SDN World 3 Commentary Thread II

[Steve]

What the hell is this? I thought I discussed with Steve that I'd be building trenches along the length of the canal, not just around Cuidad de Panama!

And what was said to contradict your trench-digging elsewhere? I'm not sure about the rest of the terrain though.

I also find it kind of darkly amusing that while I have no air force I supposedly have all these airfields...

A) Commercial airfields could still exist, even if your government didn't invest in a military air force.

B) Even if not, aircraft of this day could really just sortie off any dust track of sufficient length.

[Ryan Thunder]

What the hell is this? I thought I discussed with Steve that I'd be building trenches along the length of the canal, not just around Cuidad de Panama!

And what was said to contradict your trench-digging elsewhere? I'm not sure about the rest of the terrain though.

Nothing, I guess. I suppose I may be overreacting, but I'd really rather not have a repeat of the clusterfuck that is my coastal fortress listings if I can avoid it.

For the sake of documentation, here.

I also find it kind of darkly amusing that while I have no air force I supposedly have all these airfields...

A) Commercial airfields could still exist, even if your government didn't invest in a military air force.

B) Even if not, aircraft of this day could really just sortie off any dust track of sufficient length.

Oh, I agree. It was just an observation and not a complaint. Hell there are enough roads that he could probably just go off of one of those if he found a long enough stretch.

[CmdrWilkens]

Honestly, Ryan, 14 naval guns at one fort isn't a bad arrangement, this isn't a case where any lack of expertise caused you to do something unrealistic that could hurt you. I'm not against letting you say that it's 8 450mm and 6 350mm, but I think letting you add guns is a bit too much given that circumstance.

Very well. I'll have more to say when I get back from a meeting...

EDIT: ...or a few thoughts before I head off to it.

What the hell is this? I thought I discussed with Steve that I'd be building trenches along the length of the canal, not just around Cuidad de Panama!

I also find it kind of darkly amusing that while I have no air force I supposedly have all these airfields...

I'm still about 30 mi from the canal, in other words my forward units are just shy of gun range for Fort Panama and decision time is coming shortly for me. On the airstrip note, these guys can literally take off from a well rolled dirt field. I know on the 1-3 map that I notated for several of the fields that they would be prepared by my engineers, I didn't do that for this map but it would likely be the case for the field east of Pononome. (The field at Santiago stands a reasonable chance of being a commercial air field)

[Ryan Thunder]

I'm still about 30 mi from the canal, in other words my forward units are just shy of gun range for Fort Panama and decision time is coming shortly for me. On the airstrip note, these guys can literally take off from a well rolled dirt field. I know on the 1-3 map that I notated for several of the fields that they would be prepared by my engineers, I didn't do that for this map but it would likely be the case for the field east of Pononome. (The field at Santiago stands a reasonable chance of being a commercial air field)

Yeah, I buy that you could convert those strips, or even use them without conversion; they're small planes. It's a bit of a hassle for me, but that's my own fault. At least I have divisional air defense. <_<

EDIT: By the way, in case I forgot to specify; that line is completed as of Day 5.

[CmdrWilkens]

I'm still about 30 mi from the canal, in other words my forward units are just shy of gun range for Fort Panama and decision time is coming shortly for me. On the airstrip note, these guys can literally take off from a well rolled dirt field. I know on the 1-3 map that I notated for several of the fields that they would be prepared by my engineers, I didn't do that for this map but it would likely be the case for the field east of Pononome. (The field at Santiago stands a reasonable chance of being a commercial air field)

Yeah, I buy that you could convert those strips, or even use them without conversion; they're small planes. It's a bit of a hassle for me, but that's my own fault. At least I have divisional air defense. <_<

EDIT: By the way, in case I forgot to specify; that line is completed as of Day 5.

Yup, your guys stopped on the trackside and shot down/damaged enough to scrap at least 2-3 planes of mine (though I've got a half dozen spares per wing) so yup. Also do you mean Day 5 (D+4) or Day 6 (D+5)?

[Ryan Thunder]

I'm still about 30 mi from the canal, in other words my forward units are just shy of gun range for Fort Panama and decision time is coming shortly for me. On the airstrip note, these guys can literally take off from a well rolled dirt field. I know on the 1-3 map that I notated for several of the fields that they would be prepared by my engineers, I didn't do that for this map but it would likely be the case for the field east of Pononome. (The field at Santiago stands a reasonable chance of being a commercial air field)

Yeah, I buy that you could convert those strips, or even use them without conversion; they're small planes. It's a bit of a hassle for me, but that's my own fault. At least I have divisional air defense. <_<

EDIT: By the way, in case I forgot to specify; that line is completed as of Day 5.

Yup, your guys stopped on the trackside and shot down/damaged enough to scrap at least 2-3 planes of mine (though I've got a half dozen spares per wing) so yup. Also do you mean Day 5 (D+4) or Day 6 (D+5)?

Oh, sorry, it's D+5. I thought we started at Day Zero.

[Beowulf]

More specifically you list ONE Fortress Artillery BN with ONE Main Battery

Must be a typo. I usually pick the numbers before I work out the unit organization. In this case I suppose I must've worked it out in another window and then pasted it in.

And what kind of brigade only has one business batallion in it anyway?

Yours apparently.

That said, the organization is somewhat retarded, since a battery would likely be 3-4 heavy guns. IOW: 1 3-gun emplacement or a pair of 2-gun emplacements. A battery, after all, isn't just the guns, but communications, rangefinding, a HQ section, etc. Each of the firing platoons listed, should actually be listed as the firing platoon of a separate battery.

[Ryan Thunder]

How's this look to you? Better?

EDIT: Also, if I understand you correctly there should only be one firing platoon per battery. Is that what you meant?

[Steve]

Alright, everyone, Timothy has informed me that next week he won't be around due to his job, or as he put it, "hell week".

While he's off suffering the oppression of the commercialization and materialism of modern Christmas, I need a temporary replacement mod for him. AIM is a must for you so you can join in dice-roll chats. I have a candidate in mind but I want to see other offers first.

[loomer]

I'll throw my hat in for anything not involving Afghani conflicts, since that'd be a conflict of interests.

[Czechmate]

Hold on, did I just end up with a huge chunk of extra Libya or is that just something I completely missed on the previous maps? I thought my territory ended at Benghazi...

Regardless of that the Sultanate should also look more like this:

I don't control Jerusalem either. That's Coyote's/Siege's.

I didn't change anything about the borders except their colors. All I did was make the internal borders gray and the international borders white, repairing a confusing patchwork left over from repeated map edits during the pregame prep phase.

If you have border changes you want done, you'll want to talk to Steve. I'm not actually in charge of the map - I just wanted to make the one we had clearer. Sorry.

Alright, everyone, Timothy has informed me that next week he won't be around due to his job, or as he put it, "hell week".

While he's off suffering the oppression of the commercialization and materialism of modern Christmas, I need a temporary replacement mod for him. AIM is a must for you so you can join in dice-roll chats. I have a candidate in mind but I want to see other offers first.

I have some spare time over the next week, I can temp for Tim while he's suffering merry hell. I've already witnessed most of the Mexican-Colombian stuff and I'm not due to be a-fighting until January IRL.

[Lascaris]

For Norade's Suriname attack:

[17:12] sbbigsteve: So, 9 for a completely successful crossing. 3-5 is failure, 6-8 is minor success - some footholds but they're bottled up.- 9-12 for general success, 13-16 for outstanding success, 17 and 18 has the Dutch forces utterly routed and Suriname wide open for conquest.
[17:12] sbbigsteve: //roll-dice 3-sided 6
[17:12] sbbigsteve: sbbigsteve rolled 3 6-sided dice: 4 1 4
[17:13] sbbigsteve: General success.

Rogue and I were there, Norse and Lascaris witnessed.


Rogue should be PMing Thanas and Siege results now as well.

So I need to figure losses for both sides and I'm not knowledgeable nor am I impartial. Both sides have 2 divisions dirrectly involved, but I have destroyer support, air support, and a brigade of artillery to tip the scales as well as an infantry squad that stayed behind and will be able to motar over the river into my objective. Key points are my artillery superiority, my opening artillery barrage before landing, destroyer escorts for landing forces in small 8-12 man boats, as well as my landing an equal sized force in the initial stages before bring everything else over once the city was mine.

Looking for losses so I can do my initial results and next stage post.

Uh oh. We did discuss that with Steve and Rogue back then. The rolls were all done with your artillery support being 300 heavy pieces. That is 6 artillery brigades not a single artillery brigade. Two options I suppose

A. As Rogue and Steve put it you place 6 artillery brigades not 1 in support of the attack.
B. If you don't want to have both your artillery divisions from Portugal deployed to South America... I'd suppose a retcon of the attack should be in order.

With a single artillery brigade in support, given you do a river crossing against an entrenched enemy the advantage would lie with a close edge to the defenders.

Casualty wise...

If you have 6 artillery brigades in support 3,000 Portuguese and 5,000 Dutch casualties would be about right.

With a single artillery brigade make that 3000 Portuguese for 1300 Dutch.

Both set of numbers calculated using a fairly simple application of the Lanchester square law

[Lascaris]

DISNA?

Dirección de Securitad Nacional of course

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Heinrich Himmler just got squashed by a tank. Awesome.

[Steve]

Heh, finally showed up eh?

Has anyone seen Crossroad? He's not posted on completing his joining, I didn't see a point in re-coloring Borneo until he did.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Heh, finally showed up eh?

Has anyone seen Crossroad? He's not posted on completing his joining, I didn't see a point in re-coloring Borneo until he did.

If he's not going to join up, then that means I'll have to start retconning my OOB and construction queues yet again in order to put soldiers back in Borneo...

[Steve]

Or you can just give Borneo to me, your friendly neighborhood mod.

[Ma Deuce]

What about Sea Skimmer's Siam? I seem to recall he has decided not to play after all. So, if that is indeed the case and Crossroads ultimately decides he does in fact want to play rather than leaving us hanging, it would make more sense to let him have Siam than to force Shinn to carve off a piece of his territory to accommodate him.

[Steve]

Thing is that Crossroads asked specifically for Borneo, had his country drawn up around maps of Borneo and everything.

[Ma Deuce]

Thing is that Crossroads asked specifically for Borneo, had his country drawn up around maps of Borneo and everything.

That may be so, but it's extremely inconsiderate of him to leave Shinn hanging in the air since he is taking a large piece of his territory. If he really wants Borneo, I think it would be best if you PM'd him to confirm whether or not he is joining the game, and if so, give him a deadline to have a basic history and point spread ready for review. If he fails to meet it, then he'll have to settle for Siam or whatever other scrap of land we happen to have available.

[Norade]

For Norade's Suriname attack:

[17:12] sbbigsteve: So, 9 for a completely successful crossing. 3-5 is failure, 6-8 is minor success - some footholds but they're bottled up.- 9-12 for general success, 13-16 for outstanding success, 17 and 18 has the Dutch forces utterly routed and Suriname wide open for conquest.
[17:12] sbbigsteve: //roll-dice 3-sided 6
[17:12] sbbigsteve: sbbigsteve rolled 3 6-sided dice: 4 1 4
[17:13] sbbigsteve: General success.

Rogue and I were there, Norse and Lascaris witnessed.


Rogue should be PMing Thanas and Siege results now as well.

So I need to figure losses for both sides and I'm not knowledgeable nor am I impartial. Both sides have 2 divisions dirrectly involved, but I have destroyer support, air support, and a brigade of artillery to tip the scales as well as an infantry squad that stayed behind and will be able to motar over the river into my objective. Key points are my artillery superiority, my opening artillery barrage before landing, destroyer escorts for landing forces in small 8-12 man boats, as well as my landing an equal sized force in the initial stages before bring everything else over once the city was mine.

Looking for losses so I can do my initial results and next stage post.

Uh oh. We did discuss that with Steve and Rogue back then. The rolls were all done with your artillery support being 300 heavy pieces. That is 6 artillery brigades not a single artillery brigade. Two options I suppose

A. As Rogue and Steve put it you place 6 artillery brigades not 1 in support of the attack.
B. If you don't want to have both your artillery divisions from Portugal deployed to South America... I'd suppose a retcon of the attack should be in order.

With a single artillery brigade in support, given you do a river crossing against an entrenched enemy the advantage would lie with a close edge to the defenders.

Casualty wise...

If you have 6 artillery brigades in support 3,000 Portuguese and 5,000 Dutch casualties would be about right.

With a single artillery brigade make that 3000 Portuguese for 1300 Dutch.

Both set of numbers calculated using a fairly simple application of the Lanchester square law

When I made my OOB there was no limit to the size of an artillery brigade so I built my artillery divisions based off of a 10 man crew per gun, making 3,000 soldiers, and 2,000 men in support. I never saw any official size guidelines...

Also as I think more and more on this, why is 2/3'rd of the army in Suriname at my point of attack? I would have expected a heavier defense near his capital rather than having 20,000 men oppose me.

[Steve]

Actually, um, I always stated artillery brigades as being "about 54 guns".

However, I also made clear that if someone wants to field larger units, they can in their OrBats, as long as they pay for them in terms of the stated cost. Just like people being permitted square divisions instead of triangular.

[Steve]

Thing is that Crossroads asked specifically for Borneo, had his country drawn up around maps of Borneo and everything.

That may be so, but it's extremely inconsiderate of him to leave Shinn hanging in the air since he is taking a large piece of his territory. If he really wants Borneo, I think it would be best if you PM'd him to confirm whether or not he is joining the game, and if so, give him a deadline to have a basic history and point spread ready for review. If he fails to meet it, then he'll have to settle for Siam or whatever other scrap of land we happen to have available.

I will be PMing him.

[Beowulf]

When I made my OOB there was no limit to the size of an artillery brigade so I built my artillery divisions based off of a 10 man crew per gun, making 3,000 soldiers, and 2,000 men in support. I never saw any official size guidelines...

Also as I think more and more on this, why is 2/3'rd of the army in Suriname at my point of attack? I would have expected a heavier defense near his capital rather than having 20,000 men oppose me.

An M114 howitzer has an 11 man crew, so you aren't far off on the number of men per gun. Smaller guns require less crew, so for a similar size organization, you can have more 105mm guns than 155mm guns. Typically around 6 gun batteries as opposed to 4 gun for a 155mm. If you go down to 75mm, you could probably have 8 gun batteries.

However, there's much more support guys than guys actually pulling lanyards. A US field artillery battery had some 140 men in the 1920s. Assuming a 6 gun battery of 105mm (requiring 8 men), there's another 92 men in the battery. More than twice the number of people actually serving the pieces. It's similar for a 4 gun battery of 155, requiring 11 men. Given the additional capital expense of a field artillery brigade, they actually tend to be smaller than 5000 men. A 1920 US field artillery brigade was 3414 men, serving 12 batteries of guns. That is to say, a bit more than 1/6 of the men are actually sending rounds down range. Everyone else? Support of one sort or another. Whether they're medical, ammo train, or something else.

[Steve]

As for my last post... Kitties rock!

I also figured we'd see some suicides from various Dutch. Their nation is being crushed, their entire world destroyed. That would trigger a fatal malaise in many I think.

I'm sorry I've not given appropriate IC responses to those who have responded IC to the shooting. Naturally you can expect the gratitude of the Cascadian nation and its President for your kind words and thoughts.

if so, the cost should be raised. Say, give players the choice of paying 3 points over a year or 8 points for six months.

Don't you mean doubling the cost? A 4IBP cost for a normal infantry division in 3 months instead of 6; an 18 IBP cost for a motorized division in 6 months? That's doable IMHO, though I'd prefer then if people didn't alter the IBPs to get stuff faster. Once your initial order is started it must remain at that level and you cannot pay any figure but the basic one for normal time or double cost for half the build time. This way there's no need to track things like "I paid normal price for 3 months and double price for 3, when do I get it?" or "Can I build this motorized division with X amount of IBPs in the first quarter, X+2 in the 2nd, and then X-2 in the final quarter?" It also means there's no need for people to alter their carefully-constructed build budgets to account for the proposal. (As I figure is your concern, Thanas.)

No, I am against that.

Any reason?

I mean, I get the logic, but I think we're starting to get too technical in this game. And I also think trying to track players using cadres would get difficult if lots of players started doing it.

If this applies from here on in, I will retroactively redo my OOB, because so far I am operating under the assumption that a heavy arty is 6-9 siege guns and that a normal arty is 50-60 guns.

Point. If anything I'd just universalize it to 50 guns per arty brigade and 10 siege guns per siege arty brigade. But I do want a universal figure. And 54 is kind of an odd one to stick with.

I think what we most need on clarification is what qualifies as a heavy bomber.

Well, I think we all know what this calls for.

*gets dog whistle* Okay Shep, time to unleash your miltech technobabble!