How far along are the rules?

[Darman]

Just a brief comment/suggestion.  Crossing the bridge on my way to work this morning I took a glance down at the hill on the opposite side of the bay and I could barely make out the outlines of the fort located there.  That reminded me of the gun batteries built a little further up the hill more towards the ocean.  Those gun batteries were built sometime between the 1890s and 1900, dug into the hillside protected by piled earth and concrete and camouflaged.  The way it worked for the big (10" rifles) was that they were on disappearing mounts.  A counterweight hung underneath the barrel and when a lever was pulled the counterweight swung free and lifted the muzzle and barrel of the rifle above the parapet and into its firing position.  The recoil from firing it would send the barrel back down behind the parapet, lifting up the counterweight and getting it caught in the locking mechanism operated by the lever.  (I'll admit I spend plenty of time thinking about random things and this is one of those times.)  I wondered who developed the disappearing rifle, and why.  Did they want to design a gun that could be hidden?  Or maybe a gun that was protected from enemy counterbattery fire?  That in turn led me into wondering about the tech levels/research for N4, mainly because I want disappearing rifles for my own coastal defense   ;)
My thought was, what if a tech tree (or shrub, I believe someone mentioned it might look like) was written out and then players had their researchers ask simple questions, such as "how can i build a gun carriage that protected the gunners during firing and reloading?" and the mods determined which basic tech fit that description.  That may actually take more effort on the part of the mods though.  (Took me the entire time I used to write this to figure out it requires effort by the mods, nobody ever said I wasn't brilliant.) 

[Carthaginian]

I wondered who developed the disappearing rifle, and why.  Did they want to design a gun that could be hidden?  Or maybe a gun that was protected from enemy counterbattery fire?  That in turn led me into wondering about the tech levels/research for N4, mainly because I want disappearing rifles for my own coastal defense   ;)

Disappearing rifles were designed for BOTH those reasons.
1.) The parapet which they were designed to fall behind was designed to prevent use of direct fire against the gun positions.
2.) The parapet was also designed to provide limited concealment for the gun position- the only time the gun would be visible would be during the actual firing, and the flash/dust would be hard to range.

And there should be no real techs for coastal guns, as various methods were used during similar period of time. It would almost be a matter of personal preference whether to make heavily armored turrets or disappearing mounts.

[Carthaginian]

I'm just starting to get worried because interest here seems to be waning.
Only a few people are posting.

We're getting stunted by lack of rules- people can only go so far developing their nation in a vacuum, and without rules we are ALL sucking vacuum. Because of this, people aren't really working on anything solid for their nations, aren't posting anything on their nations, and aren't communicating anything about their nations. That means that people who are depending on other people's national histories aren't posting anything, and that is holding up development of still other nations who are tied to the second nation, which is tied to the first which is tied to the house that Jack hasn't built because he doesn't have any specs to tell him what to buy.

Guys, we need SOMETHING.
We need ANYTHING.

We need to start building this world before there is no one interested in doing it.

[Darman]

Disappearing rifles were designed for BOTH those reasons.
1.) The parapet which they were designed to fall behind was designed to prevent use of direct fire against the gun positions.
2.) The parapet was also designed to provide limited concealment for the gun position- the only time the gun would be visible would be during the actual firing, and the flash/dust would be hard to range.

And there should be no real techs for coastal guns, as various methods were used during similar period of time. It would almost be a matter of personal preference whether to make heavily armored turrets or disappearing mounts.

I'd use a mix, lighter guns behind splinter shields at the very least and possibly turrets, I have a few pics of one of two surviving Endicott-period 4.7 inchers mounted in Newport, I wish the 10 inchers were still there (or location was known).  With most battleships being incapable of indirect fire disappearing rifles seems a good idea to me. 

We need to start building this world before there is no one interested in doing it.

I'm working on it!  I'm working on influential families in the NERF (I'm gonna stick with that as the long-form of the national name, its so much fun).  Did you know none of John Hancock's children survived childhood?  I am having to bring at least one back from the dead.  I hope thats allowable.  Well I guess he ends up dying anyways before 1880 but his son is still around.... perhaps governor of Massachusetts? 

[Carthaginian]

LOL- bring as many back form the dead as you wish!!!
Remember, whatever killed them is one of many things that your new history can change. ;)

[Darman]

Remember, whatever killed them is one of many things that your new history can change. ;)

In this case I'm curing his stupidity.... either he'll learn how to swim or wont go skating on thin ice!

[Tanthalas]

Remember, whatever killed them is one of many things that your new history can change. ;)

In this case I'm curing his stupidity.... either he'll learn how to swim or wont go skating on thin ice!

atleast you didnt have to basicly rewrite history on a grand scale (I literaly had to for Deseret since alot of things that happend OTL simply had no basis in our history)

[Korpen]

I'd use a mix, lighter guns behind splinter shields at the very least and possibly turrets, I have a few pics of one of two surviving Endicott-period 4.7 inchers mounted in Newport, I wish the 10 inchers were still there (or location was known).  With most battleships being incapable of indirect fire disappearing rifles seems a good idea to me. 

Well, the drawback of disappearing mounts is that they reduce the rate of fire allot, in general taking at least a minute extra for the gun to raise and descend, more for really large guns.
One can say that the shorter the range one expect to engage the enemy, and the longer reload time you gun have, the more value there is in disappearing mounts. Oh, and they are quite complex as well and restrict the maximum elevation of the gun.
Armoured turrets might be overkill for allot of forts, just a gun shield over the parapet can give the gun sufficient protection as by naval standards they are very, very small targets.

[Darman]

My understanding of disappearing mounts is that they also have a very limited arc, so (at least at Newport) the guns were positioned to fire somewhat down the channel and never needed to make drastic movements either side to side or for increased range.  The lighter guns were to plaster the enemy ships with explosive shells and keep the enemy's head down (my personal interpretation) so they don't see the 10 inchers rise up and smash their ship to bits. 

[Desertfox]

SS3 really? Its not fully functional, harder to use, and not all of us have it.

[TexanCowboy]

What are we getting to design our fleets in terms of cash? That'd be really, really nice to know...

[Guinness]

Yes it would. :)

What I've posted is what we've got so far.

I think that something along the lines of $1000 to $1500 is a likely figure. We'll also need some scheme to prevent everyone just building ships laid down in 1878. There's two ideas for that: allocating a fixed percentage to be spent per decade, or stipulating that ships laid down before 1860 cost X times the "normal" cost, ships laid down between 1860 and 1869 cost Y times the "normal" cost, and ships laid down between 1879 and 1880 cost Z times the "normal" cost. We haven't done enough modeling yet to figure out how that should work though.

It seems more or less impossible to sim wooden sailing ships, so we'll need a system where we cut/paste specs for real ships for those, probably.

[Carthaginian]

I also am wondering why things are not getting started- when I heard the rules were getting posted, I was happy... the sim was about to get moving.

Now, we get another draft... and another wait.

If we have rules that are this complete, what is the holdup?
Let's kick the tires, iron out what can/can't be dealt with and GET THE SIM MOVING.

[Desertfox]

That money is overall for everything, right? Otherwise there would be some really massive fleets around.

[Guinness]

First, and I'm trying not to type this in anger:

All four of us who have been working on this have other things going on. We do this for fun. Sometimes it feels like work.

So for those of you who are in a hurry because you have school coming up (my how I miss those days!), or just because you don't want to wait: don't wait. If you don't want to wait, go do your own thing or whatever. Why is there such a hurry? I've heard "people are leaving". This is not compelling for me. I know how to find anyone who wonders away.

And believe me, this process has frustrated no one as much as it has me. But please appreciate the time effort (and some money) being put into this by others. But for the love of all that is good: I posted the draft 40 minutes ago. Take the time to walk away from the computer, think about it, etc. before flaming those of us who have been working on this.

Foxy: Money works more or less like this:

You have a GDP, which is set right now at $3333 for the first year. You set a tax rate. Examples use 3%. At 3% your "budget" is $100. That covers all military and research costs, including army stuff, etc. The lower your taxes, the more your GDP grows per year. The higher, the less it grows.


EDIT: edited this to take some of the edge off.