No problems here with revitalizing the Chinese... but...

For three days now, I've been trying to figure out how to quantify countries' ability to field an ether fleet. I actually found a book that purports to give estimates of nations' GDPs from the year 1 (!) all the way through 2001... so it's a start.

But I'm just not sure if that's the way to go.

If it is, then China's economic power in 1913 is greater than everyone but the UK (including her colonies) and the United States... that's a helluva fleet!

Well, that's kinda the problem... I don't know if "pure" GDP is a good way to gauge it or not. And if not, then what is?

I'm starting a new thread for this, so we don't hijack Matt's questions about the Chinese fleet itself.

I don't see them fielding 2nd generation Russian weapons either.  The Russians sparked the Chinese Revolution in this timeline because they KNEW the natives were not organized (nor did they have their ideology well enough defined).  That way, when they toppled the Qing dynasty, they would HAVE to accept Soviet help -- military, technological, administrative, etc etc....to keep the whole thing from toppling over. That being said, they're still going to be a large puppet state that isn't exactly trustworthy for a while in the eyes of the RSDLP.

So fairly traditional hulls.

But I don't want a straight continuation of the standard Russian ships.

Chinese weapons could include:
Torpedoes or Fire Rockets?
Decent Primary guns, but heavy on armor or speed?
I would like to incorporate boarders
Of course some FACs
No poison gas, as I see that as a European tactic
Keel Bomards? -- I don't think so
Not a whole lot of folks use gyroscopic stabilizers, so a fast, slashing fleet might be kind of neat.  Small ships, built on the cheap, with legs and maneuverability, but not very expensive and easy to hurt.  Emphasize numbers over quality.

"Of Course FACs" wasn't meant as snide.    I thought it had been established it would be foolhardy for any new player to enter the theater without FACs.  And I'm picturing these ships entering the field in 1914 or so.  In two years (counting off from January of 1912), I can start to see SOME crews.  Just not a big fleet as of yet.

Boarders I like, and I was thinking of another potential mechanic, which you can nuke if you don't like.

Guided torps/'suicide weapons.  Communist China's cruelty towards political prisoners or soldiers convicted of crimes against the newborn people's Republic shocked even the Soviets.  Shoved inside teeny tiny vehicles packed with explosives, they were given the option of redeeming their families in the eyes of the state by ramming opposing vessels.

I keep trying to set darker tones to IS, but it reminds me of penal battalions (Soviet) and human wave attacks and I think it adds a different flavor to the fleet.  Take a conventional torpedo and allow it to re-roll a miss.  The OR and size cost is bumped up as if the torpedo is actually two die sizes bigger.  IE, on a D8 X3 torp a Size 12 cruiser will lose 5 SUs and see its rating go up by 7 points.  With this, it loses 7 SUs and sees its rating go up 8 points.  You could limit the range of the torpedo (ie the die size) by saying the space normally taken up by propulsion is now reduced to make room for that poor pilot.

What's "martyr" in Chinese?

I don't know why not keel bombards.  After all, gunpowder and cannon being primarily a chinese invention why wouldn't their fleet include 'Dragon boats'.  Not really FACs, but small ships with a single keel bombard and fire rockets. :wink:

Boy :shock: ...when that monster opens up, underwear stocks are gonna go through the ROOF!!! 

Nice ship designs, but two nit-picky things:

130 is the total VP value; "HVP" is the number after the size class.

Remember that the Chinese aren't commies in our timeline; they are actually closer to Fascists.

This will likely cause issues in their relationship with the Reds later on.

No offense to the Maoists in our midst, but what Sun Yat-sen might have wanted is irrelevant to the situation as it stands in IS. The FRH needed a charismatic leader to seize power, and SYS gave them one... but their motivations were highly nationalistic ("China" vs. "the People"), and it wouldn't make sense for him to run counter to public sentiment.

SYS's desire for a communist state gives an excuse for an alliance with the Reds, and the FRH as a whole may tolerate it for the short term (just as the Nazis did with Stalin)-- but at some point there's going to be friction. And if SYS is more sympathetic to the commies than to his own party... lots of room for plot points there.

I don't want to overlook the likely probability that I am wrong, but...

Isn't "pinyin" the method by which Chinese characters are transliterated into the Roman alphabet?

My source says "martyr" translates as liè shì...

Kind of turning  into a debate and I dont know why .  I haven't contested what you want done with China, whatever you want is fine, but I did take some courses on Communism in (of all places) High School -- thank the Jesuits -- and in college as I pursued my worthless political science degree.  Sun did have some elements of socialism in his ideology.  I'm not disagreeing that he would have friction with the Reds almost immediately.  And in the fluff so far, the only reason he pairs with them at all is that he had nowhere else to go.  I do see Japan being even more paranoid about a nationalist China than it was in real life.  And I do see anyone with any trace of Socialist thinking being shunned in the IS setting by Western powers after the 1905 revolution.

The tone I guess I didn't establish in here is that the Soviets are being very heavy handed in trying to manipulate Chinese politics and will wear out their welcome.  It ain't exactly a friendly relationship, even in the few graphs that are down so far.

Rename the torpedoes anything that works for ya, if you like the mechanics and concept behind them.  That's more important than the name.

I'm not even presuming I should be the big brain behind China.  Anyone else has ship designs, throw them up.

October, 1911 -- The explosion at Hankou was a masterpiece of intelligence work. Within seconds after lighting the fuse (literally) Russian agents had  cemented Sun Yat-Sen's dependence on the RSDLP for financial and military support to maintain his utopian “Republic” -- all for the simple reason that he had no where else to go.

For years, China's notorious political exile had sought support for his “Three Principles of the People” – only to find that any school of thought with Socialist leanings garnered nothing but fear and resentment amongst the world's industrial powers.

The Revolution sparked by the Potemkin mutiny of 1905 had displayed Communism's reliance on violence. Four years later, Lenin's military was still waging war with Czarist forces throughout central Russia. And escalating tensions between the Japanese and their Soviet counterparts over Korea only served to alienate the revolutionary even further. Small wonder then that in November of 1909 he resigned himself to accepting Communist patronage as a guest of the Revolutionary War Council.

Back home, Sun's organization (a coalition of political dissidents who labeled themselves the T'ung-meng hui) was well intentioned, but poorly organized. It took little effort for spies to infiltrate its network. And when ammunition stored in the Houkon safe house detonated, the Chinese authorities who responded found weapons, supplies and the fledgling party's membership rolls. The rebels were forced into action at a time when they were still hammering out a common ideology.

The Republican Revolution managed to overthrow the Qing dynasty in short order. By December of 1911 Sun had returned to his homeland, nominally in control of 15 of China's 24 provinces. But the widening rifts between the movement's leadership “necessitated” Soviet intervention to keep the newborn nation from crumbling.

Along with weapons and munitions, Russian advisors brought a wealth of knowledge that gave the Chinese president an edge over the regional warlords standing in the way of national re-unification.

In March of 1912 the Whampoa Military Academy took in its first crop of officer candidates,  instructing cadets in everything from political theory to logistics to the latest fleet tactics employed by the world's ether fleets.

Administered by a Kuomintang politico named Ch'en Ch'i-mei, the Academy would produce skilled and motivated officers ready to command China's first generation of ether ships -- a pair of heavily gunned cruisers manufactured under Soviet supervision.

By May of 1914, however, Ch'en was openly questioning Soviet intentions.  Sun's Kuomintang, a party formed around the T'ung-meng hui, was the latest political embodiment of Chinese nationalism.  And more than ever, ideolouges were calling for an end to foreign intervention in China's internal affairs. 

To Ch'en, such a goal was impossible when Beijing was infested by Soviet military attaches.  Men who who  increasingly influencied the conduct of nationalist campaigns, or else imposed Marxist concepts on a government which -- until now -- had only flirted with the idea of Communism. 

In July of 1914, Ch'en was assassinated.  Authorities assumed the culprit was connected to one of the nebulous "counter-revolutionary" cells funded out of Tokyo.  But when intercepted communiques pointed to a young Soviet official named Mikhail Borodin, Chiang Kai-shek, an up-and-comer in the Kuomintang and Ch'en's former protege, took matters in his own hands.

Within weeks of Ch'en's death, KMT troops loyal to Chiang assumed control of Chengzhou Island and attacked Russian centers throughout Guangzhou province.  Crate loads of documents were forwarded by courier and Sun, confronted with growing evidence of Vladivostok's plans, ignored Soviet protestations of innocence.  By early September, Beijing had been "cleansed" of foreign interlopers.  But any elation on the part of Chiang and his allies was short-lived......

This is kinda abbreviated.  And as it's just on the forum, it's my unofficial attempt at creating a background for the Chinese fleet.  But there ya go