Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

[4WheelSword]

thread policy Discussion of politics that does not directly relate to the Quest or to Quest votes are banned from hereon out. This thread policy will be enforced by the Moderation team. Do not ignore it.

 

[Dwergar]

Unicorns? Such as?
Not sure what you're referring to. If you have any concerns, and have the time to detail them, I'll be glad to attempt to address them in my free time.

Click to shrink...

Railguns or lasers, even if possible on 1970s tooling, would be much too expensive to produce, and importing assemblies of them would be unfeasible - expensive, bulky and heavy; Airlift would require heavy aircraft (Expensive, and unlikely to take the risk of meeting Victorians), seaways are unavailable, and overland travel would risk both non-existent infrastructure and warlords.
While regular 155 mm or 127 mm artillery should be feasible, guided rounds are going to be way too expensive. Even M712 Copperhead might be beyond your means, depending on the state of industry in Chicago.

Chicago very likely doesn't have AESA radars in service, as those are 1990s tech (for military service), setting up production and working out the kinks would be a long and complex task - and trying to import them would meet the issues mentioned above.

Proposed waterjet propulsion might face the same issues of 1970's tooling; While 2070s designs might be superior, Chicago won't have access to them for quite some time - and then there'd be issues of introducing those waterjets into production.

That proposal would work if you had a decade (or more) to catch up with the outside world. You probably won't have that time; With NCR poised to rebel and FCNY likely drawing up plans to deal with Victorians on their own, you'd need to act fast to be relevant in post-Victorian America.

 

[Simon_Jester]

@Dwergar

The crude reality is that anything we build domestically will be uncompetitive against foreign-made weapons, so we are forced to plan for ships that use foreign-made weapons.

For instance, if our ships don't have antimissile lasers and adequate tracking radars, then in the next war it is very likely that Gideon Damned Blackwell's forces will sink our entire navy with a handful of surplus Russian-made Harpoonskis. Something that Alexander IV shoved in a warehouse some time in the '30s and never got around to using, but that still outclasses our fleet's defenses by far.

The fact that we cannot build the lasers is immaterial; we must have them, or we must expect our navy to have no survivability.

Now, some of the items on the wish list may be more avoidable than others. For instance, railguns are not essential to the ships' ability to function, and a more conventional chemical-propellant gun system will have the vast advantage that no matter what happens to our supply of overseas equipment, we can still make something to be fired out the gun. The railgun gets dropped, and the "procure expensive high-performance ammo for it" project is demoted to low priority.

 

[Dwergar]

@Dwergar

The crude reality is that anything we build domestically will be uncompetitive against foreign-made weapons, so we are forced to plan for ships that use foreign-made weapons.

For instance, if our ships don't have antimissile lasers and adequate tracking radars, then in the next war it is very likely that Gideon Damned Blackwell's forces will sink our entire navy with a handful of surplus Russian-made Harpoonskis. Something that Alexander IV shoved in a warehouse some time in the '30s and never got around to using, but that still outclasses our fleet's defenses by far.

The fact that we cannot build the lasers is immaterial; we must have them, or we must expect our navy to have no survivability.

Now, some of the items on the wish list may be more avoidable than others. For instance, railguns are not essential to the ships' ability to function, and a more conventional chemical-propellant gun system will have the vast advantage that no matter what happens to our supply of overseas equipment, we can still make something to be fired out the gun. The railgun gets dropped, and the "procure expensive high-performance ammo for it" project is demoted to low priority.

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However, Blackwell would need to have these Harpoonskis. Even just big numbers are somewhat problematic from a logistical standpoint - and then you have the issue of crews to be trained and formations to be raised...

In a decade, Victoria might indeed have enough metal for such high-end combatants to be essential. The question is "Why are you giving him a decade?".
Two-three years should be enough to build up Chicago's forces; By then, Victoria would still be recovering from their civil war, and they would still lack too many officers and technicians lost in Detroit campaign and "internal debates".

 

[Simon_Jester]

However, Blackwell would need to have these Harpoonskis. Even just big numbers are somewhat problematic from a logistical standpoint - and then you have the issue of crews to be trained and formations to be raised...

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Yes, but that might only take a few years from the end of the civil war. He doesn't need many antiship missile battery specialists, because he doesn't have to cover a wide naval frontage.

Furthermore, in that case, your argument isn't "this gunboat is a bad design." It's "this gunboat is well suited to be what we're building in 2090, but not what we're building in 2078." Which is a valid point since I'm pretty sure Poptart asked for 2078 designs... But on the other hand, any viable design for us needs to be built with our future (2090-era) needs in mind. After all, even if we fight Victoria again in only a few years' time (say, 2080), it's unlikely that we will fight and win to the finish all that fast. Such a war will either end in cease-fire again, or drag out because we simply don't have the muscle to crush Victoria quickly... And in either case, the Russians will start weighing in with more supplies and aid to Victoria, including equipment that sinks our gunboats if they're not armed with antimissile defenses and so on.

 

[Genolution]

Railguns or lasers, even if possible on 1970s tooling, would be much too expensive to produce, and importing assemblies of them would be unfeasible - expensive, bulky and heavy; Airlift would require heavy aircraft (Expensive, and unlikely to take the risk of meeting Victorians), seaways are unavailable, and overland travel would risk both non-existent infrastructure and warlords.
While regular 155 mm or 127 mm artillery should be feasible, guided rounds are going to be way too expensive. Even M712 Copperhead might be beyond your means, depending on the state of industry in Chicago.

Chicago very likely doesn't have AESA radars in service, as those are 1990s tech (for military service), setting up production and working out the kinks would be a long and complex task - and trying to import them would meet the issues mentioned above.

Proposed waterjet propulsion might face the same issues of 1970's tooling; While 2070s designs might be superior, Chicago won't have access to them for quite some time - and then there'd be issues of introducing those waterjets into production.

That proposal would work if you had a decade (or more) to catch up with the outside world. You probably won't have that time; With NCR poised to rebel and FCNY likely drawing up plans to deal with Victorians on their own, you'd need to act fast to be relevant in post-Victorian America.

Click to shrink...

Even if we can't import the tooling or parts to build somewhat modern corvettes and missile boats, that likely just means we need to import said missile boats wholesale off the shelf. The Chinese likely need such vessels for their long littoral zones and for the new South China Sea clashes against Japan, the EU similarly needs such light vessels to contest the Baltic against the Russians, PACS will need lighter vessels to patrol the various archipelagos of their member nations. They likely have previous generation and monkey model examples of such vessels in mothballs or for export, and if we can't hope to build something similar that just means we need to import them off the shelf. If we just stick to what we can build over the next few years without buying modern systems such as lasers, turbines, or radars, our navy will likely sooner mutiny than let us send them to their pointless deaths in the next war.

If we can't buy the systems, we will need to buy German, Chinese, or Australian vessels whole. Since that could well take time, as for all the Chinese naval yards in Jiangsu or the German yards in Hamburg are almost certainly massive, they are almost certainly prioritizing domestic orders and buying imported systems and building a hull to support said systems will likely become necessary.

@Simon_Jester is right, any purely domestic production within the next few years is grossly inadequate for fighting a war against a remotely modernized Victoria.

 

[Dwergar]

Yes, but that might only take a few years from the end of the civil war. He doesn't need many antiship missile battery specialists, because he doesn't have to cover a wide naval frontage.

Furthermore, in that case, your argument isn't "this gunboat is a bad design." It's "this gunboat is well suited to be what we're building in 2090, but not what we're building in 2078." Which is a valid point since I'm pretty sure Poptart asked for 2078 designs... But on the other hand, any viable design for us needs to be built with our future (2090-era) needs in mind. After all, even if we fight Victoria again in only a few years' time (say, 2080), it's unlikely that we will fight and win to the finish all that fast. Such a war will either end in cease-fire again, or drag out because we simply don't have the muscle to crush Victoria quickly... And in either case, the Russians will start weighing in with more supplies and aid to Victoria, including equipment that sinks our gunboats if they're not armed with antimissile defenses and so on.

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True.
But in case of Chicago, getting something into service quickly - even if it's only good for the first campaign against Victoria, and barely adequate later once they get adequate antiship weaponry - would still be very much necessary, both because it'd be expanding it's navy (thus a need for more ships to get more captains) and because it'd have shipbuilders learning how to build warships better than the coal-fired Des Plaines, and engineers learning how to plan warships much more complex than Des Plaines. And they would make mistakes in the process.

At that point, rolling out something acceptable for the ~2080 clash quickly and moving onto the next design, while hopefully integrating the lessons learned, should be considered.

Even if we can't import the tooling or parts to build somewhat modern corvettes and missile boats, that likely just means we need to import said missile boats wholesale off the shelf. The Chinese likely need such vessels for their long littoral zones and for the new South China Sea clashes against Japan, the EU similarly needs such light vessels to contest the Baltic against the Russians, PACS will need lighter vessels to patrol the various archipelagos of their member nations. They likely have previous generation and monkey model examples of such vessels in mothballs or for export, and if we can't hope to build something similar that just means we need to import them off the shelf. If we just stick to what we can build over the next few years without buying modern systems such as lasers, turbines, or radars, our navy will likely sooner mutiny than let us send them to their pointless deaths in the next war.

If we can't buy the systems, we will need to buy German, Chinese, or Australian vessels whole. Since that could well take time, as for all the Chinese naval yards in Jiangsu or the German yards in Hamburg are almost certainly massive, they are almost certainly prioritizing domestic orders and buying imported systems and building a hull to support said systems will likely become necessary.

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How are you going to pay for those vessels, and - most importantly - how are you going to get them into the Great Lakes?
Or do the same for imported components of great bulk, such as 2070s ship-grade turbines or weapon assemblies?

The only relatively quick and reliable way to import stuff that I'm aware of is by what boils down to a bushplane. That imposes a rather sharp limit on the kind of hardware we can acquire abroad.

 

[picklepikkl]

How are you going to pay for those vessels, and - most importantly - how are you going to get them into the Great Lakes?
Or do the same for imported components of great bulk, such as 2070s ship-grade turbines or weapon assemblies?

The only relatively quick and reliable way to import stuff that I'm aware of is by what boils down to a bushplane. That imposes a rather sharp limit on the kind of hardware we can acquire abroad.

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The St. Lawrence Seaway is open per our treaty with Victoria, permitting container ships through. It was the single largest term in the treaty and an extremely big deal for allowing foreign heavy equipment to get to us, such as the resources the Climate Action Fund is giving us to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

So yeah, we can definitely get weapons and engines onto the Lakes.

 

[Sir_Travelsalot]

The St. Lawrence Seaway is open per our treaty with Victoria, permitting container ships through. It was the single largest term in the treaty and an extremely big deal for allowing foreign heavy equipment to get to us, such as the resources the Climate Action Fund is giving us to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

So yeah, we can definitely get weapons and engines onto the Lakes.

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And ideally, we'll be able to get some of the local successor states and warlords to cooperate on dredging and generally making the Mississippi usable for riverine travel again before we get into another war with Victoria and the Seaway closes up again until we remove their control of it.

 

[uju32]

Railguns or lasers, even if possible on 1970s tooling, would be much too expensive to produce, and importing assemblies of them would be unfeasible - expensive, bulky and heavy; Airlift would require heavy aircraft (Expensive, and unlikely to take the risk of meeting Victorians), seaways are unavailable, and overland travel would risk both non-existent infrastructure and warlords.
While regular 155 mm or 127 mm artillery should be feasible, guided rounds are going to be way too expensive. Even M712 Copperhead might be beyond your means, depending on the state of industry in Chicago.

Chicago very likely doesn't have AESA radars in service, as those are 1990s tech (for military service), setting up production and working out the kinks would be a long and complex task - and trying to import them would meet the issues mentioned above.

Proposed waterjet propulsion might face the same issues of 1970's tooling; While 2070s designs might be superior, Chicago won't have access to them for quite some time - and then there'd be issues of introducing those waterjets into production.

That proposal would work if you had a decade (or more) to catch up with the outside world. You probably won't have that time; With NCR poised to rebel and FCNY likely drawing up plans to deal with Victorians on their own, you'd need to act fast to be relevant in post-Victorian America.

Click to shrink...

In order:
-We do not build railguns or lasers on 1970s tooling. We import them.
The Army's new 300kw laser is supposed to squeeze both the power generation and the weapon itself onto a standard military 6x6 truck, so its not a huge thing. And General Atomics Blitzer 32 MJ land railgun was supposed to fit on two semis, with most of that being power generation and capacitors.

We build the ships hull domestically, but we import the weapon systems, and the electronics, the computers, the encrypted radios, the combat management system, and the power systems. Just like we are currently importing renewable power equipment, the windmills and solar cells and batteries and supercapacitors and whatnot necessary for a clean electric grid in the 2070s and 2080s.

Just like we'll have to import cellphone networks wholesale.
Assuming we dont trust the Mississipi shipping route at that time for some reason, we ship into New York Port, stick the components on a hired or borrowed C-17(payload 77 tons) or C-5(127 tons payload) and fly it in.

There is little hope we can build something competitive on internal resources, at least not in a cost-effective manner. We could build the 127mm gun domestically, its essentially a 1960s design first built in 1971. But frankly setting up the tooling to produce equipment for a class of ships that at the most optimistic wont exceed 7 ships in number is a suboptimal use of our time and resources. Buy.

-127mm ammo weighs about 50kg per shell + propellant combo, and 155mm railgun ammo weighs roughly 20kg per round according to public info.So a full loadout of shells for one ship would weigh maybe 10-25 tons.
That's one or two C-130 Hercules flights, assuming ground logistics are blocked/unreliable in wartime.

-Modernish AESA radar is pretty much essential.
Because judging from recent Syrian experience with Israeli air raids on their territory, if you attempt to rely on 1970s/1980s/1990s/early 2000s radars in the next war against 2010s equipment in any capacity you are going to get punked.

-Waterjet propulsion dates back to the 1950s at least. But it is currently a commodity item that is seen today IRL on everything from pleasure boats to ferries to warships. Similarly, the diesels and aeroderivative gas turbines on modern warships are identical to the same power systems on civilian transport ships. Chinese domestic shipbuilding uses the same diesels for their frigates as they do for civilian transports. Buy.

-We do have at least a decade or more before the Vics are ready to throw down again.
They are in a civil war that hasnt ended yet, and have already suffered pretty appalling personnel losses in their war with us.
And may well conduct further purges after the war is over.

They have a better industrial starting point than we do because of all the hydro power and electric cars they use, even if they were using lead-acid batteries, but they have a lower population education level by design. And its going to take time to stabilize their internal social order post-war, to switch their economy over from its dependence on looting the Lakes area, and to (further)enslave the PoC population for crash industrialization.

---

-This is supposed to be a late-2080s/early 2090s design. Lemme give you a timeline.

The year is currently 2076.
We're going to need to secure the old Fincantierri shipbuilding complexes around Marinette,WI and Sturgeon Bay, WI where they are currently building ~3400 ton LCS ships and intend to build the 7000 ton Constellation-class frigates IRL. Location matters for shipyards.

After that we'll need at least five years to invest in domestic shipbuilding on the Great Lakes for both civilian and military shipbuilding.
Import or build specialist stuff like cranes, train the shipbuilding crews who will build the ships, rebuild the old shipyards, establish the feeder supplies of high quality steel and a chemicals industry. And a munitions industry.

Then buy or beg or commission a design from foreign ship designers who remember what mistakes to avoid in a modern warship.
If California is unwilling or unable for whatever reason, the French natsec establishment will probably give us a ship design and specialists for free based on their animus for Victoria and Russia. Victoria is still occupying a French island off Canada.

Import technical advisers. Allow around eighteen months to build the first ship in the class.

The Chinese do it in roughly a year for a frigate that size, and parts of the WW2 US shipbuilding industry was capable of building 14,000 ton Cleveland-class light cruisers in twelve to eighteen months(Bethlehem Steel Corp's Fore River Shipyard, specifically), so I assume we will take around half again that amount of time for the first ship in the class, and reduce it to twelve months for subsequent ships.

Then train the actual ship crews.
Probably concurrently with shipbuilding, and probably either abroad, from whoever sold us the combat management system, or domestically with VR.
Two crews per ship so they can hand off to each other and avoid problems with fatigue. Add six months to work up the ship after commissioning.

Eight years at a minimum from "we want a frigate" to "I name you XXXX".
Ten years to build a class of four ships.
That's 2084 to 2086.

---

That proposal would work if you had a decade (or more) to catch up with the outside world. You probably won't have that time; With NCR poised to rebel and FCNY likely drawing up plans to deal with Victorians on their own, you'd need to act fast to be relevant in post-Victorian America.

Click to shrink...

I think I can safely say that FCNY are not going to start a war with Victoria. Gear up defensively, yes. Expand into New Jersey/Delaware/Maryland/Pennsylvania yes. Start a war no. They're the diplo/espionage spec faction, not the military spec. They have entirely too much to lose should a dumb Frog-7 equivalent rocket or Scud gets through their air defenses and crash into Manhattan.

And California has Japan-occupied Cascadia to their north and Japan-occupied Hawaii in the Pacific to worry about, in addition to internal political issues and Russian fuckery from out of occupied Alaska.
They are not setting up an expedition to come to the East coast to kill the Vics, much as they might like to.

---

However, Blackwell would need to have these Harpoonskis. Even just big numbers are somewhat problematic from a logistical standpoint - and then you have the issue of crews to be trained and formations to be raised...

Click to shrink...

Hezbollah has antiship missiles, and 300km+ ballistic missiles, and they sure as heck did not build them in Lebanon.
And that's in spite of all the Israelis could do in the way of intercepting foreign arms shipments from Syria and Iran.
So do the Houthis, despite the efforts of Saudi Arabia and friends to maintain a blockade.

Do not overestimate the difficulty involved in acquiring a single weapon system.

---

---

In a decade, Victoria might indeed have enough metal for such high-end combatants to be essential. The question is "Why are you giving him a decade?". Two-three years should be enough to build up Chicago's forces; By then, Victoria would still be recovering from their civil war, and they would still lack too many officers and technicians lost in Detroit campaign and "internal debates".

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Because we need to eat a sandwich of our own.

We need to give our economy time to grow big enough to support a proper expeditionary war.
We need to train those parts of our military not called the Big Red One up from Korean War standards.
We need to procure industrial equipment and set up domestic production lines.

We need to feed and improve the lives of our people, who want both a better life and to murdering Victoria in the face.
We need to establish public health systems against the next epidemic. Settle domestic political issues, like immigration and refugees and the political status of petitioners to join the Accords. And establish diplomatic outreach abroad and to the rest of North America.

And grow the country by inducting more parts of America-That-Was into America-That-Is-Becoming.
Both for ideological reasons, and hardheaded growing our economic grunt reasons.

Now, some of the items on the wish list may be more avoidable than others. For instance, railguns are not essential to the ships' ability to function, and a more conventional chemical-propellant gun system will have the vast advantage that no matter what happens to our supply of overseas equipment, we can still make something to be fired out the gun. The railgun gets dropped, and the "procure expensive high-performance ammo for it" project is demoted to low priority.

Click to shrink...

Oddly enough?
Its probably going to be cheaper to acquire railgun ammo than powder gun shells.
At least, powder gun shells with antiship cruise missile capability.

 

[uju32]

And a small piece of trivia for the people interested:
SM-6 IA: 1.5 tons
ESSM: 280kg
Naval Strike Missile: 410kg
RIM-116 RAM missile: 73.5kg

The ship as configured is supposed to carry 32x SM-6s + 64x ESSMs + 16x NSMs + 42x RIM-116 missiles + full load of shells.
Total weight of munitions: SM-6(32*1.5)+ESSM(.28*64)+NSM(0.41*16)+RIM-116(.0735*42)= 75.56 tons
Shells are 10-25 tons for 500 rounds.

So total weight of munitions is 85-100 tons.
That's 1.8-2.2% of the full load displacement of a 4500 ton ship.

 

[Simon_Jester]

@uju32

I think that while you're not wrong to be planning ahead for "warships of ten years in the future," it bears remembering that we also need viable designs for what we're going to be building now, which may not be so large or sophisticated.

Also, I suspect there won't be much advantage in capturing a shipyard that was getting used half a century ago to build small ships for the US Navy.

 

[uju32]

@uju32
I think that while you're not wrong to be planning ahead for "warships of ten years in the future," it bears remembering that we also need viable designs for what we're going to be building now, which may not be so large or sophisticated.
Also, I suspect there won't be much advantage in capturing a shipyard that was getting used half a century ago to build small ships for the US Navy.

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1) In my opinion, its basically a matter of slapping an autocannon, 2-4x .50cals and possibly a heavy (120mm) mortar on a wooden boat.
Operate them in pairs and with radio/satphones. Done. Essentially what the Royal Navy operated in the littorals of the UK post-WW2, just updated for the realities of post-Collapse America

Brave-class patrol boat - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Class and type:	Fast attack craft
Displacement:	89 long tons (90 t) standard 114 long tons (116 t) full load
Length:	90 ft (27 m) wl 98 ft 10 in (30.12 m) overall
Beam:	25 ft 6 in (7.77 m)
Draught:	7 ft (2.1 m)
Propulsion:	2 × Rover auxiliary gas turbine turbo generators[2]​ 3 × Bristol Proteus gas turbines 10,500 hp (7,830 kW)
Speed:	52 knots (96 km/h; 60 mph) maximum 46 knots (85 km/h; 53 mph) continuous
Range:	400 nmi (740 km; 460 mi)
Complement:	20 (3 officers, 17 ratings)
Armament:	As Motor Torpedo Boat 1 × Bofors 40 mm gun 4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes As Motor Gun Boat 2 × Bofors 40 mm guns 2 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes

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Steel frame. Wooden hull(or fiberglass if thats more convenient).
30-35m length, 8m width, 2-2.5m draft. 100-160 tons weight. 1x 30-40mm autocannon + a couple heavy machineguns + automatic grenade launchers + maybe a 120mm mortar if involved in an active shore raid instead of just patrolling the local body of water. Add a tethered drone to extend its sensor horizon. Operate in pairs.

Searchlights. Fisherman's navigation radar. Nightvision gear. Bulletproof vests and small arms for the crew.
1950s tech or over the counter consumer tech. Thats essentially all you need to patrol the Lakes and rivers in the next two years or so, particularly if they're backed up with UAVs and the rest of the Commonwealth Air Force.

And its essentially something we should be able to throw together in a couple months in the same facilities that built the Des Plaines, using workers used to operating with wood.

When we have the actual steel shipbuilding setup, with supplies of ship-quality steel coming in and workers trained in building with steel, then we can build a bunch of steel 400-600 ton FACs with like a 57mm gun and 4x antiship missiles to replace them on the Lakes.
Like one of the South Korean PK(X)As.

Then hand them over to customs or the police and use them solely on the rivers.

Think:
2076-2080: Interim wooden cutter
2080+: Replaced by steel missile boats, wooden boats relegated to river patrol.
2085+: Introduce frigate.

2) I'm not saying capture, I'm talking seduction.
Or bribery if you'd prefer. We do want to grow larger, but would rather have people join willingly; dont want to shoot people unnecessarily to do so. So dangle a bribe, like we did with St Louis.

For us, it would be vastly more difficult to attempt to set up shipyards from scratch in, say, Chicago or Detroit, which even forty years post-Collapse is going to be a very builtup area.

So a former major shipyard which is built on terrain chosen for its suitability for shipbuilding, chosen for water depth and accessibility to resources over land and water? AND is relatively close to Chicago Is probably a better choice for rebuilding shipbuilding capacity than Chicago or Detroit, while both cities can concentrate on the whole being a trade city/center of manufacturing thing.

Not to mention that politically, not putting everything in Chicago or Detroit is always going to look good to other cities/locations that are not the first two aforementioned megacities.

 

[PoptartProdigy]

I have tweaked the Status Screen to more accurately reflect the state of play.

The Worldbuilding Thread has updated! We now have South and Central America fully established.

Things have settled enough that I should be able to resume regular updates soon!

 

[SkyAlphaAlpha]

when?

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Soon. I mentioned.

 

[PyroTechno]

Soon. I mentioned.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and summarize a lot of the user feedback you're going to get from now until then:

"wen updat lol"

Aren't you a fairly experienced QM? I'd expect you to be used to this by now.

 

[Starwarlord]

Yay! Great to see this back @PoptartProdigy, Victoria Delenda Est!

 

[inirlan]

Soon. I mentioned.

Click to shrink...

Soon or Soon™?

Can't wait for the update, I want to see how things will develop with the status quo so changed.

 

[Strypgia]

Soon or Soon™?

Can't wait for the update, I want to see how things will develop with the status quo so changed.

Click to shrink...

Victoria Cavalry.meme

 

[hYGP]

Legitimacy: 10

Click to shrink...

Poptart, this is still Legitimacy, not Legacy

My current reading is How Asia Works - it is a tour de force of how East Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China managed to modernize their economy while Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines were unable to make a similar transition through modernization.

It also happens to have some incredibly useful advice for us as a forcibly deindustrialized nation.

To begin with, let us surveil our current situation.

Centered around the City of Chicago, the Commonwealth of Free Cities is a centralized federal state. There are some limited powers accorded to member states, but administration is concentrated in the federal government, and powers not explicitly accorded to the states default to the federal government. It contains a bicameral legislature known as the Congress. The upper -- and substantially weaker -- house is the Senate, with representatives elected by member states. The stronger, lower house is the House of Representatives, which elects its members at large, from party lists. The President is appointed by the Congress and can be recalled in a vote of no confidence. The judiciary is federal-only, and judges are approved by the House.

Click to shrink...

That about your polity which sets it apart from others.

Brown-Water Navy: This nation maintains a force of vessels adapted to riverine warfare and areas within sight of shore.

Established: Unique of non-approved states in North America, this nation has attained widespread recognition within its neighborhood and among some select foreign powers. If your foreign diplomatic endeavors succeed, this may broaden further.

Good Security: This nation has a respectable counterintelligence service working to protect it from foreign or domestic threats.

Independent Merchants: This nation sits at the heart of a fledgling network of mercantile services, bringing goods and wealth from abroad.

Widespread Vaccinations: While herd immunity is still a distant dream, this nation has a large proportion of its population inoculated against common diseases, as well as the fragile foundation of a biomedical industry.

Population Boom: This nation's promise and stability have attracted far too many mouths to feed, and the food and housing situations are deeply unstable. If this pressure is not relieved, mass die-offs are inevitable. After a brief respite, your recent victory over Victoria has begun the boom once more, as people flock to the borders of the only power in decades to face Victoria and win.

Hostile Neighborhood: This nation has sprung up out of apparent chaos in a very short period of time, with the targeted application of large amounts of violence. The neighbors are deeply concerned, and prone to allying against it. Recent achievements, both diplomatic and military, have dealt with this national spirit. It will, shortly, be removed.

Libraries: Throughout the Collapse, this nation has cultivated a reputation as a safe place for relics of the old world's knowledge. They have access to great stores of information crucial to the operation of a modern state. Outdated, yes, but better than the current status quo.

Click to shrink...

Allow me to summarize the relevant components:

Population: ++++++++++
Land: +++++++
Wealth: ---
Industry: ---------

We must turn those wealth numbers positive so we can import manufacturing technology and other products - and to do that we must invest in our farmers. Considering our impoverished state, we are an agricultural nation with a vestigial modern sector - it is our responsibility to ensure that our entire nation develops instead of merely increasing how city-heavy our state is. To emphasize the city at the expense of the rural that makes up the vast majority of our nation is a mistake that will keep us top heavy and unable to grow to our full potential.

Thus, we must embark on a program that leverages and invests in agricultural production, and systematically improves agricultural output. This is because increasing the labor intensity of farming is the easiest and most efficient method to leverage an outsize population and land footprint with an absence of modern human and technological capital. Moreover, it is not enough to merely increase the number of laborers - we must align their incentives with greater outputs in the most productive fashion. Historical evidence suggests that contrary to previously accepted wisdom, plantations or collectivized farms are not as efficient either per worker or per hectare as smallholding farms where the family is permitted to retain excess productivity. Finally, we must also provide these farmers with extensive state support to maximize our gains.

In short, I call for three things:

1. The abolition of the rural landlords and tenant farming.
2. The redistribution of their lands to the families farming said land.
3. Extensive state supporting infrastructure to these smallholders.

These three items will give our smallholders prosperity, dignity, and the ability to chart their own course - and in so doing, we will be able to harness their productive forces for the good of the Commonwealth, rather than the good of a handful of landlords and plantation owners. It is imperative that we implement this policy aggressively and absolutely. Those countries that have failed to aggressively redistribute lands have found their countrysides occupied by rich plantation owners who cannot and will not generate either the demand or the wealth that redistributing their land would provide while staring down the barrel of ongoing rural unrest. Those countries that have aggressively redistributed their lands to smallholders have found that productivity has skyrocketed, and the rural countryside was able to provide a fertile soil in which to begin the next phase of modernization.

Furthermore, we must also provide these smallholders with state support - financial, technological, and infrastructural. It is imperative, no matter how easily the landlords are able to send members to this Congress, to recall that smallholders will be our most productive sector of the agricultural economy with the largest returns on investment, and should be prioritized accordingly.

This agricultural policy will ensure that we will be able to satisfy our demands to feed everyone, to provide an automatic safety net while our state is too impoverished to afford a full welfare state, and increase the overall wealth of our state and nation. We must understand that this is our priority going forward, if we are to modernize - to delay would be to delay our modernization, and I believe the recent war has attested to the consequences of failing to modernize.

Thus, my new policy going forward will be to be a one and a half issue voter on the issue of Land Reform.

In accordance with this new policy:

I will insist on plans containing at least one Census, Farm Equipment, and Libraries. I will be much more receptive to plans containing 2 Libraries, 2 Farming Equipment, and 2 Census Actions, in that order. Given the option to enact Land Redistribution, I will insist on as many actions as possible on Aggressive Land Redistribution. Given the option to expand farming infrastructure and output more food, I will take them.

I will deemphasize whatever I need to in order to achieve these goals.

 

[Simon_Jester]

We must turn those wealth numbers positive so we can import manufacturing technology and other products - and to do that we must invest in our farmers. Considering our impoverished state, we are an agricultural nation with a vestigial modern sector - it is our responsibility to ensure that our entire nation develops instead of merely increasing how city-heavy our state is. To emphasize the city at the expense of the rural that makes up the vast majority of our nation is a mistake that will keep us top heavy and unable to grow to our full potential.

Click to shrink...

Our situation is slightly complicated by the fact that the pre-Collapse US had the extensive urbanization of an industrial nation. Much of the population has probably been forced out into rural areas by a combination of Nazi/Vick looting wrecking the cities themselves and the increased need for labor to grow food for the collective sustenance of the populace.

But insofar as the majority of the people are living in the fields, they have been driven out into the fields, well within living memory, as opposed to having 'always' lived out there as is the case in even the most formerly-prosperous nation undergoing decolonization after a protracted imperialist period.

This somewhat alters key dynamics, though not in ways I feel qualified to immediately comment on.

Thus, we must embark on a program that leverages and invests in agricultural production, and systematically improves agricultural output. This is because increasing the labor intensity of farming is the easiest and most efficient method to leverage an outsize population and land footprint with an absence of modern human and technological capital. Moreover, it is not enough to merely increase the number of laborers - we must align their incentives with greater outputs in the most productive fashion. Historical evidence suggests that contrary to previously accepted wisdom, plantations or collectivized farms are not as efficient either per worker or per hectare as smallholding farms where the family is permitted to retain excess productivity. Finally, we must also provide these farmers with extensive state support to maximize our gains.

Click to shrink...

Complication:

If you want the smallholding family to produce a surplus, you must ensure economic access to luxury goods that can only be purchased with money that can feasibly be made by selling an agricultural surplus. Otherwise you fall into the extreme low-income trap of subsistence farming, where there are no goods to be had worth the amount of farm labor that would go into paying for them. At which point the farmers, being largely autonomous and self-sufficient, simply cut back their hours and farm less land per capita until a comfortable equilibrium is reached.

[This is not the peasant farmer being lazy; this is the peasant farmer not being stupid and having no desire to work a 60-hour week when a 50-hour week will suffice to meet any needs that can realistically be met]

But access to luxury goods in turn implies things like an industrial sector.

In short, I call for three things:

1. The abolition of the rural landlords and tenant farming.
2. The redistribution of their lands to the families farming said land.
3. Extensive state supporting infrastructure to these smallholders.

Click to shrink...

The good news is that we've got an overwhelmingly socialist or socialism-adjacent voterbase, very possibly because insofar as we even have rural landlords, their tenants are overwhelmingly voting for this exact thing.

So rural land reform won't be nearly as difficult as it would be otherwise. There is no landlord-centric elite controlling the bulk of the Commonwealth's internal politics, so far as I can determine- though some of the neighboring micropolities may be different. I'd bet on the Shawnee Kingdom consisting in large part of big tenant farms run by formally titled landlords, for instance.

In accordance with this new policy:

I will insist on plans containing at least one Census, Farm Equipment, and Libraries. I will be much more receptive to plans containing 2 Libraries, 2 Farming Equipment, and 2 Census Actions, in that order. Given the option to enact Land Redistribution, I will insist on as many actions as possible on Aggressive Land Redistribution. Given the option to expand farming infrastructure and output more food, I will take them.

I will deemphasize whatever I need to in order to achieve these goals.

Click to shrink...

Hrm. It should be pointed out that Libraries is only one action away from completion. If I were in your shoes I'd probably settle for one action on Libraries so that free dice could be reallocated elsewhere, including to starting Department of Education.

Our education system has almost certainly got even more holes in it out in rural areas than in most of the urban areas, and notably it is extremely likely that unlike most developed-nation educational systems, ours will include an extensive focus on remedial adult education. Under our present circumstances, that's extremely desirable.

If your goals for the Department of Technological Recovery are focused on a "width over depth" recovery, then you would do well to complete both Libraries and Department of Education as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Farm Equipment is overwhelmingly likely to receive great attention next turn, for the good and simple reason that we're in danger of famine due to food shortages if it doesn't. Census Office was explicitly called out as complicating our efforts to revitalize our farming sector, too, so that's almost certainly going to show up anyway.

I'm going to suggest something along the lines of...

free, free

[] Sara Goldblum, Agrarian Reformer?
-[] DIPLO ACTION (State fixed die)
-[] DIPLO ACTION 2 (free die)
--[] Thanks to aid on Outreach every available action will be new on Turn 5. Unsure what options will seem palatable.
-[] INTEL ACTION (Security fixed die; many new actions likely to be available from clearing Reintegrate.)
-[] WILD CARD (???, free die on whatever seems appealing)

-[] Military Training Reform (Defense fixed die)
-[] Census Office (Domestic Affairs fixed die)
-[] Refugee Crisis (free die)
-[] Farming Equipment, Part 2 (Development fixed die)
-[] Farming Equipment, Part 2 x2 (First Development die from Vick reparations)
-[] Farming Equipment, Part 2 x3 (Second Development die from Vick reparations)
-[] Infrastructure Projects (free die)
-[] Organize the Libraries (Technological Recovery fixed die)
-[] Department of Education (free die)

 

[hYGP]

Our situation is slightly complicated by the fact that the pre-Collapse US had the extensive urbanization of an industrial nation. Much of the population has probably been forced out into rural areas by a combination of Nazi/Vick looting wrecking the cities themselves and the increased need for labor to grow food for the collective sustenance of the populace.

But insofar as the majority of the people are living in the fields, they have been driven out into the fields, well within living memory, as opposed to having 'always' lived out there as is the case in even the most formerly-prosperous nation undergoing decolonization after a protracted imperialist period.

This somewhat alters key dynamics, though not in ways I feel qualified to immediately comment on.

Click to shrink...

Indeed, and neither do I. In its absence, I'm going for "families can roughly provide for each other, and at least the mass implementation of extremely similar practices across the nation" means that we can promulgate empirically useful success stories and lessons as fast as possible - if we are to have widely proliferated education, I strongly suspect that "here is how you squeeze every last calorie from every last centimeter of soil" is going to be one of the most important things to promote.

Complication:

If you want the smallholding family to produce a surplus, you must ensure economic access to luxury goods that can only be purchased with money that can feasibly be made by selling an agricultural surplus. Otherwise you fall into the extreme low-income trap of subsistence farming, where there are no goods to be had worth the amount of farm labor that would go into paying for them. At which point the farmers, being largely autonomous and self-sufficient, simply cut back their hours and farm less land per capita until a comfortable equilibrium is reached.

[This is not the peasant farmer being lazy; this is the peasant farmer not being stupid and having no desire to work a 60-hour week when a 50-hour week will suffice to meet any needs that can realistically be met]

But access to luxury goods in turn implies things like an industrial sector.

Click to shrink...

Yes and no. Yes in that you are correct that without something of value for our rural population to spend their agricultural surplus on, they will not produce agricultural surplus. This is exactly correct, and why it is so important that we redistribute land from rural landlords to farming families - precisely so that we can ensure more people working more land will seek to maximize their own productivity.

No in the sense that there is always a market for more goods. Families that can produce agricultural surplus will have surplus - that means that they will have demand for goods that our merchants can service, cheap available labor for our industrial sector to take in, and critically, a ready-made market for when we kick industrialization into high gear. If nothing else, having surplus demand + surplus resources + surplus labor is a combination that usually resolves itself through entrepreneurial spirit.

(Make no mistake; we absolutely should keep tight import controls and regulations for infant industry related reasons, despite the fact that this will probably lead to a thriving black market)

The good news is that we've got an overwhelmingly socialist or socialism-adjacent voterbase, very possibly because insofar as we even have rural landlords, their tenants are overwhelmingly voting for this exact thing.

So rural land reform won't be nearly as difficult as it would be otherwise. There is no landlord-centric elite controlling the bulk of the Commonwealth's internal politics, so far as I can determine- though some of the neighboring micropolities may be different. I'd bet on the Shawnee Kingdom consisting in large part of big tenant farms run by formally titled landlords, for instance.

Click to shrink...

welcome to the revolution comrade we have pamphlets

Hrm. It should be pointed out that Libraries is only one action away from completion. If I were in your shoes I'd probably settle for one action on Libraries so that free dice could be reallocated elsewhere, including to starting Department of Education.

Our education system has almost certainly got even more holes in it out in rural areas than in most of the urban areas, and notably it is extremely likely that unlike most developed-nation educational systems, ours will include an extensive focus on remedial adult education. Under our present circumstances, that's extremely desirable.

If your goals for the Department of Technological Recovery are focused on a "width over depth" recovery, then you would do well to complete both Libraries and Department of Education as soon as possible.

Click to shrink...

My goal for the Department of Technological Recovery in the short term are basically nothing. Taiwan modernized with a literacy rate of like 50%, South Korea with like 30%. Get the Libraries, get occupied reading history of development theory or whatever for a bit, perhaps prepare initial planning drafts for a merger slash reassignment of priorities with the Office of Development into one unified industrial bureau that controls both development and trade - because once we begin proper modernization of our industry and filling out our technical frontier, we'll need them in full force, but not until we're stable with a comfortable food surplus without imports.

[] Sara Goldblum, Agrarian Reformer?
-[] DIPLO ACTION (State fixed die)
-[] DIPLO ACTION 2 (free die)
--[] Thanks to aid on Outreach every available action will be new on Turn 5. Unsure what options will seem palatable.
-[] INTEL ACTION (Security fixed die; many new actions likely to be available from clearing Reintegrate.)
-[] WILD CARD (???, free die on whatever seems appealing)

-[] Military Training Reform (Defense fixed die)
-[] Census Office (Domestic Affairs fixed die)
-[] Refugee Crisis (free die)
-[] Farming Equipment, Part 2 (Development fixed die)
-[] Farming Equipment, Part 2 x2 (First Development die from Vick reparations)
-[] Farming Equipment, Part 2 x3 (Second Development die from Vick reparations)
-[] Infrastructure Projects (free die)
-[] Organize the Libraries (Technological Recovery fixed die)
-[] Department of Education (free die)

Click to shrink...

triple farming equipment? based, thank you
(I'd actually go for Census x2 over Department of Education free dice - the US actually managed without a federal Department of Education until 1980!!!, so it's not exactly necessary for modernization)

 

[uju32]

@uju32
I think that while you're not wrong to be planning ahead for "warships of ten years in the future," it bears remembering that we also need viable designs for what we're going to be building now, which may not be so large or sophisticated.

Click to shrink...

You asked.

---

---

Audrey-class Patrol Boat
The totality of the Commonwealth's 2075 victory caught the Naval Board by surprise.
The pressing need for patrol hulls subsequent to the crushing victory of the Commonwealth's crushing victory drove a requirement for rapid procurement of a cheap, shallow-draft patrol craft using available resources and a shipbuilding workforce accustomed to working in wood and steel.

The Audrey-class patrol boat is the result of those compromises.

Borrowing principles from the 1950s-vintage Seeadler-class fast attack craft of the West German Navy, the Audrey is a wooden hulled patrol boat of roughly 220 tons full displacement and less than 2.5 m draft. Its propulsion plant reflects the economic limitations of the 2075 Commonwealth techbase, with twin diesels and twin gas turbines driving four screws in a combined diesel or gas turbine (CODOG) configuration, where the diesels are used for speed cruise and the turbines for speed.

Optics and electronics are primarily COTS(commercial off the shelf) equipment, ranging from surface radar to encrypted radio, GPS and acoustic fathometer. NVGs are also available to the bridge crew.

Primary armament is a dual-purpose 40mm autocannon with both air and surface capability in a single mount, mounted fore and aft.
This was supported by a pair of heavy machine guns on either flank, and a pair of automatic grenade launchers, as well as the standard small arms locker. There is space amidships was retained for a single 120mm mortar in the event of a requirement for beyond line of sight shore bombardment.

Manning requirements are almost half that of the venerable Avalon-class boats, and existing shipyards and shipworkers would prove capable of building and outfitting the design without retraining, with the first hull in the water with the coming of spring 2076.


CSS Audrey PG-1

Displacement:	220 t full load
Length:	43.0 m
Beam:	7.10 m
Draught:	2.30 m
Propulsion:	Combined diesel or gas (CODOG) 2x 4.5MW gas turbines + 2x 1.2MW diesel engines 4x propeller shafts, driving three-bladed propellers 2x 200kw auxiliary electric generators for electric power Bunker: 30t+ fuel, 2t fresh water
Speed:	43 knots (78 km/h; 48 mph) max 39 knots (72 km/h; 45 mph) max sustained
Range:	500nmi at 39 knots (turbines) 700 nmi at 35 knots (turbines) 1000 nmi at 32 knots (turbines) 2500 nmi at 16 knots (diesels) 7 days endurance
Complement:	40 officers and enlisted
Sensors and processing systems:	Navigation radar. GPS. Searchlight. Nightvision goggles. Radio: HF,VHF,UHF, SATCOM Acoustic depthfinder/echo sounder.
Armament:	2x Bofors/Oto Breda 40 mm/L70 autocannon forward and aft 240-450 rpm Max range 12.5 km horizontal Max range AA 4km 2.5kg round 3000 rounds of ammunition total 4x .50 cal machineguns in twin mounts, 1 on each flank 2x 40mm automatic grenade launchers, 1 on each flank 1x 120mm mortar 4 rounds per minute sustained Max range 9km 40 rounds of ammunition at 15kg each Smoke generator

NOTES

• Built on the West German Seeadler-class torpedo boat design, with a different(and lighter!) power plant.
• 1950s/1960s techbase. Two thirds the length of the Avalons. Half the weight.
• Steel frame and superstructure. Wooden hull. Steel around weapon mounts. Kevlar wall panels, around mission-critical areas.
• 1960s marine turbines performance(Rolls Royce Tyne) as baseline, and they're substantially lighter than even less powerful diesels. Plus, less trouble starting in cold weather, so start your turbine up, then switch to diesels.
• Diesels for patrol cruise. Turbines for chase and combat.
• Propeller increases draft but can be fabbed locally or just forged abroad and imported and assembled.

NOTES 2

• Napier Deltic-class diesel engines. Aluminium and steel construction. Power to weight ratio of 2.6kg/kw in 1954. In use in Royal Navy until 2008 on the Hunt-class minesweepers, and still in service with the Greek and Lithuanian Navies.
• Rolls Royce Tyne marinized aeroderivative turbine. 1 ton dry weight, 4.5MW circa 1962.
• GM 6-71 diesel generators. 60-100kw. Circa 1 ton.

 

[Random Member]

1. The abolition of the rural landlords and tenant farming.

Click to shrink...

Well, we can agree on this at least....

But why limit it to just the rural landlords?

 

[Simon_Jester]

You asked.

---

---

Audrey-class Patrol Boat
The totality of the Commonwealth's 2075 victory caught the Naval Board by surprise.
The pressing need for patrol hulls subsequent to the crushing victory of the Commonwealth's crushing victory drove a requirement for rapid procurement of a cheap, shallow-draft patrol craft using available resources and a shipbuilding workforce accustomed to working in wood and steel.

The Audrey-class patrol boat is the result of those compromises.

Borrowing principles from the 1950s-vintage Seeadler-class fast attack craft of the West German Navy, the Audrey is a wooden hulled patrol boat of roughly 220 tons full displacement and less than 2.5 m draft. Its propulsion plant reflects the economic limitations of the 2075 Commonwealth techbase, with twin diesels and twin gas turbines driving four screws in a combined diesel or gas turbine (CODOG) configuration, where the diesels are used for speed cruise and the turbines for speed.

Optics and electronics are primarily COTS(commercial off the shelf) equipment, ranging from surface radar to encrypted radio, GPS and acoustic fathometer. NVGs are also available to the bridge crew.

Primary armament is a dual-purpose 40mm autocannon with both air and surface capability in a single mount, mounted fore and aft.
This was supported by a pair of heavy machine guns on either flank, and a pair of automatic grenade launchers, as well as the standard small arms locker. There is space amidships was retained for a single 120mm mortar in the event of a requirement for beyond line of sight shore bombardment.

Manning requirements are almost half that of the venerable Avalon-class boats, and existing shipyards and shipworkers would prove capable of building and outfitting the design without retraining, with the first hull in the water with the coming of spring 2076.


CSS Audrey PG-1

Displacement:

220 t full load

Length:

43.0 m

Beam:

7.10 m

Draught:

2.30 m

Propulsion:

Combined diesel or gas (CODOG) 2x 4.5MW gas turbines + 2x 1.2MW diesel engines 4x propeller shafts, driving three-bladed propellers 2x 200kw auxiliary electric generators for electric power Bunker: 30t+ fuel, 2t fresh water

Speed:

43 knots (78 km/h; 48 mph) max 39 knots (72 km/h; 45 mph) max sustained

Range:

500nmi at 39 knots (turbines) 700 nmi at 35 knots (turbines) 1000 nmi at 32 knots (turbines) 2500 nmi at 16 knots (diesels) 7 days endurance

Complement:

40 officers and enlisted

Sensors and processing systems:

Navigation radar. GPS. Searchlight. Nightvision goggles. Radio: HF,VHF,UHF, SATCOM Acoustic depthfinder/echo sounder.

Armament:

2x Bofors/Oto Breda 40 mm/L70 autocannon forward and aft 240-450 rpm Max range 12.5 km horizontal Max range AA 4km 2.5kg round 3000 rounds of ammunition total 4x .50 cal machineguns in twin mounts, 1 on each flank 2x 40mm automatic grenade launchers, 1 on each flank 1x 120mm mortar 4 rounds per minute sustained Max range 9km 40 rounds of ammunition at 15kg each Smoke generator

NOTES

• Built on the West German Seeadler-class torpedo boat design, with a different(and lighter!) power plant.
• 1950s/1960s techbase. Two thirds the length of the Avalons. Half the weight.
• Steel frame and superstructure. Wooden hull. Steel around weapon mounts. Kevlar wall panels, around mission-critical areas.
• 1960s marine turbines performance(Rolls Royce Tyne) as baseline, and they're substantially lighter than even less powerful diesels. Plus, less trouble starting in cold weather, so start your turbine up, then switch to diesels.
• Diesels for patrol cruise. Turbines for chase and combat.
• Propeller increases draft but can be fabbed locally or just forged abroad and imported and assembled.

NOTES 2

• Napier Deltic-class diesel engines. Aluminium and steel construction. Power to weight ratio of 2.6kg/kw in 1954. In use in Royal Navy until 2008 on the Hunt-class minesweepers, and still in service with the Greek and Lithuanian Navies.
• Rolls Royce Tyne marinized aeroderivative turbine. 1 ton dry weight, 4.5MW circa 1962.
• GM 6-71 diesel generators. 60-100kw. Circa 1 ton.

Click to shrink...

This is viable but will likely draw a few complaints.

The big one is armament. Sure, the lack of a howitzer option for longer range shore bombardment missions can probably be accepted given that the goal is just to thicken our presence so that we're not trying to patrol three Great Lakes and God knows how many hundreds of miles of rivers with only eleven gunboats. There's room for a mortar, good enough, especially with the Army reviving its field artillery branch. The problem is that the limited ammunition capacity for the mortar really hampers the shore bombardment mission even when the target is conveniently within nine kilometers of the water.

On the other hand, adding a bigger ammunition locker for said mortar isn't necessarily that big of a design modification.

Yes and no. Yes in that you are correct that without something of value for our rural population to spend their agricultural surplus on, they will not produce agricultural surplus. This is exactly correct, and why it is so important that we redistribute land from rural landlords to farming families - precisely so that we can ensure more people working more land will seek to maximize their own productivity.

Click to shrink...

No no no.

See, that's the problem. Absent supply of industrially manufactured goods, rural small farmers' incentive structure does not align with maximizing output; it aligns with not starving and, subject to the constraint of not starving, with not overworking themselves.

"There will always be something for rural small farmers to buy in exchange for their agricultural surplus" simply isn't something you can take for granted, though it's admittedly likely as long as we have a domestic light industrial base or foreign trade access (even if we're buying shitty secondhand goods from other countries).

That, too, is a component that requires a certain amount of intentional effort for the developing nation to achieve. Part of the effort involves mechanizing agriculture (so that it becomes less labor-intensive for the farmers to cultivate a surplus), and part goes into making desirable products available in rural areas through domestic industrial goods production- especially if, as you say, you're cracking down on foreign imports.

My goal for the Department of Technological Recovery in the short term are basically nothing. Taiwan modernized with a literacy rate of like 50%, South Korea with like 30%...

Click to shrink...

Yeah, they began modernization at those levels, but they didn't stay there. For example, you cite South Korea. Literacy in South Korea was a little over 22% in 1945, but rose to 87.6% by 1970.

The modernization process doesn't have high literacy as a prerequisite for starting, but it will inevitably crash out and fail if you don't get the population literate. You can't run modernization on a tiny elite of educated specialists overseeing masses of illiterate peasants, any more than you can concentrate modernization in the cities and ignore the countryside. Indeed, the two failure modes both revolve around the same illusions.

I think the lessons you learned from that book may have somewhat oversimplified the process of modernizing an impoverished nation...

Get the Libraries, get occupied reading history of development theory or whatever for a bit, perhaps prepare initial planning drafts for a merger slash reassignment of priorities with the Office of Development into one unified industrial bureau that controls both development and trade - because once we begin proper modernization of our industry and filling out our technical frontier, we'll need them in full force, but not until we're stable with a comfortable food surplus without imports.

Click to shrink...

Suffice to say that both for game mechanical reasons and for practical reasons, I don't think Technological Recovery should be folded into Development.

triple farming equipment? based, thank you

Click to shrink...

That's the number of actions we spent on Farming Equipment last time we were doing it to make sure we wouldn't get slammed with a famine that was due to happen if we failed the action that turn.

(I'd actually go for Census x2 over Department of Education free dice - the US actually managed without a federal Department of Education until 1980!!!, so it's not exactly necessary for modernization)

Click to shrink...

The US had homegrown functional local school systems. The Commonwealth of Free Cities doesn't in a lot of places. We have a much more urgent need to create something that can standardize and organize schooling (and make sure universal schooling is even available in impoverished regions) than the historical 20th century US did.

Seriously, you're not going to be able to create a broad-based modernization/recovery that benefits rural areas if you can't get education in those rural areas.