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Author Topic: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]  (Read 80078 times)

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Offline StarSlayer

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Well that was disappointing.  I was hoping the Tsukuba was going to get to draw blood before this conflict ended.
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 

Offline Enioch

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
What is disappointing is that I lead with like ten times the enemy VP, yet my politicians sign a compromise peace. I really wanted to punch through my screen at that point.
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

 

Offline StarSlayer

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Well to be fair the Hawks in the IJN were generally displeased with the Japanese diplomats, could be an additional national trait.    :P

Which was dumb since without the Naval Treaties, Japan would have been completely bankrupted attempting to compete with the US in an unrestricted naval arms race.
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 

Offline Enioch

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
I fully agree - however, do note that, in this case, Japan was not dealing with the US. She was dealing with the French, in 1908, and winning handily.

Relations with the USA discussed in the upcoming update.
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

 

Offline Enioch

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In the aftermath of the war, the naval budget was slashed, as expected. The Admiralty still reeled at how far in the red their finances now were; drastic action was required to maintain a certain degree of competitiveness.



The commissioning of the Tsukuba, a few days before the Emperor's death, had somewhat added to the prestige of the Navy. More so, since it happened in a very opportune time with regards to the steadily improving relations between the US and the Japanese Alliance.



On December 16 1907, by order of the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, a task force of US warships, affectionately known as the 'Great White Fleet' began its year-long mission of circumnavigating the globe and 'showing the flag'. Under the overall command of Admiral Robley D. Evans, the American forces would reach the Japanese waters scant days before the launching of the Tsukuba. Admiral Evans and his staff were invited to attend the ceremony; and after their attendance of Emperor Meiji's funeral, Tsukuba and her flotilla would escort the American ships to the next leg of their journey.

Relations between Japan and the US had always been relatively smooth in the past; the Americans had military bases in the Philippines and Guam, but maintained only a minimal presence there. The signing of the Franco-Japanese peace was seen as an opportunity to further improve the relations between Japan and the US.

Negotiations did not lead to any concrete results; but an unofficial and tentative 'Gentlemen's Agreement' was drawn between the two administrations, that would allow free mobility of peoples in both parties' Pacific holdings, while preventing uncontrolled immigration from and to their 'core' territories.



Meanwhile, in Japan, during Tsukuba's shakedown cruise, she fired more than three hundred rounds of stockpiled ammunition, in a series of ballistics tests. The results would lead to improved AP shells, with increased penetrative capabilities.





The R & D department also presented the Admiralty with the first designs for a ship-borne oil-fired boiler. The Navy was ecstatic, but returned the designs with a long list of suggested improvements. It would be impossible to afford an oil-fired ship with the current budget; it would be best if the scientists took the time to iron out as many faults as they could on the drawing-board.



In an attempt to further curb expenses, and with international tensions running low, the Admiralty put a halt to advanced gunnery and live-fire testing.



The budget savings were put to good use, refitting the obsolescent fleet of Minesweepers. It was the general opinion that the 'Maru boys' had given a damn good showing during the war and that they deserved better than their old run-down boats.



As a small consolation, military intelligence reported minimal activity in the French shipyards. Closer investigation revealed that the war aftermath had hit the French even worse - they had to freeze the construction of one of their battlecruisers, because of lack of funds. This put Japan firmly ahead in the battlecruiser race among the minor Powers.



In fact, it was heartening to see that, with the exception of the powerhouses of Great Britain and the United States, Japan was still a competitive world leader among the minor Powers, with a budget to rival Germany. This certainly put things into perspective for the Japanese Alliance, whose pride was somewhat soothed.



In July, the order was given to scrap the remaining Akikaze-class destroyers, as they were considered too obsolete to be competitive. Their machinery had reached the end of its operational life and it was thought that refitting them, or continuing to maintain them would prove to be too much of a financial burden. The new Matsukazes would take over their duties.





July also marked the end of Tsukuba's shakedown cruise. She was now the only battlecruiser in operation world-wide not flying the Royal Navy's White Ensign and Japan's prestige skyrocketed in the international scene.



August 1908 led to the establishment of the first overseas factories in the Japanese Alliance. Taking advantage of the improving relationships with the US and the 'Gentlemen's Agreement', the Mitsubishi conglomerate established two electrical equipment plants in the Philippines and followed up with the opening of an insurance office specifically targeted towards American merchant shipping in the Pacific. The initiative rendered more than satisfactory profits for the company and spurred further industrialisation in the Alliance.





More importantly, on the 28th of August, the R & D division submitted the final designs for an oil-fired boiler system to the Admiralty. The Sumatran oil fields would soon show their true worth for the Alliance.






« Last Edit: June 18, 2018, 07:34:26 pm by Enioch »
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

  

Offline Col. Fishguts

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Awesome thread, looking forward to see how things turn out. I guess the Spaghettis are the next ones getting slapped?

One question, is this kind of picture also ingame (autogenerated from her stats)?


Can you see your ship designs like this, or do you only get the autogenerated top-down view?
"I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it." - D. Lynch

Visit The Babylon Project, now also with HTL flavour  ¦ GTB Rhea

 

Offline Enioch

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Re: Spaghettis; won't spoiler it.

Re: side views: the game can auto-generate the placement of the turrets and the torpedo tubes and offers you several options for the shape of the hull, the height of the funnels etc. Then, you 'build' the superstructure and the masts with sprites that are included in the game (and you can mod in your own).
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

 

Offline Col. Fishguts

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Ah cool, and once you have built it with those sprites you can save you work and the game will use it as an illustration?
Like that Virginia Gazette newspaper?

This thread makes me itch to buy RTW, it looks like X-COM with ships :)
"I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it." - D. Lynch

Visit The Babylon Project, now also with HTL flavour  ¦ GTB Rhea

 

Offline Enioch

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Exactly. You can see the illustration in the game as an alternative to the top-down view (not in the tactical map, though, obviously), you can re-use it for evolutions of the same class and it's a bitmap that you can see outside of the game too.

One major problem with the side view designer is that it doesn't save 'layers' and it only has one undo. It's not particularly user friendly and you need to build a sideview in a signle session (takes like 5')

I heartily recommend supporting the developer - he's currently started work on RTW2, which will include WWII designs and, apparently, aircraft carriers as well!
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

 

Offline StarSlayer

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Is there any multi or is it SP only? 
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 

Offline Enioch

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Strictly SP, I'm afraid - a result of the way the combat system works.
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

 

Offline Enioch

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In early September, the R & D department delivered another groundbreaking development: a viable system for superfiring turrets. The stresses applied to the hull of the ship made it impossible (still) to have a front-mounted 'B' superfiring turret, but an 'X' superfiring turret, pointed toward the rear of the ship was well within the capabilities of Japanese engineering.





The Admiralty responded with a change in research doctrine. It was clear that Japan would never rival the production capabilities of giants such as Great Britain or the US. In the (hopefully avoidable) situation where she would have to meet their dreadnoughts in battle, it was, therefore, imperative that she hold a qualitative advantage. She needed a small core of tough ships, with a decent punch, which could be relied upon to survive any but the most disastrous beating and come back swinging.

The R & D department was, therefore, asked to focus their efforts on damage control and torpedo protection, which they did, with gusto.



The Admiralty also considered several hypothetical designs for an improved Ikoma-style battlecruiser at the time. The one the Admiralty felt held the most promise was the one codenamed Kurama; but it was concluded that the weight requirements of a modern torpedo defense system would overwhelm both the current budget and the shipbuilding capabilities of the Japanese shipyards. More time to build up infrastructure was needed - the Admiralty refused to compromise and lay down a ship that would be obsolete two months after work on it had started.



Instead, further expansion of the docks was ordered; and experts were summoned to form think tanks on how to better miniaturise and implement the R & D department's findings.





The work of military intelligence confirmed that the Admiralty's new doctrine could be viable. On October, the blueprints of the Russian battlecruiser Navarin found their way to the Admiralty, via a rather...complicated route. In short, the Russian ship had been laid down almost a year after Tsukuba, but was still its inferior in everything but gun caliber - and Tsukuba was designed to take hits from 12'' guns and keep on going. Drawing a comparison to Ikoma was laughable - the Japanese warship would tear through the Russian's belt armour in only a few salvos. Clearly, Russia was not a force to be feared - yet.



November was marked by further torpedo technology developments that had the destroyer captains champing at the bit for their new Matsukazes.



It also marked the beginning of the Java crisis, one of the more contentious issues, that would mark the diplomativ arena in South-East Asia for the next decade.

Germany, with her original bid to weaken the French presence in the region having failed because of the quick Franco-Japanese peace, adopted a more aggressive stance. A task force was dispatched to occupy neutral Java who, while not an official partner or ally of Japan, played an important part in the diplomatic balance of the South China Sea and had even expressed interest in formally joining the Japanese Alliance.

The Japanese response could best be described as 'stunned'. There was much discussion on what stance to assume. It was important to keep Germany out of South-East Asia, from where she had been expulsed during the 1905 war; but it was also important not to appear imperialistic in the region and potentially sour the chance for a closer relationship with the USA. Finally, after long deliberation and discussion it was agreed that an international force should be assembled and dispatched, under a joint Japanese and USA command, to convince the German forces to back down.



The Germans did not; and the task force, under partially conflicting orders and the timorous leadership of cautious US diplomats did not offer further challenge. However, two things were made clear:

Firstly, the Germans and their long-reaching imperialistic ambitions in the Far East were still very much a threat to the stability of the region and Japan's interests.

Secondly, the Japanese had demonstrated that they had no aggressive imperialistic designs of their own and that they were willing to operate in collaboration with other world powers; America in particular. As the US had also felt their bases in the Pacific to be threatened, this considerably improved the spirit of collaboration between the two countries; the term 'Pacific Neighbours' was coined after the Javan Crisis to describe the very cordial relationship between the two countries.

In short, Japan lost a potential protectorate and another base in the South-China Sea; but she earned herself a very close friend in the US and emerged the clear moral victor of the Crisis in the international stage, while Germany was almost universally villified.





As a sidenote: the 'Japanese Craze' which took off in the USA during that period (most notable being President Roosevelt traveling to Japan to learn Jujitsu and Kendo from native tutors and the 'Sushi Mania' of 1909) is genuinely one of the most hilarious periods of the two countries' history.




(OOC Note: the above are actual things and the images have only had the dates changed, holy crap, the silliness is overwhelming)

Also:



****ING FINALLY. SPAGHETTIS GO HOME, I HAVE BETTER FRIENDS NOW.



On Christmas day of 1908, the first of the Matsukazes, Minazuki was commissioned into the Navy. She immediately started her shakedown cruise and was much praised by her crew for her high top speed and her increased stability and high freeboard.



The Russian Navy also made a half-hearted attempt to acquire the licence to the Japanese oil-fired boilers design. They were calmly and politely shown the door: if Japan was to maintain her qualitative advantage over her enemies, she would have to keep such critical technology classified.



(OOC: Why, yes, Italy, I have no objection to selling you a crappy firing control sub-tech. *CASH REGISTER SOUND*)



No, the Japanese Navy had no objection to selling off what it considered to be less-important advances, especially when their engineers had just further opened the gap with the installation of high-quality 9ft-rangefinders on every Japanese ship.



And then, Intelligence delivered again, by securing the prototype blueprints for the British Invincible battlecruisers - Tsukuba's older sisters.



In their defense, they mounted 13'' guns, which could give Tsukuba's 10'' armor trouble at close range. But they were also horrendously underarmoured compared to her, with a 6'' belt. Tsukuba's 11'' guns would go through that belt like a hot knife through butter, at any range; and any hit to the Brits' vulnerable engine room would rob them of their speed - a crucial element for the survivability and effectiveness of a battlecruiser.

As for Ikoma - she would be slower, true. But in any broadside engagement she was sure to turn the British ships into swiss cheese.

In short:
« Last Edit: June 18, 2018, 07:34:52 pm by Enioch »
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

 
Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Superior quality trumps quantity unless your russia
This is really entertaining!
Too many ideas.....not enough FREDing time!

 

Offline crizza

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Loving this :D

Lacking RTW since I'm not sure that one shady site is the right one to get it.
But this motivated me to play HoI IV and invade the USA :D

 

Offline Enioch

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
That 'shady site' is, indeed, the way to get it. Don't worry, it only looks shady.  :lol:
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

 

Offline StarSlayer

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
I can't help but think Intelligence Operative image needs to be replaced with the Geisha from Shogun Total War.



Though I suppose if those murder machines were you Intel Operators they would have assassinated the Russian Admiralty and burned down their yards as well.
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”

 

Offline Enioch

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
Image yoinked. Thanks for that brainwave.  :lol:
'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'  -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"

So don't take a hammer to your computer. ;-)

 

Offline Spoon

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
I check thread everyday
Everyday I check

I dont have anything else to add

have an action poi
Urutorahappī!!

[02:42] <@Axem> spoon somethings wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> critically wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> im happy with these missions now
[02:44] <@Axem> well
[02:44] <@Axem> with 2 of them

 

Offline Lorric

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
That top spy is amusing because normally she'd stand out. But in this universe? No, she doesn't. :D

So did you change the dates on those pictures to 1909? What were their true dates?

 

Offline StarSlayer

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Re: Enioch's naval shenanigans - RTW as Japan - [Image Heavy!]
The top spy picture is Mata Hari, she was an exotic dancer/courtesan and probably the most famous spy during the First World War.
“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”