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but yeah, I'd say there's no point in getting these subpar shipments unless we REALLY need to fight in the next year or two, and these have to last us until the REAL weapon arrives.
Otherwise... well, we might "save" an AP from taking this low success, but lower resources can translate in higher DCs and lower APs later on.
Something I would like to point out, especially for newcomers to this quest: Our next war with Victoria is scheduled 6 years from the start of next turn, meaning we have 12 turns before we have to commit to attacking Victoria. The equipment we will choose is absolutely crucial, our decisions determine what kind of army we have when war comes. Getting the necessary equipment in time is certainly a consideration, but getting stuff that is competitive with the Victorian army we will face is just as important. We need good deals for that. We will face a force that has a super power sponsoring it's military modernization, promising to commit as much military equipment as necessary to it's allies. I'm not confident about facing Russian armed Vics with surplus equipment 100 years out of date. Quantatity isn't better if we have to bully nations to get us spare parts.
but yeah, I'd say there's no point in getting these subpar shipments unless we REALLY need to fight in the next year or two, and these have to last us until the REAL weapon arrives.
Otherwise... well, we might "save" an AP from taking this low success, but lower resources can translate in higher DCs and lower APs later on.
Critically, this will heavily determine our dice bonuses when the war against Victoria starts. Equipment and Training is half the battle, if not more. And trust me, you do not want Victoria with a +2 equipment advantage to combat rolls against us.
Critically, this will heavily determine our dice bonuses when the war against Victoria starts. Equipment and Training is half the battle, if not more. And trust me, you do not want Victoria with a +2 equipment advantage to combat rolls against us.
that's not really what we're deciding THIS turn though.
Let's be real: even if we get this equipment, we WON'T USE IT against Victoria unless we're truly desperate and running out of everything else. Or maybe for some kind of bluff.
What I can see us doing with it is
1)Keep it for emergencies if we have to fight minor battles before then
2)Re-sell it to other local/minor polities that refuse to join us directly
3)MAYBE give it to the less trained forces left on defense and FAR from the actual frontline of combat.
The cost is, of course, that we're paying good money for it, which means we'll have LESS for the actual good stuff later on, which means bad things for our budget.
So yeah, I'm DEFINITELY against buying this. I'm just pointing out what I think we'd use it for IF we took it
that's not really what we're deciding THIS turn though.
Let's be real: even if we get this equipment, we WON'T USE IT against Victoria unless we're truly desperate and running out of everything else. Or maybe for some kind of bluff.
I disagree, it's very much the decision we are making. Sourcing foreign arms consists of signing contracts with arms exporters, with us committing the resources to buy this stuff, buy the parts, train the people and so on. We don't have the slack to import the 5/100 quality equipment and as many additional contracts as we want on top, if we buy it, we will use it.
The cost is, of course, that we're paying good money for it, which means we'll have LESS for the actual good stuff later on, which means bad things for our budget.
So yeah, I'm DEFINITELY against buying this. I'm just pointing out what I think we'd use it for IF we took it
The mechanics are unclear, but I would assume we have a certain range of money earmarked for the arm exports (as additional AP costs aren't currently mentioned, tough this might be due to the stuff being really cheap). If we go over this amount, tough luck. Hope that you can convince congress to allocate cash for the stuff you actually want to buy. Half of the equipment deals aren't enough to equip the expanded army, we are buying for use, not for stockpiling.
Alright read the update and great to see it back! And honestly I'm inclined to take the arms we can now, we can't afford in my eyes to delay on arming our military so even older gear is better then none. Combined with the fact that it'll be one of two success for foreign arm sales is worth it in my eyes.
Also something to note: If we import now, we will imports for 12 turns prior to the end of the 7 Year Plan. If we start importing next turn and achieve even one success, we would import for 11 turns prior to the end of the SYP. It's a difference of around 9.1% in quantity, bought with vastly inferior quality.
Alright read the update and great to see it back! And honestly I'm inclined to take the arms we can now, we can't afford in my eyes to delay on arming our military so even older gear is better then none. Combined with the fact that it'll be one of two success for foreign arm sales is worth it in my eyes.
Well, that's a problem too, but it's not the MAIN problem.
The main problem is that NOBODY is manufacturing replacement parts or more of it later, so we'd waste a lot of training on equipment that will only be used for a very short period by only a small part of our army.
Does the Commonwealth take the arms offers available to them right now?
[ ] Yes. Gain one success on Source Foreign Arms. Gain an amount of mismatched assortment of last-generation materiel of dubious maintenance records with no parts or ammunition support, as sellers can get them to you.
[ ] No. Cut your losses and wait for the real arms manufacturers to have their shit sorted out.
Unless this timeline gave us a FB-22, the raptor is the most useless US jet plane we can hope to have.
It is a literal 2000 plane that even now is facing obsolenece in 2040. That's 30 years obsolete.
While they have been assiduously well maintained, the fact remains that their awesome kinematics is risky to pull off due to sheer age and fatigue. And we can't throw bombs with it.
So, in it's intended role, well, California and Victoria are the only powers to have an opponent we can fight. And even for Victoria, well, we shattered them badly.
Think of the F22 raptor the same way colonial airpowers thought of the Hawker Hurricane or Hawker Hunter. The first step.
Som.its kinda easy for me to
[] Yes. Gain one success on Source Foreign Arms. Gain an amount of mismatched assortment of last-generation materiel of dubious maintenance records with no parts or ammunition support, as sellers can get them to you.
We ALREADY in this scenario. We need to expand or secure supplies so as to prepare insitutional knowledge and our airforce is working with 70 year old planes.
Honestly I think that's an exaggeration. Given that the world entirely collapsed and was only really able to get it's feet under it recently, I kinda doubt that the incredibly big ticket items of modern fighters were able to be really prioritized. The scariest things on the planet (outside of Russia)are probably "only" 6th generation stuff that otl would have been done by the 2030s.
Basically what I'm saying is that a 2028 modernized raptor is enough to overkill everything on the continent and is also enough to put up a fight against or even kick the shit out of an SU-75, which is probably along th lines of what the vics will get. At least, I hope so, given that it's not gonna get many foreign sales IRL and I wanna see that thing do fuckin *something*.
[X] Yes. Gain one success on Source Foreign Arms. Gain an amount of mismatched assortment of last-generation materiel of dubious maintenance records with no parts or ammunition support, as sellers can get them to you.
My vote is yes. Yes, we're going to need to improve it later. And a bunch of this stuff will effectively be... using it to destruction. But right now faced with this or nothing, this wins.
100 men is more than 10,000 men after you've lost.
My vote is yes. Yes, we're going to need to improve it later. And a bunch of this stuff will effectively be... using it to destruction. But right now faced with this or nothing, this wins.
100 men is more than 10,000 men after you've lost.
I think this misrepresents the choice. The choice isn't "get stuff or nothing", the choice is "get bad stuff now, or try getting decent stuff next turn". We have the most value able commodity, 12 turns of time, lets use it properly! Trading half a year of delay for semi-modern equipment is a very good trade! The choices in equipment isn't temporary, our military road map is highly dependent on what we pick regarding "foreign arms exports".
Ultimately, it's still a stealth fighter that can fight BVR and drop JDAMs or their equivalents. That's not gonna be useless, assuming it's still got stealth capability. You don't need super-kinematics for that role.
8 bombs max, with a subsequent decrease in stealth profile., And serious fatigue making the F22 an extremely dangerous plane to fly. Again, the F22 is supposed to be retired by 2040, and no extension of shelf life could had been done.
I'm not sure beating stealth turns out to be that simple. Even if it does, the F-35 has the major advantage that the Californians were still using and updating it up through at least the Pacific War and quite possibly later, so it's got modern-ish avionics and sensor/computing options of its own.
The F35 stealth now is supposedly better than the F22 just due to an additional decade worth of tech.
The same applies to modern day ADA networks against the older F117 . The theory nowadays is that you treat stealth not as a cloaking field, but rather, it shrinks the range of an enemy sensor and makes it harder to actually range in on you.
It's an advantage still, but 50 years in the future with the kinda adv computing abilities to make 3D hologram projectors? The bar for stealth has definitely changed again.
I'm pretty sure that sixth-generation fighters are whatever Russia rolled out a generation ago (that is, 2035-2050). Seventh generation fighters are still untried prototypes because there's relatively little demand.
"5.5-generation" fighters are probably still common and competitive all over the world, again in the way that even the USAF still flies F-16s and F-15s even though both are originally derived from designs that originated back in the 1970s. Because it turns out that a "4.5-generation" aircraft is still effective in a lot of roles circa 2020, who knew?
Aircraft generation length has stretched out a LOT since 1970 in real life, and nothing about the Collapse and subsequent Russia-as-superpower situation in the quest timeline would change that.
I don't disagree with anything you said, but a needless pedantry is itching away.
A 4.5G plane is a new plane. A F16A is itself a different beast when compared to a F16D or later blocks. Subsequent blocks with AESA rader and modern avionics are new planes entirely. Ditto to the F15 and it's F15E or even more modern day variants with AESA radar. It's not just slapping a different sensor on, you actually need to do all the weapons tests over again because new shape and etc may affect whether it's actually safe to fire said weapon.
Bargaining for that had taken some doing, but -- as much as he hated using the logic -- a farmer in northern Indiana has a lot less use for an -- admittedly well-maintained -- M-14 these days than he does for a good plough horse that he's too arthritic to pick up from its previous owner the next town over.
Probably the farmer traded them an old firearm that he was having trouble sourcing 7.62x51 ammunition and parts for, while his 5.56 AR is back in his home. In a country with no law enforcement and a nonzero chance of wild animal attack from feral dogs to coyotes to feral pigs, I suspect the only people selling or trading guns have other guns at home.
With all those things coming together, and brushing up against his grim certainty that voicing any of them will draw a lecture from the Father, David opts to simply hang back, be polite when addressed directly, and say as little as possible. Brooding, really. Perfectly respectable thing to do, brooding.
Dude's brooding like a teenager.
Its easy to forget that David himself probably wouldnt count as all that grown up, by modern standards.
We dont have a physical description, but the contextual cues....
Someone of military age, but young enough, and impressionable enough to fall in with a wandering priest without asking questions? Assuming the Vic Army took him at 18, and he's served 3-5 years, we're looking at someone in the 21-23 years range. Barely an adult. And every so often, his mannerisms show it.
"Mr. Jackson owns a lot of land in Tulsa, and a sizable herd of cattle that comes to the city for slaughter and passage downriver," says Louie. "Employs a good slice of the town, owns the homes of most of those left over. He has a hand in most of the businesses there. Lately the Mayor and he have been butting heads over who's really in charge. Mr. Jackson, he's not the kind to ask very nicely if he can pay some of his cowhands to get his opinions across more directly."
Louie sits back in his chair, raising an eyebrow at the outburst. "...parts for the Keystone Dam," he says. "Mayor says it needs repairs. He's hired the help he needs to get it done from abroad. Now he just needs the machinery, which Mr. Dixon was able to source. But Jackson caught wind of it. City control of the dam is the one big thing he can't touch. But if he gets his hand on the parts, holds onto them, and waits for the city to run out of money to keep those engineers just sitting around..."
Its nice to have a reminder: Not all Bad People in these disUnited States are Victorian. And there are lesser evils aplenty.
Greed, shortsightedness, ideology, the breakdown of law and order breeds warlords and wannabe warlords aplenty.
Look at this particular fucker for instance, squatting on a major river port, charging people for housing in homes he didnt build, and wielding coercive force in an attempt to dominate the local economy.
And he assuredly wont be the last of his type we'll see.
The Devils Brigade made a career of knocking over potentates like this.
We'll have to get around to doing this without their services.
"Devils!" he shouts. "We have fought across the Country together for-" He pauses, just a moment, breath catching. "-forty-three years," he says, his volume dropping.
Hmm. 43 years.
I know we havent ever pinned down his age, but he's either a late Millenial or a Zoomer. Old enough to have served abroad when the US fell, so post-West Point or post-OCS. Which would make him in the late sixties at best.
Dude's field service days are coming to an end, even if he could well live for decades more.
Alexander's heir is making noises about military adventures, so everyone is checking their gunpowder and refilling their arsenals first. I would not be actually surprised if a couple nuclear threshold states went explicitly nuclear in the next eighteen months as a threat display to discourage fucking around in their local areas.
On the bright side, arms race and production lines around the world are about to kick into high gear.
Which should increase weapons availability for us.
The upshot of this is, people are selling. They're just not selling anything you actually want.
You can procure some T-90s, somehow still running...allegedly. Chad is selling a single MiG-29 that it claims to still be in workable condition. Australia is offering some M1A1 Abrams they've had kicking around in reserve storage for longer than you care to contemplate. Lots of stuff like that. Ancient gear, stuff well past its prime even going into the Collapse and now solidly behind the times, and with questionable maintenance to boot.
Option fails. Civil strife continues to escalate, with the tool meant to help with settlement and social services for the refugee population not materializing.
Fuck.
Internal instability has always been the most likely way for a nationstate to die.
And it doesnt help our external credibility when we go lookimg for partners if we are having trouble managing our people.
And you have to admit, there's a satisfaction in bilking somebody so convinced they're going to have to drag cooperation and basic competence out of you that they don't even notice you outright scamming them out of half again the budget actually needed for the work.
And, if the old, hydrocarbon-burning power plants have been shut down and not necessarily decommissioned, against the possibility of sabotage in or during the leadup to the next war...well.
What the CAF doesn't know won't hurt them.
1) I have to wonder how much we're actually successfully pulling the wool over their eyes, and how much of this is people displaying wilfull blindness out of laziness, or antipathy. After all, Catherine was (one of) their patrons, and she's either dead or in custody. Its not their money thats being spent, and there is no future funding contingent on financial prudence.
No real incentive to save Russia money here.
Also, the more excess capacity, the less likely we are to restart fossil fuel power plants.
2)Gonna need fuel. Renewables or not, military vehicles run on hydrocarbon fuel. So do military FOBs.
Wonder if we can get mining and refining up and running in order to build stockpiles for war and training, or if we'll have to import refined fuel from abroad.
One of the biggest difficulties is going to be rolling stock. It's not actually that hard to build rail if you have the expertise, and on this one, you actually do. The locomotives, now, that will be harder. Detroit has some small facilities, but they'll need expanding, and you'll still need infrastructure in the meantime. You'll need to order foreign.
Which is probably necessary, because rail weighs between 58kg and ~120kg per metre depending on usage. A single track railway(2x parallel rails) would require anywhere between 120 tons and 240 tons of steel per kilometre, never mind the concrete and gravel and shit.
Just Chicago to Detroit, a distance of 450km overland, would require 54,000 to 108,000 tons of steel rail for a single track railway.
And we certainly dont have the capacity to mine and refine iron ore, then produce and roll steel in industrial quantities.
Because if we did, we wouldnt be using wooden gunboats.
Even stripping and reprocessing steel from derelict railways is probably outside our industrial capabilities
But if we had to wait until we could source hundreds of thousands of tons of steel rail just to get our transport network up and running, the Vics would murder us in our beds.
So yeah, handwave. Maybe technology improved before the Collapse.
I wonder what the trains are running on. Diesel-electric?
So, easily enough, your agents cultivate the contacts and informants that give you eyes down the Mississippi River; down most of the Country's interior, for the Mighty Miss's reach is truly vast. Down, down past St. Louis. Shooting up the Missouri, to give you new eyes that go all the way to Montana. Down through all the ruined or tightly-held locks and passages that you must clear, to open the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Into the great Ohio, slipping eyes and ears along the southern flank of the territories you will surely fight through in the next war. Down past the city of Memphis, with its quiet, nervous people; with its disused, moldering docks, usually home to roving bands of Victorians on a bit of destructive shore leave; and with the charred, abandoned city blocks surrounding the bloodstained buildings of the National Civil Rights Museum, left undisturbed as a warning. Up the Arkansas, a bloody trail clear to Colorado, through lands so annihilated beyond any ability to sustain settled life that the locals have returned to a life on horseback. Down through the deathly silence and terrified courtesy of the depopulated Mississippi south of Memphis. Down to the chaotic scrum of Morgan City, the asthmatic boom town at the mouth of the surging Atchafalaya River. Down to the hollow towns living in the ruins of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, clinging to a much-reduced Mississippi for life and paying heed to any visitors with desperate courtesy.
Down the Mighty Miss, and to the Gulf, until Commonwealther boots touch the sea.
This is very informative, both in what it says and what it doesnt say.
Memphis has disused, moldering docks and nervous people. Depopulated Mississippi.
Baton Rouge and New Orleans seem very much to be ripe for someone to show up with a plan and investment.
Nope. The juice is not worth the squeeze, and we have limited resources to spend on arms.
Gotta make it count, not make panic purchases of stuff that was obsolete decades ago and with no spare parts.
Imagine trying to fly a Mig-29 in 2080 with upgraded S-400s on the other side.
Next year is a turn/six months from now in Spring 2077, and we'll probably be able to spend more AP on a repeat as the urgency increases. Either that or the AP requirement comes down in response to inquest events, because we have already established contacts. We should wait.
Well, that's a problem too, but it's not the MAIN problem.
The main problem is that NOBODY is manufacturing replacement parts or more of it later, so we'd waste a lot of training on equipment that will only be used for a very short period by only a small part of our army.
Noticed that too didn't talk about it since I was at work and had to be quick but off work now. but at the moment though the commonwealth needs to start sourcing gear and even if we only regulate it to training uses it's still better then nothing.
Yeahhh that's a no from me on the bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. Victoria is getting modern equipment and will most likely get proper Russian aid as well (drone strikes, little green men, etc) next war. It is absolutely a priority to get equipment that'll be capable of giving the Vics and their Russian friends a kick in the shins at the very least; cold war era weaponry won't do that.
Noticed that too didn't talk about it since I was at work and had to be quick but off work now. but at the moment though the commonwealth needs to start sourcing gear and even if we only regulate it to training uses it's still better then nothing.
nah, I still think "nothing" is better, because we can retry next turn and it CAN'T be worse than this. We'll just have to prioritize military a bit more
Which is probably necessary, because rail weighs between 58kg and ~120kg per metre depending on usage. A single track railway(2x parallel rails) would require anywhere between 120 tons and 240 tons of steel per kilometre, never mind the concrete and gravel and shit.
Just Chicago to Detroit, a distance of 450km overland, would require 54,000 to 108,000 tons of steel rail for a single track railway.
And we certainly dont have the capacity to mine and refine iron ore, then produce and roll steel in industrial quantities.
Because if we did, we wouldnt be using wooden gunboats.
Even stripping and reprocessing steel from derelict railways is probably outside our industrial capabilities
But if we had to wait until we could source hundreds of thousands of tons of steel rail just to get our transport network up and running, the Vics would murder us in our beds.
So yeah, handwave. Maybe technology improved before the Collapse.
Or, as I've noted before, you recently annexed Detroit, to whom Victoria gave explicit dispensation to set up large-scale steel refining facilities and heavy industry to serve as a captive market, so that production in Buffalo could focus on products later in the production chain.
And, therefore, you now have a level of steel production vastly outstripping that available to you at the time of the Des Plaines' design.
No to getting the old stuff. No spare parts and being a chaotic mix of disparate equipment just kills it for me.
Having our soldiers train in it will just be a detriment when we get the proper stuff since they'd have to go through retraining. Especially to unlearn any bad habits.
