Oh, and moving cities and changing jobs, those also took a little bit of my time.

Given your recent entry to the ranks of folks called "Doctor", I'm glad to hear you've successfully found a job. The market these days is not the best. Hope it is a good one, too!

Luna equipment would follow its own nomenclature, which confusingly meant that M1 was now the name of a shovel, a helmet, a carbine, an old armoured car, a tank prototype, a series of tractors, a field howitzer, a heavy anti-aircraft gun, an aircraft gun, a light anti-aircraft gun, a tank gun, a bayonet, a chemical mine, a flamethrower, a hand grenade, a rifle, a mortar, a Bazooka, a submachine gun, but now also meant the ultra-light carbine that used caseless ammo to prevent Lunar dust from jamming its mechanism and its Duranium coated body could withstand the extreme temperature swings between Lunar day and night. Or so its designers claimed.

"If we don't know what we're wielding, the enemy sure won't!" --some American general c.1956, probably

the M8 all-terrain vehicle for logistics purposes.

The M8A1 Tactical Resupply Utility Carrier Kit. 

Honestly I can't believe the U.S. Army hasn't come up with this one yet...

the M7 anti-air machine gun
[...]
Against the Red Air Force, if it ever appeared on Luna, the mechanized columns would be protected by the M16 HMG, which was just the M7 placed on a Luna-qualified trike, and the M17 Air Defence Vehicle, carrying a short-range surface-to-air missile.
[...]
The M21 Air Defence Vehicle was truly a behemoth, being the largest combat vehicle that the Americans were planning to build and it carried both missiles and heavy AA guns, able to cover an entire formation against flying threats. The fact that the Soviets had not demonstrated such capability had not deterred American engineers.

Should I take this to imply that there will be mucking about with ground support fighters at some point in the campaign? Or are the AA units purely for roleplay purposes?

I usually can't bring myself to use AA even for roleplay purposes, it is simply too wasteful for me... but in some campaigns I have used, e.g., small Gauss turrets to represent AA elements as these have some minimal practical use despite the heinous expense involved.

If they had known the maintenance problems that the CCCP KOSMOS was struggling with, they might not have been quite so worried. Production of mines had been halted by the Kreml and a new crash build of maintenance facilities was prioritized. This program was completed on the last days of December and allowed Kreml order the construction of 10 Krivak-M10B1 fighters.

Given that the initial outlay of 5,000 tons supported is quite generous until survey ships start going up, the Soviets do seem to have seriously overbuilt their space forces here. Although given the general Soviet policy of preparing to utterly dominate a war and then failing to declare it, this is at least on-brand.

I note a general lack throughout this update of snazzy OOB graphics, while I would not fault an authAAR for such an omission it is a clear mark of taste and elegance borne by only the very best AARs thus such graphics would come highly recommended. 

How'd you manage to get the 5,000-ton army regiments up to Luna? Last time I used fighter shuttles to move some Xeno equipment I ended up having to break the unit down into individual trucks - the 10 shuttle squad couldn't pick up the 10 trucks all at once; it could only pick up 10 individual trucks.

I created five different 250-ton formations, built a bunch of each, then used the shuttles to move them over and finally merged them together into those five regiments you see. Because the numbers did not match perfectly, I did not use the replacement template system but I think I'll try it with the Americans.

This seems ominous as it hints to some darker force behind Stalin's apparent good health...

Oh dear, what could it be? 

But then how will the Chinese get screwed over again, as is tradition?

I'm not sure if this campaign will last long enough for China to join in but we can hope that the tradition continues 

And what is the US doing to counter this threat? Pretty soon it will not matter if the Soviets keep their agreement not to engage in ground combat if they can just kinetic-strike the West into dust unopposed! 

Ask and ye shall receive!

---

1955

Thanks to Rocketdyne developing a new engine that is far more fuel efficient than the F-3, USA begins construction of the Gemini class:
Gemini class Recon Craft      500 tons       10 Crew       52.4 BP       TCS 10    TH 2    EM 0
200 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 3      Sensors 18/18/0/0      DCR 0-0      PPV 0
Maint Life 2.14 Years     MSP 6    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 2    5YR 26    Max Repair 18 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Morale Check Required   

Rocketdyne C-110/9 Engine F-2 (1)    Power 2    Fuel Use 201.25%    Signature 2    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 33,200 Litres    Range 5.9 billion km (343 days at full power)

Raytheon AN/AAR-1 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  33.5m km
Raytheon AN/ACR-2 (1)     Sensitivity 18     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  33.5m km

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a Scout for auto-assignment purposes
Pentagon wants a shuttle that can covertly monitor Soviet vessels and emissions, thus the Gemini which carries sensitive thermal and electromagnetic receivers, able to detect engines or other sensors from millions of kilometres away. Americans also managed to bring a new research lab online before constructing another new class, the Dionysus:
Dionysus class Early Warning Craft      500 tons       8 Crew       88.4 BP       TCS 10    TH 2    EM 0
200 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0-0      PPV 0
Maint Life 1.36 Years     MSP 11    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 6    5YR 96    Max Repair 72 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 15 days    Morale Check Required   

Rocketdyne C-110/9 Engine F-2 (1)    Power 2    Fuel Use 201.25%    Signature 2    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 33,200 Litres    Range 5.9 billion km (343 days at full power)

Raytheon AN/APY-3 (1)     GPS 720     Range 25.3m km    Resolution 10

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a Scout for auto-assignment purposes
The large Raytheon AN/APY-3 gravitational radar system utilizes never-before-seen TN-technologies combined with terrestrial radar system, allowing the Dionysus to observer a huge area of space around itself, ensuring that the Soviets could never surprise them. Not so incidentally, the shuttle is capable of sharing targeting data for other space craft if necessary. Both Soviets and the Americans construct bona fide spaceports - the former at Baikonur, the latter at Cape Canaveral. As form follows function, both sites are surprisingly similar with dozens of shuttle pads, fuel tank farms, hangars and warehouses, and traffic control towers, not forgetting the armed security guards at the gates. In October, the deposits of Gallicite run out on Earth, though all three powers have ample stockpiles of it available to them.


American space assets at the end of the year. TS = transport shuttle, SCT = shuttlecraft, RS = rescue shuttle, SEC = security shuttle, AEW = early warning craft, RC = recon craft, GES = geological survey craft.

How'd you manage to get the 5,000-ton army regiments up to Luna? Last time I used fighter shuttles to move some Xeno equipment I ended up having to break the unit down into individual trucks - the 10 shuttle squad couldn't pick up the 10 trucks all at once; it could only pick up 10 individual trucks.

The joining of the British (and friends) should be exciting, if nothing else there is a force in play which should, in principle, counterbalance Soviet aggression but will probably in practice annoy the Americans by refusing to do as told. 

Speaking of Soviet aggression, they really do seem to be set up in a position where they could handily 'win' the game if they felt like it, since right now they have all of the space-based military assets. Are there some measures in place which would restrain such an action? Particularly in this strange new post-VB6 world in which we lack PDCs...

Have no fear, the hubris will inflate and expand once 2.5.1 is here as Steve confirmed that the fighter cargo bug will be fixed with just an exe change. So this campaign will resume then!

I see the campaign is resumed so I suppose the bug is fixed? 

Have no fear, the hubris will inflate and expand once 2.5.1 is here as Steve confirmed that the fighter cargo bug will be fixed with just an exe change. So this campaign will resume then!

Luna minerals were SM'd in. It was originally empty but I want to have some tensions over control of it early on so I had to change that. That Ohio thing is an homage to the fact that more astronauts are from Ohio than any other state which is a surprising but mysterious fact. For Progress, blame the actual Soviets for originally naming it that way! And yes, multiple geological survey ships can work together in the same Fleet to combine their points when surveying a single body. If you're using standing orders, the surveyors avoid each other, I guess to avoid wasteful traveling between bodies.

Anyway, this campaign is on hiatus until the cargo bug with fighters is resolved - I could use SM to temporarily overcome it but eventually it'll become too much of a hassle so I don't want to get committed if the fix requires a DB change.

1949

On 4th June, the Soviet Union triumphantly announced the launch of Vostok-1 , the first human space shuttle. With a crew of nine kosmonauts and commanded by Kapitan tret'yego ranga Anatoliy Denisov, the goal of the Vostok program was first to put a Soviet citizen in space and then on the Moon while simultaneously performing important scientific work.

Vostok class Geological Survey Shuttle      500 tons       9 Crew       67.3 BP       TCS 10    TH 2    EM 0
200 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 3      Sensors 0/0/0/0.2      DCR 0-0      PPV 0
Maint Life 1.55 Years     MSP 8    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 4    5YR 57    Max Repair 50 MSP
Kapitan tret'yego ranga    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Morale Check Required   

Glushko RD-101 (1)    Power 2.0    Fuel Use 201.25%    Signature 2.00    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 59,800 Litres    Range 10.7 billion km (619 days at full power)

Conventional Geological Survey Sensors (1)   0.2 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a Survey Ship for auto-assignment purposes

Thanks to the incredible energy density of Sorium, the Glushko RD-101 rocket engine could propel the shuttle to the Moon in mere 32 minutes despite being made out of conventional materials. Its lifesupport system was rated for whole 30 days, ensuring that it could fully survey Luna for TN-minerals without having to return to restock air, food and other supplies.



Captain Denisov became the first human to step on the surface of Luna, planting the red-and-gold CCCP flag and uttering the historical words: "One small step for man, one giant leap for socialism!" as he did so. Shockwaves reverberated through all countries but especially in Washington DC, where President Truman announced the creation of National Aerospace and Space Administration to coordinate the American effort in space to ensure that the United States would regain the lead. In London, the Labour government came under heavy public pressure to enter the so-called 'space race' as the tabloids were calling it and in Paris, debate raged whether France should focus on propping up its crumbling empire or switch its attention to space as well. What Moscow desperately wanted to keep out of the public eye was the fat that it took Vostok-1 over three months to survey Luna. To ensure this, the shuttle was not allowed to return to Earth. It's nine-man crew, haggard and starving, finally landed at Baikonur on 5th September and were rushed to receive medical care and badly needed haircuts before the inevitable public parades would begin.

In October, Vostok-2 was launched from Baikonur. It was powered by the improved Glushko RD-102 rocket engine, making it 50 km/s faster than its predecessor. Both shuttles flew together back to Luna for further 'scientific research' as Moscow announced it. Captain Evgenia Sorokin, commanding Vostok-2, became the first woman to step on Lunar surface. In November, Moscow announced that Luna held all 11 TN-minerals and that they were all easily accessible albeit in much smaller numbers that on Earth. This seemed to confirm the hypothesis of some planetary scientists that the Moon, larger as it was than most moons in the system, was a fragment of Earth itself and had been formed in a gigantic collision between proto-Earth and some other, unknown planetoid. To cements its reputation, the Soviet Union announced that it would freely share all scientific data it had gathered with the world. American scientists later commented that the data had very obviously been sanitized to ensure that the Soviets would have an advantage for any future mining or colonization projects. Such complaints were labelled as 'degenerate capitalist whining' and promptly ignored by Moscow. Once again, the Vostok shuttles had went beyond the limits of their nominal life-support limits, and once again Moscow carefully kept this a secret. But in Baikonur, the leadership of the Soviet space program acknowledged that the design was incapable of further survey work and would be repurposed.

1950

February brought long-waited relief to the Americans as Mercury One was launched. While the public was told an inspiring story of engineers burning the midnight oil to go beyond the human limits in building this shuttle, the truth was that most of its components had been researched already and it was the creation of NASA that enabled the various military programs to be merged with civilian industries. The result was impressive:

Mercury class Geological Survey Shuttle      500 tons       10 Crew       116.4 BP       TCS 10    TH 4    EM 0
375 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 0/0/0/1      DCR 0-0      PPV 0
Maint Life 1.44 Years     MSP 14    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 7    5YR 111    Max Repair 100 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 1 months    Morale Check Required   

Rocketdyne C-125/9 Engine F-3 (1)    Power 3.8    Fuel Use 287.05%    Signature 3.75    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 33,200 Litres    Range 4.2 billion km (128 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a Survey Ship for auto-assignment purposes
Lieutenant-Commander Jarod Blissett from Ohio became the first American to step on Lunar surface after a flight of only 17 minutes thanks to the capable Rocketdyne C-125/9 rocket engine. Furthermore, thanks to its more capable survey sensors, the Americans announced that their survey was completed in mere two weeks. After four days of celebrations back home, the shuttle relaunched, this time at Mars. On 23rd February, the ten astronauts stepped on the Red Planet, finally writing a historical record first for the USA. Only gray cloud on the sky for NASA was that Mars only had Tritanium, Uridium and Gallicite, though all three were present in large quantities.

To further drive home the message of American superiority, on 17th May Mercury One completed the survey of Venus. Due to the hellish conditions on the planet, this time the shuttle did not land.   The mission had seriously taxed the life-support capacity of Mercury One. NASA thus decided to build more Mercury shuttles, to ensure faster surveying of other bodies as it was not deemed practical to extend the deployment time. Venus was discovered to be very poor with minerals with only five types present and all at minimal accessibility. Though the amount of Gallicite was massive, over 23 million tons. How humans could ever mine it was a mystery to be solved in the future.

On 25th June, the Soviet created Democratic People's Republic of Korea invaded Republic of Korea, its southern neighbour, announcing that the 'lapdogs of capitalist imperialists' were not democratic enough. Initially, the invasion went swimmingly for them as their Soviet-supplied armaments were an order of magnitude strongers than what the US had left behind in South-Korea. But the rest of the world did not sit idly by. Americans especially rushed troops and equipment over. The biggest impact was made by the brand new B-29L Superfortress, an experimental aircraft that replaced its entire bomb load with an infrared laser. Not only was it incredibly accurate as the bomber/gunner could hit anything he could see the same instant, its destructive power was sufficient to outright destroy any tank, vehicle, artillery piece or a command post it targeted. By end of the year, as more and more B-29Ls arrived in Korea, the Communist North found itself in an impossible situation, capable of moving only light forces and only at night, making it possible for the United Nations forces to regain lost territory and eventually enter North-Korea itself. This led to a massive surge in Soviet aid to the DPRK, including Soviet pilots flying the new MiG-15 jet fighter which posed a grave threat to the American bombers, meaning that more and more American fighters were needed to escort the vulnerable Superfortresses. With more and more Chinese 'volunteers' bolstering the diminished North manpower, the war stagnated as both sides re-evaluated their objectives. Both Moscow and Washington realized that space would be the ultimate high ground once TN-based weaponry matured and the so-far peaceful space programs started to transform into militaristic ones.

But first, there were more peaceful developments. In September, USSR launched the first Progress class shuttlecraft:

Progress class Shuttlecraft      500 tons       3 Crew       16.9 BP       TCS 10    TH 3    EM 0
250 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0-0      PPV 0
Maint Life 3.79 Years     MSP 2    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 0    5YR 3    Max Repair 5 MSP
Cargo 250   
Kapitan tret'yego ranga    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 6 days    Morale Check Required   

Glushko RD-102 (1)    Power 2.5    Fuel Use 351.56%    Signature 2.50    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 68,800 Litres    Range 7 billion km (326 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a Freighter for auto-assignment purposes

Moscow announced that it was a research support craft but Washington doubted this claim since the two Vostok class shuttles had not done anything since their return from Luna and that inactivity continued.

In November, NASA gained Mercury Two and the two shuttles were sent together to survey their namesake planet, completed by 20th November. In December, the first Ares class transport shuttle was launched:

Ares class Troop Shuttle      496 tons       3 Crew       20.8 BP       TCS 10    TH 4    EM 0
378 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0-0      PPV 0
Maint Life 2.00 Years     MSP 2    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 1    5YR 10    Max Repair 6 MSP
Troop Capacity 250 tons     
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 15 days    Morale Check Required   

Rocketdyne C-125/9 Engine F-3 (1)    Power 3.8    Fuel Use 287.05%    Signature 3.75    Explosion 12%
Fuel Capacity 38,200 Litres    Range 4.8 billion km (147 days at full power)

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a Troop Transport for auto-assignment purposes

Though it did not have any troops to carry yet as Pentagon was still debating what form the American Lunar Garrison should take. Also in December, the Soviets launched their sixth Progress shuttlecraft.