NationStates Jolt Archive

ok, if your supply line is being protected by your troops...

then it's working, as that's that many troops who arn't fighting. [aslo, it's not exactly weak given that it's not the usual line of thought in these parts or era]

besides, it's still true.. and i don't have to Beat your guards to set stuff on fire.

in all honesty, what kind of idiot uses hevey cavalry to guard supplies?

light cavalry or heavy infantry are Designed for the roll... heavey cavalry pretty much suck at it. not to mention that it's that much hevey cav spending all their time wearing themselves out going back and forth so they're not int he right palce, or too tired, to fight properly.

besides the fact that you never actually detailed anyone to guarding your supplies... seriously, show me the post that would lead me to belive that you have anything more than the typical light guard of infantry or light cav guarding those supplyes [Before i raid them. after doesn't hold water for what i've already done.. though it'll make it harder later.]

humm?

if you had actually said somewhere that you had detailed X hevey cavalry to guard supplys? fine. if you do it now, fine for things happening.. After Now.

if not, it's effectivly the same as you not having done it. [by way of your commander not thinking of it]

also, i don't have to win a battle to fire your supplies... just get in close, actually set hem on fire, then run away again.. mabey keep your guys distracted long enough for the fires to take hold [not long at all]

of course, i won't be able to hit Every supply wagon or convoy... thus why i'm attempting to stuff the roads and rivers as well.too few supplys are, in some ways, worse than none.

honestly though "weak" "gurrila warfair" and "middle ages" do not go togeather. gurrila warfair in the middle ages could be outright devestating [in part because it was used so rarely] for one thing.

weak is not taking advantage of every method available to you to win a war.

... i'm sorry, but you have pissed me off somewhat here.. hopefully taht's the whole rant out of my system...

hehe. no one ever consideres the effects of logistics [and thus how effective gurrilla warfair can be] properly untill After they get burned... and all too often in RPs they try and do something about it retroactivly...

sadly... "can't do that general!"

Ok firstly I thought guarding my supplies would be obvious. Glavius has 30 years of leadership under his belt, what did you actually expect him to do with the supplies, leave them unguarded?

I also mentioned positioning the first supplies I carried into the country in the middle of my troops, which if you dont take so literally means they are surrounded by my marching soldiers.

Lol I give you the heavy part in heavy cavalry. I added that word more just to give my words impact then for their realistic equipment. True their heavy armour would be packed in the wagons. But heavy or light cavalry, they both have heavy impact on peasants.

To be honest this wont stop my troops. It will slow me, but not by enough.

And logistics is the most important thing for all Rpers these days.

Hmm... I think it's safe to say that supply lines are somewhat defended by default without RPing. But heavy cavalry? :p

Interested that you think I'm playing below my legitimate tech-level...

My medieval history isn't the best, but we're RPing the mid-late 11th century, right?
Therefore around the time of the battle of Hastings. At which point about the most advanced, centralised and wealthy kingdom in Christendom (apart from Byzantium) was England...saying England sucks at this stage is unfair, though we should recognise the distinct lack of population.
Equally, technology at this point advances most swiftly in weapons, not anything else...and both sides at Hastings and Stamford Bridge, the two battles I know most about in this period, were using mail, shield walls were common, and so my troops are bang up to date :p

As to the Arab world (IRL) and technology...true to a point. The biggest cities, the freest thought, etc etc. But the reason the expansion of Dar ul Islam had stopped was the military capabilities of their neighbours...meaning that they weren't so far ahead, even with advantages in organisation and internal unity (up to a point...1041 I think ;) )

Yeah, I don't really think you can assume to have anything but really bad troops guarding your supplies unless you say they are... I mean, in that case, whenever your armies are commanded by someone with a lot of experience, you could just say that they thought of everything the enemy would do and planned against it.

It might be more reasonable to allow for automatic actions such as troops defending your supplies, but then we get to the problem of where do we draw the line, between automatic actions and things you have to say yourself. Therefore, I think it's best just to make the RPer say what they want to have happen- if they don't say it, it doesn't happen.

I will take that into mind in future, but this is the most basic element to being a general ffs, guarding your supplies.......

And besides by stating that my supplies are carried in the middle of my forces pretty much outlines it anyways.

Joho I'm back. sorry to much to read. Can anybody plz give me a sum up of what have happened?

*checks pulse of this RP*

Doesn't look good folks...

let's see.. Osteia's thread died [litteraly], i'm waiting for something to happen i can Respond to, and have been a little busy...

lots of theings waiting on the Ralish, i belive?

we seem to have lost most of our players in the south and east to... i dunno... attrition?

i Think Caladonn's mostly in the same position as me, and i think Terra's got some real life stuff keeping him busy as well.

so.. it's not Dead yet....

that reminds me:
Frozopia:

a road would not be destroyed by baracades, but by picks and shovels and diverted water flows.. i do belive i said 'destroy' not 'block' did i not?

more effort, but there's no Point in simply makeing baracades... Behind and around, not ahead of, your army, no less. the objective being to prevent you retreating or recieiveing supplys. as i said, there's no way your army could carry enough with it for such a campagine. i tend to think long term about these things :) though i'm not arguing that any supplys in the midle of your army would be very well defended, yes.

anyway, give me something to work with in that war thread other than "nothing you do achives anything of any great significance" if you please, and i'll make a response to it.

Fricken damn East gets no attention. Up to war maybe? lol if only I could march West. Oh well. lol I won't.

let's see.. Osteia's thread died [litteraly], i'm waiting for something to happen i can Respond to, and have been a little busy...

lots of theings waiting on the Ralish, i belive?

we seem to have lost most of our players in the south and east to... i dunno... attrition?

i Think Caladonn's mostly in the same position as me, and i think Terra's got some real life stuff keeping him busy as well.

so.. it's not Dead yet....

Yeah, merely university. Can still post, just nothing much happening at my end of the RP, I don't think.

Ok so the roads are destroyed (probably not many in a week, but enough to slow me down). I did not mean literal barriers like say a.....fence but stuff that slows me down.

Fine I will be even slower, but my main armies will keep going, going crosscountry where necessary but primarily the roads that are still useable.

Once again the balls back in your court.

Sorry for absence lately. I'll get back to business again... not that much happened with Madnestan, of course :rolleyes: But still. Had a busy weekend, so to speak ;) so I couldn't get much to PC during it..

Frozopia...

... do you only read every second word or something? :p

this won't slow your main Army. just any reenforcements and supplys coming up from behind or attempted retreats.

you're sentry's are being hit by spys and assasins, not malitia, btw.

and reguardless, there's nothing for me to respond To [still.] unless your army actually gets somewhere, or your messenger actually gets to my capital with his message, especially seeing as how i said several times that y ou're not going to get an engagement with such a large army untill things shift untill i have an advantage of some sort. commiting aproximitly 1/3rd the size force the enemy has to a battle with no mitigating curcumstance is ... stupid, and thus not happening.

so, yeah..i either need your messenger to arive, or for you to actuall, you know, attack something.

So you destroying roads wont slow my army.......Fine with me.

And suddenly my army gets attacked by ninja assasins, well fine little difference here, a sword kills any man and a professional soldier is just as capable at fighting as a spy/assasin. My alert sentries are NOT gonna be taken by surprise in 90% of encounters.

And Im attacking your main city. No resistance means im at the gates, the messenger is at your city carrying the terms I typed up in the OOC thread, so use that for your leaders response. What should I expect to see? Whats your capital like?

you know, i'm sure i've described that several times...

mostly, it's a scaled up version of my border towns, with more layers of wall, and the river on two sides... comeing up from the south, you're on the wrong side of the river.

it'd just be nice to know that you're actually there [or almost there] rather than [so far as i know] still only just barely at the point where you turned north.

anyway, my point is that assasins and spys are more addepte at sneaking and escapeing than militia. actually, Ninja would be a good word for them, seeing as how ninja almost never actually Fought. just snuk in, killed as quickly and quietly as possible, then escaped again.

the idea being that in those 90% of encounters, such people would actually have the brains to realise "oops. i've been detected. run away!" rather than attacking anyway. however alert a sentry may be, humans Suck at being observant in the earlyer hours of the morning when they haven't had a full night's sleep yet.

i'm not arguing that they'd kill many guys. just that they wouldn't get killed [mostly] and the guys they Did kill wouldn't exactly have the chance to fight back/give warning. mostly.

anyway, your messenger will get their well ahead of your army... all you needed to do was say that he arived at the capital with his banner and things [a single man being obvious about his appearance probibly would have been let in, though guarded, even without it] and asked to see the yePrinse... not a long post at all, but it needs to happen for me to be able to continue without, you know, god moding by way of taking over your charicters.

lets see if i can ASKII the city design..

edit: shoddy askii deleted because the text entry box is a different size from the display one which stuffed it up horribly despite me useing enter to end lines in the right place. /edit

ok, i can't do it. but, does that give an indication? the outer walls are done roughly like that, with stone buildings with blank walls and roofs slopeing inwards accross the gaps so you're forced to go sideways, towers in the corners of the walls, another layer of buildings, also with blank stone walls facing out, alligned with the gaps between the first lot, though from there in the buildings mostly only have stone outward-facing walls. go a few layers of buildings in, there's another set of walls aligned with the gaps. repeate. repeate again only with the Palase in the center rather than another set of walls.

hope that makes sense.

Sorry If ive been a bit ratty recently (and short of reading/posting time) but work is stressing me out (the work itself isnt that stressful but the seemingful never ending part of it is).

The guerilla warfare, I will not deny, will probably either starve my army within months (say 2-3?) or force me to divert both soldiers from my nobles at home and my main force to protect my caravan. At the moment its pretty safe to say my army is ok, taking a few losses from those ninja's :P (I do my sentries in shifts, so hopefully you wont do too much harm).

Hm Im slightly confused by the description of your city though. As far as I understand it at the moment, I first have to cross a river (Im assuming bridges will be destroyed but there must at least be crossing points? The river cant be so fast and so deep when its travelling into a city), and then I have to get over the walls (the bit that confuses me). What do you mean by blank walls? Will there be (what do ya call 'em.........the things the men stand on ontop of the wall, cant remember the word)? And the buildings are sloping inwards? What does that mean? And theres 3 layers of that, the last being pallisade i get that. Let me get this straight before posting how suitably impressed my messenger is.

Hm, keeping your troops inside your army is a good precaution... still, I'm not sure if I'm off on this, but most armies had at least as many camp followers and supply wagons etc as they had troops, and that was when they were still trailing a supply line behind them, instead of trying to carry all the supplies they need with them... It's quite likely that your civilian part of the army will be significantly larger than the military part, and thus quite hard to defend adequately.

clip..
Hm Im slightly confused by the description of your city though. As far as I understand it at the moment, I first have to cross a river (Im assuming bridges will be destroyed but there must at least be crossing points? The river cant be so fast and so deep when its travelling into a city), and then I have to get over the walls (the bit that confuses me). What do you mean by blank walls? Will there be (what do ya call 'em.........the things the men stand on ontop of the wall, cant remember the word)? And the buildings are sloping inwards? What does that mean? And theres 3 layers of that, the last being pallisade i get that. Let me get this straight before posting how suitably impressed my messenger is.

with the buildings: the wall facing the outside of the city is higher than the wall facing the center of the city, so the rooves slope towards the center of the city.

the rivers don't go Into the city. they flow outside the walls, basicly addding an extra layer of defense on two sides. and they'd have to be quite wide, deep, and fast, given that they both show up on our World map.

the city it's self is very much square, with one corner of the outer wall being basicly as close to the meeting point of the two rivers as possible [pretty close, that]

a messenger doesn't have to get over the walls. the walls are like this:

T_________T T_______________T T_________ T

on each side, with the gaps being gateways [without gates or arches or anything. just a gap, really] and the Ts being towers. the buildings within the wall have stone walls themselves [at least on the side facing out of the city] and there are large and solid ones built directly accross from the gaps, forcing you to go side to side more than you go forward as you enter the city unless you bother taking the time to stop and demolish every building.

does that make more sense?

the palisade wall being the inner most one, and more of a very strong fence than a wall. it surrounds the Palase [that is, palace. Angerman for the win!]

as for bridges over the river.. given that i basicly use my rivers as highways and that they are Outside the city, i'm gonna go with boats being more likely, and Those would all be busily avoiding being captured as much as possible, so would stay on the city side [mostly] unless needed.

blank walls: a blank wall is a wall without deliberate protrusions or hollows or pillars, decoration, or, most importantly, windows or arrow slits. upshot is, the out-of-city facing walls of the buildings are, while [substantually] thinner, not that different in construction from the city walls.

you know, i can't remember the word for the things on top of walls either. they were designed so that archers could hide behind them to reload and step into the gaps to fire [or infantry with rocks and oil] and to make it more difficult to get ladders up, i think. my outermost wall would have those, yes, but the inner ones would not.

as for work and stress and stuff... 'all is forgiven. don't do it again' or something to that effect :D

Caladonn... i think i've been trying to make that point about the supplys for some time.

with 25000 solders [if i remember rightly] and at least as many followers of various sorts, AND their animals, if they stop Anywhere without an intact supply line they'll strip the area they can get to within a day... within a day or two or less. they'd be lucky to be able to carry a weeks worth of supplys for such a large group within it, so... from loss of supply untill starvation is: time from last food 'till death + 8 days. rough estimate.

so... about a month. and that's before they're all Dead. they'd be useless inside of two weeks.

it'd be shorter, but one thing my territory has Lots of is fresh water, so you're not having to cart That in :p [otherwise they wouldn't last a week with this kind of thing :)]

anyway: a messenger entering Angerwraith from the south would first have to cross the river [by boat :p], then enter through one of the gateways, then weave back and forth all the way into the center where the Palase is located. i'm not Sure, but i think he'd end up going something like two or three times as far Sideways as he did inwards. comeing in from the outside, most of what he'd see is stone walls and road way, unless he looked over his sholder or back out towards the outer wall, in which case it's the normal kind of thing for a large capital city of the era... with added bonus excess of heraldry informing everyone of what is what and what and who it's associated with and so on and so forth.

the city is not really designed to withstand a seige. instead, it's built to suck enemy troops in and kill them within it, or to allow easy escape for an entire army and the bulk of the population if nessisary.

of course, it's design means it would take a Lot for seige weapons to destroy it... but there's no need to force a breach that way as there are gaps to begin with.

well I need terror to reply in my fact book hmmm.

Yeah, I definitely agree with you Angermanland... the truth is, in this time period there's no way to avoid long, slow supply lines of plodding ox carts (Or whatever your nation's equivalent is). It would probably take a whole army just to defend that supply line, if you want to do it as closely as Frozo seems to have.

i belive an army of about three thousand or less could Probibly do what Frozo is trying to do. at least in my southern teritory. in summer/autumn. small enough that they can forage effectivly if things start going wrong.

half the problem is that the longer the supply line, and the more support personal you have... the more supplys you need. gotta remember it's not just the soldiers and officers who have to eat, it's their horses, the servants, the smiths, the wagoners, the oxen [or whatever are pulling the wagons] any escorts for the supplys, and then you've got to bring up the metals so that the smiths have the materials to repair/replace stuff, the arrows for your bows [no garantee of them being reusable after battle, or of reliably finding what you need to make more... though they're not as bad as bullets or artillary shells in that reguard] horses to replace the inevitable loses in combat [or to other issues].

one trick that in some ways helped and in some ways didn't was that you could reduce the amount of food you have to bring in by takeing Live stock [hehe. pun] with the army. provided their is grazing and water, they're self transporting [this was done in the napolionic era, too] and if you get desperate you Can eat your horses... but this begins to reduce your combat effectiveness [the whole point :D]

Hey, sup guys. I was wanting to advertise a new PT rp that I've created, if you're interested.

RP Link (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=502697)

... interesting. not really entirely relivant :p but interesting *looks more*

This RP is so dead. Without the Ralish nothing can be done.

What a shame...

yeah. one of many reasons why i'm not really very keen on people starting wtih large empires.

we could [with a little effort] kill off his emperor or something and have the empire fragment under it's own weight, or have him have really incompitant commanders and lose a whole bunch of battles and go splat.

but it's kinda not cool that way.

though i don't think he ever actually Said he was quitting or whatever, so there's a chance it might just be a pause rather than a cesation. never know.

Or you can join my rp! Mwuahaha! Here's a link to the sign-up thread: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=502697

you piratical poacher you!

hehe.

not that it matters. time filling is Good :)

Want some real funny time-waste, heres a funny link you should see about ninja.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC71t8GzqPs&search=samurai

Ok, good reasons for not joining that RP:

Not enough time.

It's way too technical.

Everything is too prescribed.

Just my personal opinion.
This one is, however, kinda dead.

Ok, good reasons for not joining that RP:

Not enough time.

It's way too technical.

Everything is too prescribed.

Just my personal opinion.
This one is, however, kinda dead.

Like I said, what else have you to do? Heh, and I am eliminating a lot of the rules and not really enforcing a bunch of stuff. Its there as a guideline more than rules. ;)

Blargh, this is annoying... sorry, Thrashia, but I'm not really partial to 1500s Japan or rules that are that rigid, so I'll have to pass it up...

Actually, someone I know is thinking of starting an NS historical RP set in the 1870s, with the Scramble for Africa, the Great Game, Bismarck, and all that... I don't know if that's too modern for you guys, but would anyone be interested?

Blargh, this is annoying... sorry, Thrashia, but I'm not really partial to 1500s Japan or rules that are that rigid, so I'll have to pass it up...

Actually, someone I know is thinking of starting an NS historical RP set in the 1870s, with the Scramble for Africa, the Great Game, Bismarck, and all that... I don't know if that's too modern for you guys, but would anyone be interested?

Like I said, it's less rigid that what you think; but suit yourself, no need to worry. Also, if you guys are interested, there is another PT Fantasy rp going on that is really good, I'll provide a link bellow to the off-site forums.

http://z14.invisionfree.com/Earth_Imperialism/index.php?

the 1870 rp might prove fun. Don't know about the fantasy rp. I don't like off site rps.

what i Really want to do somewhere along the way is a napolionic era RP.

i actually know a lot of Facts about that one :D

the guns at the time are still inferior to longbows, too. no breach loaders yet.

and there was basicly No combat tech development during the corse of the era, that i can tell, unless you count doctrine.

i dunno about 1870, i also dislike off site stuff, and fantasy is... weird. has to have even more ridged rules, or a very very well defined and described world before you even start.

Terra and i were bouncing around an idea a while back for a points system for setting up PT nations. basicly, you'd describe something a "defult" 'this is what a nation can and can not get/do in this game" set up, then have a list of positive and negative modifyers with points values assigned to them.

things such as special traits, more advanced units, rare resorces, etc.

you'd get about 5, mabey 10 points worth of positives without having to take any negatives, and a lot of them would probibly be paired, as in you could only have the negative Or the positive, to stop anyone being silly and taking everything [or near enough]

then you'd play it with a map devided into provences similar to the provence map Thrasia for his japanese RP. each territory would be asigned a maximum recrutable population. you recruit guys, this number goes down. when it reaches 0, you've recruited every male of fighting age for an entire generation [or near enough] that number doesn't reset if it gets taken over, either.

once you get set up, it plays out pretty much like our pervious PT games, except with far less "make it up as you go" "oh, i have 25000 men. what, you killed them all? ahh well, that's ok, i'll recruit another 50 thousand and come get you anyway" type scenarios, and debate as to weither something is Possible or not.

the key being to have as exhasutive a list as possible when you start out, and someone who plays the role of GM [or two people being GMs as well as players] would certainly help.

i'm curious as to people's oppinion on that one.

what i Really want to do somewhere along the way is a napolionic era RP.

i actually know a lot of Facts about that one :D

the guns at the time are still inferior to longbows, too. no breach loaders yet.

and there was basicly No combat tech development during the corse of the era, that i can tell, unless you count doctrine.

i dunno about 1870, i also dislike off site stuff, and fantasy is... weird. has to have even more ridged rules, or a very very well defined and described world before you even start.

Terra and i were bouncing around an idea a while back for a points system for setting up PT nations. basicly, you'd describe something a "defult" 'this is what a nation can and can not get/do in this game" set up, then have a list of positive and negative modifyers with points values assigned to them.

things such as special traits, more advanced units, rare resorces, etc.

you'd get about 5, mabey 10 points worth of positives without having to take any negatives, and a lot of them would probibly be paired, as in you could only have the negative Or the positive, to stop anyone being silly and taking everything [or near enough]

then you'd play it with a map devided into provences similar to the provence map Thrasia for his japanese RP. each territory would be asigned a maximum recrutable population. you recruit guys, this number goes down. when it reaches 0, you've recruited every male of fighting age for an entire generation [or near enough] that number doesn't reset if it gets taken over, either.

once you get set up, it plays out pretty much like our pervious PT games, except with far less "make it up as you go" "oh, i have 25000 men. what, you killed them all? ahh well, that's ok, i'll recruit another 50 thousand and come get you anyway" type scenarios, and debate as to weither something is Possible or not.

the key being to have as exhasutive a list as possible when you start out, and someone who plays the role of GM [or two people being GMs as well as players] would certainly help.

i'm curious as to people's oppinion on that one.

A lot of good points there, and yea a GM would be a nice thing to have; but then mods kind of do the same thing as a GM, only online.

in a seperate, dedicated forum, they're basicly the same thing.

on nationstates? too much content for it to be moderated properly by the staff.

at any rate,t he two terms are near interchangable in the case of forum based games.

in a seperate, dedicated forum, they're basicly the same thing.

on nationstates? too much content for it to be moderated properly by the staff.

at any rate,t he two terms are near interchangable in the case of forum based games.

*nods solemnly*

A Napoleonic RP would be good too... I'd like either that or 1870, personally.

1870 is way cooler.
More possibilities, and it's done less often, as far as i can make out.

Yay, that sounds good with me.

Whew,

I am back and active once more....had ALOT of shit going on for the longest time, i apoligize for my absence.

I was thinking more along the lines of 1650...1770...

Maybe French/indian wars? American Revolution?

I will gladly join...

I mean either the tech, using nations...

Or charactor based using a place....what goes on there is up to us, i dunno..i just throwing afew ideas out there..

I for one have had enough of pre-industrial stuff for a bit. Steam and electricity opens up a whole new world of possibilities; and it doesn't have to make those with higher tech totally dominant, as long as anyone else boxes slightly clever.

Own nations is far better from my point of view, because I want the freedom more than I want the hard facts available...but I'm happy to sign up to a RL 1870 situation, probably as the USA.

I see what your saying about development and what not, but for some reason i don't really find myself that interested in the time period...i am unsure why, but it just don't click....

Umm, not very well explained...lol..the best i can do..

Hmm, well, I'm thinking of fusing our discussion and the one on the offsite forum about 1870 be creating an interest thread... when I get the time, today or tomorrow, I'll do so.

late 1800s always seems like an awkward transitional phase to me, tech wise.

though, on the Other hand, it's the right centuary for the New Zealand land wars.... [i've got a fair bit of detail about those]. at least if i remember corretly.

first usage of all out trench warfare. go Rebel [mostly, but not entirely, maori] forces! only cavalry charge in NZ history! [that's right, there was only ONE.] go government [useually a mix of british soldiers and local malitia. included maori. guess which was useualy more effective?]

that whole set of wars is funny. it's Really hard to accuratly describe who was on which side, if only because it kept changeing :headbang:

what I'd find interesting, is a 'steam punk' RP.

basicly, the premis is this: steam can do Anything. it's bulkyer than electronics [which don't happen.], sure, but if you're willing to put the effort in you can make robots, aircraft, machine guns, all taht good stuff.

as well as freaken great flying castles, etc. the idea being, that if people had focused on steam rather than electricity, it has a lot more brute force mechanical aplication.

perfect example: Steamboy. it's a movie. go rent/buy it and watch. it's awsome :D

precludes nukes and easily man portable machineguns...

doesn't prevent aircraft or ships [or even tanks, if you want to get a bit creative]

allows the possibiility of things like Flying battleships... and apparantly [somehow] robots with enough AI to behave like humans. i've got no idea how that last one works, but it shows up sometimes in these things.

you could, just barely, allow morse code telegraph... but such an understanding of electricity Rappidly leads to manportable machineguns... which are EVIL. [basicly, in my opinion, machinegun type weaponary is where warfare starts to get stupid. especially manportable] properly built breachloaders are bad enough. a trained infantry man can fire a round a Second with those.

haliographs are viable though.

there is no magic. humans are still humans.

i'm thinking, mabey a good one to apply my points system idea too.

Especially if it were played useing a pacific map, after removing the continets from either side. [meaning australia is the Biggest landmass on the map]

how's that sound? provided it was set up well enough and we, i dunno, closed it so we only had people we Know are good at this and won't bail?

errr... i would say a "no empires!" limit would have to be imposed on starting set up though.

Dude, the way we play, the time periods we cover, you can rule out the machine gun simply by saying no-one is allowed to have it at the start of the RP, and so any that are deployed are prototypes, unreliable, and not available in numbers.
The period between effective machine guns and early tanks is very bad for fighting, cos everything bogs down. Hard.
Breech-loaders, on the other hand, are okay...because one man can't mow down a whole company unless they're extremely stupid.

very good point.

still, i'd like to do a steam-punk RP sometime reguardless :)

i Really don't like trying to work off historical natons though. i just don't know enough about any of them.

any of you ever read... i think it's "adrift in the sea of time" and the other books in that series?

that allows for some interesting possibilitys.

think 2000 bc, [roughly]. there's still chariots crusing around, but breachloading single shot rifles, crude rocket launchers, gatling guns [not so sure about this] and mortars have become the norm for combat weapons.. officers tend to carry sixshooters and katanas...

cavalry [with stirups and saddles] has mostly replaced chariots. except that it hasen't, because some brightspark figured out that three man chariots make Excilent weapons platforms [gunner/commander, loader, and driver], while cavalry have to Stop to have much hope of hitting anything. [though they are a bit faster and more manouverable]

no one can do internal combustion yet, but it's all based on Nantucket getting throwen back in time, so there are a few microlites crusing around made from scavenged parts.

non-combat tech is all over the show as well... medican[sp] in some places is great. next best thing to outright modern in most areas. in other places it's worse than the middle ages, and still other places are a mixture or inbetween.

the major powers [in the book] ended up being Nantucket [best tech, best navey, smallest population] Greece [lead by Odisseus by the end, if i remember rightly] some city which no one's even sure ever existed [in iberia] and babalon [which is to Nantucket what japan was to the western world historicaly, apparantly. with reguards to takeing on new ideas and concepts, anyway]


but yeah, actual story line is irrelivant.

the massive mixed tech level idea is kinda cool though.

i mean, what's not to like about chariot mounted rocket launchers? :D