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Old 01-30-2019, 05:51 PM   #71
tshiggins
 
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Default Re: REALLY Heavy Rifle for Antarctic Space Nazis

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Southern Germany can grow tobacco, as can France.
I'm not too surprised that France can grow tobacco, but the notion that southern Germany does (or did) is unexpected.

I wonder if the reason it isn't grown much north of the latitude of the Ohio River has to do with the fact that the southern climate is so much better that the Upper Midwest states don't bother to try?
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Old 01-30-2019, 06:08 PM   #72
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Default Re: Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

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A couple of books that may be helpful with this:

Textbook of Small Arms is a British publication from 1929, which includes a fairly detailed outline of how mass-production of ammunition is done at TL6.

Hatcher's Notebook has some material on TL6 small arms manufacture, among a lot of interesting anecdote.
Thanks. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be available in Kindle form. Perhaps a library might have them, though I doubt it.

Best guess, how much of their resources, including, most crucially, how many man-hours of TL7 workers, would making a ton of ammunition cost the ASNs?

And how much weight are we talking about in bringing the tooling needed to do so, per cartridge type?

And would it take days, months or years to set up a plant in the new world, if they brought materials along broken down into pieces that were all smaller than 400 lbs.?

Is making or adjusting tooling to make a manufacturing plang capable of making a new line of cartridges, of an entirely diffferent caliber than everything else, a fairly simple procedure, perhaps a few months of work for a team of a dozen men? Or is it a megaproject requiring hundreds of technicians for years?

Is making TL6-7 SAPHE rounds for 13mm or higher calibers dramatically more difficult for their cultural enclave than making military ball or steel-cored AP?
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Old 01-30-2019, 07:03 PM   #73
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Default Re: Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

Textbook of Small Arms is in PDF on scribd so if UK government publications are like US ones with no copyright that is a legit way to get a copy.
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Old 01-30-2019, 09:09 PM   #74
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Default Re: REALLY Heavy Rifle for Antarctic Space Nazis

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Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
I'm not too surprised that France can grow tobacco, but the notion that southern Germany does (or did) is unexpected.

I wonder if the reason it isn't grown much north of the latitude of the Ohio River has to do with the fact that the southern climate is so much better that the Upper Midwest states don't bother to try?
Probably, though tobacco has been farmed in Canada since the American Revolution and is still farmed in Ontario, Canada in the Ontario Tobacco Belt.
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Old 01-31-2019, 12:48 AM   #75
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Default Re: REALLY Heavy Rifle for Antarctic Space Nazis

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
I'm not too surprised that France can grow tobacco, but the notion that southern Germany does (or did) is unexpected.

I wonder if the reason it isn't grown much north of the latitude of the Ohio River has to do with the fact that the southern climate is so much better that the Upper Midwest states don't bother to try?
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Probably, though tobacco has been farmed in Canada since the American Revolution and is still farmed in Ontario, Canada in the Ontario Tobacco Belt.
It's probable enough that many plants are tbeoretically capable of being grown in a wider range than is done today, because our worldwide trade network encourages specialization to the degree that cultivating plants in suboptimal conditions isn't profitable.

If there is no other potential source of tobacco and there are those among the Natarctic Space Nazis who remain addicted to it, likely they would pay a far higher price for inferior product than anyone would do in our world, with alternate sources readily available.

Of course, given the risks of growing tobacco on plantation farms hundreds of miles south of the military-patrolled settlements of the ASNs on Germania Hyperborea, the 'Treckbauer' are going to need obscene prices for their crops to justify the risks of native raids.

And now we've accidentally created a campaign framework for rugged individualists rejecting Antarctic Space Nazi society and striking out as heroic homesteaders... with fields of tobacco, plantations and many, many slaves. Freebooting outlaw capitalist farmers who reject Nazi values in favour of Antebelllum South or apartheit South African ones. Eh, except that both the slaves and the rampaging and 'savage' Natives all look European, so... win?
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Old 01-31-2019, 01:23 AM   #76
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Default Re: Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

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In total, I guess that the Antarctic Space Nazis were able to take with them about 30,000 short tons of machinery, tools, supplies and equipment from 1944-1945 Earth.
That's a lot more than I was expecting, given the limit of 400lb per beast-load. Did they really get 150,000 loads moved?
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Thanks. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be available in Kindle form. Perhaps a library might have them, though I doubt it.
OK, those were background reading. I'll try to get you detailed answers over the next few days.
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Textbook of Small Arms is in PDF on scribd so if UK government publications are like US ones with no copyright that is a legit way to get a copy.
UK government publications come under Crown Copyright.
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Old 01-31-2019, 01:33 AM   #77
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Default Re: Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

Just because they are fighting with the locals doesn't mean thy are fighting with all the locals or any of them all the time. So you can have the locals learn how to grow tobacco and trade for high tech goods.
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Old 01-31-2019, 01:39 AM   #78
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Default Re: Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

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That's a lot more than I was expecting, given the limit of 400lb per beast-load. Did they really get 150,000 loads moved?
Yeah, it's not a long trip through for their three primary gates (which is why they were the primary gates). For the Jötunheim and the first Germania Hyperborea gate, where the first outposts were located, it's maybe a couple of hundred yards over the World Tree for each of them (though, oddly, it's almost a kilometer of rough going to travel from Jötunheim to Germania Hyperborea). For the demiplane with the mystical Wewelsburg analogue (which only became available in mid-1944), it's literally only a few steps. And for the first three gates, those are walks along the World Tree, not difficult climbs, as with some other worlds or the direct route from Jötunheim to Germania Hyperborea (fortunately, each world can be accessed from the demiplane with a few steps, which makes for a much easier route between them).

The ASNs could basically use TL7 rails, cars and other technology to move things to one of the complexes used on Earth (Der Riese in Silesia, near the Czech border, Wewelsburg in Westphalia and Weltmittelpunktbunker in Berlin) and then the supplies would be carried for a few minutes to travel to another world, either by the beast-men for heavy things or by a normal person for lighter things. For things that they were taking directly to the 'landing zone' around the otherworldly Wewelsburg or the industrial site to be at Jötunheim, one person could make hundreds of trip on one day, if that someone was feeling up to the heavy labour. And the beast-men didn't have much of a choice about the heavy labour part.

About ten beast-men would have worked non-stop from mid-1943 to the end of April, 1945. At first, they were bringing supplies for outposts, not necessarily a Last Redoubt, but before the end of 1943, at least some of those in charge of the outposts realized that the Third Reich would probably fall eventually, given the results on the Eastern Front, but their outposts on other worlds wouldn't have to.

Granted, not all the supplies just had to be moved to the closest spot near the gates, but note that the estimate only assumes that the ten beast-men made around 150-200 round trips a day each for six hundred days, with humans bringing a little of supplies as well, not to mention shifting the loads once they were placed at the landing zones. In fact, the beast-men probably made fewer trips, as the human workers would probably manage to rig some kind of contraptions around the gates and contribute to moving the freight, even to the point of lugging backpacks over the World Tree at times. It's rough for the beast-men, but by no means impossible, especially as it wasn't the same ten working all the time, but different ones in shifts.

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
OK, those were background reading. I'll try to get you detailed answers over the next few days.

UK government publications come under Crown Copyright.
Cool, thanks a lot.
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Old 01-31-2019, 02:01 AM   #79
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Default Re: Antarctic Space Nazis Across the Multiverse

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Just because they are fighting with the locals doesn't mean thy are fighting with all the locals or any of them all the time. So you can have the locals learn how to grow tobacco and trade for high tech goods.
Absolutely.

Even though they are, well, literal Nazis, some of them will be mostly normal people, albeit ones living in a society with values that we would deplore. Quite likely the more successful Treckbauers would treat their slaves with paternalistic affection and learn enough of native ways to be able to deal with them. There would be shocking inequality and brutality, from the perspective of our modern society, but anyone indulging in cruelty would learn that without the military might of the main settlements to back them up, they need the 'native' Aryan class and even the better type of slaves to be at least minimally content.

The society of the Treckbauers would probably evolve into one where the second class citizens descended from 'civilized' Natives (with sufficiently Aryan features) could do quite well, even if those who could trace their descent to the Earth-born original settlers would become, effectively, a class of frontier nobility, or at the very least landed gentry, having rights and privileges beyond any Native, no matter how wealthy, simply by virtue of their superior citizenship.

And for the Treckbauers, at least, their slavery could well evolve into something closer to what thralldom became in Viking frontier areas like Iceland, i.e. something that was imposed on battle captives from foreign cultures, but didn't persist among descendants who spoke the same language and had the same customs. The main settlements and the industrial areas of the Antarctic Space Nazis can get away with chattel slavery of shocking brutality, because they can transform recalcitrant slaves into Kadavergershamer automatons who are incapable of rebellion, but that option wouldn't remain open to anyone who struck out on their own.

The Treckbauer might buy such slaves, yes, but they'd be more like farm equipment than people, and, in any case, such slaves really require access to power plants for best results.* As the Treckbauer will probably be TL5, with access to TL6-7 gadgets only by purchase (and will not make use of many higher TL skills, either), it's probably simpler to rely on a work force that is at least marginally content.

*Why, yes, they do in fact not eat as ordinary people do, but instead require energy in easily drainable form.
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Old 01-31-2019, 03:41 AM   #80
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Default Antarctic Space Nazi 'Low-Tech' Smallarms

I'm assuming that while the ASNs could scrounge up quite a lot of military hardware, as the senior leadership of the SS and in charge of more than one division of Waffen-SS, not everyone among the senior leadership was prepared to strip the Third Reich of badly needed munitions or weapons.

So, while many thousands of rifles and millions and millions of rounds of ammunition would have been available as a matter of course, by the time that all the leadership of the Antarctic Space Nazis had accepted the inevitability of the fall of the Third Reich, Nazi Germany was, ironically, facing somewhat of a shortage of munitions.

Granted, that doesn't matter much on the scale of five or ten thousand rifles, but it does explain why the ASNs might not have had literally hundreds of thousands of stockpiled rifles. Instead, they maybe ten thousand military rifles ready at the end of 1944 and maybe another ten thousand training rifles in .22 LR and then whatever weapons they could scrounge and steal during the first four months of 1945.

I'm assuming that they took everything necessary to set up manufacturing of Mauser rifles and ammunition, however, and that this was an absolute priority to get up and running.

For the first few years and probably the entire first generation, it's likely that TL6-7 firearms and, especially, ammunition, were in more demand than their manufacturing could ever supply. Well, granted, for the first generation or so, they'd probably have enough stockpiled of authentic Earth-made rifles and ammunition for all citizens, but they would hardly have enough to equip ever growing numbers of 'civilized' 'Aryan' second-class citizens. Which is why I think that black powder firearms would make sense, for all other tasks than frontline military service.

My thought was that the farmers and second-class citizens would receive copies of Mauser 1871/84 rifles in 11mm, with whatever changes are needed to make them as economical to manufacture in their circumstances as possible.

I also believe that a simple black powder flintlock muzzleloader, as easy to manufacture as possible and maintainable at TL4, would have been made as a trade item to their TL3 allies. I was wondering what kind of pattern would be most practical, as well as having superficial similarities to some suitable Germanic firearm. Probably a Prussian musket copy.

If it is easier to upgrade to percussion rifle-muskets than it is to go directly to centerfire Mausers in black powder, I suppose they also need such trade guns, for when their allies have moved beyond TL4 armaments and need more expensive trade goods.

Is it easier or more economical, if you have TL7 knowledge and manufacfuring capability for TL6 Mausers, to mass manufacture a 'new' design of percussion rifle-muskets, either muzzleloading or breech-loading, than it is to make more Mauser 1871s?

Even if equivalent in terms of labour and materials, it seems like it might be easier and cheaper to manufacture percussion caps, powder and minie-bullets in massive numbers than it is to make 11mm centerfire black powder cartridges, if only because of materials savings in metal casings. Paper cartridges might alter that analysis, of course.

For citizens of das Neues Reich der Schwarzen Sonne, even if second class citizens, the increased utility of the Mauser 1871/84 rifles probably makes up for any reasonable cost increase. As trade goods, however, it seems plausible to me, without any real understanding of the relative complexities in manufacturing, that selling native allies (safely on another world and thus a limited threat) upgrades to trade muskets in the form of percussion caps and rifled barrels might be more profitable than moving directly to the more advanced Mauser from the most primitive trade muskets.

Essentially, an analogue to the Ring of Fire/Assiti Shards/1632 Series SRG rifle-musket, designed as a muzzleloader that would initially use a flintlock action, but be upgradable later on to percussion caps and even breechloading.

Though obviously, based on something with more Germanic and völkisch credibility than the Enfield rifle-musket. I don't know what having access to factories that make Mausers means for lower-tech actions, if perhaps some form of bolt-action can be converted to work with paper cartridges and percussion caps and if that would more more economical to mass produce than an adaptation of a historical action type.

What think the denizens?
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