Previous: Last thread an user mentioned some sort of alternate history setting where Scandinavia was unified and a world power in the 20s. To improve Veeky Forums-related discussion in the thread, I would like to hear more.
Well, it looks like that user is gone, probably for the night, but I'll try and collate the info(and bump the thread):
Scandinavia was united about a thousand years ago and currently controls Iceland, Greenland and Canada, plus treaty ports in Asia and Africa. Total population 20-25 million in Europe(they eat a lot of fish), 8 million in Canada. Or maybe they call it Vinland in this timeline. It has a dominant position in the Baltic but no actual holdings on the southern coast outside of Denmark. Produces large quantities of steel and fish and thanks to authorial fiat they've already begun exploiting Norway's offshore oil fields(IRL they were only discovered in the sixties).
There have been discussions about the navy being divided(either de jure or just de facto) into the brown-water coastal defense and the blue-water oceangoing navies, not because it's a smart idea but because it makes the internal politics more interesting. They'd probably have plenty of coastal defense forces anyway, not just because they have a lot of coastline and rely on the sea a lot, but also to maintain their control of the Baltic as their Mare Nostrum.
Other than that, their relatively small population compared to their rivals means they have to rely on qualitative superiority, and their navy is probably well funded. Their ships prioritize seakeeping ability because their home field is the north atlantic, and possibly one expression of their focus on quality would be using higher-caliber guns with higher muzzle velocity instead of making them bigger, saving all-important weight but increasing wear and tear and increasing inaccuracy via increased shot dispersion. Also, another possible side effect of operating primarily in the north atlantic is a disinterest in naval aviation, relegating the airforce to land bases(at least until carriers become the hot new thing).
Dominic Lopez
I looked it over and it's pretty much a stereotypical "Babbies First Alternate History". At AH dot com it would garner little more than chuckles and head pats.
Some of the silly stuff includes: - Drilling for North Sea oil with 1920s tech - A need to import "rare earths" for 1920s tech - Not!Scandinavia developing naval artillery with longer ranges despite constant references to bad weather and consequent poor visibility levels. - Still owns Canada despite the fact that stronger European naval powers exist and have existed.
Anthony Morales
>At AH dot com it would garner little more than chuckles and head pats.
eh, AH.com's level of autism isn't really something to be proud of.
William Fisher
Amagi and Akagi would have been pretty sexy.
Austin Hernandez
>eh, AH.com's level of autism isn't really something to be proud of.
Neither is that timeline.
I know you kiddies throw the "autism" tag around a lot because more of you were misdiagnosed with it during your school years, but taking pains to work through a timeline's "butterflies" is an important part of crafting any timeline. While you might find that "autistic", others find it realistic.
If you're not honestly following the consequences of the changes you've made and if you're regularly employing anachronisms, you're not doing your own ideas justice.
If you can't be bothered to do that, why should anyone else care?
David Anderson
Speaking of AH: Domination of Draka RtW mod when?
Ayden Hernandez
And it hasn't occurred to you that you might be looking at a work in progress that will be receiving correction and ref--waaait a minute.
>dropping out of nowhere solely to shit on something in discussion >attempts to sound smug and erudite that fail due to a generally shitty, spastic attitude
Ah, it's *you*. Never mind.
Christopher Howard
Oh good fucking lord. Lemme guess, cruise missiles and rapid-fire autoloaders for main armament in the 1940s.
Michael Thomas
Playing RtW with the French, poor buggers seem to have a hard time, took me a while to bully the med, despite going big on battleships for blockading power. By the time that was done the boxheads had double my budget despite the victory and they were itching for a scrap, my naval modernising crawling along despite some aggressive scrapping.
Xavier Morales
The way Stirling wrote them, the Draka weren't much of a naval power were they? Which makes as sense as the rest of that cringe-worthy mess does.
They grabbed Egypt & North Africa during the Napoleonic Wars and did so from their colony in South Africa. That simply had to be done by sea. They also grabbed Madagascar plus Ceylon/Sri Lanka early on.
It doesn't matter how much earlier they developed steam engines or "tamed" the African interior, at the very least coastal shipping in the Med and IO should have been important to them.
James Wilson
>Lemme guess, cruise missiles and rapid-fire autoloaders for main armament in the 1940s.
At the very least. IIRC, the US nukes Truk in the Draka's version of WW2 with a pair of teleguided cruise missiles. At the start of the war, the IJN also catches the USN carriers in port.
It's been quite some time since I read "Marching Through Georgia" but ISTR mentions of fuel cell subs and cargo subs on the naval side. Of course, Stirling has the Germans fighting in his 1942 with what is pretty much their historical kit while the Draka ground forces are using stuff from our 50s & 60s. As with zeppelins, widespread & long term tech disparities like that are another hallmark of poor alternate history.
Christian Gomez
The weirdest thing about Drakaverse to me was how many things still had to happen as they did in reality, like the IJN still catching the USN unaware to start the war, or the Nazis still doing their shit at the same time as the Draka.
Jaxon Williams
>The weirdest thing about Drakaverse to me was how many things still had to happen as they did in reality
Truth (and history) is stranger than fiction which means it's full of good stuff you can borrow.
To me the weirdest part of the Drakaverse, apart from Stirling's various sexual fetishes, is how the presence and example of the Draka doesn't really effect the rest of the world. I mentioned earlier about how the Germans in "Marching Through Georgia" are carrying Gewehr 98 rifles and using much the same tanks they used historically while the Draka have assault rifles and Centurions/Conquerors. The idea that progress by the Draka wouldn't spur similar progress by the other powers is laughable.
Of course the idea that an AIW POD would still see a WW1 fought between the same lineups and between the same years is laughable too. As is the idea that the Congress of Vienna would grant the whole of Africa to the UK/Draka despite the presence of various European holdings there from the 1500s onward.
Isaiah Smith
>Of course the idea that an AIW POD would still see a WW1 fought between the same lineups and between the same years is laughable too. As is the idea that the Congress of Vienna would grant the whole of Africa to the UK/Draka despite the presence of various European holdings there from the 1500s onward.
Don't forget the idea that the UK or anyone else would buy the Draka "it's not *slavery*, it's *serfdom*!" excuse for one second.
Landon Price
>Never heard of this Draka stuff >Have to go look it up Yup, more horrible wank and I can safely avoid reading.
Jackson Torres
Another good point. Emancipation as an important part of various religious beliefs existed before Stirling's POD and would lead to the UK abolishing slavery empire-wide within a few decades of that POD. The UK also began a decades long naval & diplomatic campaign to suppress the slave trade along the west and east African coasts while also pressuring European power to stop trading. Part of the various post-Napoleonic treaties which settled Europe after 1815 included slave trading prohibitions at the UK's insistence.
Why a few tens of thousands of refugees in South Africa would change such a deeply rooted social movement so that it accepts the "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" you mentioned is something Stirling never tries to explain.
Aaron Morales
It is indeed horrible wank, but I can say that it is *fascinatingly* horrible at least.
Easton Rivera
The Washington Naval Treaty and London Naval Treaty make me furious beyond anything else I've ever known.
Gavin Martinez
>Yup, more horrible wank and I can safely avoid reading.
Glad we were able to tip you off. It's fucking wretched.
Adrian Perez
>The Washington Naval Treaty and London Naval Treaty make me furious beyond anything else I've ever known.
Why user?
Andrew Clark
All the designs that were cancelled and how everything could have been bigger.
Wyatt Young
I could point out that every dollar spent on war is a dollar not spent to feed a hungry mouth, but that'd be a misrepresentation of reality, because in truth there is already enough food for all the hungry mouths in the world and the real problem is that it's not profitable to feed all of them, while warmongering IS profitable and indeed the destruction unleashed by war sends the rate of profit soaring during the reconstruction.
Or I could talk about how warships are cool, which they most definitely are.
Levi Price
>All the designs that were cancelled and how everything could have been bigger.
So, right after WW1 the nations involved should have built ships and kicked off an arms race that would have bankrupted them? Just because someone a century later thinks the designs were "cool"?
Okay.
David Taylor
Yes.
Jaxson Moore
Meh, I appreciate the weirdness of some of the designs brought about by the treaties. It's interesting to try to follow the processes and pressures that brought about specific decisions.
Robert Nelson
A quick question for the more military inclined
Were subs (WW2 Era) used in big naval battles alongside regular ships, or are they used mostly as means of disruption of the enemies´supplies and as a sort of skirmishers?
Elijah Johnson
For big battles, subs would generally be lurking on the edges acting as scouts and harrasment.
Before battle is joined, a sub could shadow enemy surface assets to give friendly forces intel about where they were.
After a major surface action, subs could be very effective at sinking damaged ships on their way back home.
Parker Rivera
Japan had the idea to use large fleet subs as part of fleet actions for "Muh Decisive Battle," and true to form failed to do so for the most part. Everybody else more or less used them as secondary combatants, raiders, and scouts.
Kevin Brooks
>Were subs (WW2 Era) used in big naval battles alongside regular ships
No, not in the slightest. While subs were present during a few gun and/or air battles between surface ships, the subs' activities were not coordinated with those gun and/or air attacks.
For example, during the Battle of the Philippine Sea the IJN lost two carriers to US subs. The attacks those subs made, however, were not in any way coordinated with the air attacks USN carriers were making on the same ships. The subs in question had spotted, reported, and trailed the IJN formations hoping to make attacks when and if the opportunity presented itself.
>>or are they used mostly as means of disruption of the enemies´supplies and as a sort of skirmishers?
Yes, very much so. Subs were skirmishers, pickets, and - most importantly - snipers. With varying degrees of success, all the powers sent subs to skulk off their enemies' bases and lines of communications to lay mines, report movements, and hopefully snipe at the occasional ship.
Many powers, especially in WW1, toyed with the idea of producing what was then called a "fleet" submarine, that is a sub which was fast enough to deploy with the surface battlefleet and then submerge to attack the enemy battlefleet. Rumors of German projects actually caused the UK to build a series of steam powered subs which were noteworthy for little other than killing their crews.
Caleb Watson
Hey Im new to nwg, I wanted to get a naval wargame to play with my Dad who is retired from the navy. Is there a decent wargame that I can buy a set of easily in a single box so we can start playing right out of the box?
bonus points to anyone who can ID the nation or name of this ship
Xavier Thomas
user, the Albacore and Cavalla were both under the direct command of the admiral aboard the USS Lexington, they reported everything back to him, were expected to call targets for the battle fleet, and were given the attack order from him; in fact, the entire Special Submarine Mission assigned to the Task Force that day was used like that - and that's according to the US Naval Institute's record of submarine warfare (1938-1946). In other words, you're wrong, in order to say no you picked for an example the one instance of the US saying yes.
Anthony Turner
Looks like LE Samuel Beckett.
Connor Perry
Hey nice one, you get a cookie but also can you help me out with finding a game?
Zachary Young
While I can't help you on your request, that's the LÉ Samuel Beckett of Ireland.
William Evans
Dammit, late. Need to refresh the page next time.
William Fisher
Well do you have any sort of period in mind? We've got quite a bit of rule sets in the OP you can look through, but if you help us narrow down what you're interested in, we can point you better.
Charles Peterson
Ill admit the setting is a massive WIP right now, but im open to criticism, however I posted in this thread for answers to naval questions not to create a perfectly accurate AH.
Christian Wood
The key word in my post, user, was the word "coordinated".
While Albacore and Cavalla were under the command of Lexington and were scouting for him, they did not conduct torpedo attacks in direct coordination with the air strikes. They were part of the battle, indeed part of the TFs launching air strikes, but they weren't making their own torpedo attack as part of those air strikes. It wasn't a case of the 2 subs being told that "Dive bombers attack @1830, so make torpedo attacks @1830"
Putting it another way, the orders they received weren't to attack "now" but instead were orders allowing them to attack when they saw fit.
When asked about "naval battles alongside regular ships" I took the word "alongside" to mean coordinated attacks and not attacks made in conjunction. As you know, the problem with coordinated attacks is one of communications. A sub isn't going to be skulking around an enemy task force with it's radio mast raised in order to receive the kind of immediate orders a coordinated attack requires.
>In other words, you're wrong.
No, I'm right just in a way you didn't understand. I was addressing the question as asked.
Brandon Cooper
Era? Type? Easy? Hard? Groggy? Etc. etc. etc.?
Do you want to use figures? Cards? Hex maps and chits?
There are hundreds of games we can recommend so we'll need to know more about what you both will find interesting.
Carter Hill
>Ill admit the setting is a massive WIP right now, but im open to criticism, however I posted in this thread for answers to naval questions not to create a perfectly accurate AH.
You'll get much more help at AH dot com and help with your naval questions too. There are far more naval enthusiasts there then ever post here and they'll be able to post longer, more detailed answers, rebuttals, and explanations too.
A word of warning though, if your idea is little more than "It's 1920, Scandinavia has been united for 1000 years, owns Canada, and everything else is the same" the timeline will not be well received. A Scandinavia unified circa 920 will have profound effects on first Europe and then the world.
Samuel Morgan
The setting does indeed expand past what has been outlined in this thread. However I deemed those points irrelevant and off topic for the discussion at hand. I do thank you for your input and direction to AH dot com
Noah Stewart
>I do thank you for your input and direction to AH dot com
You'll get better help there. Not because the posters are better, but because the posts themselves can be better. The character limit here precludes any real discussions.
Aaron Russell
user, you're being pedantic, and according to this you didn't even answer the original user's question - you moved the damn goalposts so you could stroke your ego. The correct answer to his question is simple: "Yes, it happened, but extremely rarely."
What happened at the Battle of the Philippine Sea was THE DEFINITION of Submarines fighting alongside regular ships as part of the battle fleet, which the user asked if happened. By definition, it did. In fact, it's the only recorded time it's actually happened for the US - who had actually been planning for that type of thing from the get go (FLEET Submarines were meant to act as part of the Battle FLEET). You're instead, according to this, moving the goalposts to something nobody asked about and demanding coordinated X do Y at Z time actions between multiple lines of ships. Newsflash, that mostly stopped happening in WW1, barring some few instances (particularly with the British). Even Surigano Straight wasn't that well coordinated and instead relied on ranges. Part of the Paradigm Shift that happened between the wars was the shift from centralized Grand Fleet action to decentralized Sub-Unit action. They didn't coordinate everything with the flagship anymore in a micro-managed clockwork machine, they instead relied on training and knowing your allies. There were few 'X ship do Y at Z time' occurrences, it was 'All ships, away' and 'Happy hunting, boys.'
To put it in another way: >No, I'm right No, you're wrong. >I was addressing the question as asked. No, you didn't.
Joshua Harris
Oh modern for sure or at the earliest ww2
Parker Stewart
Just something that I can teach my dad within an evening and preferably modern, and something I can buy in a single box
Xavier Fisher
Maybe NWS' Modern Naval Conflicts: 1970s could be up your alley.
Liam Smith
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Levi Hughes
Why would the HUEs opt for wing turrets instead of secondaries?
Wyatt Reyes
The Minas Geraes class was designed during the dawn of the dreadnought, when wing turrets were still considered optimal.
Jacob Gomez
But they already have superfiring main armament, and I can see a few smaller guns in casemates below the upper turrets...were 4 extra guns (of which only two can contribute to a broadside) REALLY worth it? The engineers weren't idiots, they knew how much it would mess with everything else...
Elijah Williams
This class started out with 22 4.7" guns as secondary battery. Five of them were removed during a refit in the 20s, the rest are pretty hard to find on this picture due to all the sailors standing around them.
Joshua Young
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Lucas Martinez
Having another crack at the French, might try and circumvent AH and push hard for war with Italy for war number 1. currently attempting to make an outrageous looking predread, but little in that regard can best reality.
Bentley Cruz
Designing a coast defence battleship now, probably only be a class of two, but I feel the extra battleship tonnage might be of use in the Med in order to increase blockading capabilities. I read somewhere that battleships are more efficient at blockading than just their raw tonnage so a downrated low freeboard version of the Ocean class might be useful.
Carson Cooper
I've never played a naval tabletop game but a group of friends convinced me to play naval thunder. I haven't read the rules or anything and impulse purchased some frog ships and poorly painted them.
What am I in for.
Brayden Mitchell
Pretty good naval game that doesn't require you to have severe autism to enjoy.
Also the rules should be in OP's mediafire folder so you might as well download them now and give them a look.
Jacob Bailey
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Mason Perry
Anyone have an image of the proposed Montana class BB with the 8inch secondaries?
Levi Ramirez
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Caleb Gomez
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Cooper Wilson
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Evan Martin
How would a modernized Alaska have been able to operate helicopters from the midship hangar? Maybe a retractable pad that becomes the hangar floor, like some stadiums have nowadays...
Juan Scott
>How would a modernized Alaska have been able to operate helicopters from the midship hangar? It wouldn't, that was one of the reasons why the Hawaii's conversion proposals failed. They still haven't figured out how to have an amidships hangar for Helos that isn't open to the aft.
Nolan Carter
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Leo Stewart
Are Helena and St Louis considered Brooklyn-class cruisers or their own thing?
Luke Young
Depends who you ask; some things rate them their own class, some things just consider them slightly modified Brooklyns.
Juan Lee
If it matters, the US Navy considered them a separate class.
William Edwards
>Different user who should probably steer clear, but eh
I think the "sniper" analogy got things across quite well.
Christopher Moore
But how are these "Mediterranean Battleships" supposed to fight the Boche and reclaim the lost provinces user? They'll never get funded.
Kevin Smith
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Carson Lee
It didn't work out how I'd hoped. Spent the first five years or so juggling tension before finally getting my war with Italy. Unfortunately I couldn't get the edge on them to blockade them and the war dragged on and on.
However, it had been a very long time since I played with the Germans and I had forgotten just how poor their starting techs are so I needn't fear them so much at the start, indeed an early war with them might be ideal.
Juan Ward
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Isaiah Morgan
>I think the "sniper" analogy got things across quite well.
Thanks.
Christopher Cooper
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Michael Powell
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Ian Sanchez
What mod to you use to get the generated ship image?
Julian Martinez
plz halp no bully
Camden Bell
USS Pittsburg, unbowed.
Kevin Rivera
The impetus for a lot of Japanese design was not that they were faster or cheaper, but that their main strategy in defeating a numerically superior enemy (the US) was through what they terms "outranging the enemy."
Almost all their aircraft were extremely lightweight, with the benefit being that they could strike from a much farther distance than their enemy counterparts. This made all their planes flying deathtraps, but was a reasonably sound strategy that would have worked early-war.
Unfortunately, by the time they actually got into a tactical situation that utilized such a strategy (Battle of the Philippine Sea), the U.S. not only had numerical and technical superiority in their craft and weaponry, but they had much better air defense systems that made it almost impossible for Japanese aircraft to make it through the strike.
This idea of "outranging" also pervaded their battleship construction, with the Yamato-class battleship being the prime example. When the U.S. came out with its various Vinson acts that expanded the navy in the 1930's, the Japanese shifted to such a strategy, opting for quality over quantity. The idea being that even if the U.S. had more battleships, the Yamato's had better range and firepower and could take multiple opponents on. This climactic clash would of course follow a campaign of attrition as the U.S. fleet traveled across the Pacific.
Unfortunately for Japan's "quality" strategy, they never actually had a qualitative advantage, which the U.S. technical survey's reports after the war largely attest to. The Yamato was a paper tiger and probably would have been sunk with equal or better probability by any of the U.S. fast battleships.
Ryder Davis
plz no bully
Nolan Bell
It's just extra assets from the forum for the one in game. It's a little dodgy, if you want an easier time of it generate the basic ship and finish it in an editor.
Brayden Davis
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Jordan Martinez
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Austin Miller
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Anthony Rivera
Look pretty nice from what I can see, user. I see you went with the neutrality patrol scheme too. I"m partial to it myself. I see La Fantasques, Aigle/Guepard/Vauquelins, Algerie, Dunkerque, and what looks like Richelieu. What make are the models?
If you're looking for relatively fast playing rules that still have some depth to them, go give Naval War a look too. The only thing you really have to do is make a login, and you'll have access to all the rules and stats and such.
This looks pretty neat, just on an initial scan of the kickstarter. Going to have to read more about it and see if it's something I really would like to go in on. Considering I'll probably never lay hands on a copy of The Hunters or one of the other titles like it, it might be worth it.
Andrew Parker
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Gabriel Diaz
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Bentley Robinson
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Samuel Sanchez
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Juan Turner
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John Russell
This thread is slowly dying, because all you people do is post pictures of boats.
Isaac Cooper
Post something else then. Got models? Post 'em. Played a game? Talk about it. You want to add more Veeky Forums shit? Add it. Shit or get off the pot, user.
Jaxon Turner
I think you and I should do a thread AAR of Guadalcanal Campaign in War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition.
Which side do you want to be? Allies or Japs?
Christian Wright
Alas, I don't have that game and it's also a bit too autistic for my pleb blood. But I hope you get somebody.
Xavier Evans
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Asher Thompson
Thought I'd go easymode and play with the yanks after struggling with the French in RTW but their naming conventions are so fucking boring. Might be autistic enough to come up with an alternate naming convention but I don't want to just ape the Brits, also I'm feeling lazy enough to not want to just play as the brits and have to do the colonial shuffle
