xthetenth

Damn, compared to that the various ________ Ship Design and Development books by Norman Friedman look crazy cheap. I've even had some decent luck at coming up with rare books/textbooks about the early modern period.

Might it have been a thing where there's a compromise they made on the MS-1 because it was so small and then stopped making on later tanks because they felt they had more room, and only later returned to when tanks had grown to fill that size and they needed to optimize for volume to get good protection?

Might the bamboo have something to do with the way it's structured in bows not being reflected in your source?

It's a source of energy loss over time due to a force opposite the acceleration, drag is a decent enough way to represent the concept.

Die Antwoord is a significant fraction of my incredibly weird music video collection. I'm pretty sure that says bad things about the rest of my music video collection (IE weird videos I remember the name of). Here, have some little big.

Yeah, sent. Please tell me we have artists. My drawing is more accurately draftsmanship, and I don't know how to make 3d models.

Is "gets unreasonably angry at games" a qualification? Inquiring minds must know. Also, depending on some important decisions made early on (such as going with turn based), an intermediary product of what's needed to make a video game would be a goodly fraction of what you need to make a PNP RPG (which is what I've really been mucking about with in off-time because assets are not a thing I can do at this point in my life).

One thing I find is that simulationist rulesets usually fall on their face pretty hard once things that aren't baked into their simulation come up. Functionally I find abstracted rulesets are perfectly capable of leading to realistic outcomes and more importantly realistic decisionmaking processes, it's just that once you start making a game of things pure heavy realism starts to strike people as not fun. Speaking of Roman fallout, Age of Decadence is literally intended to be pretty much that and does a very good job of a deterministic gamey system where combat you aren't ready for is a fantastically stupid idea, and taking on multiple people can suck for even good fighters. It however doesn't go into the full realism aspect with regards to wounds after the fact, which is a big area that gets glossed over for very good reasons from a gameplay (both not making things drag on too long and also having bad outcomes have a clear cause) perspective. A 30 years' war RPG where unlucky wounds causing death happens and making new characters isn't a big deal could be all kinds of amusing though as some sort of pencil and paper Cannon Fodder.

Heh. That's more a crossbow thing, by the time of guns they'd kind of gotten used to it. I'd contend that for a decent subset of uses, that's about the right level of protection. For example, 30 Years' War kurassiers in heavy plate and armed with pistols to fire on the charge (experience showed it worked better than the lance, which is the sort of awesome thing about the period) would likely be facing enemy cavalry often and rarely be going for an unbroken tercio. So protection against pistols and melee weapons would be about right. However, there is definitely a marked trend towards the armor for the elites to be made from steel and carefully heat-treated, although cheaper armor was iron or iron and a small amount of phosphorus. My great hobby ambition in life is to make an RPG that doesn't do history a disservice. It's amazing how RPGs that spill a huge quantity of ink on a huge variety of races in many areas and they end up having less cultural and social variation than a single relatively culturally homogenous area with a single very dominant ancestor state dominating their political lineages, let alone other areas. The early modern period is one of the most incredibly awesome and nuts settings imaginable, but it's usually just putting the thinnest notions of super abstracted disney park feudalism over a generic modern idea of a nation, so they can get to adding other homogenous groups. Third century RPG, basically Roman fallout lite. The fourth to seventh centuries would be really interesting in most any place. A bunch of tribes invading who really desperately want to be Roman but don't know how and the Romans not wanting or being able to take them, Rome itself falling apart while Constantinople is still an incredible repository of knowledge and an incredible mess, and various awesome stuff up north.

I believe that was the case more with cannon, and early firearms that really got used had a nice bit of development time after the "vase loaded with spears" look. And yes, there was a long period where armor could be bulletproof (and indeed had a bullet mark as a proof that it was, thus the word), although I think that was high end, nicely heat treated product for the elites and not arsenal plate made for more regular troops. However if I remember right fancy harnesses started compromising on full coverage to get that bulletproof thickness on the vitals. Guns came of age in the era of pike after all, so good terminal effects against foot could make up some serious flaws.

Multiple arrow wounds are good and all for eventually killing a dude, but the fact that so many arrow wound survivors with multiple arrows sticking out of them says something about the ability for a bow to quickly take a person out.

I think you mean the Curtiss ass-ender Ascender. Also much earlier than the Shinden.

I forgot the swoose goose. How.

That's an absolutely terrible thing. You have no idea how painful it is having to go from decacentenial holy wars for a dutchy to having to encourage breakoff revolts to pick away at until you can get a nice de jure claim to a bunch of their territories. This lesson brought to you by this game: I spent decades bringing down the mongols. In the end, Rajas of India came out and I lost the game.

Here, have some WWI fun things: Supermarine Nighthawk. Designed to carry a 37mm gun and a searchlight as a bomber interceptor. Instead of 75 mph it made 60, and took an hour to climb to 10,000 feet, which was still inadequate to intercept Zeppelins. SPAD A.2. If you can't fire through the propeller arc, put the gun in front of the propeller! And a gunner! Preferably a guy you don't like because he's got an engine, a propeller and a pilot who can't really see to land behind him.

That moustache looks like he took the "caterpillar on your upper lip" comment as a recommendation and trimmed it so it looks like it's walking.

Yeah, I guess the super duper long range escort idea fits, although considering the Twin Mustang it seems that's a niche that they really wanted filled. Now for a few British things: Westland Lysander. The joke went that to novices there were two types of planes: planes and Lysanders. Rare for things in this thread, it was actually a very successful liason aircraft with great visibility, low speed performance and short field performance. Westland Welkin. Designed to intercept high altitude and high speed reconnaissance flights, they took a Whirlwind, which was a high performance heavy fighter that had been plagued with development troubles and gave it a huge wing. Very good altitude performance, but not enough threat to be worthwhile. Miles M.39B Libellula. Designed to be a fast bomber. Apparently kind of worked, strangely enough. Seems that the progress of other designs passed it by, not really sure. Miles M.35 Libellula. I think they used all their inventiveness on the planform and had to reuse the name or something. Intended as a naval fighter which could fit onto elevators without wing folding and would have excellent visibility onto the carrier while landing. Was built without official authority which doomed the project, which was rejected.

Wait, I forgot the theme music for that post! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uVJ-9qDado

XSB2D Destroyer with groovy top and bottom turrets, but the Navy quickly changed its mind. It wound up becoming the XBTD-2 with mixed propulsion. This was a reasonably popular thing for a bit, adding a jet instead of a rear gunner to provide rear protection by speed. XTB2D Skypirate. Designed for the larger later carriers. Fit an R-4360 with counter rotating propellers. Could carry four torpedoes or an equivalent bomb load. Don't let the single engine fool you, the thing could carry as much as four TBFs (and they considered stuffing a jet in the back). It was about the same empty weight and had a longer wingspan than a B-25 Mitchell. Grumman XTB2F. Yes that's a proposed carrier torpedo bomber. I'm sure you can see the biggest problem with that idea. But what I'm pretty sure you didn't notice the significance of is yes, that is a 75mm gun, and it would be accompanied by six .50 cals. And that's a radar in the wing because why not at that point. They also had a much more sensible idea for a torpedo bomber, the XTSF-1, which was a F7F modified with a TBF torpedo bay and an air to surface radar in the nose. YP-37, an early attempt to fit a turbosupercharged inline in the Hawk airframe. Basically an abortive attempt at what the P-40 was, but with bad visibility and stability. The SNC-1, originally the CW-22. A two seat fighter. They took the CW-21, a super lightweight fighter that got good performance at the expense of durability even when compared to the Zero, and added a rear gunner. It rather quickly became a training plane instead because that's not an awful idea. The XP-62, the last hurrah of Curtiss-Wright fighter design. Originally promising with a R-3350 providing a ton of power going into a counterrotating prop. Got passed by because Curtiss-Wright was failing as a company with a ton of similar projects cannibalizing each other. Overall a mess. NOT PICTURED: There were attempts to to add a turbosupercharger and intercooler to the P-39. One try was in a belly pod. Top speed dropped 40 mph. The next try was in a saddleback right over the cockpit. Top speed dropped by 45 mph. This otherwise unoffensive looking sort is the XP-47H. Yep. It's a thunderbolt, testing the XIV-2220-1 16 cylinder inverted V engine. It didn't work very well. Meanwhile cleaning up and lightening the thing with a radial produced the J, which using a mass-produced engine and propeller cleared 500 mph. Bell YFM-1 Airacuda. Yep, that's two gunner aimed and fired 37mm guns. To quote wiki: it was an innovative design incorporating many features never before seen in a military aircraft, as well as several never seen again. I wonder why. It'd probably be effective against bombers if it weren't for the minor problem of not being able to catch them. It relied on an independent auxiliary power unit to power both engine fuel pumps as well as all aircraft electrical systems (this is one of those features!) It functionally had three separate engines without any one the plane was a write-off. XP-67 Moonbat. In addition to looking frankly super cool, it was supposed to be armed with 37mm cannon as a bomber destroyer. Six 37mm cannon in fact. Unfortunately actually making the thing work right was a bit much for the design staff and it had a severe tendency to overheat to the point of fire. By the time it worked, it didn't perform. XP-71. The very definition of big American bomber killers. 82.3 foot span, 39,950 pound weight intended (two B-25s!) with two R-4360-13s with turbos and a pair of eight blade, 13.5 foot diameter contra-rotating props. Intended to climb to 25,000 feet in 12.5 minutes, make 428 mph up there and be able to get to 40,000 feet with a 3,000 mile range. The thing was supposed to be armed with two 37mm cannon and a 75mm cannon. There were only two problems. First, it wasn't really working, it was complex as could be and things were progressing slowly. Second, there weren't any bombers to hunt. Which is a shame, because I desperately wish the B-36 of fighters had been a thing. Northrop XP-56. Cool looking plane, all-magnesium, all-welded. Unfortunately it didn't actually work and more importantly couldn't be made to work. XF5F. Normally the nose goes in front of the wing, but Grumman does what it wants. The test performance was allegedly excellent, with it pulling away from an XF4U so fast the pilot thought the Corsair had engine trouble. Unfortunately it was a twin engine design and the Wildcat was deemed more practical, and the XF5F was going to need more design time and changes that would add weight. Oh come on Vought. Really? This is the XF5U. Basically the idea was that there are good reasons why a wing with super long chord suck, mainly the induced drag at the very long wingtips, but if you cancel them out with the prop wash it'd totally allow for better maneuverability, roll rate and strength. It was promising but development took too long, with vibration problems in particular. They did need to break it up with a wrecking ball, so the strength was a thing that happened. No points if you guessed that I have a handsome book on US WWII "fighter" (and light strike plane) development.

Yeah. Considering the answer to the question "When are you going to be in a blue backdrop where that uniform blends in with" kind of makes me think OSHA safety orange is a better idea.

In most people's lives, the cost of putting rounds through something is a lot more relevant than the terminal ballistics, so that's a pretty good thing.

Putting the mockery back in the mock turtleneck, I see? Also, can they make the rank even more obvious so people know if they need to salute? You guys are on a boat. Make it big and obvious so the enlisted have an easier time of it.

Can we put Garbad in the North Korean army instead?

I'd contend that people with strong racist views, especially ones like Nazism that place a serious emphasis on killing the groups you're racist towards, are more likely to commit war crimes and other things that are really not good when you're trying to build a harmonious state. There's a whole lot of not thinking about it that's being done, and there are pains being taken to minimize the effect on the American public. It's kind of a realization of the Vietnam desire to be able to fight the war without the public actually caring in a meaningful way.

It's the best word I could map to the whole taxation is theft and night watchman state concept but yeah it's not right. It's the essential defense of the law as a thing with everything else on a personal basis, where the only thing the state is defend property rights, enforce contracts and ensure personal freedoms.