Thinking a bit about the USN...

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I'm kind of in the "there's no way it could have been destroyed to that extent" and making that fit in a "canon" T2k (1.0) setting sticks in my bridgework a bit, but one justification sprang to mind: maybe the ships themselves weren't destroyed - there's plenty of ships left, but what of willing crews, what of maintenance (even nuclear ships require POL for moving parts), and indeed what of supplies? Kinda hard to pack up for a six month patrol when everyone in your home port city is scratching by on 800 calories per day.

Just sort of a random thought.

[ArmySGT.]

Navy personnel could have been seconded to the Army and the Marine Corps in increasing numbers to replace combat losses in Technical fields. Those require months to train let alone just finding healthy replacements. The fact that the training bases themselves along with the instructors are nuclear fallout.

Naval personnel and to some extent Air Force personnel are going to become redundant with a decreasing number of airframes and less of the larger seaworthy vessels. Honestly, I think that the Sailors and Airmen are going to replace the Army and Marine Corps support service personnel with the trained Army and Marine Corps personnel trickling out to the Combat Theaters worldwide, almost completely within CONUS. This exempts active combat in the SW and Alaska.

[Raellus]

It's a good thought. I think naval T2K canon can make sense if we take a holistic view. I agree that attrition of personnel with technical expertise could lead to vessel attrition through accident and wear (or unmanned vessels sitting in port for lack of a competent crew). Also, undermanned vessels are more likely to succumb to enemy action. Take out a few naval port facilities with nukes, and damaged/worn out ships can't be repaired and returned to service quickly.

It's not mentioned either way in canon, but an additional explanation for the sorry state of the USN late in the war is the use of tactical nuclear weapons at sea. Even a near miss or nuclear-armed SSM intercepted relatively close to a carrier battle group could do enough damage to put vessels out of commision for a while, and a direct hit could destroy most, if not all, of a CBG.

Put these all together and add in the inevitable conventional battle losses and you have a skeleton fleet c. 2000.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by Raellus

It's a good thought. I think naval T2K canon can make sense if we take a holistic view. I agree that attrition of personnel with technical expertise could lead to vessel attrition through accident and wear (or unmanned vessels sitting in port for lack of a competent crew). Also, undermanned vessels are more likely to succumb to enemy action. Take out a few naval port facilities with nukes, and damaged/worn out ships can't be repaired and returned to service quickly.

It's not mentioned either way in canon, but an additional explanation for the sorry state of the USN late in the war is the use of tactical nuclear weapons at sea. Even a near miss or nuclear-armed SSM intercepted relatively close to a carrier battle group could do enough damage to put vessels out of commision for a while, and a direct hit could destroy most, if not all, of a CBG.

Put these all together and add in the inevitable conventional battle losses and you have a skeleton fleet c. 2000.

Yeah, exactly. New York is basically a vertical version of The Road Warrior, so forget landing there. Lots and lots of other deepwater ports are gone, and even if they're intact what infrastructure exists to get stuff to and from the ships (roads/highways to the ports).

[dragoon500ly]

don't forget the example of the Red Fleet following the fall, within two years of few trained personnel, no spare parts and little maintenance, most of the fleet was inoperable and rusting alongside piers.

[TrailerParkJawa]

I think the authors wanted to portray a last man standing narrative hence almost no ships left. In reality I think there would be dozens of ships left even if they are just frigates and destroyers. However by 2000 there's no oil, boil electricity, nothing in any significant numbers anyway to keep a capital ship in fighting trim.

Bigger ships like carriers and cruisers probably all fell to tactical nukes or masses Ssm attacks. Any that are left are probably sitting in port.

[Targan]

I welcome discussions on this topic, though I fear it can be a major point of contention in our little online community. Wherever possible I like to find ways to make things described in the published books make sense, rather than just throw out large parts of the designers' alternate history.

I'm among those who feel that most of the USN's fleets are gone not because of total destruction of ships but because most of the remaining ships are inoperable for a variety of reasons.

I'll be reading further responses to this thread with great interest as this topic aligns nicely with the way I like to explain things in my campaigns.

[ArmySGT.]

The casualties have go to be high if ships meet in engagements in the North Sea, The Baltic, The Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, the North Pacific, and the Bering Strait.

• Confined maneuver room
• An operational area compact enough for shore based anti ship air patrols
• Operationally in effective range of shore based intermediate range nuclear missiles
• Supply only by Munitions and tankers. Shore based depots will be denied.

Additionally only the port facilities of neutral or strategically unimportant (in the first years) port and ship building facilities are going to be spared several nuclear strikes.

No drydocks, no mooring berths, no repair facilities, based on land are going to survive for the NATO or Pact fleets. No spare parts or the technicians to make them. To return to.

Maybe there is a Fleet Tender out there somewhere but, without GLONASS, LORAN, the GPS constellation, or communications satellites of any kind surviving Admiralty of either side can't make use of one.

[Olefin]

First off the canon isnt exactly the most reliable thing as to USN strength

1) The USN has one nuclear submarine left - and its implied very very much that they were lost to enemy action, not to maintenance issues.

Sorry but that means that all the Permits, Sturgeons, Los Angeles (except Corpus Christi), Tridents, etc.. are gone - basically no chance of that at all - it would take the Russians, British, French, Chinese and every one else in the world to hit the USN that bad - and remember a bunch of USN bases didnt get hit in the nuclear exchange so those bases would have spare parts, etc.. available to repair ships

2) The whole "last battle of the Virginia" is completely unrealistic - read it and then try to have it make sense with any weapon the Russians ever mounted on a ship

3) The fleet in the Persian Gulf that supposedly has been supporting Marine landings is way too small to land any kind of Marine force - you are talking two full divisions and all their support ships and all thats left is two ships? And we know that Frank Frey missed ships when he did his module because he forgot the whole French task force in the area.

4) No USN ships on the Pacific Coast at all - sorry but no way -

And we do know that there are USN ships left active in the US on the East Coast which is where most of the naval fighting that is mentioned in the canon happened - there are three destroyers plus the John Hancock at Norfolk and NJ according to Challenge Magazine - they dont have much in the way of fuel but they are still active duty ships - along with a sailing ships, several smaller ships and even a few aircraft

so if there are survivors there, there are survivors on the Pacific Coast

5) Maintenance - ships do take a lot of maintenance that is true - but it takes a lot to make a ship so out of whack its useless - your radar might not be working and your engines may only be able to put out half power but you still have a ship that can kick butt

6) Fuel - you can run a ship on oil that is about as bottom barrel as it gets - gunk that would ruin the engines on a tank or jet works just fine in a ship. Heck in a pinch you can run on unrefined oil if you have to on most ships - you wont get max efficiency or range but it will work

A lot of USN ships may be out of fuel in places like Hawaii, Korea, etc.. - but all they need is oil and they would be operational again - and as long as the US has ships in the Persian Gulf and access to oil there they can bring those ships back into operation

7) Armaments

Lack of armaments could make many naval ships not as effective as they used to be. I.e. if you are out of torpedoes then your sub isnt going to do much but recon or maybe be able to lay mines. However there is a lot of ammo out there for the guns the USN has. And even if all they have left is their guns that makes them a lot more effective than a jury rigged gun on a sailing boat or cabin cruiser.

My GM showed this with the Corpus Christi. He took the writeup in the Gateway to the Spanish Main that the Christi sunk that Bulgarian freighter in 2000 with dud torpedoes to mean that her fire control system was screwed and she was out of torps. Thus if the Christi was under US control in late 2000 she couldnt be under civilian control a couple of months later.

So he changed the Last Submarine from a search for a submarine to a search for fire control parts and torpedoes and Harpoon missiles that were needed to restore the Christi and several of her sister ships back into fighting trim.


Its very obvious that the original authors either didnt have any naval expertise or wanted to simplify the game as much as possible so they just killed off the USN to make it easier to write for it. Similar to what they did with air power in the Gulf - they mentioned air strikes and the like in the RDF sourcebook but only in Challenge Magazine did they put the rules in so you could actually do them.

[Olefin]

There are maintenance facilities left - they cant take aircraft carriers or battleships but there are lots of places you can repair destroyers, cruisers and destroyers.

For instance they never hit the sub base in Connecticut that is part and parcel of Last Submarine. If they hit every USN maintenance facility that base would have been nothing but a crater filled with water.

But they didnt - so that means that not every base got hit. They hit Norfolk and they hit the sub bases in South Carolina - but that doesnt mean they hit everywhere. And even Norfolk got hit with one nuke only - and one that wasnt big enough to take out the whole base - there have to be docks left for instance. There are ships based there that operate out of Norfolk - and you dont operate out of a ruined base with no fueling or dock capability - so that means even a nuked base is still operational.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Olefin

First off the canon isnt exactly the most reliable thing as to USN strength

Meh, I am not going to worry about Canon so much. The game was written with the Cold War as very much a reality. 20+ years later we can take it for granted pulled from all manner of open source material. Fact is it was classified then, and much of what is current is classified now.
In all fairness to the authors we can’t be smug about what we know now about the US Navy of the 80s and 90s, while pretending we are privy to the numbers and capabilities of what is afloat today.

Originally Posted by Olefin

1) The USN has one nuclear submarine left - and its implied very very much that they were lost to enemy action, not to maintenance issues.

Convenient. I think that would be called plot. If we are going to assume anything, it would be this is the sole KNOWN and OPERATIONAL nuclear submarine.

Originally Posted by Olefin

Sorry but that means that all the Permits, Sturgeons, Los Angeles (except Corpus Christi), Tridents, etc.. are gone - basically no chance of that at all - it would take the Russians, British, French, Chinese and every one else in the world to hit the USN that bad - and remember a bunch of USN bases didnt get hit in the nuclear exchange so those bases would have spare parts, etc.. available to repair ships

I don’t think I would waste a nuclear weapon on the dockyard in the hope that valuable ships are there. The warehouses and the ammunition magazines necessary for those ships to operate isn’t going to evade a strike. A nuclear weapon could strike the dockyards but, both sides realize that is a temporary measure. Drydocks will be repaired and gantry or cranes erected again. Deny the enemy the spare parts and it is as good as taking the ships out of the fight.

Originally Posted by Olefin

2) The whole "last battle of the Virginia" is completely unrealistic - read it and then try to have it make sense with any weapon the Russians ever mounted on a ship

I was Army. I don’t have the experience to regard it either way. Probably just a plot point and an explanation to placate those that want an explanation.

Originally Posted by Olefin

3) The fleet in the Persian Gulf that supposedly has been supporting Marine landings is way too small to land any kind of Marine force - you are talking two full divisions and all their support ships and all thats left is two ships? And we know that Frank Frey missed ships when he did his module because he forgot the whole French task force in the area.

Can also be taken to mean those are the ships that remain. The others sailed on to Bremerhaven or were lost in action around the Straits of Hormuz. Is there a mention of civilian sealift or merchant marine?

Originally Posted by Olefin

4) No USN ships on the Pacific Coast at all - sorry but no way -

Really? In the vastly larger Pacific ocean, the North Pacific closer to the Kamchatka peninsula puts vessels in range of Soviet radar and shore based anti ship patrols. However the US Navy has Bremerton, San Francisco, and San Diego, as well as Pearl Harbor, Guam, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. This is versus the Soviets in Korea and ported in Vladivostok and Petropavlosk.
If I was a betting man I would say that the remnants of the US Navy are in the southern or equatorial waters of the Pacific. Away from everything Soviet but a surviving reconnaissance satellite, as it would simply be out of operational range without a WW2 scale island campaign. The North Atlantic and the Med, as well as the Persian Gulf are all in the operational range of Soviet Bombers, especially Backfires.

Originally Posted by Olefin

And we do know that there are USN ships left active in the US on the East Coast which is where most of the naval fighting that is mentioned in the canon happened - there are three destroyers plus the John Hancock at Norfolk and NJ according to Challenge Magazine - they dont have much in the way of fuel but they are still active duty ships - along with a sailing ships, several smaller ships and even a few aircraft

Surviving vessels but, operational? Are they worth diverting the resources? Do they have the parts, do they have the crew, can the ammunition and the rations be spared for them to venture out into blue water for even a coastal cruise?

Originally Posted by Olefin

so if there are survivors there, there are survivors on the Pacific Coast

I concur, far more likely. However, I am sure the operational ships on the east coast are there to support the “Going Home” module. It’s a plot point and necessary. No ships, No Omega. So it takes some writing and probably some fudging just to justify.

Originally Posted by Olefin

5) Maintenance - ships do take a lot of maintenance that is true - but it takes a lot to make a ship so out of whack its useless - your radar might not be working and your engines may only be able to put out half power but you still have a ship that can kick butt

Blind and limping on one leg? What would a Captain do? Take it to a Port before it was lost. Can’t see the enemy, and do not have the speed to catch them or run away from them. That’s a wounded beast waiting for the predator to kill it. That is not a ship that would go into a fight, unless there was no choice but to fight.
Maintenance is the Achilles heel and it takes a large industrial base to keep a Navy afloat and operational. One that does not exist after the nuclear exchange and a division of the United States into Milgov and Civgov.

Originally Posted by Olefin

6) Fuel - you can run a ship on oil that is about as bottom barrel as it gets - gunk that would ruin the engines on a tank or jet works just fine in a ship. Heck in a pinch you can run on unrefined oil if you have to on most ships - you wont get max efficiency or range but it will work

Most ships run on bunker fuel, oil that is one step above tar. Still consumes thousands of gallons. Quality is not the problem, it is supply. The same infrastructure required to keep the Navy operational is the industrial base needed to support an oil drilling, pumping, and refining industry. Are oil fields pumping, are the refineries running, are there shortages of the people needed to run them?

Originally Posted by Olefin

A lot of USN ships may be out of fuel in places like Hawaii, Korea, etc.. - but all they need is oil and they would be operational again - and as long as the US has ships in the Persian Gulf and access to oil there they can bring those ships back into operation

Probably are ships out there, but after a few years with no fuel, no food, and no parts. Probably with crew transferred out……. It is going to take a while to get them going again.
The oil in the gulf is probably of no use to anyone as it is still in the ground. Every bit of oil industry infrastructure is in the range of bombers and theater ballistic missiles. That being a strategic asset it is in the interest of both sides to deny it to the other.

Originally Posted by Olefin

7) Armaments

Lack of armaments could make many naval ships not as effective as they used to be. I.e. if you are out of torpedoes then your sub isnt going to do much but recon or maybe be able to lay mines. However there is a lot of ammo out there for the guns the USN has. And even if all they have left is their guns that makes them a lot more effective than a jury rigged gun on a sailing boat or cabin cruiser.

Probably not a lot, if nukes were going to be used the magazines would be certainly be a priority. Add in the factories that once made ammunition for WW2 canon have long since been dismantled. The US has been relying on surplus munitions well into today.

Originally Posted by Olefin

My GM showed this with the Corpus Christi. He took the writeup in the Gateway to the Spanish Main that the Christi sunk that Bulgarian freighter in 2000 with dud torpedoes to mean that her fire control system was screwed and she was out of torps. Thus if the Christi was under US control in late 2000 she couldnt be under civilian control a couple of months later.

So he changed the Last Submarine from a search for a submarine to a search for fire control parts and torpedoes and Harpoon missiles that were needed to restore the Christi and several of her sister ships back into fighting trim.

A departure from Canon but, not an illogical one, personally I think it more likely that a surviving submarine would be diesel electric than nuclear.

Originally Posted by Olefin

Its very obvious that the original authors either didnt have any naval expertise or wanted to simplify the game as much as possible so they just killed off the USN to make it easier to write for it. Similar to what they did with air power in the Gulf - they mentioned air strikes and the like in the RDF sourcebook but only in Challenge Magazine did they put the rules in so you could actually do them.

More likely they just wanted to simplify. As they were writing a game about ground combat in Europe, besides who would want to compete with the success of Harpoon.
So GM fiat, hand waving, the Navies of the World are dead, let’s get on with combat in Europe with the remnants of the NATO and Warsaw pact forces as that is more plausible for a role playing game with a small party of 1-8 players.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Olefin

There are maintenance facilities left - they cant take aircraft carriers or battleships but there are lots of places you can repair destroyers, cruisers and destroyers.

For instance they never hit the sub base in Connecticut that is part and parcel of Last Submarine. If they hit every USN maintenance facility that base would have been nothing but a crater filled with water.

But they didnt - so that means that not every base got hit. They hit Norfolk and they hit the sub bases in South Carolina - but that doesnt mean they hit everywhere. And even Norfolk got hit with one nuke only - and one that wasnt big enough to take out the whole base - there have to be docks left for instance. There are ships based there that operate out of Norfolk - and you dont operate out of a ruined base with no fueling or dock capability - so that means even a nuked base is still operational.

They needed a Sub base for “Last Submarine” so plot point. As for civilian ports, they could repair a lot, except for spares that would be specific to a warship.
As for operational bases, no fuel, no parts, no support personnel, no food for the people, make one just a place to park.

[HorseSoldier]

1) The USN has one nuclear submarine left - and its implied very very much that they were lost to enemy action, not to maintenance issues.

Sorry but that means that all the Permits, Sturgeons, Los Angeles (except Corpus Christi), Tridents, etc.. are gone - basically no chance of that at all - it would take the Russians, British, French, Chinese and every one else in the world to hit the USN that bad - and remember a bunch of USN bases didnt get hit in the nuclear exchange so those bases would have spare parts, etc.. available to repair ships

That is what it means. Put another way, in the T2K universe, the Soviet naval threat + attrition + anything else (bad luck, whatever) is such that the Soviets inflicted pretty brutal losses on the USN (while being largely exterminated themselves).

That's the plot and backstory in the game. It's also pretty unrealistic, knowing what we know now, to think that the Soviets could have sustained massive conventional warfare on two fronts for a couple years without economic collapse. And we now know they didn't have any plans for war in Europe that didn't involve plastering NATO forces from the get go with nuclear weapons.

In short, it's an alternate universe, where things didn't work out the way they did in real life.

2) The whole "last battle of the Virginia" is completely unrealistic - read it and then try to have it make sense with any weapon the Russians ever mounted on a ship

Agreed. Quality of later T2K supplements was not nearly as good as the early ones in a lot of ways.

3) The fleet in the Persian Gulf that supposedly has been supporting Marine landings is way too small to land any kind of Marine force - you are talking two full divisions and all their support ships and all thats left is two ships? And we know that Frank Frey missed ships when he did his module because he forgot the whole French task force in the area.

The ships that are there are what's left -- and it's just as bare bones as heavy divisions with a couple dozen tanks and all the other familiar trappings of T2K orders of battle for land forces.

so if there are survivors there, there are survivors on the Pacific Coast

The combined naval forces available to the US and Canada in the T2K universe are inadequate to prevent the Soviets having an amphibious romp through southern/south eastern Alaska and down Canada's Pacific coast. That implies some serious casualties -- doesn't mean every last ship in the Pacific is gone but it implies very serious losses.

5) Maintenance - ships do take a lot of maintenance that is true - but it takes a lot to make a ship so out of whack its useless - your radar might not be working and your engines may only be able to put out half power but you still have a ship that can kick butt

Who does the work? Besides expenditures of spares and degradation or destruction of facilities, you also have to factor in the death or displacement of skilled labor.

So you've got an intact maintenance facility -- so what? How are you going to power it? Are you just going to ring up the work force who've fled the area looking for food and tell them their jobs are back on? How do you feed them once you consolidate them, assuming that works out.

The reality is that modern naval ships and their support infrastructure are very complex systems with numerous failure points in the mix. T2K assumes pretty much a worst case scenario where complex, modern systems of various sorts have failed.

6) Fuel - you can run a ship on oil that is about as bottom barrel as it gets - gunk that would ruin the engines on a tank or jet works just fine in a ship. Heck in a pinch you can run on unrefined oil if you have to on most ships - you wont get max efficiency or range but it will work

Where does it come from and how do you get it to where the vessels are located?

And, maybe a bigger question, why do you bother? It's not just the USN that is nearly extinct, but everybody else's navies as well. In a world of extremely limited resources, would you bother wasting fuel on a destroyer or save it for an alternative like barges or freighters to move around personnel and supplies -- or just to provide heat to make it through the winter?

7) Armaments

Lack of armaments could make many naval ships not as effective as they used to be. I.e. if you are out of torpedoes then your sub isnt going to do much but recon or maybe be able to lay mines. However there is a lot of ammo out there for the guns the USN has. And even if all they have left is their guns that makes them a lot more effective than a jury rigged gun on a sailing boat or cabin cruiser.

On the other hand, a cargo ship with a couple jury rigged autocannons and heavy machineguns is going to be a better asset for what you need a ship for in T2K than an ASW frigate or Aegis cruiser. If you only have the resources to keep either a warship or a cargo ship working, the best use of resources is going to be for the cargo ship given the minimal naval threat above the level of what real life Somali pirates can manage and the destruction of infrastructure and need to be able to move cargo and people around.

[Raellus]

From a gaming POV, most T2K GMs really don't need/want complicated, "realistic" naval orbats because most campaigns (based on the modules) don't involve naval warfare.

From a world-building POV, a relatively large, highly functioning naval force doesn't really "fit" the T2K setting.

It all comes down to whether one can suspend disbelief or not. I think that there are enough strong and compelling arguments (outlined in several of the preceding posts) supporting the canonical view that I am comfortable working with it more or less as-is.

GMs can tailor their T2KU for their own preferences and sensibilities (and/or for their players).

Not everyone is going to be convinced either way and that's fine. Good honest, intellectual debate is healthy, but let's all make sure that we keep it civil.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Good honest, intellectual debate is healthy, but let's all make sure that we keep it civil.

Might mean for me. I can be blunt and undiplomatic, even when I am not meaning to be confrontational.

I have not yet lacked for an opinion, for good or ill.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I feel kinda bad for even starting the thread; I didn't realize there was this much past acrimony...if it helps (and it may not) my thoughts are that while a not-insignificant portion of the USN probably still exists (10-20%) it is, as noted, in very poor shape. A lot of it may be run aground in ports too shallow to have supported the ships in the first place, as acts of desperation by captains trying to get badly damaged ships home and not having a home port to moor at. Some of it may have made it to adequate port facilities and a possibly depleted crew suddenly finding themselves facing the ire of civilians who'd seen their city suffer because of the war in general. Again, as I said in the OP, some of it may be serviceable, but without fuel, POL, food for the crew, armaments or depleted crews, those ships are effectively "beached" until further notice.

I'd imagine a good portion of the rest of the world's navies are in just as bad a shape.

The sortie of the John Hancock to support OpOrd Omega may well have been a mighty, mighty push by the USN to scrape together one crew, enough POL for one ship, and get them to and from continental Europe (plus a stopover in England). I don't have a mind for an "America triumphs over all" vision, that's not what I'm getting at. But just as there is some armor remaining in just about every nation's military, and just as there are some flyable combat a/c and fuel for same left in every nation's military (see the RDF sourcebook), there's some ships, too.

My thoughts were more broadly speculative than an insistence that the USN be this mighty, world-shaking force - by 2015 or 2020, there may well be an operable blue water USN of not inconsiderable (comparatively speaking) ability, if nothing else to stave off pirates and commerce raiders while reestablishing vital, vital trade lines.

That's all, that's all I meant. I wasn't saying anything like there should still be destroyers providing off shore fire support in everyone's campaigns or a gaggle of operational carriers and a/c and you're doing it wrong if you don't have that, or whatever.

I guess I might have simplified a bit just by saying that "world navies should have slightly more operable ships they can scrape together during the post-war construction period, 2001ish onward."

Sorry for any drama.

[HorseSoldier]

Some of it may have made it to adequate port facilities and a possibly depleted crew suddenly finding themselves facing the ire of civilians who'd seen their city suffer because of the war in general. Again, as I said in the OP, some of it may be serviceable, but without fuel, POL, food for the crew, armaments or depleted crews, those ships are effectively "beached" until further notice.

I would suspect that the general scenario shown in Satellite Down isn't an isolated event in T2K regarding various naval forces. With home ports often nuked, other major ports maybe nuked and/or in total anarchy, and national command authorities of increasingly dubious validity and increasingly unable to support the forces they claim to own . . . there's got to be a strong argument for tucking your ship or even your small task force into some relatively isolated bay or harbor and striking up some sort of deal with the locals.

This doesn't mean slews of naval officers mutinying against their national governments -- just means they fall into that T2K category of "loyal but ignoring orders to move" and such. Going forward past Y2K, I'd think that there'd be a interesting effort by the French government to purchase a lot of those ships to help augment their own overstretched fleets. Some may say no (for reasons of patriotism or other motives), but I bet some would say yes if the French offered a good enough deal.

Probably some interesting, and murky, adventure ideas in there, with PCs acting as anything from agents for other national governments sent out to scuttle negotiations (or just scuttle) for a ship transfer to them ending up as some sort of advanced team or something for a French diplomatic mission (and some or all may still be agents for the owning nation, other nations, or other armed groups).

[Raellus]

In my opinion, the debate here in this thread has so far been very civil. My admonition to keep it civil was not intended for any one person. I just wanted remind everyone to continue to keep things civil here as diverging viewpoints become apparent. In other words, keep up the good work.

[Mahatatain]

I’m not having a go at those that want to work out the fate of every single vessel (or unit or tank or aircraft) but it’s always struck me as a restrictive thing to do as a GM. Personally I would rather not have the fate of every single USN vessel (or whatever) decided because by keeping the fate of some of them vague it gives you a tool as a GM to introduce one if necessary. Listing out the fate of everything runs the risk of a player saying “well that’s wrong because X was sunk in 1998 according to the expanded Canon” and causing disruption in the game as the GM explains what parts of Canon and expanded Canon they use.

In my opinion Canon provides a framework for a GM's campaign and almost every GM will start diverging from Canon the moment they start running their campaign, often as a result of PCs actions. For example if you run Black Madonnna as presented you need to ensure that certain things occur if you want to stay true to the Canon presented in White Eagle (which is set about a year later) and that might actually be contrary to what your PCs are actually doing. What happens to Canon if the PCs try to kill General Julian Filipowitz before he becomes King Julian of Silesia? Do you fudge things as a GM or force the players to do something else? The vast majority of GMs will simply accept the PCs actions and then adapt their campaign accordingly and therefore diverge from Canon in the process.

Lastly it's also worth noting that discrepancies in OOBs and ship lists might well occur anyway due to inaccuracies in reporting. No one apart from a GM with a God like view of the world is going to know the fate of every single ship or unit or whatever so why tie yourself as a GM to something that has been "expanded from existing Canon". Retaining flexibility as a GM seems to be a much better idea to me.

But that's just my opinion so ignore me if you disagree!

[Webstral]

I have made room at Alameda, CA for multiple USN vessels in my sketches for the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm mostly focused on Blue Two [2nd Naval Infantry Battalion]. However, Blue Two operates on the waters of the Bay and the Delta under the command of the USN, so it's impossible to avoid giving some attention to the Navy.

Fuel is going to be the elephant in the room, though plenty more problems rear their ugly heads. The value of the electricity the nuke boats can generate may surpass the value of their patrols under most circumstances. For this reason, I see Alameda as a very secure, very densely populated sweatshop.

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Mahatatain

I’m not having a go at those that want to work out the fate of every single vessel (or unit or tank or aircraft) but it’s always struck me as a restrictive thing to do as a GM. Personally I would rather not have the fate of every single USN vessel (or whatever) decided because by keeping the fate of some of them vague it gives you a tool as a GM to introduce one if necessary. Listing out the fate of everything runs the risk of a player saying “well that’s wrong because X was sunk in 1998 according to the expanded Canon” and causing disruption in the game as the GM explains what parts of Canon and expanded Canon they use.

Careful, there. You don't want to run afoul of the ORBAT Mafia.

(For what it's worth, I agree with you. I'd rather have story hooks than a catalog.)

- C.

[dragoon500ly]

Just my own musings....

The Soviet primary targets would by the SSBNs and the carriers as they ships, at the time would carry nuclear weapons that could be used against Russia. I think it would be a fairly safe assumption that the carriers would either be sunk or damaged to a degree that they are no longer operational.

The SSBNs, especially the Ohios, would have been difficult for the Soviets to track, let alone sink. My own guess is that once they have fired their missiles, they may have returned to port, trying to get reloaded, and either fell prey to nuke strikes or Soviet mining activities, most likely they are tied up alongside a pier, providing electrical power to any remaining bases.

The SSN fleet would have been a bit more active than the boomers and either fell prey to ASW efforts, Soviet subs or the sheer lack of weapons to rearm them with.

The battleships would have been high-priority targets since their Tomahawks could have carried nuke warheads.

The modern cruisers, destroyers, and frigates would have either been sunk/damaged defending the carriers or NATO convoys, used up most if not all of their missile loads, and the survivers, in dire need of repair and maintenance and simply not available for sea duty.

The older destroyers and frigates, would probably be the ships most likely to be used by the USN, I can even see many museum ships pulled back into service "for the duration of the emergency" operating with limited electronics and their crews working to get their old guns back into some kind of working order. Ready for the "The Sullivans" and the "Kidd" to leave their sheltered berths and serve their country yet again, sixty some odd years after having been laid down?

my two cents

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

Just my own musings....

The Soviet primary targets would by the SSBNs and the carriers as they ships, at the time would carry nuclear weapons that could be used against Russia. I think it would be a fairly safe assumption that the carriers would either be sunk or damaged to a degree that they are no longer operational.

The SSBNs, especially the Ohios, would have been difficult for the Soviets to track, let alone sink. My own guess is that once they have fired their missiles, they may have returned to port, trying to get reloaded, and either fell prey to nuke strikes or Soviet mining activities, most likely they are tied up alongside a pier, providing electrical power to any remaining bases.

The SSN fleet would have been a bit more active than the boomers and either fell prey to ASW efforts, Soviet subs or the sheer lack of weapons to rearm them with.

The battleships would have been high-priority targets since their Tomahawks could have carried nuke warheads.

The modern cruisers, destroyers, and frigates would have either been sunk/damaged defending the carriers or NATO convoys, used up most if not all of their missile loads, and the survivers, in dire need of repair and maintenance and simply not available for sea duty.

The older destroyers and frigates, would probably be the ships most likely to be used by the USN, I can even see many museum ships pulled back into service "for the duration of the emergency" operating with limited electronics and their crews working to get their old guns back into some kind of working order. Ready for the "The Sullivans" and the "Kidd" to leave their sheltered berths and serve their country yet again, sixty some odd years after having been laid down?

my two cents

That's more-or-less where I was going.

[Targan]

The Challenge mini-module/sourcebook A Rock in Troubled Waters offers some great examples of older destroyers being brought back into service during the Twilight War and ending up being among the few major USN vessels still actively patrolling the CONUS east coast.

[TrailerParkJawa]

Originally Posted by Webstral

I have made room at Alameda, CA for multiple USN vessels in my sketches for the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm mostly focused on Blue Two [2nd Naval Infantry Battalion]. However, Blue Two operates on the waters of the Bay and the Delta under the command of the USN, so it's impossible to avoid giving some attention to the Navy.

Fuel is going to be the elephant in the room, though plenty more problems rear their ugly heads. The value of the electricity the nuke boats can generate may surpass the value of their patrols under most circumstances. For this reason, I see Alameda as a very secure, very densely populated sweatshop.

I agree. I think most practical patrols could be handled by smaller coast guard cutters. No need for huge capital ships to protect the fishing fleets. A carrier or subs with a live nuke plant would make a good mini plant.

[Matt Wiser]

If anyone wants to use the expanded naval material I did: it was on Antenna's site before it went down, be my guest. It was there for folks to use-or not-as one saw fit. Jason and the DC group did make some use of it, before their plans went on indefinite hold.

Personally, more surviving ships does make sense. I, for one, could not understand that there was only one SSN left? And no boomers? Not very likely-and no carriers? My material had four carriers left in port-though two were conventionally powered and short of fuel, and two were CVNs. Not to mention two damaged carriers sitting in various ports that could sail again-if the right parts could be found. And also mention of a couple of the amphibious carriers, the battleships and cruisers, as well as additional SSNs and boomers (including Parche-the PACFLT "special projects" boat).

Reactivating older destroyers-as well as the two Des Moines class cruisers-made a lot of sense as 1996 went into '97. Now, the only place you'll find major USN units doing regular patrols-apart from those SSNs and boomers I mentioned-is in the Persian Gulf.

[Webstral]

So we might see a CVN laid up permanently at Alameda with wiring running to the shore. Between the machine shops aboard (would they go ashore?) and the machine shops at the naval base, a lot of work could be done with the power from the nuke plant. I don’t have any figures, but it would be interesting to know how much electricity could be generated if the plant were run at 80% capacity.

Being an island, Alameda would be relatively easy to secure. Bandits might come over in small boats at night, but a halfway decent shore patrol would go a long way towards managing that problem. Checkpoints and machine guns on the bridges would control access. With electricity and order, Alameda would be a haven for anyone with skills to offer in return for food and shelter. I foresee people being jammed in like Tombstone’s Chinatown neighborhood. Pretty soon, new construction would start.

Alameda, then, could be the engine for the Recovery in the San Francisco Bay. There would be a need for food, which would move by water as much as possible. (Blue Two might spend a lot of time escorting riverine convoys down the Sacramento River.) There would be a need for labor and raw materials. Materials could be recovered from the metroplex that encloses the SF Bay. Provided raw materials could be moved to Alameda, ammunition and small arms could be fabricated (or repaired) and traded for more raw materials.

As with every other place in post-Exchange America, bringing food supplies in line with demand would be the first order of business. When this came up in the thread about USAF and USN personnel a couple of years ago, I selected a 40% survival rate for SF Bay residents. Leg suggested having another million survive but migrate. Without mechanized agriculture, the Central Valley is going to need more manpower. For now, at least, I’m going to go with Leg’s suggestion and peg the SF Bay population at 3 million in early 2001. There is the usual dynamic of food being grown in every available plot of land, survivors clustered into communities for self-defense, and the whole pattern we see on Manhattan in Armies of the Night. Some food can some in from outside, like the Central Valley or fishing communities along the coast. Something is going to have to go out, though. I’m thinking that by early 2001, the Navy will have become a broker for the movement of food and goods throughout the region. Alameda, Treasure Island, and Alcatraz are all easily-secured locations to which water-borne goods can be brought for sale and/or redistribution. Obviously, local barter and exchange will continue all around the Bay. But with control over the rich waterways of the region, the Navy will be in a much better position than most Milgov cantonments.

I just had a thought: Sixth US Army is supposed to have control over the Sacramento-Oakland stretch of land. This leaves room for the Navy to control most of the Bay Area and possibly have ownership of the waterways. It seems to me that there is room here for rivalry between the Army and the Navy.

[Matt Wiser]

Indeed: the carrier I have at NAS Alameda was Abraham Lincoln. Her surviving aircraft are based ashore there. She's at Alameda due to two AS-4 hits that took out her arresting gear and one of her elevators. Not likely she'd sail again, so make use of those two nuclear reactors. The operational carrier at Alameda is Nimitz with CVW-9, with one CGN (California).

One sub that you can bet could be used to get any party down to Baja for Satellite Down would be Parche. The PACFLT "special projects" boat would be in demand-and likely that kind of operation would be what she would be used for.

[Webstral]

The more I think about it, the more it seems likely that once the food situation can be brought in hand, the Navy is in a position to use the waterways of the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system to put the Recovery on a favorable footing. The Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, along with their tributaries offer access to more than half of the Central Valley. Use of these rivers in their untamed state would require adjustments to barges and other river traffic. Nonetheless, the combined assets of San Francisco Bay’s population and industry, the Central Valley’s food production, and the river highways make central California a natural springboard to recovery of the state and much of the West.

In a very real sense, the Mexicans were right to think that occupying San Francisco would be devastating for the Americans. It’s hard to see how they would have a prayer of reaching so far north, though.

Here’s a question: where is Third US Fleet HQ in 2000? It would seem that the major surviving bases would be in San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound.

[Matt Wiser]

SF or Puget Sound is very appropriate; I never placed them in the Naval stuff I did, but did have a CINCPAC HQ relocated to Hilo, HI, along with a floating drydock, and one each destroyer tender and sub tender. In addition, the battleship Wisconsin is there for lack of fuel (and a torpedo hit in the forecastle). Missouri is at Chinhae, ROK, along with Salem's sister ship Des Moines-also for lack of fuel.