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Glorious Arstotzka

17 (16%)

Glorious Moskurg

13 (12.3%)

Ingloriously Didn't Play

76 (71.7%)

Total Members Voted: 106

[andrea]

The war bulletin is back! rejoice!

Spoiler: Forenia war bulletin, spoilered for size (click to show/hide)

[Taricus]

Nuke, the hardcore nationalists are already upset. What you want to do is get the non-hardcore to fold, so the hardcore ones are left looking like insane loonies.

NATIONAL FORENIAN PEOPLE'S PARTY FORMED!
Formalised today in response to radical separatist attacks on forenian people & businesses, several pro-forenian political groups and community watches have banded together into a political party named the 'National Forenian people's party'. Promising an end to to the fractious violence and reparation to the victims of the heartless and devastating attacks. Led by two retired generals from the last war, Field marshal Nikolai Antonov and Major General Tarik Karim, the party has indicated it has a number of candidates for the next election along with a few currently sitting ministers poised to flip to them in the coming days, along with the announcement of charity dedicated to helping the poor & the victims of the nationalists' attacks to get back on their feet.

Detractors of the party has criticised the fascistic policies it espouses, some saying the charity is nothing more than a 'sympathy grab' to ensnare voters.

[Sensei]

Orders locked in: Attacking northern front and Tundra island.

[Azzuro]

I've modified parts of my speech. The date can't be changed without changing the whole opening two or three paragraphs. I don't really think 5000 km is too much, given that Australia and NZ are 4000 km apart, but I've toned it down. The 'converge to victory' I think is accurate, as wars involving combined land-air-sea operations haven't occurred, although the various elements have been used separately. The unity paragraph is needed to segue from the topic of weapons design to The Power Of Unity. Next paragraph has been heavily edited, but I can't get it to flow well. I kinda like the ending too much to change it, especially with 'united' being repeated so much, but I moved it to a new line.

Anyway, you all are free to edit it further if you like.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Sensei!

[NUKE9.13]

Orders locked in: Attacking northern front and Tundra island.

The British Tundra island, yes? We were thinking about calling it Myark, to avoid confusion.

[andrea]

Keep in mind when writing that yellowjacket is cheap, that our new bombs are also incendiary, that when we need range we have rocket propelled shells, that our fighters have drop tanks that don't increase expense and that among our vehicles we have some pretty good motorbikes.

[Parsely]

-especially as we don't have screening ships or floatplanes to warn of enemy forces in the vicinity.

A carrier has fighters that it can use as a scouting force. A CV would have been pretty capable on it's own, especially with the ability to intercept enemy communications. Now we've got a good destroyer, but it's undergunned and will get torn to shreds by the bigger and harder hitting enemy ships out there. A destroyer is pointless without another ship to escort. A CV would have been just as vulnerable while contributing more to the fight.

This is incorrect. Carriers of this period did not use their fighters for scouting, as their range, endurance and flight characteristics were nowhere near suited to the naval reconnaissance role, not to mention that doing so would severely comprise its CAP cover in case of attack. In fact, the main bulk of airborne naval reconnaissance was done by Kot's beloved floatplanes and flying boats, which were not quite so fatally bound to their fuel endurance.

And screening ships are much better than planes in serving as early warning. For one, they don't consume fuel merely to stay in the air, thus the carrier's air wing need not run their supplies low, enhancing their effectiveness and mission capability. They can also continue providing cover at night, while carrier operations of this period are limited to daylight.

In WW2 the US Navy combined the scouting role with their dive bombers because they couldn't afford to carry dedicated scouts. So yes, they did use attack aircraft as scouts. That's not to say that an aircraft exclusively made for a scouting role wouldn't be better at the job. My point is that you CAN and SHOULD use aircraft as scouts, regardless of if you have escort vessels. Let me explain why:

Planes are much better for recon than screening ships. Escort vessels have to stay close to their principal ship, at least within a few kilometers of each other in order to do their job of protecting the ship, which means they only increase a carrier's awareness by a few kilometers at best (probably less in practice because a destroyer's conning tower is much shorter than a carrier's). A plane flying a few thousand meters above the water has a line of sight significantly greater than a surface vessel that's only a couple hundred meters tall.

d = 3.57 * sqrt(h), where d is the distance to the horizon in kilometers (AKA your line of sight) and h is the height from the ground in meters.
Some of the largest aircraft carriers have conning towers that are 240 feet, or 60.96m, from the surface of the water. If we plug in the height, d = 27.87km.
Let's use the Airco DH.10 (biplane bomber from 1918) for comparison, which has a max altitude of 5800m according to Wikipedia, but I'll round that off to 5000m. For this one, d = 252.44km.
Even just having a single plane flying directly over the CV increases the group's line of sight by an order of magnitude!

Conclusion: planes are much better at scouting than ships, therefore a CV with planes deployed is a better scout than any surface vessel in terms of its ability to detect enemy vessels, so a surface group with scout planes is significantly harder to kill because of this increase in awareness. Our planes are not ideal for scouting, but that does not mean they aren't still extremely valuable for scouting compared to escort ships!

[andrea]

Walking in the streets of the capital and in the old arstotzka and moskurg, a common sight in the last few days is a short pamphlet distributed by the association of veterans.

"Fellow people of Arstotzka and Moskurg.
In those days of grave danger for our nation, we see growing unrest in the streets on behalf of our old nations. We understand the allure of nationalism, longing for the glory of old. We have fought those wars, shot at each other. And to the last man, we would do it again, for our homelands!
But this is not the time! An enemy knocks at our doors, seeking conquest, pillage, enslavement. Most of uou are too young to remember the old british occupation but ask your elders what it was like: long days laboring in plantations and mines, for the benefit of a stranger. And most importantly, we had to be nice to each other. Not only war was not allowed, but there were no frequent riots like the ones you are used to. People were arrested for things such a a friendly punch or a stab! Is that what you want in the future of our nations?
No, if we want to keep our tradition we must first dispose of this foe. Focus your energy, that fire burning inside you, toward Cannala! Gain glory for your nation, Arstotzka or Moskurg, in the battle against the invader.

GLORY!"

Several signatures of decorated veterans follow, then a picture of the signatories. most of them are aged men, all wear their old uniforms and sport a few fresh bandages and cast limbs, likely due to debates while drafting the document.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I've modified parts of my speech. The date can't be changed without changing the whole opening two or three paragraphs. I don't really think 5000 km is too much, given that Australia and NZ are 4000 km apart, but I've toned it down. The 'converge to victory' I think is accurate, as wars involving combined land-air-sea operations haven't occurred, although the various elements have been used separately. The unity paragraph is needed to segue from the topic of weapons design to The Power Of Unity. Next paragraph has been heavily edited, but I can't get it to flow well. I kinda like the ending too much to change it, especially with 'united' being repeated so much, but I moved it to a new line.

Anyway, you all are free to edit it further if you like.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Sensei!

Hmmm...you could use the historical example of the fight against the British to lead to the point of unity.  And I don't think the opening paragraphs need to be changed much, just the lines of where we are fighting.  Summer was the opening months after all, so you could set it mid to late summer and the changes would only really need to be where we are fighting, if that.

[NUKE9.13]

With all this talk of new political parties, I'd just like to make my party membership clear:

I am a card carrying member of the extreme-centre Moderate Party. They hold no strong views on any controversial issues. The only things on their agenda are things everyone in Forenia can agree on:

• The right to own a ludicrous amount of firearms.
• The right to riot (in designated rioting areas, during designated rioting hours)
• An extremely high military budget.
• Capital punishment for all forms of piracy.
• ...maybe some other stuff.

[Parsely]

Great speech Azzuro.

With all this talk of new political parties, I'd just like to make my party membership clear:

I am a card carrying member of the extreme-centre Moderate Party. They hold no strong views on any controversial issues. The only things on their agenda are things everyone in Forenia can agree on:

• The right to own a ludicrous amount of firearms.
• The right to riot (in designated rioting areas, during designated rioting hours)
• An extremely high military budget.
• Capital punishment for all forms of piracy.
• ...maybe some other stuff.

I'm super on board with this.

[evictedSaint]

I am a card carrying member of the extreme-centre Moderate Party.

I had you figured for an extremist, Nuke.

[Powder Miner]

The Forenian Self-Defense Advocacy Organization
With the outbreak of the war and with the swirling political climate in the rest of the world, many political organizations have begun to sprung up within the nation of Forenia. The Forenian Self-Defense Advocacy Organization, or FSDAO, is a rather anodyne term for what is only a political organization in the loosest sense of the term. The FSDAO consists of some of the more fervent gun owners and gun traders of the country, who formed after the outbreak of the renewed ethnic violence in Forenia. The organization notably hosts both Arstotzkan and Moskurg members, because it isn't really nationalist in form; to put it simply, it's a bunch of paranoid gun nuts who have vaguely promised to form together and circle the wagons to defend each other if the violence in Forenia gets too bad.

The FSDAO doesn't really publicly advocate any positions besides ATTACK OUR HOUSES AND WE WILL SHOOT YOU, but there's a well-known anti-totalitarian bias in many of the members of the group who fear the possibility of a government that has the power to A. take away their guns, B. send secret police at them or execute them, or C. take away their guns AND execute them.

[evictedSaint]

It's a little silly to think they're afraid of the government coming and taking away their guns, since the government has done nothing but make new guns and press them into the hands of anyone who can hold one for the past few decades.

[Powder Miner]

That would be why they don't have much of a coherent political policy. This is a group that is presently just focused on making a lot of noise about WE'LL DO IT WE'LL DO IT WE SWEAR DON'T COME SMASHIN OUR SHOPS

With that said, it IS much more likely they would be primarily scared of potential governmental organizations in the style of the secret police employed by old Moskurg and old Arstotzka.