NS Military Realism Consultation Thread #3

[Registug]

I'd be inclined to think if an armored vehicle had absolutely, positively got to enter built-up areas, automatic cannons, automatic grenade launchers, and heavy machineguns (a la BMPT) would be the better armament to have as opposed to the usual guns; also extensive additional armor (like birdcage) and both passive/active protection are very handy.

Yes, this is true. But all of those weapons are man-portable (albeit crew-served), and that makes me wonder what the vehicle itself is for. The problem with armored vehicles is that it's a centralized target; one soldier with a rocket propelled grenade can take it out; unlike, say, an AGS-30 platoon, which is at least a dozen different targets to be neutralized.

While an armoured vehicle with no infantry screen can be easily killed by a guy with an RPG, even an AGS-30 platoon can be pinned and suppressed by dug in positions in a city. The key is using infantry and armour together.

[Lolzieristan]

Basically, Hellraiser, the main link to the economy is your budget, which you can check into with this fun little tool:

http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/nseconomy.php?nation=Hellraiser+Army

If you don't have a very large cash flow to the defense sector, good luck justifying ICly that you've got stealth bombers, twenty aircraft carriers, and a gigantic nuclear stockpile.

You pretty much just started up your country, you'll have to make do with what's reasonable for a brand-new country. I personally used FN FALs and BMP-1s in my first RP, because that's what I felt was expected of me. Some people don't agree with me on that, but I personally think that your military needs to be built up over time.

And Registug, absolutely, combined-arms are extremely necessary in irregular terrain, be it forests, hills, or urbanized areas. But infantry are more important in urban combat than armor, in an inversion of conventional wisdom.

[Novraslavia]

http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/nseconomy.php?nation=Hellraiser+Army

You can also try NSTracker. They just released their new website and it has a bunch of cool interactive features for RP purposes (statistics adjust for RP population, military size, etc).

[Arthurista]

Is there any current hardkill ADS which is good against top attack? Trophy? AMAP-ADS? Quick Kill?

[Samozaryadnyastan]

Quick Kill would probably be effective against top-attack, since it's pretty much a VLS.

[The Akasha Colony]

Thanks. But, however, keep in mind that i'd use that for the OLDER battlefeilds. Ratte on new battlefeild: immensly terrifying. Ratte on older battlefeild: HOLY SHIT THATS HUGE. Maus on a new battlefeild: terrifying until missle. Maus in WWII era battlefeild: MASSIVLY TERRIFYING. Same with 800mm gun. In this battlefeild, if it was well hidden and defended, WHAT THE HELL WOULD WE DO?

So, the last question is this: how does my economy in the game affected by war, which in this game sense, imagionary.

On an older battlefield, the enemy would simply drive around it. Neither the Maus nor the Ratte will be chasing even infantry down given their hilariously bad speed. Or wait for it to break itself down, given their terrible reliability. The existing German heavy and super-heavy tanks already did a fine job of resisting Allied firepower but were already at or above the level that could be reliably built with technology.

800 mm gun will be easy to find unless you build it into the ground. Thing is, in the time it takes to bury it into the ground and reliably set it up, you very well may have won the siege already. It's also hideously inaccurate and its low rate of fire won't make up for it. There's a reason why these projects are universally regarded as white elephants whose battlefield use was massively outweighed by their impracticality and cost.

Is there any current hardkill ADS which is good against top attack? Trophy? AMAP-ADS? Quick Kill?

LEDS-150 is also supposed to be good against top-attack munitions if fitted with the top-attack sensor.

[Lolzieristan]

http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/nseconomy.php?nation=Hellraiser+Army

You can also try NSTracker. They just released their new website and it has a bunch of cool interactive features for RP purposes (statistics adjust for RP population, military size, etc).

Seems like the military section dictates a little bit too much, stuff I prefer to define myself.

[Novraslavia]

You can also try NSTracker. They just released their new website and it has a bunch of cool interactive features for RP purposes (statistics adjust for RP population, military size, etc).

Seems like the military section dictates a little bit too much, stuff I prefer to define myself.

I do believe you can edit it. On the old website you were able to change military information, if it's not on the new one you should be able to soon. I think they're still working out the bugs on the new site.

[Radictistan]

It's hosted on Mediafire. And while MF is a ****ing pain to download from there is no requirement for either of those. The trick is to find the little icon in the top right of the window that says download on the tooltip and download the spreadsheet. Than use it from your hard drive.

I have a dropbox account and could upload a copy there. But I would want to ask the creator for his permission before I do so.

IMO, Mediafire is the easiest downloading site out there. No wait time or captchas, lots of bandwidth, and no real daily cap (I've never hit a MF download cap even DLing several multi-hundred MB archives back-to-back). I considered it better than even MegaUpload because of the improved bandwidth and lack of wait time.

Thanks for the tip.

[Hellraiser Army]

800mm gun. That has a shell thats bigger than the T-34/45 tank. A CARTRIDGE SHELL. Not even the explosives.

And the Ratte would've had two to four AA or AAA guns. That was later versions.

[Lubyak]

800mm gun. That has a shell thats bigger than the T-34/45 tank. A CARTRIDGE SHELL. Not even the explosives.

And the Ratte would've had two to four AA or AAA guns. That was later versions.

I do believe you mean T-34/85. And so what? Given the amount of resources you'd have to spend to build it, transport it to the battlefield, and actually fire it, you'd have gotten way more explosives down range with the ten or so batteries of basic 105 mm guns you could have gotten for the same resources. And, while a single lucky air strike or counter battery barrage could wreck your massive 800 mm gun, the more dispersed 105s wouldn't be as vulnerable. Bigger is not always better.

And so what as well for the Ratte? It's so large that you could get much more use out of the platoons of Panzer IVs, Panthers, Tigers or even Tiger IIs you could have built instead. Remember, that no defense system is perfect, and even with air defense your Ratte is hideously vulnerable to air attack, artillery barrage, etc. etc.

There's a reason these weapons were never built. If there's anyone who should be glad that Nazi Germany never built the Ratte or Monster, it should be Nazi Germany that they didn't waste resources building such monstrosities.

[Purpelia]

Such huge guns have their point. And that is destroying very specific very fortified positions. There are places like say the Maginot Line or Sevastopol that just have so much concrete that they need battleship grade guns to bust. And in the case of the later, the concrete actually held the magazines and turrets of battleship grade guns that shot back. You can fire millions of regular shells at fortresses like Sevastopol and they just won't penetrate. Period. The concrete is just too thick. Now since there is no way to hide that type of fortification you know exactly how many you will need and where you will need them. So what you do is have a few of these super heavy railroad guns in stock. Not many, but a few. And you deploy them on those one off missions that just can't be handled by anything else.


The modern day equivalent of this would be using theater ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. Both are specialist tools that you won't be using that many times. But there will be that one or two times where nothing else will do. So not having one or two in stock is folly. Having more than that is even greater folly. And mounting them on tracks to build a super-mega-ultra-tank is just plain retarded and completely missing the point.

[The Kievan People]

800mm gun. That has a shell thats bigger than the T-34/45 tank. A CARTRIDGE SHELL. Not even the explosives.

And the Ratte would've had two to four AA or AAA guns. That was later versions.

I do believe you mean T-34/85. And so what? Given the amount of resources you'd have to spend to build it, transport it to the battlefield, and actually fire it, you'd have gotten way more explosives down range with the ten or so batteries of basic 105 mm guns you could have gotten for the same resources. And, while a single lucky air strike or counter battery barrage could wreck your massive 800 mm gun, the more dispersed 105s wouldn't be as vulnerable. Bigger is not always better.

And so what as well for the Ratte? It's so large that you could get much more use out of the platoons of Panzer IVs, Panthers, Tigers or even Tiger IIs you could have built instead. Remember, that no defense system is perfect, and even with air defense your Ratte is hideously vulnerable to air attack, artillery barrage, etc. etc.

There's a reason these weapons were never built. If there's anyone who should be glad that Nazi Germany never built the Ratte or Monster, it should be Nazi Germany that they didn't waste resources building such monstrosities.

All this is assuming it can actually get to the battlefield.

Can you imagine if it threw a track? Or sunk into the mud? Or what happens when you need to replace the barrels?

[San-Silvacian]

800mm gun. That has a shell thats bigger than the T-34/45 tank. A CARTRIDGE SHELL. Not even the explosives.

And the Ratte would've had two to four AA or AAA guns. That was later versions.

Artillery rounds aren't used in cartridges?

The shell itself is about 1/3rd taller than a T-34/85. However the T-34/85 did far more in WW2 than the Dora did now didn't it?

The Yamato Battleship had 166 anti-aircraft guns. Look what happened to it. The Bismarck had 44 anti-aircraft guns. Look what happened to it. You would need more anti-aircraft defenses than Berlin to defend it. Plus squadrons of aircraft.

[The Akasha Colony]

800mm gun. That has a shell thats bigger than the T-34/45 tank. A CARTRIDGE SHELL. Not even the explosives.

And the Ratte would've had two to four AA or AAA guns. That was later versions.

A few AA guns aren't going to keep a wing of fighter-bombers off you, especially given how large a target the Ratte would have been. The development of high-velocity rockets that gave a measure of stand-off capability would have further made it pointless, and given its size and slow speed, I suspect even primitive guided anti-ship missiles like the ones the Germans were already using (Fritz X, etc.) would have been viable, and these missiles were able to heavily damage and even sink battleships, which were much better protected both in AA armament and armor thickness. The Germans had plenty of anti-air with their motor pools during the war, didn't stop Allied air power from taking them out anyway, just as the Germans themselves had done to the Soviets.

Schwerer Gustav weighed 1,350 tonnes. For that weight of steel, you could make more than fifty T-34s. And no, the shell was not larger than a T-34, it was 0.8 m wide by 3.6 meters long and the heaviest shells weighed 11 tonnes. In comparison, a T-34 was 3 meters wide and 6.68 meters long, and weighed 26.5 tonnes. And the tank battalion you could equip with the same amount of steel as a single Schwerer Gustav would be more than enough to take the gun out of action. It also had a rate of fire measured in rounds per day, rather than rounds per minute like a standard artillery piece, and with a range of 39 km, was out-ranged by smaller but more accurate and faster-firing battleship and coastal artillery guns.

Such huge guns have their point. And that is destroying very specific very fortified positions. There are places like say the Maginot Line or Sevastopol that just have so much concrete that they need battleship grade guns to bust. And in the case of the later, the concrete actually held the magazines and turrets of battleship grade guns that shot back. You can fire millions of regular shells at fortresses like Sevastopol and they just won't penetrate. Period. The concrete is just too thick. Now since there is no way to hide that type of fortification you know exactly how many you will need and where you will need them. So what you do is have a few of these super heavy railroad guns in stock. Not many, but a few. And you deploy them on those one off missions that just can't be handled by anything else.

If it's that fortified, then it's time to break out the earthquake bombs and strategic bombers. No need to spend all this time and money developing a specialist piece of equipment that is a bitch and a half to move and set up, then will maybe have a few days at most of usefulness before being rendered useless again. Strategic bombers can go right back to conventional bombing afterward, and you should probably have some around anyway, as the Germans learned the hard way. Schwerer Gustav's relatively short range meant that if the Soviets had any good artillery, they could have easily gotten within range and counter-battery'd the thing into uselessness. Yes, it could have been rocket-boosted, but so could conventional artillery. The Germans, ironically, developed most of the best counters to their own lolweapons.

[Arthurista]

800mm gun. That has a shell thats bigger than the T-34/45 tank. A CARTRIDGE SHELL. Not even the explosives.

And the Ratte would've had two to four AA or AAA guns. That was later versions.

I do believe you mean T-34/85. And so what? Given the amount of resources you'd have to spend to build it, transport it to the battlefield, and actually fire it, you'd have gotten way more explosives down range with the ten or so batteries of basic 105 mm guns you could have gotten for the same resources. And, while a single lucky air strike or counter battery barrage could wreck your massive 800 mm gun, the more dispersed 105s wouldn't be as vulnerable. Bigger is not always better.

And so what as well for the Ratte? It's so large that you could get much more use out of the platoons of Panzer IVs, Panthers, Tigers or even Tiger IIs you could have built instead. Remember, that no defense system is perfect, and even with air defense your Ratte is hideously vulnerable to air attack, artillery barrage, etc. etc.

There's a reason these weapons were never built. If there's anyone who should be glad that Nazi Germany never built the Ratte or Monster, it should be Nazi Germany that they didn't waste resources building such monstrosities.

There's an argument that Germany should've built nothing but Panzer IVs (or maybe that plus the panther) and nothing else in terms of heavy armour: no tigers, no Elefants, no Jagdpanthers and all those expensive and hard to produce toys. The Red Army and the allies stuck with a single type of medium tank and it worked.

Btw, is there any point nowadays in deploying large calibre but low RoF ordnances like Tyulpans and Pions?

[The Kievan People]

There's an argument that Germany should've built nothing but Panzer IVs (or maybe that plus the panther) and nothing else in terms of heavy armour: no tigers, no Elefants, no Jagdpanthers and all those expensive and hard to produce toys. The Red Army and the allies stuck with a single type of medium tank and it worked.

That argument is bunk. Germany had much more fundamental problems than a shortage of tanks, like shortages of oil and trained manpower.

Having x times as many Panzer IVs would have done as much to help Germany as the tens of thousands of fighters that rolled off the lines in 1944 did to stall the Allied bomber offensive. Nobody even knows where they went!

[The Akasha Colony]

I do believe you mean T-34/85. And so what? Given the amount of resources you'd have to spend to build it, transport it to the battlefield, and actually fire it, you'd have gotten way more explosives down range with the ten or so batteries of basic 105 mm guns you could have gotten for the same resources. And, while a single lucky air strike or counter battery barrage could wreck your massive 800 mm gun, the more dispersed 105s wouldn't be as vulnerable. Bigger is not always better.

And so what as well for the Ratte? It's so large that you could get much more use out of the platoons of Panzer IVs, Panthers, Tigers or even Tiger IIs you could have built instead. Remember, that no defense system is perfect, and even with air defense your Ratte is hideously vulnerable to air attack, artillery barrage, etc. etc.

There's a reason these weapons were never built. If there's anyone who should be glad that Nazi Germany never built the Ratte or Monster, it should be Nazi Germany that they didn't waste resources building such monstrosities.

There's an argument that Germany should've built nothing but Panzer IVs (or maybe that plus the panther) and nothing else in terms of heavy armour: no tigers, no Elefants, no Jagdpanthers and all those expensive and hard to produce toys. The Red Army and the allies stuck with a single type of medium tank and it worked.

Standardizing the StuGs would have been useful. The big tank destroyers were generally overkill; they mounted giant guns but aside from the IS-2, the Allies never fielded heavy tanks in any real quantity, so these giant guns were by and large not very useful. A combination of the Panzer IV and Panther for panzer divisions (as was adopted later in the war) plus the StuG IV and Jagdpanther for assault guns and tank destroyers would have been fine. Even the Jagdpanther might be unnecessary, but since it uses the Panther hull, it wouldn't be too much of a strain logistically and would bring an 8.8 cm gun to the battlefield.

Some other vehicles likely would have been fielded anyway. The StuG III was worth producing using left over Panzer III hulls, and the Elefant was just a conversion of existing Tiger P stocks that Porsche made because he got overconfident. A whole slew were simply converted from captured Czech and French vehicles.

Of course, that wouldn't have won the war for them, since as Kyiv points out, the troubles go deeper than that. The Panzer IV was not a production-optimized vehicle to begin with, and the Germans were already working on the simplified E-series. It certainly would have helped to streamline production, but it wouldn't have helped Germany truly win the war than fielding a larger number of jets would have.

[Sedikal]

Hey guys quick question on some crapy French weaponry. So I'm doing an RP on my nations first. I il war as some of you may know from my earlier posts. I have my rebel forces using the Chauchat as a standerd machine rifle but is taking up positions that a medium or heavy machine gun would be used for because of money issues. And it just dawned on me that the Chauchat cartridge is the 8mm Lebel. Now from what I understand they stopped making this cartridge in 1944 and this RP takes place in 1964.

So my question is would you stillbe able to find 8mm Lebel in a Eastern European nation in 1964 and if not then would a rechambered version of the Chauchat be adequate and if so it what caliber?

[Lolzieristan]

The assault guns were actually a particular favorite of Hitler' s troops, surprisingly. Pains me to admit that, I hate them for their aesthetics (or lack of), but they were rather valid strategically.

Anyway, there' s really no purpose in building bigger, other than having a strategic pissing contest with your rivals. Hitler was overcompensating for something, as one can see from his "I want bigger stuff" projects...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_321
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_323
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster

Just a few examples.


And Sedikal, that' s a pretty specific request. I feel like they would make more sense with WW-II era Nazi equipment...there was a metric ass ton of it lying around, and they had to do something with it.

But a general rule of thumb for any aspiring rebel is that at least 50% of your equipment will most likely come from the people you' re fighting. It' s just easier to get your hands on that way.

[Sedikal]

The communist government had a good amount of Chauchats from WWI which we licensed from France. Just as shitty but still domestic copies that were laying around for "emergency situations" so we have had a lot. Guns were hard to get ahold of as well and the Chauchat and AKM's were about the best they could get from armory raids.

Probably should have put that in the question actually. But yeah I guess the same situation and question still applies.

[The Corparation]

The assault guns were actually a particular favorite of Hitler' s troops, surprisingly. Pains me to admit that, I hate them for their aesthetics (or lack of), but they were rather valid strategically.

Anyway, there' s really no purpose in building bigger, other than having a strategic pissing contest with your rivals. Hitler was overcompensating for something, as one can see from his "I want bigger stuff" projects...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_321
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_323
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster

Just a few examples.


And Sedikal, that' s a pretty specific request. I feel like they would make more sense with WW-II era Nazi equipment...there was a metric ass ton of it lying around, and they had to do something with it.

But a general rule of thumb for any aspiring rebel is that at least 50% of your equipment will most likely come from the people you' re fighting. It' s just easier to get your hands on that way.

The Gigant was actually a decent transport aircraft although it was lacking in the range department. Their main shortcoming was that Germany lacked the air power to properly protect them. Also going against them was the fact that Germany really didn't need any large military air-lifters later in the war.

[Rich and Corporations]

The assault guns were actually a particular favorite of Hitler' s troops, surprisingly. Pains me to admit that, I hate them for their aesthetics (or lack of), but they were rather valid strategically.

Considering that according to operational research surveys, most hits are to the front of the tank (NS will tell you differently), assault guns are quite useful prior to development of widespread high quality two axis gun stabilization. So in the case of RL, before the 70s/80s, or in the case of NS, before the 40s/50s.

[Lolzieristan]

Ok, I understand now. If your government has weapons in their stockpiles, then they'll most likely have the right type of ammunition as well.

[Altaiire]

Is there any reason not to (optionally) include an external box launcher for ATGMs on an MBT? I was thinking using them similiar to the Longbow, where an FCS automatically identifies and engages threatening targets. Top attack, not TOWs.