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[piratejoe]

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Pregame Start!

Even before we became the bastion of freedom and democracy in this archepegalo, our navy has always ruled the waves nearby, with many a ship made to protect the lands from threat of sea. A wooden wall with gunpowder and cannon. However, despite our old and prestigious past, times have changed. While the government knows the importance of the navy, and the army as well, our shipyards are clearly more fit to old wooden ships than proper steel ones, and as such we have unfortunately been limited in that regard, and just as unfortunately, only the well off are usually afforded the education that is required for the navy. You can teach a poor uneducated man to follow orders and shoot a gun, but repairing a ship or determining how far off a full cannon shot is, is much more delicate and difficult...

Worse still, the prestige of the past has left some embellishment of our officers, who usually dress their ships to impress. And the captains and officers being the most skilled and intelligent personnel makes their job of 'improving the quality of their crews on paper much easier. Still, this can have its uses, both when it comes to spies and the connections we have...Additionally, our already generous funding should be only on the rise, as despite the many cloudy days and rain, the home land is fertile for both fields of cattle, and basic food crops, while islands a bit further south and north are great for luxury crops, including tea and coffee in some locations. This, combined with good access to iron has lead to our economy to rise. However, with the reformation, a new naval ensign and perhaps name is required, and with enough of a prestigious flag of our reformed navy compared to the southerners of Sothweg, we could get public funding for a ship...After all, you can't have a navy without a flag, or a nation for that matter.

Pregame Design Phase of Turn 1 of 5

[TricMagic]

Public Education System

As with the do we need new ships. But we also require a way to bring up future generations to take up the task of improving upon the past. The Public Education System is meant to be our step. Funding for schools, books written and distributed, teachers found to teach. It's not much, but we can fill our students heads with our history, math, and the sciences. And maybe, there will be some gems uncovered who will pioneer the next great invention.

At the least, the math for those almost military age shouldn't be too hard to stuff in there heads. Though this will end up being a long-term project, that will show better and better results.

[Kashyyk]

((Modeled on the Yorktown-class))

The Freedom-class is a 245 feet long and 36 feet beam steel-hulled gunship. It's 14 foot draft will allow this vessel to move close to the coast of the majority of islands in the archipelago and safely pass over reefs and sandbanks, allowing it to escape larger ships that cannot enter such shallow water.

For propulsion, it uses a pair of horizontally mounted triple-expansion steam engines, driving screw propellers, as well as a supplemental three-masted schooner rig, providing 6,300 sq foot of sail. Combined, these should provide excellent endurance, as fuel will only be needed for basic living when not in a combat situation, achieving up to 16 knots.

Armament consists of three 6 inch double gun turrets spaced along the center-line, along with four 2 inch single gun turrets, two aside. At the front of the ship is the first double-gun turret, followed by the conning tower on the forecastle, with one two inch gun on either side. The second double-gun sits behind the smokestack, elevated to allow it to shoot over the final double-gun turret placed at the back of the ship. The final two 2-inch guns sit on either side of this elevated double-gun turret. Altogether, this allows all six 6 inch guns and two two inch guns to fire to either side, with the majority of guns also able to fire astern.

The sloped deck and conning tower are both armoured with 2 inches of steel, along with the double gun turrets. The two inch guns each have a gun shield one inch thick. The rest of the ship is 1/3 inch thick. All essential machinery and stores, such as the magazine and propulsion are placed below the armoured deck.

[Man of Paper]

Tric, we're the Navy, not the country. We don't have the resources, scope, or scale to overhaul the public education system.

[TricMagic]

I don't think we even have a public one. Just cause we're the navy doesn't mean we can't institute a change for the better.

[Man of Paper]

Yes it does.

[TricMagic]

... This is going to be fairly normal When we're in the same team, isn't it.

Piratejoe, is mine something we can do?

[Man of Paper]

I mean it's normal for every team you're on, and for good reason. In this case, it's:

1) My previous point
2) We're not likely to design away a -2 level handicap with something so simple and broad, or even make significant impact
3) If we even do anything publicly to draw minds and manpower to our branch and away from others we're likely to piss off the army, which people seem to want to avoid
4) We shouldn't use actions to combat the things that we decided would define our nation, or else we're just throwing designs away in order to combat ourselves

[Jilladilla]

It'd be a long and hard road to completely obsolete our trait like that Tric. Even if it is a viable design.... I don't see it being quick. I don't even see it being a long project. I expect it to be *massive*. Better to take smaller steps that'll have tangible benefits rather than try and lunge for it all in one go.

Anyhow, I noticed that we don't have torpedoes in our starting tech list. Given that we're going with small ships.... This needs to be rectified.

Sadly, our Grand Navy has fallen a bit behind on the times... This will of course be rectified soon! But for now we will have to rely on the might of the smaller ships, of the torpedo boats, to safeguard our Nation from the dastardly Tyrant of Sothwog. The only problem is, we don't have any torpedoes. And while purchasing ours from Whitehead is theoretically an option, our proud Nation and Navy would never accept such a course of action.

Still, placing an order for a few for research and development purposes should still be acceptable, as no one will ever know what we did the end result will be a 100% original, home-grown piece of Nemorian Pride! Of course, we'll be taking it easy for this first attempt, surely a weapon with a range of 800 yards at 25 knots would be impressive, and a point of pride in that our Nation, behind as it was, could nearly match the rest of the world with our first, totally 100% our own work, attempt!

[Vostok]

Not all jobs in the Navy require a good education--the stoker, for example, just needs to know how to follow directions and learn on the job. Instead of trying to improve the education of all sailors in the Navy, we should identify the jobs that require more skill, find individuals within the navy that show promise, and concentrate our education-related resources on training them for these jobs. This would create a cadre of Warrant Officers to be sprinkled in amongst the enlisted crews to better handle skill-heavy tasks.

I'm not sure what's considered "normal" for the paleolithic period of steam warships 1890s, but how slow is 16 knots for a cruiser? It's pretty well armed and small enough to shit out en masse, but 16 knots isn't running away from anything

Also known as the-keep-them-from-kicking-our-shit-in-class, the Aegis-class coastal defense ship is an ugly bastard with no fucks to give a pair of twin 10" turrets, ten inches of armor, and the speed of a snail with arthritis a fourteen-knot speed. Her secondary battery of eight four-inch guns and weaponized ugliness, which is said to be capable of blinding enemy sailors.

Propulsion is provided by two VTE steam engines and eight Marine-type boilers, with an endurance of about 3,400 nautical miles at 10 knots. The ship is divided into nine watertight compartments for damage control, and has a double-bottom running 70% of the ship's length. Armor protection consists of a 10" belt that tapers to 7.5" at the ends, 1.2" of deck armor, 8" turrets and barbettes, and 7" around the conning tower.

[Aseaheru]

The Fleet cannot always protect the shore. Indeed, many argue that the Fleet should not protect most of the shore, and instead attack others. The looming war has caused adherents of this school of thought to come to power within the structures of the Navy. Thus, the PF-A where built to guard harbors and other important sections of the coastline, freeing up the fleet to do what it does best, attack.

The PF-A is best described as a triangular reinforced concrete(with thick earthen berms over it) fortification armed with a trio of 10"/50 guns in disappearing mounts at the corners with a central blockhouse-cum-fire-director constructed from reinforced concrete.

The guns mounted are new designs, hoop-built breachloaders using Welin breech blocks and use multi-piece ammunition with bagged charges of Brown Powder and separate 500lb warheads. This propellant, combined with the barrel length(carfully chosen based on burn rate, the propellant is spent jsut as the shell leaves the barrel) ensures ranges in excess of 20,000 yards. The ammunition arrives at the gun pits via two sets of hoists, connected(through technically a pair of hoists, the switchover point also containing the shell storage) to a powder store dug within the bedrock no less than 50ft below the pit. These are some of the largest and heaviest guns we have had experience with, weighing near on 80,000lb when combined with its breach.

One of the other notable sections of the fort are the blockhouse/fire-director towers. Besides their construction(over a yard of reinforced concrete on the exterior, foot-thick walls on the interior and an overall shape reminiscent of the Martello towers that used to pepper the coast), the extensive telegraph system connecting each fort to others in their defensive net and between nets, the blockhouse also mounts a range-finding and fire-directing turret in leu of heavy armament, containing a Coincidence rangefinder measuring nearly 10ft across to allow for aiming at the ranges possible with the gun.

So, this is to give us three things, half-decent fire control, better-than-decent heavy(ish) guns and good propellant for them.

Vostok, on speed, 16 knots is roughly as fast as any capital ship(which includes heavy cruisers, anyways) could go prior to steam turbines.
Anyways, I want smaller ships. Lotsa them. But we do need to be able to tie down our ports from raids.

[Vostok]

Well, Mikasa made 18 knots, the Royal Soverigns made 17.5 knots, and most actual cruisers I can think of were making speeds in the high teens at this point in time. All with VTE, probably. It's in the same ballpark, yes, but when your ship is the tiny one, it needs all the advantages it can get.

Compound armor works,, but it has an unfortunate habit of delaminating on a good hit. By replacing the multiple layers of iron and steel with a single, case-hardened case-hardened plate of nickel-steel armor, we can increase the effectiveness of our armor and reduce the amount of thickness needed for the same amount of protection.

[Aseaheru]

 Well, it turns out that none of us read the rules correctly, so really none of us have workable designs.

 Fear not, dear users of the forums who shun the carnage of Discord, we who have suffered within have a plan!

 First step, unfuck ourselves, by training our excuses for sailors and by putting the hands of the engineers on desks!

The Advanced Naval Training Schools are a series of, well, schools setup to teach sailors and officers practical knowledge from damage control to advanced paperwork. Spread across a half-dozen "Stone Frigates", each ANT School specializes in one particular naval specialty, from the Gunnery School to "Middies Nightmare"(dedicated to post-bootcamp training of ensigns of training mustangs, and of training the Marines), passing through the Engineering School, the Damage Control School, The School of Hydrography and Meteorology(and communications), and finally the School of Medicine. Each school is able to conduct basic training(which includes literacy), and each is located in a different coastal city.

 It should be noted that in our mostly-modern navy, near all shipboard positions are specialist in nature. Excepts mostly consist of stokers, mess-crew and whipers.

[Madman198237]

Nemorland Naval Academy's School of Nautical Engineering
Too long has our nation been full of the uneducated. This is crippling our engineering department's ability to actually work out designs. We cannot rely on a few educated geniuses to draw out an entire ship in detail, from the largest armor plate to the smallest bolt. We must have project leads capable of separating the work into parts, and the ever-underappreciated work of the engineering intern, who must find the right bolt to put in the right spot to hold the whole ship together.

In order to supply ourselves with these valuable interns and engineers, we have formed the Nemorland Naval Academy's School of Nautical Engineering. Teaching students from families who can't afford an education, these academies make use of the best of our engineers. Selection for the academy is done via entrance exam: Candidates wishing to apply take an exam at their local recruiting office or whatever, which sends their (nameless) exam to the Academy while keeping an identification paper that lists the number of the exam paper. The Academy reviews the exams sent from each center, accepts candidates, and sends the exams back. Each center then sends their candidate onwards to the Academy, the people responsible for accepting students and checking the exam never knowing whose exam is whose. This makes it much harder for corruption to take root, and much more obvious when it does.

The Academy is filled with the very best of our engineers, who pass on their knowledge to the next generation primarily through hands-on experience. Classes go over previous designs of our nation or of other nations, and challenge students to explain why decisions were made at the time, or make them better. Advanced classes cover current projects, working with students to gather their ideas and hone their skills.

It's taken me far too long to get this done, here, opinions welcome.

[Kashyyk]

What with the GM setting a deadline for this turn, we should get round to voting. I'm not sure if the Polygonal Fort would count as a Ship design (cos it's a gun platform) or a technology. Feel free to move it if you know.

Technologies (3 Dice)
() Public Education System :
(1) Blackbutt Torpedo : Kashyyk
(1) Warrent Officer Corps : Kashyyk
() Harvey Armour :
() Advanced Naval training Schools :
() Nemorland Naval Academy's School of Nautical Engineering :

Ships (4 Dice)
() Freedom-class Protected Light Cruiser :
() Aegis-class Coast Defence Ship :

Other (? Dice)
() Polygonal Fort, Type A :