NEW Adventure Module!

[mmartin798]

Floating bases were talked about in a different thread. There is a company that will make a luxury yacht that is basically an artificial island build on a SWATH style hull. I don't think any consensus was reached.

[Gelrir]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

Floating bases were talked about in a different thread. There is a company that will make a luxury yacht that is basically an artificial island build on a SWATH style hull. I don't think any consensus was reached.

I suspect you're referring to the proposed "Mobile Continuity Force", described in the "Professional Notes" section of the US Naval Institute "Proceedings" (July, 1984) and excellently depicted as the "Mobile Continuity Force" vessel on the Shipbucket web site. The USNI article isn't easily available online, but the Shipbucket page is:

http://www.shipbucket.com/drawings/7048

The old Shipbucket forum had a detailed description of the crew, weapons, sensors, etc. ... they're recently re-mixed everything and the old forum pages don't seem to be around.

Our Classic-era campaign has quick-and-easy conversions of T-2 tankers (they were turbine-electric vessels, and low cost in the early 1980s) rather than a built-from-the-ground-up design. http://asmrb.pbworks.com/w/page/5264...uction%20Fleet

The tanker conversion description is based on the vehicle transport vessels built for the government in the late 1960s (from earlier conversions to railcar carriers).

https://www.t2tanker.org/ships/t2active.html

https://www.t2tanker.org/ships/t2convstory.html

The "Lewis B. Puller" is sorta similar, though perhaps a bit too blatant for the Morrow Project to get away with:

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/ho...pte-1658743256

--
Michael B.

[Project_Sardonicus]

I was fascinated by what a simple idea it was, like Airforce 1 but a fraction of the cost and you could stay at see for weeks (well years with a fusion drive). In the UK it seemed to have beaten this whole fear following the Nuclear Scientists debacle that all of the ROTOR shelters would have been anhiliated on day one. And as such three converted car ferries became the biggest secret in the Nuclear War plan.

Of course the other thing is the amount of work that went into these floating bunkers was pretty minimal.

So it's not impossible another corporation or even national guard could have done their own conversions.

Now I think about it Russia has some truly monsterous nuclear powered ice breakers and their fuel would last for decades. So maybe out there is the remenants of the Russian Navy prowling the Atlantic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclea...red_icebreaker

[Gelrir]

More reading of the "Operation: Daidalos" book.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Chapter Six, "Enemy Troop Deployments", goes on for five pages in detail about all the presumed opponent nations, with information about troop numbers, weapon types, morale ratings, etc. There are also two pages giving game mechanics for the enemies' weapons. However, the Daidalos city-state doesn't have anything like this amount of detail provided:

(pg. 76-77): "Stored in the armory is an extensive collection of well-maintained 21st Century vintage weapons as well as weapons of Daidalos manufacture. The vehicles consist mainly of alcohol-fueled jeeps armed with pintlemounted .50 caliber machine guns. One jeep sports a Mk 19 40mm grenade launcher." That's pretty much it for information about their equipment.

It's implied that Daildalos has at least two hundred soldiers (based on a statement of barracks size); and apparently everyone serves for 5 years in the military after high school or college (pg. 92, "... completed their schooling and are both currently serving their compulsory five-year terms in the [Diadalos Defense Force]" (though a character description elsewhere implies that the compulsory service was once only two years).

That brings me to another issue: the stated scientific and technical capacity seems very "off" for a 6,000 person community (including children). We are told there are seismologists, geologists, astronomers, mathematicians, botanists, agronomists, chemists, rocket scientists, at least five grades of military officers up to the rank of general, a hospital "... as advanced as any pre-war hospital" and "Discoveries in botany and agronomy rival advances made just before the War."

Based on circa-1900 American population, you'd have age groups:

• age under 20: 2,664
• age 20 to 44: 2,268
• age 45 to 64: 822
• age 65 or more: 246

The "five years" compulsory service would give a military of 472 persons (if nobody's exempt) plus "lifers": say 500 total. That's pretty close to the level of militia to population in the United States during the War of 1812.

In comparison, Israel required military service of 3 years for men and 2 years for women from 1968 to 2015, starting at age 18, with about a 26% exemption/refusal rate. There's also some form of reserve service obligation.

From the 1940 U.S. Census, the work force consisted of 79.1% of the males age 14 or more, and 25.8% of the females 14 years of age or more. For Daidalos, that gives 2,372 males and 774 females in the work force, a total of 3,146 workers.

• professional persons (engineers, lawyers, judges, teachers, all medical professionals, draftsmen, librarians, musicians, etc. except college instructors as below) are 5.1% = 160, of which at least 40 will be elementary and high school teachers
• college presidents, professors and instructors are 0.1% ... about 6, certainly less than 10 for a population of 6,000.
• farm owners and farm managers are 13.7% = 431
• proprietors, managers and government officials (including professional soldiers and naval forces) are 7.6% = 239
• clerical and sales workers are 11.7% = 368
• craftsmen are 14.8% = 465
• manufacturing workers are 17.2% = 541
• domestic and service (barbers, cooks, cleaning and laundry, waiters, bartenders, prostitutes, etc.) are 4.3% = 135
• protective and emergency workers (police, firemen, guards) are 1.5% = 47
• farm laborers (including unpaid family members) are 7.6% = 239
• laborers (fishermen, longshoremen, etc.; but not including farms and mines) are 10.9% = 342
• not reported/not classified are 6% = 189

I have trouble believing this community can educate and support multiple seismologists and geophysicists, for example.

Also, if their military of 500 persons with "well-maintained 21st Century vintage weapons" has a good supply of ammunition (and they've had decades of knowledge about the threat of the Purge to prepare), defeating in defensive battles an enemy of 6,000 (mostly armed with bows, swords, spears, and some muskets) should be quite possible. Daidalos is mentioned to have used booby traps and land mines in previous wars.

I wonder if a short chapter about the Daidalosi military got misplaced or cut for space?

--
Michael B.

[mmartin798]

I only have one question about your analysis. If Daidalos is more or less a late 20th/early 21st century city-state, then why are you using 1940 census data? It is likely they have additional occupations that didn't exist in 1940. The 2000 census includes information workers and would include effects that has on the other occupations. For example:

Occupation / 2000 data / 1940 data
Professional persons / 20.2% / 5.1%
Farming / 0.7% / 13.7

Both of these examples were greatly affected by technological advances in the latter half of the 20th century. Though you will have to take some care, as the 2000 census data only includes civilians, so you will have to pull the military out of the population total before doing the break down.

[Gelrir]

Originally Posted by mmartin798

I only have one question about your analysis. If Daidalos is more or less a late 20th/early 21st century city-state, then why are you using 1940 census data? It is likely they have additional occupations that didn't exist in 1940. The 2000 census includes information workers and would include effects that has on the other occupations. For example:

Occupation / 2000 data / 1940 data
Professional persons / 20.2% / 5.1%
Farming / 0.7% / 13.7

Both of these examples were greatly affected by technological advances in the latter half of the 20th century. Though you will have to take some care, as the 2000 census data only includes civilians, so you will have to pull the military out of the population total before doing the break down.

Good point! But I don't consider Daidalos to just be 6,000 divided by 327 million of the 21st Century United States.

The use of 1940 data seemed a better fit to a community of only 6,000 persons that can't import technical goods (I thought about using 1930, but that would be skewed by the Great Depression). I doubt they can build (or import from China) lots of combine harvesters or other mechanized farm equipment (horses are mentioned as the usual form of transport); and I don't see them as benefiting from online tech support and other 'information technology" very much.

21st Century America (the nation covered by the 2010 census) depends heavily on foreign nations (outside of the census) for manufacturing: steel, electronics, merchant ships (and shipping), heavy machinery, etc. An independent nation is going to have to shift to self-sufficiency (at least for technical goods); they mention (pg 76) that the Daidalosi "own very little that an average person of the late 20th Century would have"; and even within Daidalos barter is still commonly used. So I chose 1940 U.S. as an example of a nation not-very-dependent on foreign manufactures or mass production of every convenience.

One of my issues with the book is the lack of information on how this tiny nation constructs things, feeds itself, educates an amazing number of college students, etc. ... quadrupling the number of professionals (college instructors, medical specialists, web application designers, seismologists, etc.) to a 21st Century America level would come at the expense of farmers, laborers, and factory workers.

Another military note: the Daidalos Defense Force has claymore mines, also.

--
Michael B.

[Gelrir]

SPOILERS

So, if you want to present Daidalos as having the same occupation patterns as 2017 America:

153.3 million employed (age 16 or more) out of 327 million (thus excluding military in both cases) translates to 2,812 persons employed out of 6,000 in Daidalos. Thus:

• management: 326
• business and finance: 139
• professional: 652 (including 169 in education, training and library occupations, and 88 in computer and mathematical occupations, and 168 in medical/healthcare occupations)
• service: 490 (including 122 in police, fire, and other protective occupations)
• sales and office: 616
• natural resources, construction and maintenance: 260 (including 22 in farming, fishing and forestry occupations)
• production, transportation and material moving: 328 (including 155 in production occupations)

For Daidalos, you can then add about 500 persons on active military duty to that. Thus 22 farmers, fishermen and forestry workers support the community (and produce a marketable surplus).

--
Michael B.