Castles of Steel - Lesbians Good, Imperialism Bad

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Lieutenant Arisukawa Haruna

Balance Stats
❁ • ❁ Work / Life ❁ • ❁
❁ • ❁ Warrior / Princess ❁ • ❁
❁ • ❁ Radical / Respectable ❁ • ❁

Tactical Stats
Gunnery 0, Navigation +2, Command +2, Technology -4, Personal -2, Strategy +3

Stress: 3​


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PLEASE READ THE QUEST RULES BELOW

You collectively vote on the actions of Arisukawa Haruna, the first woman to serve openly in the Imperial Akitsukuni Navy.

This quest is set in a universe which is much like our own circa 1910, but with different politics, cultural norms, and ideas about gender and sexuality, as well as some unusual and advanced technology in places.

We are using this quest to explore themes like breaking the glass ceiling, divergent outlooks on gender and sexuality, colonialism and imperialism, and the place of royalty.

Content Warning
This quest goes some dark places.

There is violence, often explicit, often unfair, often against undeserving targets.

There are not always good options forward. The protagonist is not necessarily a good person.

There is implied content and discussion of sexual harassment and assault.

This is a world where people are often racist, sexist, queerphobic bigots. Sometimes, even the PC and the people they are friends with.

Voting Rules

We will tell you if write-in votes are allowed. If we do not say that write-ins are allowed, they are not. This is to prevent people from unrealistically hedging their bets.

You may proposal other options in a non-vote format, subject to approval, on non write-in votes.

We will tell you when a vote allows approved voting. If we don't say the answer is no, pick an option. We like making people commit.

Discussions makes the GM feel fuzzy.

Game Rules
When we ask you for a roll, roll 3d6. You are aiming to roll equal or under the value of your stat. If you succeed, Haruna gets through the situation with no real difficulties. If you roll above the target value, Haruna will still succeed, but this success will cost her something or add a complication.

Whenever Haruna loses something or faces hardship from a botched roll, she takes Stress. The more Stress Haruna has, the more the job and the circumstances she's in will get to her, and it'll be reflected in the narrative. Haruna must be kept under 10 Stress: if she reaches 10 Stress, she will suffer a breakdown and the results will not be great for her.

Haruna loses stress by taking time for herself, by making meaningful progress on her dreams, and by kissing tall, beautiful women.

Meta Rules
Author commentary is in italics so you know it's not story stuff.

Please don't complain about the system or the fact we have to roll dice. We've heard it before, we've heard it a thousand times across multiple quests. We're not going to change it, and it wears at our fucking souls.

Just going "oh noooo" or "Fish RNGesus Why!" is fun and fine. Complaining at length because you didn't get what you want less so.

If you have a question, tag both @open_sketchbook and @Artificial Girl. If you only tag one of us, you will be ignored. Seriously, we both write this quest.

And yes this is an alt-history type setting with openly gay and trans people, ahistoric medicine, and weird politics. Just... deal, please?

This quest employs a special system called Snippet Votes. Please read this post for more information.
 
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C_Z said:
So, after doing a bit of research (I really should not have gotten myself distracted, fuck), I've come up with bullet points of a plan:
  • The mount itself is superficially similar to the USN 40 mm Mark 1, in that it's two paired guns in the middle of a vaguely-semicircular mount, with the rear platform (that rotates with the guns) being used by the loaders:
​
  • Ready ammunition is stored in lockers surrounding the gun mount.​
  • Guns themselves are water-cooled.​
  • To provide the maximum amount of space for the ammunition handlers to do their thing, and prevent interference between the guns, the crew, and the people aiming the guns, the aiming is taken off-mount. There's a platform above and behind the mount where a person can stand and aim a dummy gun with a nice, big spiderweb sight (similar to the 20 mm pedestal mount posted upthread), and a linkage converts movements of that dummy gun into movements of the mount. Backup control positions can be provided on the mount, but they're spartan.​
  • While it's technically possible that Akitsukuni could be advanced enough to have synchros (Germany did in 1914, and she should check with Aiko on this!), most countries IRL had to rely on stepper motors if they wanted electric elevation and training, which are too jerky for use in AA. Instead, swashplate hydraulic motors can provide smooth power operation, amplifying the movements of the gun director. This is a decently mature tech, and would be familiar to Haruna since the turrets of Albian-built warships, such as the Myogi, would have them.​
This is, ofc, assuming we're using something similar to the 37 mms we commanded in the last war; if the AA gun is closer to the 3" automatic cannon used aboard our torpedo boat, then I'd be suggesting something slightly different.
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Ugh. Hydraulics.

Can't we just have Aiko invent synchros on the spot? :p
 
[X] C_Z's erzat Bofors mount. It's a bit complex, yes, but none of the individual bits and bobs should be beyond the current state of the art, it's just going to be putting them together that way, which is what these quests do. And if it's done even mostly right, it makes for a dang solid basis for a gun mount, and there's room to upgrade it as time goes on so it shouldn't become immedaitely obsolete. (having played a lot of Rule The Waves, not immediately becoming obsolete is worth a lot more than it might sound)
 
I really like what C_Z is laying down here, I worry that it's too complicated but I think that overreaching technologically is fun. However, in the interests of discussion and to try to get something that I think is more like what the requirement was supposed to be (although nobody has actually given us the requirement yet!), I'm going to propose something very different:

[X] Lotus Mount
"Simplify, then add lightness" - Colin Chapman, possibly
  • Single, air-cooled gun mount
  • Manually traversed and elevated by two crewmembers, directed by another, loaded by two more
  • Ammunition all stored off-mount
  • Fiddly components minimised
  • Weight minimised
  • Deck footprint minimised
  • Zero deck penetration
The idea here is to create a mount that is useful against the harassing/reconnaissance role of aircraft over the next fifteen years, which can be developed rapidly, built cheaply and fitted to every ship or boat in the fleet. I remember Haruna being unable to do anything about Caspian reconnaissance aircraft while aboard Kari, something that could perhaps have allowed the transports to make a clean escape from the Caspian surface action group. The mount will need to be completely replaced aboard larger ships after that time, but it will remain useful for auxiliaries and torpedo boats well into the 40s. I expect this mount to still be an improvement on the current state of the art, because I suspect the current state of the art to be a simple pedestal mount that is manhandled around by one person.


A similar mount to what I'm thinking, 1918
 
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Very good descriptions of time passing slowly in this update. And excellent that Aiko's back, morale is sure to improve, very cute.

I don't know enough about anti-aircraft gun mounts to have an opinion on what would be a good one but we should definitely include a model of a crashed enemy aircraft to show the efficacy of our mount.
 
FrangibleCover said:
I really like what C_Z is laying down here, I worry that it's too complicated but I think that overreaching technologically is fun. However, in the interests of discussion and to try to get something that I think is more like what the requirement was supposed to be (although nobody has actually given us the requirement yet!), I'm going to propose something very different:

[X] Lotus Mount
"Simplify, then add lightness" - Colin Chapman, possibly
  • Single, air-cooled gun mount
  • Manually traversed and elevated by two crewmembers, directed by another, loaded by two more
  • Ammunition all stored off-mount
  • Fiddly components minimised
  • Weight minimised
  • Deck footprint minimised
  • Zero deck penetration
The idea here is to create a mount that is useful against the harassing/reconnaissance role of aircraft over the next fifteen years, which can be developed rapidly, built cheaply and fitted to every ship or boat in the fleet. I remember Haruna being unable to do anything about Caspian reconnaissance aircraft while aboard Kari, something that could perhaps have allowed the transports to make a clean escape from the Caspian surface action group. The mount will need to be completely replaced aboard larger ships after that time, but it will remain useful for auxiliaries and torpedo boats well into the 40s. I expect this mount to still be an improvement on the current state of the art, because I suspect the current state of the art to be a simple pedestal mount that is manhandled around by one person.


A similar mount to what I'm thinking, 1918
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To be explicit, at the start, I think this is good. In an absolute vacuum, in the early 1900s, I'd vote for something similar to this. However, I think this is less than ideal given the specific situation. If we go back to the 37 mm that Haruna commanded in Joseon, it has:
  • 8 crew per gun
  • Special mountings that allowed them to be pointed upwards.
  • Some method specifically to crank around the guns (as opposed to "pivot" or "train"), which suggests elevation/training handwheels on a pedestal mount.
As such, I think the current mounts in service already look vaguely similar to the one you're describing. We're also on the eve of war; the most likely weapon to be rush-adopted is going to be minimally different from what we've already been using, in which case we're getting into the weeds on optimizing ergonomic factors that would require a detailed description of the mount beyond the level the quest seems to be operating at. If we spend our time on a clean sheet design that's a slight improvement over the mount currently in production, I expect the procurement apparatus to reject it.

That's why I tried to shoot for the moon, so to speak, and come up with something that's probably not going to be ready for immediate use but will be the basis for our wartime development program and postwar production. It's still reasonable tech - the hydraulic systems are mature enough that they're in current service, a rotating loading platform and off-mount aiming are novel ideas but not high risk ones, and the other stuff should be no problem at all. However, it's also the bones of a system that we can fill out with servos, stable verticals, proper directors, and the like once we have the technolgy, satisfying the request for something that'll "keep the skies free of aircraft and ensure that the good old battleship will remain supreme forever.", emphasis on the last bit
 
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C_Z said:
As such, I think the current mounts in service already look vaguely similar to the one you're describing.
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Fundamentally I think this is where we're disagreeing and therefore why we've done the two different designs. You think we currently have a system comparable to this, I think we're operating at the next technological level down. I see why you think we're at the higher tech level and if we turn out to be there I'll absolutely back your complex system.
 
[X] Gun Porcupine
-[X] It's a fixed mount with a bunch of presighted guns aimed along useful bombing trajectories for the ship's speed and size. The crew does not aim the guns, they merely trigger the gun from the appropriate sector to fire.

There needs to be at least one terrible design.
 
10ebbor10 said:
[X] Gun Porcupine
-[X] It's a fixed mount with a bunch of presighted guns aimed along useful bombing trajectories for the ship's speed and size. The crew does not aim the guns, they merely trigger the gun from the appropriate sector to fire.

There needs to be at least one terrible design.
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it is indeed terrible, though I suspect there will be one guy on the comittee who proposes it, touting the value of simplicity and trying to hide that he has an uncle who owns a machine-gun company that has a model that would be TOTALLY PERFECT to incorporate with this mount...
 
Brevet Commodore Nashimo: *looks around* "Lookth like I'm gonna need theth cabineth high thpeed"
Captain Haruna: "What! No!"
 
Okay, finally getting around to formally writing this up. It's not quite as elegant as I'd hoped due to the lack of a good period-appropriate PD controller; while Sperry had a PID controller in 1911, it's not suitable for this use. I had to hunt down some people who knew more about period hydraulics, but TL;DR, this is a technically viable albeit crude RPC for an AA mount, with fairly easy opportunities for later improvements such as stabilization of both the director and the mount, control of multiple gun mounts from a central director, and integration into a more elaborate anti-aircraft fire control system. It's ambitious, but I'm banking on the current mount described in discord being good enough for the present, and thus we want something that'll be reaching design maturity when the navy decides they need something better.

[X] C_Z's erzat Bofors mount.

"The turrets of the Myogi had hydraulic pumps motors for aiming, and if we had something like that for the anti-aircraft mount, it'd be much easier to track fast airplanes. The mounts need to be small though so that the crew can still operate them by hand in an emergency, so the heavy hydraulics would need to be fixed to the deck instead of the rotating platform. If you're doing that, though, there's no reason the gunlayer during normal operation even needs to be on the mount - you could put them over here like this, and they won't be blinded by the muzzle flashes or get in the way of the crew loading the guns! Each mount and gunlaying location then has four sets of hydraulic pumps and motors in two pairs; the first two large sets train and elevate the gun mount, and the latter two are much smaller and move the gunlayer's seat and gunsight around to show where the guns are aiming. The only thing the gunlayer has to do to aim is move these two levers! Since the force is being provided by the hydraulics, we can also put two guns on the mount to give twice the protection without taking up more deckspace."

I was going to draw a schematic but then I realized I do not have energy for that at all.
 
[X] C_Z's erzat Bofors mount.

When am I ever going to say no to a cutting edge piece of kit?
 
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Y'all realize we're going to have to prototype this...

I mean, doing it out of clay and wood might satisfy if it can move through the angles, but I'm thinking something at most a foot or two across. Actually, no. We've got a lot of connections, even if we are using this to teach ourselves skills. How ambitious do we want to be?

[X] C_Z's erzat Bofors mount.
 
[X] C_Z's erzat Bofors mount

More importantly, Haruna is such a gay wreck and I'm here for it.
 
9-7: Professional Pain in the Ass
  • Threadmarks
    • "Basically you get a semi-circular mount which can hold a pair of guns--a pair because you need to keep up a good rate of fire and more shrapnel means you're more likely to hit the plane, right?" You began with enthusiasm. At last, something you were good at that you could be proud of to your girlfriend.

    "These here are ready ammunition storage; we had something similar lining the edge of the pits we dug for the anti-air guns in Joseon. The guns are a best guess, but they were trialing those Naylor guns on the base not long ago so I can't imagine it's anything else. Aiming is done over here, so there's more room for the loaders to operate; it's similar to the fire control stations on cutting-edge battleships, though they will only be managing one gun each. For now."

    "They asked you to do all this?" Aiko asked, leaning close to inspect the model.

    "Well, no. But I haven't had anything else to do, but I wanted to seize the initiative and show I've been paying attention, maybe give something to talk about in the meetings." Instead of talking about yesterday's meeting preparation for tomorrow's meeting. "What do you think?"

    "It's impressive, well thought out, and detailed. They'll be thrilled!"

    ---

    "... ah." Captain Masaki had his hands neatly folded on the table in front of him and was staring down at your painstakingly crafted model with a expression that suggested more perturbment than anything.

    "Your enthusiasm is certainly appreciated, Lieutenant Commander Arisugawa. It's just that we're a bit early in the project for this sort of detailed design work. And…" He frowned, as if trying to find the right words to let down an eager child very, very gently.

    "You are not an engineer. You are an expert member of the committee whose specialty is use of the weapon system. So while it's an imaginative piece of work, I'm afraid it won't be needed. Commendable initiative, though.

    "I just wanted to do something useful, you understand?" you explained, seizing back your poor forgotten model. It'd look good on a shelf in your apartment if nothing else. "I feel I have done nothing but take up a desk and attend meetings, and I can't understand what I'm doing here. I wanted to contribute."

    He raised an eyebrow, sitting in the silence. It took you a moment to realize he wanted you to continue.

    "I don't even know what these meetings are for. We seem to go over the same things over and over," you concluded.

    "We do," he agreed. "This is your first procurement posting, right? Let me explain. These meetings are about records, you understand. We are in a very difficult time in our business; we have just concluded a war. This means we have a great deal of hard lessons learned in blood we must adapt to and many new technologies we must implement. But at the same time, our great nation has spent itself into a deep hole, and the politicians are more tight-fisted with money than ever. Rather than spend what money we have efficiently, they have invested it in a series of auditors who watch us like hawks and will jump on any project seen to be misappropriating funds."

    "... so we waste the money and time of officers and contractors to ensure we debate and write down every detail of all the money and time we spend?" you summarized.

    "Exactly. There's little else we can do, because these preliminary meetings are about determining if we can even accomplish what we need to accomplish and what budget we'll actually need to do it with. Most officers are very glad to end up in a place like this; you get to draw your pay and make contacts in the civilian sector, all while working very hard at doing very little."

    "I think I might be ill-suited for the job, then," you admitted.

    "Oh, I agree." He raised a hand as if to stifle any outburst, "That is not a slight against your character as an officer whatsoever. Everything I've seen indicates that you have had an eventful career and you wouldn't have decorations for bravery in action and saving life if you were bad at your job. Nor would Vice Admiral Fukunaga have recommended you to me if he thought you were some kind of waste of my time or his." He reached over to pick up his lukewarm cup of coffee, took a sip, and followed it with a drag from the cigarette smoking away in the ashtray on his desk.

    "But you do have a sort of energy that doesn't suit you for sitting around in meetings waiting for nothing to happen. So, I do have an assignment for you that will help us immensely and keep you from sitting here at your desk feeling as if you're going to waste away from lack of activity." He leaned back in his chair and exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke, gaze boring into yours from behind the wire-rimmed glasses he wore.

    "Much of what we have to debate in these meetings are questions that are better solved in informal deals, the sort where favours trade hands or are called in rather than having a line in the budget somewhere. Unfortunately, this has gotten harder than ever in recent years as the politicking gets worse, you understand. Every flag officer is jealously guarding a handful of pet projects, and so don't have time for the grunt work like this."

    "I'm not sure I follow," you admitted. You were used to people being indirect, but maybe he was being too direct while also being indirect? Wait.

    "Well, tomorrow we're going to have the first in a series of meetings about costing the construction and modification of various barges, reactivating mothballed vessels to use as testbeds, the wrangling over transferring them from so-and-so's responsibility to ours and so on and so forth should a design need testing. This issue could be sidestepped entirely if, say, we had someone who could go talk to whoever had the vessels we needed sitting around doing nothing and convinced them to volunteer the resources without all the endless meetings and memos."

    "I think I understand. But you said they were all being jealously guarded by staff officers and admirals with pet projects."

    "That's why we need someone who will go talk to them over and over and over until they get tired of hearing from us and give us what we want. I can't believe I didn't see it before, you're perfect for the job."

    "Thank you?"

    "You're a people person, you have a way with words, you're persuasive, and best of all you have Imperial relatives on top of being a war hero, which makes brushing you off too rudely a bad look for them. There are plenty of officers who would rather see a whole squadron of modern enemy battleships bearing down on them than yet another 6 am visit from a procurement officer who won't quit."

    "So you want me to make appointments and harass people we need things from to move the project forward."

    "That's precisely what I want you to do, because I think you'll be excellent at it and it will keep you from sitting here going crazy while we talk engineering, budgets, and crunching numbers."

    "It does sound better than sitting at a desk doing nothing, yes," you agreed. "Who will I be talking with?"

    "Ah, yes." Captain Masaki shuffled a few papers aside, clearly hunting for something under the detritus, before opening a drawer and fishing out a folder. "Your first victim."

    "I would prefer to not… think…" You took the folder and flipped it open.

    ---

    [ ] Rear Admiral Uramoto Tanjiro, who is overseeing the holding squadron used to manage various ships severely damaged during the war until decisions are made about repairs or scrapping. With a stroke of his pen, the weeks-long process of getting a vessel inspected and released for use as an installment testbed could be shortened to a single signature. Unfortunately, the man would prefer to see as many damaged older vessels scrapped as possible to justify funding for more modern replacements.​
    [ ] Captain Nagata Haru, who is important only in that one of his direct subordinates is Commander Yoshikawa Minori, the man with the most hands-on experience with imported and captured anti-air guns in the entire Navy, on account of having overseen their inspecting and testing. He is, unfortunately, a very competent officer, which means Captain Nagata would be loath to see him assigned elsewhere.​
    [ ] Admiral Kawamura Masashi, an older officer who was instrumental in the composition of the modern Akitsukuni Navy. The man spent considerable time in Albia two decades ago and became utterly obsessed with their, at the time, brand-new torpedo rams, and despite their increasingly glaring obsolescence in modern combat his development and study program continues to suck up funds like a whirlpool. If somebody can finally convince the old coot to let it go, that's millions of yen freed up for R&D like this.​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • "I just wanted to do something useful, you understand?" you explained, seizing back your poor forgotten model. It'd look good on a shelf in your apartment if nothing else. "I feel I have done nothing but take up a desk and attend meetings, and I can't understand what I'm doing here. I wanted to contribute."
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    Haruna, no! Don't forget von Tiesenhausen's Law of Engineering Design: "If you want to have a maximum effect on the design of a new engineering system, learn to draw. Engineers always wind up designing the vehicle to look like the initial artist's concept." If you leave that model sitting on the shelf of the boardroom where the engineers meet, you'll have a bigger influence on the project than anyone else in the navy. (Actually, would it be a valid snippet vote to have Aiko tell her this when she comes home with the model?)

    Also, with regards to government expenditure, has Akitsukuni remained neutral? I thought they joined the world war, but if not, good.

    As for the actual vote:

    [ ] Rear Admiral Uramoto Tanjiro, who is overseeing the holding squadron used to manage various ships severely damaged during the war until decisions are made about repairs or scrapping. With a stroke of his pen, the weeks-long process of getting a vessel inspected and released for use as an installment testbed could be shortened to a single signature. Unfortunately, the man would prefer to see as many damaged older vessels scrapped as possible to justify funding for more modern replacements.

    This is, by my gut feel, the best choice. The third option is likely a huge pile of stress - we've got to argue with a senile old guy who hasn't realized that the motor torpedo boat does exactly what he wants to do with torpedo rams, and we're not just asking him to give up funding for his pet project, but to invest in something completely at odds to his planned Jeune Ecole navy. If he's held a torch for two decades, he's not going to drop it without a hell of a fight. Meanwhile, I think having an actual ship to test on will result in a better end product than some guy who knows about foreign AA guns when most of them haven't engaged in a shooting war and probably have been copying off our notes. We don't want to come up with a system that's absolutely fantastic on the test stand but utterly useless aboard a ship, and while it's likely too early in the process for a test ship to be helpful, it's better to have one sitting around than to not have it later.
     
    Thank you both for the new chapter!

    C_Z said:
    Also, with regards to government expenditure, has Akitsukuni remained neutral? I thought they joined the world war, but if not, good.
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    We voted for them to have not joined when we went through the Panama Canal. It's diagetically justified as the political part of the government not yet being quite willing to jump in so soon after the last war, but they might do so later. IIRC the alliance with the Allied Kingdom is still active, they just haven't yet called the Akitsuini in on their request.

    C_Z said:
    This is, by my gut feel, the best choice. The third option is likely a huge pile of stress - we've got to argue with a senile old guy who hasn't realized that the motor torpedo boat does exactly what he wants to do with torpedo rams, and we're not just asking him to give up funding for his pet project, but to invest in something completely at odds to his planned Jeune Ecole navy. If he's held a torch for two decades, he's not going to drop it without a hell of a fight. Meanwhile, I think having an actual ship to test on will result in a better end product than some guy who knows about foreign AA guns when most of them haven't engaged in a shooting war and probably have been copying off our notes. We don't want to come up with a system that's absolutely fantastic on the test stand but utterly useless aboard a ship, and while it's likely too early in the process for a test ship to be helpful, it's better to have one sitting around than to not have it later.
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    This seems like a good idea to me. It also seems easier to manage given we can support scrapping the rest of the ships as long as we get one, especially since we can try to have that one ship be redesignated as some sort of experimental ship and share it with everyone else designing something. Does mean we won't have it for testing as often as we'd like, but it's a useful place to compromise down to.
     
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    You've joined at the wrong step of the procurement process, Haru! You'd be much better off liaising with the engineers, trying to turn the requirement into something that might work!

    Adm. Kawamura feels like a lot of work for a high reward, millions in R&D funding is more than we could soak up and the collateral benefits could help us to Not Die going forward. Capt. Nagata is a waste of time, we don't need the Navy's top man, we're already the Navy's top woman and we're achieving nothing. RAdm. Uramoto sounds like the best option, less work than Kawamura, more directly helpful and there's a chance we'll get to rescue one of our old ships.
     
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