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That Time I Became A Dictator Of A Small Asian Communist Nation

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CyberEnby said:
Yeah, think it's worth breaking them out like the insect farms?
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I mean, we're already fishing for better alternative ideas, I'd say it's worth at least seeing if they'd break even on rep while also being helpful or gain rep.

The other option I can see is throwing LSEEH at our housing problems to farm rep and PO for whatever project it was you actually wanted to do.
 
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Barondoctor said:
I mean, we're already fishing for better alternative ideas, I'd say it's worth at least seeing if they'd break even on rep while also being helpful or gain rep.

The other option I can see is throwing LSEEH at our housing problems to farm rep and PO for whatever project it was you actually wanted to do.
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I mean, were already throwing LSEEH at our housing problem no matter what. :V

I think breaking out agro-forestry might be worth it. You can get fruits, nuts, berries, mushrooms, and lumber from the same place, possibly more exotic things like rubber, honey, medicinals, etc.
We'd also be able to stretch our fertiliser and herbicides further because we'd need less per hectare.

@HeroCooky, could we get costing for breaking out Agroforestry?
 
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Hmm, Crop Breeding is +2 RP but doesn't have a (Helpful) tag. On the other hand, crop breeding takes time, so the sooner we implement it, the sooner we get results...

Ok, I'm going to do it, if nobody objects?


[X] [PLAN] Top Guan(gchou)

[X] [COMMIEWOOD] Natchthexen
 
[X] [PLAN] Top Guan(gchou)

[X] [COMMIEWOOD] Natchthexen

Crop Breeding is one of those "efficiency farming" things we have to do on a tiny island if we're going to farm and not involve the ocean. It not being marked helpful is weird, but it being a +2 rep agriculture action that isn't actively harmful is helpful enough in and of itself.

Also the Night Witches were cool, full stop.
 
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Remember how I said conformal sonar was probably a bit beyond 1975 tech?

Yeah, I was wrong. By a lot.

Meet Sonar 2001, developed by the British between 1957 and 1962.

In hindsight, this makes sense. The States probably could have built this as well, but the popular wisdom at the time was to go for spherical arrays because they expected bottom bounce of active pinging to play a key role in submarine detection and that sort of locked them into that path down the tech tree for the rest of the Cold War.

The Soviets, I would speculate, didn't have the computers to deal with the fancier math needed to make a conformal array work, and defaulted to cylindrical arrays.

This doesn't have too much of an effect on our sub design efforts, but it does mean we could make the bow a bit more compact and our submerged displacement a bit lighter.
 
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    Plane Wei
  • Sidestory
    • Plane Wei​

    Wei's office was a far cry from the army tent smushed up against one of Mingxiang's underground pillars where Junmin first met them, but the design lineage was clear to see. Fluorescent bulbs covered in paper lanterns hung from the ceiling. Bookshelves sagged under neatly organized rows of binders. A standing table with a computer monitor perched on the side. A photograph of a Russian man and Guang woman smiled at the viewer from a place of honor. And it seemed like every other flat surface hosted some sort of technological knick knack.

    "Oohh, you're new," Jungmin muttered, spying a glass bulb where streamers of light played around a sphere suspended in the center.

    Common sense bid him not to touch the glowing glass ball, but Wei wasn't known to be reckless with such things, and the Tesla coil in the corner had a slew of labels attached to it while this did not, so it was… probably fine?

    He poked it.

    A streamer of light connected to his finger before disappearing.

    Jungmin put his finger on the glass. Content that it wasn't going to electrocute him, he started playing with the plasma globe.

    ***​

    Wei walked in on him going "heehee hoohoo" as he corralled the streamers into a single vertical thread.

    "Sometimes, I despair about the future of this nation," they said with a raised eyebrow.

    Jungmin looked up and laughed before getting up to hug one of the few people he considered a genuine friend.

    Wei grinned when they separated, "It's good to see you again Jungmin."

    "And you Wei, how's the life of a big shot administrator treating you?"

    Wei groaned and rubbed at their eyes, "It was a mistake letting you talk me into this promotion. I should have stayed a counselor. I haven't had more than six hours of uninterrupted sleep in two months."

    Jungmin took in the bags under their eyes and the slightly gaunt look of their cheeks and frowned, "That bad?"

    Wei sighed and laid their suitcase on their desk before turning to the samovar on a corner table, busying themselves making a fresh batch of tea.

    "It's crunch time here, we all knew the Airy modernization was coming and did our best to get ahead of it, but there's no way to predict the issues that will come up when you get into the thick of it. People are tired, but morale is holding for now. If we fall behind there will be issues, but I'm hopeful we can get it done and then I can approve a titanic amount of vacation time," they replied, dipping an immersion heater into the samovar and plugging it in.

    "Come on, I'll brief you on the x-planes while the water boils," they said, gesturing to the table.
    They grabbed a binder from the shelf while Jungmin took a seat on one of the drafting stools in front of the table, and Wei started handing him photographs with notes scribbled on them.

    "Phoenix One continues to be our golden child," they said, handing him a stack of photos of what looked like a perfectly ordinary MiG-23, "No real weight reduction or performance improvement over traditional hydraulics, but the mechanics won't stop singing it praises - no more hydraulic fluid spills for them, they can just pull an EHA and slot a replacement in its place while the old one goes for refurbishment in the shop."

    Jungmin laughed when he got to the last photograph, showing a technician photobombing a picture of the EHA mounted in the aircraft, holding up a big thumbs up and grinning like a fool.

    "Honestly, we basically welded an alternator to the engine so the lack of weight savings are understandable, I'm confident that the Iron Tiger's EHAs and power-by-wire system can function as a drop in replacements for modern aircraft hydraulics and significantly increase a plane's uptime," finished Wei, before handing him a file showing interior shots of a plane's cockpit.

    "Phoenix Four is… mostly on schedule. The test pilots are pretty confident in the superiority of the new HOTAS layout over the traditional stick, and the old guard has come around on fly-by wire."

    The new cockpit looked positively minimalist to Jungmin, whose cursory knowledge of aircraft was used to a a confusing field of dials and gauges on the instrument panel. The large screens labeled 'multi-function display' seemed a barren desert by comparison.

    "The new flat screen CRTs are a problem though. We've managed to reverse engineer them based on the Kaiser patents and we've made enough for the Phoenix program, but serial production is running into a brick wall of quality control issues. We have a little time before the Zen development group has to finalize the cockpit control form factors, but…" Wei trailed off worriedly, crewing on the ends of their pencil, "Well, we'll see."

    "Phoenix Four-don't give me that grin," they said as Jungmin lit up the mention of the 'stealth' plane.

    "Oh come off of it Wei, you're just as excited to get one over the Americans"

    "Unlike you however," they said, baping him over the head with a file, "I actually have to deal with the on-the-ground realities of what this technology entails, so the sheen has rubbed off."

    "Now pay attention: we've flown with the unitary hull panels and imaged the aircraft with radar on the test stand. A notable but not amazing reduction in radar cross section. Honestly, we've run into the limits of the airframe - there's only so much we can do before you need to start doing edge alignment. It does validate some of our models though. It's currently grounded while we rip off its rudder and tailplanes and replace them with a v-tail. Ancestors, I need to make sure someone goes over every millimeter of the ejection system before that thing goes up again and have a safe flight envelope drawn up in case that tail doesn't play nice with the wing airflow-oh hey-" they reached into their pocket and extracted a piece of tinted glass before tossing it to Jumgmin.

    "Souvenir or you. One of the lab techs decided to fuck around with the radar test stand, and we found out the indium-tin-oxide we use for defrosting aircraft windshields reflects radar. Saves us from getting enemy radar waves bouncing off the pilot's helmet."

    "That's a thing that happens?" asked Jungmin, perplexed.

    "Yep. Lots of nooks and crannies for radar waves to bounce off of in the cockpit."

    "Huh," said Jungmin, looking at the piece of plexiglass with an appraising eye.

    "And then there's Phoenix three," Wei sighed.

    "That's the… unstable one?" Jungmin asked, looking up from twirling the piece of shard between his fingers.

    Wei screwed up their face, "Sort of. The MiG-23s aren't actually unstable, but their center of lift moves forward and back as the wings change position. They're a pain in the ass to fly because the pilots have to learn how to fly them at each wing position. We thought given our dynamically unstable control systems experience from the Iron Tiger, we could do a similar sort of dynamic stabilization here."

    Jungmin made an interested noise to signal them to continue - he didn't know nearly enough about what Wei was talking about to draw any conclusions, but it wasn't hard to figure out when to make the appropriate noise or gesture to show he was paying attention.

    "Yes, well. The gods are punishing us for our hubris - because it turns out that walking has basically nothing in common with flying. There are underlying techniques for controlling a dynamically unstable structure that apply, but building up the control schemes for an aircraft had to be done almost from the ground up. It was a good thing we did this before designing our fighter because this would have been a stone cold bitch to co-develop."
    The sound of water burbling came from the samovar, and Wei broke off to deal with it while Jungmin looked over some concept drawings of a MiG-23 with its rudder and elevators replaced by a v-tail.

    "How's your missile program going by the way"? Jungmin asked idly, flipping through more diagrams.

    Wei dropped a tray with two glasses of Russian style black tea onto the table, making the glasses rattle inside their metal holders, then took a deep breath before launching into their rant.

    "You know what the problem with taking in every dissatisfied academic from the USSR and USA is Jungmin? Half of them just wanna Show Them All. We had five final submissions for the missile development project. Three - three! - were for hypergolic liquid rockets - two that use unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine as fuel and either red fuming nitric acid or dinitrogen tetroxide oxidizer, and one using kerosene and red fuming nitric acid. One was a liquid fueled ramjet with a solid rocket booster integrated into the combustion chamber, and one - ONE - was a normal solid rocket booster - except it wasn't!" Wei yelled, slamming their palm on the table for emphasis, "Because they slapped a thrust augmenter on it that added seven times the weight in ducting and I had to tell them to delete it!"

    Wei paused to take a sip of their tea, hahfhahhafing when it turned out to be too hot, then continued their rant without acknowledging their burnt tongue, "And the worst part? The worst part Jungmin - is that the longer I look at the preliminary reports, and the more I pour over our intelligence reports on historical missile development in the USSR and America, the more I see their point? Gods help me Jungmin, I'm about to approve a hypergolic AA missile and-"

    Jugmin leaned back and felt a comforting warmth spread through him. Maybe it was the tea, or maybe it was the happiness that comes with watching a close friend rant about a topic close to their heart, but in the moment he felt… content.

    ***

    Author's Notes:

    Ok, I was planning to introduce Wei for a while, but my muse wasn't cooperating, so we're just going to skip ahead to a point where Wei and Jungmin have known each other for a while.

    If it's ok with HC, this is the omake I want to canonize with my Map reward. I've spoken to him about the idea that Guangchou's unerring luck in placing bets on what technologies to develop comes from a modern isekai somewhere in the bowels of Guangchou's R&D complex nudging scientists unto the right tracks, and this is my take on it.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • CyberEnby said:
    "Phoenix Four-don't give me that grin," they said as Jungmin lit up the mention of the 'stealth' plane.

    "Oh come off of it Wei, you're just as excited to get one over the Americans"

    has basically reached the end of what we can accomplish with it as is. We'v"Unlike you however," they said, vaping him over the head with a file, "I actually have to deal with the on-the-ground realities of what this technology entails, so the sheen has rubbed off."
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    This is screwy.
     
    I feel like this quest is passing me by. Sorry guys, but don't expect any more omakes from me for the foreseeable future. My clinical clerkship just started, and I'm at the hospital long before the sun rises and long after it has set too, most days. Sometimes, even my Sundays are gone. :(

    I'll still be around though. Mostly to manipulate encourage @Magoose to throw some dice and give @HeroCooky something to scream smile about. :V
     
    CyberEnby said:
    Plane Wei
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    Choose yo-
    CyberEnby said:
    If it's ok with HC, this is the omake I want to canonize with my Map reward. I've spoken to him about the idea that Guangchou's unerring luck in placing bets on what technologies to develop comes from a modern isekai somewhere in the bowels of Guangchou's R&D complex nudging scientists unto the right tracks, and this is my take on it.
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    ...alright then. Canon.
    abominable said:
    I feel like this quest is passing me by. Sorry guys, but don't expect any more omakes from me for the foreseeable future. My clinical clerkship just started, and I'm at the hospital long before the sun rises and long after it has set too, most days. Sometimes, even my Sundays are gone. :(
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    Ey, I'm just happy people like this high-effort shit-post, no need to feel any obligation to provide more content! Just reading is enough for me, so take it easy, and I hope you'll get the good sleep you deserve!
     
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