Driven By Baboons (a confederate AAR)
Oct 24, 2020 10:01:16 GMT -6
captainloggy and prophetinreverse like this
Post by plattfuss on Oct 24, 2020 10:01:16 GMT -6
Editor´s remark: I did not choose the CSA because I am a huge fan of slavery - I thought that their territorial limitation to the Caribbean and their status as a military underdog would be easy and fun to play.
I assumed office on the turn of the year 1899/1900 full of feverish ambition and took a look on the legacy fleet the program created. My glorious ships to fight in glorious battles…
The 1899 legacy fleet…
is the usual assortment of slow and weak rust buckets, often with limited range or cramped accomodation
(maybe that´s typical for a comparatively small nation with limited ressources)
The 1899 legacy fleet…
is the usual assortment of slow and weak rust buckets, often with limited range or cramped accomodation
(maybe that´s typical for a comparatively small nation with limited ressources)
We´ve got only two real pre-dreadnoughts (we will have to heavily depend on them in the future, I guess) of the Franklin-Buchanan-Class.
Four more battleships have only cruiser like armament and are of short range. And all of our cruisers are slow….what a great start….
Our big plan is:
#1 massive cost reduction (nearly everybody gets transferred to the reserve fleet: “Get back home to your peanut farms, boys, we´ll get back to you in case we need you….!”)
#2 12% research
#3 We´ll build nothing (except coastal fortifications) unless our tech levels get better.
#4 And we´ll expand our wharves as fast as possible.
#5 Politically we´ll be as fluffy and plushy as we can be….
April 1900
The software really likes us – our relations with France “have taken a sudden reverse” – we are (just four turns in the game) already near the brink of a war
– with everybody home on the farms and nothing but self-sinking buckets in the harbours….
this feels “great”….and…by the way: nobody else really likes us….
June 1900
We´ve got the “early coastal submarine” – now we can at least spam “Hunley”s…if need should be…
(by the way: “SS” means “self-sinking” in the confederate navy….)
After cancelling the construction of more rust buckets we have a net income of 4900 and begin to pepper the coastline with 10´ batteries….
September 1900
We are currently paying royalties to our research department, they´ve got air-condition and their mint juleps filled to the brim
– and all they are experiencing are “temporary setbacks” with absolutely everything they are trying to tinker…fools!
Why – for heaven´s sake - am I not admiral in the bolivian fleet???
January 1901
Having no colonies it seems strange to me that we have now a colonial crisis with Great Britain.
And having no remarkable prestige I cannot afford the prestige loss of yielding.
Alright, everybody here is trampling on our lawn and mobbing us as they please…
I cannot find any fun in this profession at the moment....
I cannot find any fun in this profession at the moment....
Do your work, little grey cells…! More mint juleps for the research department….
February 1901
Well, that´s a new one.
We are cost reducing everywhere and those tobacco chewing blokes are READING BOOKS (they are obviously not understanding)
and are humming now “Rule Britannia” in their bathtubs. They want six cruisers… why not six hundred???
Am I Ali Baba, do I look like having a wonderlamp??? Are we in A Thousand and One Nights?
Am I surrounded by idiots???
But I´ve got absolutely no prestige to lose left - and if I don´t want to be sacked….
Well…Open sesame!
I choose to build cheap long range raiders….with 1500 a month they are as cheap as a long range ship can be and hopefully fast enough to run away from everything….
Tin cans and sailing yachts….what a wonderful navy do we have!
August 1901
That is fun indeed.
It doesn´t matter which option I choose – either we are in a war with France or I will get sacked…
I wonder why we always have conflicts with all those nations….what are they doing in the foreign office??? Sending insults, defamatory letters and shrunken heads to all other nations???
Well…maybe it´s time to spam Hunleys – the self-sinkable last hope of a waning cause…
(Margaret Mitchell never wrote about that….not much glory in the glory of the South here I´d say…)
September 1901
Remember? I was penny-pinching from the beginning – and spent money only when I had to hold the funds below 40 millions
(because those blokes in parliament would take away the money from the navy then).
The “big plan” was to have the funds and the wharves ready when our eggheads would come over with some kinky new technologies to produce finally REAL warships.
And now we have: rising unrest levels because the people are clamouring the IMMENSE expenses of the navy!
My goodness, there is no cheaper navy in the universe!
Shall we go to war in swimming trunks and with rubber duckies?
About those kinky technologies: Our eggheads are just fumbling around, always mumbling something about “temporary setbacks”. They until now produced nothing but black forest cuckoo clocks as present for the president….
And then we have those self-inflated baboons in Richmond who forced us to produce tin can cruisers just to appease their megalomaniac aspirations….
I never intended this to become a farce - but that´s just what it is: A BLOODY FARCE!