StarDestroyer.Net BBS

roll out a flag? pshhh. that's what lcd screens are for.

Probably a good investment for San Dorado PMC ships. It costs a lot more at the start, but they'll never be caught without the appropriate flag again.

RogueIce wrote:I'd imagine the competent ones, operating under contract with a competent civil authority, would likely have a room aboard where they keep multiple flags of various nations likely to hire them. And thus, as part of their contract, will be "flagged" by said nation and probably more-or-less be considered a temporary "Naval Reserve unit" of said nation, so as to avoid the issue of being declared pirates and it becoming open season on them (legally). Probably what Thanas' mercenaries might do as well, just so Rheinland isn't technically a belligerent. Unless Rheinland's the one using them in which case fuck it. A modern day letter of marque, unless we still recognize those which I honestly don't know.

The less competent ones might not do that - or work for some entity that is not a government and thus lacks such authority - in which case they could probably be considered pirates and at risk from any other nation's Navy that happens to be close enough to take a swing at them.

Does that sound about right Siege? Plausible? Or something else? And FWIW I'll include Thanas in that as well. I'm just curious how our international laws would go about handling "mercenary navies" operating on the high seas, because AFAIK our Real World doesn't really do that so there's probably no legal framework in place for it. But in SDNW6 World they clearly exist so I imagine there's some kind of legal cover for them, else as I mentioned they could be considered pirates and fair game for anyone's Navy. Theoretically, of course.

I imagine that mercenaries would be flagged to which ever nation had hired them. If a group that was in rebellion against a civil authority hired them, they'd still be flying a flag other than the nation they were based out of, and be flying a flag. This would make sure they'd fall under the international law regulating POWs and lawful combatants, rather than pirates.

I'd like to start the game before the end of the month, say next Saturday or if people are still busy then Saturday 28. Is that doable for everyone?

Works for me.

If it's next saturday I won't be able to contribute until the Sunday evening as I'm away for the day, but that should still be fine.

Missing one or two days hopefully won't make a massive difference.

If we have a few NPC countries uncompleted at that time, can we finish filling in the blanks later? I approve of starting pretty soon, though I may need some thinky-time after game start to get my nation fully up to speed and able to participate in events interestingly.

sounds good.

Just juggling ideas at this point. Need to figure out how stable my end of Ausfrica is to work out what sort of ORBAT the country would have built up.
To the east of Champa: Umeria, to the west Hakistan (NPC 5).

Why did Umeria not conquer Champa in the past?
Some blowover during the cocaine wars, after that Umeria was focused entirely on holding itself together as the revolutions went around and around. Since consolidating power, the Scholar-Beauracrats have had a dim view of war. The costs are certain, the returns far less so. Conquering a densely populated, disaster prone strip of delta dosen’t seem like a good investment to them.

Why did Hakistan not conquer Champa in the past?
Area wise, it’s much larger, so it must either have been busy with its own troubles, sparesly populated or studiously isolationist or peaceful. Now the map is finalised, it makes sense to tweak Champa’s history so it’s an escaped province of Hakistan, rather than Omnia.
History wise, it makes sense to me that Hakistan is a relatively mountainous country, with good potential for hydroelectricity and mineral mining. Historically feudal, with the ruling family tied closely to the Omnian church, society was dominated by a strong caste system (approximated by the animals of tiger, bull, dog, pig). It developed on a par with Umeria and Champa up until about 1900, when the ruling family where brought down in a populist religious uprising driven by Brutheran extremists. The caste system was outlawed, and in an attempt to jumpstart economic development, a disastrous plan for rapid industrialisation was started. Villages were rounded up and bussed to mines, to factories, to the cities of equality. The interior plains were ripped up to plant better crops, reliant on irrigation systems still under construction. Displaced herders striped the remaining grazing lands bare and dust choked them. Hundreds of thousands starved. Refugees poured into Champa until the border was closed. Thousands more fled into the hinterland, sparking a ripple of hunger and conflict across the hill tribes. Before long, the generals, the deposed tiger caste had enough popular support for a counter revolution. In the short and furious civil war, the Brutherans lost. The Tigers formed a junta government, with strong martial law and a reimposition of the class system. The refugees in Champa who returned,
The country is slowly putting itself back on its feet, with much welcome investment from foreign companies. The junta has grown fat and greedy but members continue to control much of the economy of the country. Both Champa and Hakistan watch their border carefully.

Okay, NPC rundown... Are we still okay with #11 having a socialist dictatorship like I asked for before?

And Fin, would you like to help me pick out a second NPC nation somewhere to be another red menace? Perhaps on the other continent to the south of me, so the Orions can freak out about it?

I'm fine with starting this month, I'll get to work on a nation profile and OOB.

On an unrelated note, I'd like to make Apelia a center for international anti-Communism - we're a two-thousand-year-old monarchy, after all - so if any of our Communist friends wants to write about exiled counterrevolutionaries or suchlike, feel free to put them in Apelia.

madd0ct0r wrote:sounds good.

Just juggling ideas at this point. Need to figure out how stable my end of Ausfrica is to work out what sort of ORBAT the country would have built up.
To the east of Champa: Umeria, to the west Hakistan (NPC 5).

Why did Umeria not conquer Champa in the past?
Some blowover during the cocaine wars, after that Umeria was focused entirely on holding itself together as the revolutions went around and around. Since consolidating power, the Scholar-Beauracrats have had a dim view of war. The costs are certain, the returns far less so. Conquering a densely populated, disaster prone strip of delta dosen’t seem like a good investment to them.

Champa and Umeria might have a history of war and even periods of conquest, like Vietnam and China, but that's all ancient history. In recent times, what he said is correct. In addition to that, modern Umeria is even less inclined toward major aggressive wars than modern China; it's too busy industrializing. They might fight a war out of national pride, but it wouldn't be a land grab. It'd be an attempt to assert their not-to-be-fucked-with status the way historical Japan did in the Russo-Japanese War.

KlavoHunter wrote:Okay, NPC rundown... Are we still okay with #11 having a socialist dictatorship like I asked for before?

My proposal was this:

Siege wrote:11: Bentacruz
New socialist democracy, populistic leader recently overthrew the previous kleptocratic oligarchy mostly through soft power. New government has to appease 'advisors' from Komradistan and UOCSR as well as big landowners and industrial interests with ties to San Dorado.

KlavoHunter wrote:Okay, NPC rundown... Are we still okay with #11 having a socialist dictatorship like I asked for before?

And Fin, would you like to help me pick out a second NPC nation somewhere to be another red menace? Perhaps on the other continent to the south of me, so the Orions can freak out about it?

Well I suppose some bits of tension would be fun....

Some serious pondering leads me to think that without nukes I would expect that world defense budgets would be higher here on Tellus than in the real world. Spending on the close order of twice the real word expenditures (about 10% of GDP) is not unexpected.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

KlavoHunter wrote:Okay, NPC rundown... Are we still okay with #11 having a socialist dictatorship like I asked for before?

And Fin, would you like to help me pick out a second NPC nation somewhere to be another red menace? Perhaps on the other continent to the south of me, so the Orions can freak out about it?

Well I suppose some bits of tension would be fun....

Science-damned commies!

Seriously though I like this idea. Especially if this red menace is trying to subvert the fledgling democracies of the NPC Three Kingdoms that I support.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

KlavoHunter wrote:Okay, NPC rundown... Are we still okay with #11 having a socialist dictatorship like I asked for before?

And Fin, would you like to help me pick out a second NPC nation somewhere to be another red menace? Perhaps on the other continent to the south of me, so the Orions can freak out about it?

Well I suppose some bits of tension would be fun....

Science-damned commies!

Seriously though I like this idea. Especially if this red menace is trying to subvert the fledgling democracies of the NPC Three Kingdoms that I support.

I wonder curiously how a mix of atheists and christian commies could ever get their act together though.

It would be interesting to see

TimothyC wrote:Some serious pondering leads me to think that without nukes I would expect that world defense budgets would be higher here on Tellus than in the real world. Spending on the close order of twice the real word expenditures (about 10% of GDP) is not unexpected.

Why? Hm. Lemme guess.

With nuclear weapons, you can win the battle by shooting once. With conventional weapons, to have a prayer of winning the battle you must shoot many times. Therefore you must buy more shells/missiles/bullets/whatever, and more platforms to fire them from.

Pretty much. I think Sir Humphrey explained it pretty well: "Conventional forces are very expensive. Much cheaper just to push a button."

Anyway, once the game actually starts, would anyone object to Orion being the nation that starts pushing the UN idea?

You can push for it all you want. Nothing says people will go for it. Or even if they do, it'll ever be anything more than a glorified high school debate club.

True.

Or maybe it's our secretive evil one-world-government conspiracy. Still, I recall Siege saying San Dorado would probably support such a move.

I think San Dorado would probably support anything that blocks an angry nation-state with blood in its eye from coming after them directly and personally in an act of aggression. That's got to be a concern for the major San Doradan and shakers; they have ways to counter it but they can't be absolutely sure it'd work if someone were willing to take enough economic hits and go that far to bring harm to the city.

They benefit greatly from internationalism, because low trade barriers and strong international NGOs give them more leverage to open up markets and opportunities.

As to the UN, yeah I don't think it's going to be very popular if Orion is the one to suggest it.

I don't feel like writing the whole thing out anymore, not with orBats coming up, but suffice to say, Cascadia and Klavostan had a war around 1900, it ended with a status quo antebellum peace due to the failure of the Klavos to take the territory they wanted against the Cascadian border defenses and the terribly power of the Maxim, but the Klavos did deal a striking upset to the Cascadian Navy in the Battle off Baja, which we can consider our Tsushima Strait counterpart if desired. So aside from perhaps various terms about reparations and damages, no territory exchanged hands, and it all seemed to be a waste of lives.

All it really did was set up the Klavostani itch for payback and Round 2 during the Second Great War.

Could we push the start back to the 30th? I got a major conference on 24th-29th so I don't have time on the 28th.

As for the UN, I wanted to have my chancellor Fisher suggest it at the start of the game as one of the parts of his big introduction speech of his second year in Government.

EDIT:

Siege wrote:Frankly I'd rather see more PCs stepping up to admitting having done bad things in the past. Thanas designated the Britonians the Loser Bad Guys of our WW2 equivalent. And that's fine. But now it's starting to look like Britonia/Nippon were the only terrible people around in the 1st half of the 20th century. Everybody else was their aggrieved victim.

Rheinland could have done some nasty things in the past, but I wonder which nation it could have done them to. As I hinted at in the history thread, some of the insulting nicknames of Rheinland are "bloody mongers" and "merchants of death", so maybe we sent the Likedeeler/Landsknechts to some nations to make them agree to some demands in the past, or sold massive quantities of weapons to dictators for use on their own people?

That's cool Thanas, you go ahead and announce it, it would have more weight from you anyway.But Orion will support it.

In fact, could we say that it was an idea that Orion and Rheinland had been discussing for a a few months before game start?