming
Blackstar threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Rolls Total: 622
48 48 1 1 58 58 76 76 66 66 41 41 62 62 42 42 58 58 54 54 62 62 54 54
Blackstar threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Rolls Total: 647
70 70 79 79 41 41 76 76 17 17 21 21 7 7 82 82 45 45 39 39 94 94 76 76
Blackstar threw 12 100-faced dice. Reason: Rolls Total: 570
48 48 85 85 57 57 74 74 31 31 56 56 62 62 8 8 32 32 81 81 30 30 6 6
Blackstar threw 2 100-faced dice. Reason: Military Dice Total: 45
38 38 7 7
 
Infrastructure 6 Dice
-[X] Ural Rail Lines, 6 Infra Dice (60 Resources) 48 , 1 , 58, 76, 66, 41 = 290 + 30 = 320/300 (Nat 1)
Heavy Industry 8 Dice
-[X] Stalingrad Metallurgical Plant, 2 HI Dice (60 Resources) 62, 42 249/200
-[X] Zlatoust Planned City, 1 HI Dice (15 Resources) 58 139/700
-[X] Kutznetsk Basin Mine Expansion, 5 HI Dice (75 Resources) 54 ,62 ,54, 70, 79 384/300
Light and Chemical Industry 6 Dice (5 idle)
-[X] Pharmaceutical Plants(Sulfa), 1 LCI Dice (40 Resources) 41 46/100
Agriculture 6 Dice
-[X] New Socialist Towns(Stage 4), 3 Agriculture Dice (30 Resources) 76, 17, 21 243/300
-[X] Set up a Weather Bureau, 3 Agriculture Dice (60 Resources) 7, 82, 45 149/100
Services 6 Dice (5 idle)
-[X] Expansion of the Schooling Program, 1 Services Dice (5 Resources) 39 271/300
Military 6 Dice (+4 Free Dice)
-[X] Alternative Basic Manufacturing, 6 Military Dice (180 Resources) 94, 76, 48, 85, 57, 74 459/250 Quality 38
-[X] Production Line-Shift to SVT-34, 3 Free Dice (60 Resources) 31, 56, 62 214/200 Quality 7
-[X] Construct Officer Academies (Stage 4), 1 Free Dice (15 Resources) 8 154/300
Bureaucracy 2 Dice (+2 Free Dice)
-[X] Attempt Trade Agreements(France) (2 Bureaucracy Dice, 2 Free Dice) 32, 81, 30, 6 DC 80 reached
 
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We have surely displeased Great Lenin by our refusal to electrify the Union first...that's the only explanation.
 
Ural rail lines: 320/300, nat 1
Stalingrad aluminum: 249/200
Zlatoust: 139/700
Kuznetsk coal: 384/300
Sulfa drugs: 46/100
NST: 243/300
Weather service: 149/150 (close enough)
Schools: 271/300
ABM: 464/250, quality 38
SVT's: 214/200, quality 7
Academies: 154/300
Trade deal: 169/80

Well, we're officially behind the curve on the officer academies, good thing we built up that buffer. Overall an acceptable turn though, the nat 1 is gonna be interesting but we should hopefully still get the project, and the 7 on SVT quality is ugh but we've survived worse.
 
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Dwergar said:
DP-28 was good enough, as well as its' tank version. Their aviation MGs (Berezin UB, ShKAS) were up to the task, as well as DShK. The only niche not covered is rifle-caliber MMG (until introduction of SG-43), and not for the lack of trying (for example, DS-39) - their MGs of that kind suffered from teething problems, and were not produced in mass as a result.

Usage of Maxims was also enforced by Barbarossa - old MG is better than no MG, and they couldn't put production on hold until they deal with problems of their MGs.

Though, of course, if we stumble upon PKM in late 30's... No-one would complain. No-one of ours, anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Eh, the DP-28 is fairly mediocre considering it has an awkward magazine, an inability to to be belt fed, and relatively low rate of fire. It's not an aggressively bad gun, but it has a lot of shortcomings we ought to overcome before we go to war with it. I'd kill for the ability to work on the RPD before WW2, and that's something advanced enough we'd need to get started working on it sooner than later.

Realistically, I'm hoping to see us develop something like a RP-46 variant of the DP-27: even better in that it will still have ammo commonality with the SVT-34. Making the DP-27 belt fed and reinforcing the barrel and the bipod shouldn't be too technically challenging.
 
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Okay, can we please do the military production bureau trials next turn? This is just getting silly now.
 
We make jokes about them being wreckers but they're not actually wreckers we just roll a 7 now and then. Shooting them all won't help with that, it'll just mean we need to waste more time and resources training up new workers from scratch. The purge options are a quick and easy PI source at the cost of shooting a bunch of innocent people (and all the inefficiencies/fudged reports/blame culture/wasted knowledge/disgruntled family and friends that produces), we're very comfortable on PI at the moment so no need to shoot anyone.
 
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If it makes you feel any better I expect many, many opportunities to do new and exciting flavors of purges in our near future. The Big One is nearly upon us, and there's no way we're getting out of it without signing off on a few kill lists.

But that's why we should minimize our optional purging right now, so the ones we're FORCED to do by politics hurt as little as possible.
 
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Semi-Canon Omake: Great Wonders of the Modern Era: The Stalingrad Hydro-Industrial Complex
  • Sidestory
    • Great Wonders of the Modern Era : The Stalingrad Hydro-Industrial Complex

    In this series, we explore the greatest feats of industrial engineering. From Space Station Freedom to the Continental Highspeed Railway, we have explored the history, construction and future of America's modern wonders. But on this very special episode, we're leaving america behind and are heading to the Soviet Union. Our crew has gained an unprecedented look behind the Iron Curtain, with access to never before seen footage, documents and history of one of the Soviet's greatest closed cities : Stalingrad.

    Though most famous for the pivotal role it played in the second world war (or the Great Patriotic War, as it is known in the Soviet Union), our story begins in the year 1928. The New Economic Policy has just been declared a failure, the Soviet experiment with what they considered capitalism failing under onerous regulation and bureaucratic sanctions. Instead, the economy would now be directed by the central planning bureau, enabling a swift industrialization that would transfer Soviet Union from an agricultural nation to an industrial juggernaut. With the start of the first five year plan, ambitious goals were set , and the Soviet union set it's first steps on the bloody path of modernization.

    Under the leadership of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy charts the course of the modernization. Agriculture is to be modernized, and so with the stroke of a pen the lives of hundred of thousands of peasants are changed forever. Stalingrad is designated as the central supplier of agricultural equipment, over the coming decades it's famous tractor factories would supply nearly 40% of agricultural equipment working on Soviet fields. In order to allow further expansion, Sergo also drew up another idea, which even today forms the center of Stalingrad. The great Stalingrad Hydropower Station.

    Though initially scheduled for completion under the first 5 year plan, the Stalingrad Hydropower plant would only be completed in June 1933, under Sergo's succesor. Tens of thousands of people worked on the elaborate network of retaining dams and underwater channels that redirect the stream of the Volga, including many divisions of the controversial NKPS labor programmed. Though Soviet records note that casualties during construction where "expected given circumstances" local stories and international rumors talk about the spirits of those who died in the tunnels, something which is still frowned upon in the strictly atheistic union. Curiously enough for such a wonder of Soviet engineering, the Stalingrad dam had american technology at it's heart. It's powerful turbines were originally slated for use on several smaller US hydropower projects, and were bought and moved to the Soviet Union as those failed in the wake of economic depression.

    Though highly publicized, most of the dam's production capacity laid idle for the next few years. It was not until several years that the Five year plans returned to Stalingrad. While the first plan saw Stalingrad as a center for agricultural mechanization, the second plan saw entirely different sort of mechanization. Great refineries were build for aluminum and other materials, feeding new factories from which emerged tanks and trucks for the war effort. Soon, the great hydropower station was supplemented by coal fired generators, powering a chemical industry that supplied the Red army with explosives, ammunition but also rare materials such as synthethic rubbers.

    All this made the city an interesting target for the Nazis, but although the city was besieged for months, the nazi forces would never enter it. Heavily damaged by shelling, the dam (and the city) nonetheless continued their vital supplies for the war effort. Tanks and other vehicles were finished even as artillery shells rained down around the factory hall, soldiers leaving directly for the battlefield after having just finished building their own vehicles.

    In the post-war era, Stalingrad received a new function. The hydropower plants were renewed and refurbished, large Soviet build turbines replacing the patchwork network of smaller American equipment. With new power and a refurbished city, the central plan called for a further specialization of the city into metal refining and chemical production. These days, it is one of the Soviet Union's largest petrochemical centers. In order to secure the future, it also home to a wide array of research facilities, developing new plastics and materials for further construction. The advanced solar cells that powered the Mir space laboratory saw their origin in Stalingrad.

    Even so, the future is uncertain. With the introduction of new technologies, and the Soviet Union's strategic shift to nuclear power generation, Stalingrad's mighty dam and petrochemical industry threaten to lose their strategic relevance. Even so, the workers are not worried. "The Union built this place" they say "They have planned it's future".
     
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