Cold War Comments Thread

[Kurt (OP)]

I am busily working on the events taking place from month 186 to 195, but I have decided to implement some changes.  These changes shouldn't be a big deal, at least not from the reader's perspective, but are taking some time to work out behind the scenes.  Firstly, I decided to change the campaign setting that deals with how SA tracks missiles.  When I started the campaign, I couldn't really remember the difference between the two options SA gives you when you start out, so I decided not to use the missile fund.  For those of you that don't know, Starfire uses something called a missile fund and a fighter fund to track munitions carried on the various ships in each fleet.  Its an abstract system designed to make it easier to deal with the thousands of missiles and other carried munitions that even a moderately sized fleet carries.  The empire maintains a fund that is the sum total of the averaged cost of all of the contents in the magazines of the fleet units, and if the number of magazines grows the owner has to pay into the fund, or the number of missiles in each magazine will shrink to cover the expansion.  Basically.  SA offers an alternative, though.  Because it is an automated tool, it offers a second option where it tracks all munitions in all magazines.  When a ship is built SA automatically schedules a build order for the munitions to go in its magazines, and if the number of missiles in a magazine is lower than the standard set level, if for instance some were expended in battle, then SA will schedule another build order to replace those munitions. 

The second choice, tracking all of the munitions, was the option I selected at the start, and it worked well enough.  However, the campaign has grown enough that it has become cumbersome, so I've switched over to the missile and fighter funds.  This has had unexpected effects.  For the races that have anti-matter weapons, the values of these funds have swelled, and every turn the race has to pay 15% of the fund value to maintain it.  For pre-anti-matter races this isn't a big deal, but for those that have developed those weapons, the cost can rapidly become prohibitive.  For instance, the Mintek had to drastically adjust the contents of their magazines, because they couldn't afford the maintenance cost.  For the most part this hasn't been a big deal and shouldn't be noticeable moving forward.

The second change is that I've decided to activate the optional supply rules Steve added into SA not long before he moved on to begin developing Aurora.  I had only a vague memory of how this worked, so I decided against using these rules when I started, but I've always meant to figure them out and start using them at some point.  After some digging I found the explanation that Steve posted and activated the option, so moving forward I will be using these rules.  For those that don't know, Starfire ships have a maintenance requirement that must be paid every month.  If the ship is out of supply it will begin suffering maintenance failures and lose systems.  In the original rules, this is a very basic on-off situation.  Either a ship is in supply, or out of supply, based on whether the imperial freight network can reach the system where they are located.  Steve's rules add some complexity to this, and give the player some options to deal with supply situations.  Instead of being an all or nothing option, supply is now available throughout the player's empire based on how much production is in the system in question, and how close that system is to other productive systems.  A system in the core of your empire, surrounded by productive systems, will be able to support large fleets, while systems on the periphery won't be able to support much of a fleet at all.  This will force a player to plan ahead for offensives, as he must ensure that the offensive route can support the ships he intends to deploy.  The new rules give the player several tools to increase supply in a system - supply dumps and supply ships.  Supply dumps increase the supply capacity of systems that they are in, and in the surrounding systems.  Supply ships carry supplies that a fleet can draw upon if they are in a system that cannot support them, but those supplies had to have been paid for on a previous turn and loaded onto that supply ship. 

Kurt

[StarshipCactus]

With these latest developments in the Torqual government, the question arises. What can the Alliance do about this situation? Do they have the legal power to do anything? Should they do anything, or leave them to sort themselves out? Interfering in local politics can cause blowback, not just in the Torqual area, but other areas of the Alliance that see the Alliance giving itself the ability to be more heavy handed in interfering with local politics. If they leave them be, then political instability could leak out from the Torqual state and affect other states, including the Alliance itself. How the Alliance deals with this crisis could be very important to the future of the galaxy.

[Kurt (OP)]

With these latest developments in the Torqual government, the question arises. What can the Alliance do about this situation? Do they have the legal power to do anything? Should they do anything, or leave them to sort themselves out? Interfering in local politics can cause blowback, not just in the Torqual area, but other areas of the Alliance that see the Alliance giving itself the ability to be more heavy handed in interfering with local politics. If they leave them be, then political instability could leak out from the Torqual state and affect other states, including the Alliance itself. How the Alliance deals with this crisis could be very important to the future of the galaxy.

Legally, the Alliance government cannot interfere in the internal affairs of any state without an unanimous vote of the extended membership, which would include the Torqual representative.  This entire situation is the legacy of the early days of D'Bringi conquest that created the Alliance in the first place.  The Rehorish convinced the D'Bringi to give up indiscriminate conquest, and the smaller nations wanted assurances the bigger alliance members weren't going to meddle in their internal affairs. 

Even as this is happening there are high-level talks going on between the D'Bringi, T'Pau, and Rehorish members (the three full members).  The D'Bringi want to intervene, as they feel responsible for the situation as it currently stands, which is reasonable as they are responsible, but the T'Pau and the Rehorish are against it without a full vote. 

This evolving situation will stimulate discussion of change within the Alliance, to be sure.  The Alliance's strict rules about interfering are a result of the D'Bringi's previous acquisitive military adventurism, but they are all seeing the consequences of not being able to intervene when necessary. 

Kurt

[TheDOC]

Hmm, i wonder if the Torqual fleet will have to bombard the planet, one way or the other. I could see attempts at intimidating the admiral and its crew with the fate of their loved ones backfire spectacularly, tbh.

[Kurt (OP)]

I apologize for the lack of posts lately.  Real life has been stressful, for various reasons, and I haven't had a lot of time to write, and when I do have time I don't feel very creative. 

Things are changing, though, so I'm going to be working my way back into the campaign, and I'm hoping to begin posting again soon. 

Thanks

[nuclearslurpee]

Kurt, I've recently gotten current with this campaign and am looking forward to future updates eagerly. Of course, take as much time as necessary, on one hand real life must always take precedence unfortunately, and on the other hand great work can never be rushed. 

[Garfunkel]

Great updates. And as always, civil war is messy.

[nuclearslurpee]

Very exciting updates. I'm sure there was some roleplay involved, but even so the importance of a well-trained crew was starkly displayed in the space battle, with the incompetent revolutionaries barely able to hit the broad side of a space barn never mind a military target. Good to see some form of justice done in the end.

Are you RPing the ground war, or is there an exciting new system working behind the scenes that models logistics, cities, and the like?

[Kurt (OP)]

Very exciting updates. I'm sure there was some roleplay involved, but even so the importance of a well-trained crew was starkly displayed in the space battle, with the incompetent revolutionaries barely able to hit the broad side of a space barn never mind a military target. Good to see some form of justice done in the end.

Are you RPing the ground war, or is there an exciting new system working behind the scenes that models logistics, cities, and the like?

The ground war is completely role played, and I decided before the war started that the outcome would largely be based on who won the space battle.  If the Revolutionary Council managed to somehow stop the Free Fleet from returning, then they would have been able to regain control on the ground.  Conversely, if the Free Fleet whipped the Council's fleet, then they'd eventually be able to gain control of the surface. 

The battle was interesting.  The Council's forces slightly outnumbered and out-massed the Free Fleet.  Not enough to make a big difference, but still, its not good to be on the wrong side of that.  The difference in grades really made a big difference, though.  It became clear to me after the first two salvoes that the Council's forces were completely outmatched, which is why they crumbled like they did.  After all, they were supposed to have an advantage at long range, given that they had more missile launchers than the Free Fleet. 

This got me thinking, so I wrote up a comparison that I'll post in the story thread in a bit. 

Kurt

[misanthropope]

im sorry about going off-topic, but characterizing russia as having "hamstrung" its army is a little odd to me.  was there another armed force on earth that could have done what the russians did, at the moment they had to do it? one need not admire the methods of the russian leadership, but simple survival under unprecedented duress proves they weren't a pack of oafish Weberian straw men.

[nuclearslurpee]

Commenting in the correct thread:

im sorry about going off-topic, but characterizing russia as having "hamstrung" its army is a little odd to me.  was there another armed force on earth that could have done what the russians did, at the moment they had to do it? one need not admire the methods of the russian leadership, but simple survival under unprecedented duress proves they weren't a pack of oafish Weberian straw men.

I believe Kurt is referring to the state of the Red Army immediately prior to the start of Operation Barbarossa (or the Great Patriotic War, from the other side). This was not the successful and mature Red Army which won at Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin, but in 1941 the Red Army suffered a severe leadership deficit due to Stalin's purges which rather loosely mirrors the Torqual revolutionaries' situation in Kurt's recent updates. While it is somewhat open to debate what the actual impact of this was, and what might have been different had Stalin not carried out these purges, it is hard to argue that killing or firing the majority of your generals and a sizable fraction of the lower-ranking officers in a nation's army could not be described as "hamstringing" said army.

Certainly in the period of 1942-45, and even at times in 1941 such as at Moscow, the Red Army accomplished great things and was a premiere fighting force, but they surely did not start in a particularly enviable position.

[Kurt (OP)]

Commenting in the correct thread:

im sorry about going off-topic, but characterizing russia as having "hamstrung" its army is a little odd to me.  was there another armed force on earth that could have done what the russians did, at the moment they had to do it? one need not admire the methods of the russian leadership, but simple survival under unprecedented duress proves they weren't a pack of oafish Weberian straw men.

I believe Kurt is referring to the state of the Red Army immediately prior to the start of Operation Barbarossa (or the Great Patriotic War, from the other side). This was not the successful and mature Red Army which won at Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin, but in 1941 the Red Army suffered a severe leadership deficit due to Stalin's purges which rather loosely mirrors the Torqual revolutionaries' situation in Kurt's recent updates. While it is somewhat open to debate what the actual impact of this was, and what might have been different had Stalin not carried out these purges, it is hard to argue that killing or firing the majority of your generals and a sizable fraction of the lower-ranking officers in a nation's army could not be described as "hamstringing" said army.

Certainly in the period of 1942-45, and even at times in 1941 such as at Moscow, the Red Army accomplished great things and was a premiere fighting force, but they surely did not start in a particularly enviable position.

That is indeed what I meant.  Stalin thought he had years before the inevitable war with Germany would start, and was way more concerned about the possibility of a coup coming from the Army, so he instituted several purges that saw the Red Army's most senior and experienced officers killed or sent to the gulag, leaving inexperienced and often timid junior officers in command.  I believe this directly led to Germany's early successes, which saw huge masses of troops and equipment captured for little loss to Germany. 

However, Russia is probably the only nation on earth that could survive the early disasters that rocked the Red Army.  They had the territory to trade for time to reorganize, re-equip, and retrain their army.

Kurt

[Garfunkel]

Fun fact: Russia lost more of its territory (percentage wise and ignoring Siberia as that's meaningless) than France and kept going. That's the power of a totalitarian system compared to a democratic one.

As a military historian, I'll point out that the sorry state of the Workers and Peasants Red Army in 1941 was not only due to the Great Purge, though it did play a significant party. The Army also grew massively at the same time in preparation for the coming conflict with rest of Europe. So, at the time when officers were needed the most, Stalin got rid of a large proportion of them, and especially the most experienced ones, with few exceptions. This is the main reason for the abysmal performance of the Red Army in the Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940.

However, what is often forgotten, is that only a small percentage of those officers were executed. Vast majority of them were sent to gulags and once Germany invaded, they were rehabilitated, released and sent to the frontlines to command units. This certainly helped Red Army to bounce back and to learn as an institution from the catastrophes of 1941 and the mistakes of 1942 and 1943. Red Army of 1944/1945 is an entirely different beast than what it was before, whether you look at organization, leadership, equipment, or firepower.

[Black]

Poor Bedu, they will get in lot of trouble very fast. They got some time by intercepting the courier probe, but it is only matter of time before another Mintek freighter arrives in system. I believe we never got the report on Bedu fleet, only on their tech level? This is most likely great for Mintek as they can now justify the conquest and they can continue to lie to themselves that they are not the bad guys in this.

[Paul M]

I hope things are returning to normal for you Kurt.  You're comments on the effect of elite crews are smack on, the combination of elite crew fighting poor/green just makes it all the worse.  The effect of the crew grade is a massive shift, in missile combat in particular it is a huge edge.  At range 13 they stop missing, and their base 9 point defence number tips missile combat in an ugly direction.  The fact the ships they were fighting had little active missile defences meant that they suffered disproportionately in missile combat and they had superior close range ships with again a +2 to hit so out to 8 hexes they don't miss and out to 13 they basically don't miss.   Add in the malus on the other side and the battle tips heavily in their favour.  Starslayer and I have seen the effect of elite crews in a few battles.

As far as the 1941 red army is concerned...when I first read about the initial phases of Barbarossa in the 1970s the purge figured prominently in why they suffered so badly but modern scholarship points out that other countries also sacked large numbers of officers, and as Garfunkel said the bulk were not killed in the purge, but were available to be recalled.  The biggest effect was it paralysed reactions and killed initiative.  But the biggest contribution to what happened was the fact the red army was going through a transition and equipment/training/experience was either lacking, or was not functional.  Something like only 1/3 of the tanks ran, ammunition for front line units was low, etc.  Then the Germans overran the command and control network which promptly broke down.  Add in that Stalin ordered counter attacks that wasted massive amounts of equipment and trained troops.  Basically only the fact the soviets could trade space for time and the logistics nightmare invading the soviet union was for the germans saved them.  There are very few nations on this planet that could have survived the first months of Barbarossa.  France in 1940 isn't comparable.  The French never had the time to recover and basically they lacked Stalin...the government they had was all but dysfunctional.  Plus it is hard to hold river lines when the bridges are available to the enemy as the cities they are located in have just been declared "free cities."  I have a great book  "military misfortunes" (Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch) and France 1940 is a case of catastrophic failure caused by (looking only at the highest command level): a perception all future battles would be methodical, a false idea where the battle would be fought, poor positioning of reserves and a lack of air support.   Failures of Learning, Anticipation, and Adaption basically occurred at every command level and well that is as sure a recipe of disaster as you can get.   I would say the red army suffered much the same thing...but they bought the time to learn, adapt and finally to anticipate.