Fria Ligans forum

The UK doesn't use nuclear plants

Um...?

Apart from Calder Hall and Sizewell and Trawsfynydd and what? half a dozen? other power stations running during the 90’s, then...

On ships I think he means.

However the same nuke kills fleet applies to the Soviet invasion force, with a much shorter flight time. The UK has its own nukes and I think given the number of mushroom clouds already any significant concentration of Soviet shipping would get nuked the moment it was detected.

Sure, you might need to work for 4-6 hours to find them, but then it's only minutes to track them over the subsequent passes.
And from fire to arrival is under an; multiple estimates of 15 to 20 minutes for russian ICBMs.

It does not work that way. The RORSAT was a strategic system to provide strategic information to fleet HQs. it had an inbuilt delay of 8-10 hours. It was also a system prone to exploitation being a doppler radar. NATO ships usually knew when the RORSAT was going to pass and were often able to just head 90 degree from the pass (exploit the Doppler 'blindness'). Other tricks were to change heading after the pass so the course that the analyst would extrapolate was completely bogus.

ICBM and IRBM are not something you use for tactical purposes, plus oce you let the genie out of the bottle, your ports will be exposed to retaliation too...

Taking oilers yes, but again to fix them you need quite a reconnaissance effort.

The UK doesn't use nuclear plants

Um...?

Apart from Calder Hall and Sizewell and Trawsfynydd and what? half a dozen? other power stations running during the 90’s, then...

On ships I think he means.

Fair enough; I thought he meant in terms of resilience in keeping society running against blocked sea routes ... but in that case, how does that make the RN different from anyone else, e.g. the USN?

Sure, the large carriers that the CVBG’s are centred around are nuclear ... but all the other ships in the BG — the ones the CVN’s are entirely dependent on to survive against air and submarine threats, not to mention the ones that keep all of these supplied — aren’t.

The thing is with this is that this was to be the soup on the side, not the main dish.To have something more interesting than just some marauders to fight if you want to have UK as a setting area instead of the two setting areas provided in the game (Sweden and Poland). Anyone that wants to play in UK instead of Sweden/Poland must write up the setting themselves. I actually don't even think (me guessing) that FL have any near plans for areas outside the main setting area and if they do, they are most likely bordering the main setting areas.

So the re-writing of this or modifying of this needs to have that in mind, this is a small text extra flavour text, mostly written in headline format. It will not be much.

SU have four fleets, that can't reinforce each other (in wartime). Those four fleets are defensive fleets. They do have offensive capacity, but only in their vicinity, although controlling Scandinavia will change that, at least a bit.

Having this view, there are two boring solutions:
* Let UK be, they can fall politically, but than that, just marauders and paramilitary forces.
* Nuke it. A lot of tac.nukes in the right places and UK will be less useful as a springboard for US (or for anything else).

None of these choices is any good from a WWIII setting point of view. One is just some sort of cyberpunk world minus the cyber (i.e. outside the cities) and the other is pretty much the mutant setting (just a century or two too early).

So how is this going to be solved in the short, headline format that it has today without being something else.

I played a lot of wargames in the 80s and early 90s. In one of them I actually manage as SU, occupying the northern part of the British isles (the map only shows the northern part of the British isles). This game (the entire game series actually) was extremely Americanized (still fun to play) and I used tac.nukes and I lost the game, but still. To those of you who know more than me about this. Would a (technically failed) attack on UK, with some of the northern bases occupied be valid. The nukes and the fact that this is some years into WWIII would cripple UK as a whole but so are the SU forces there.

I just throwing out some ideas.

Fenhorn,

what game/game series was? Just curious, I should have it in my thousand titles collection...

As for UK,

Not every country must have a war going on, just because it is WW3. Otherwise we end up in the silliness of the 3rd Edition... some targets would probably have been nuked, but not that many. The government will have difficulties, but not being an active warzone. What kind of adventuring could be done?

Political stuff is one, the other is internal order, they could be exciting or not depending on your GM. Other issues could be spetsnaz or GRU incursions against the remaining NATO infrastructure (and they could be played both sides... no one stops enterprising players GM to play the Pact...).

all the other ships in the BG

You forgot Long Beach, California, Virginia, and Truxtun... CG... N...

Fenhorn,

what game/game series was? Just curious, I should have it in my thousand titles collection...

As for UK,

Not every country must have a war going on, just because it is WW3. Otherwise we end up in the silliness of the 3rd Edition... some targets would probably have been nuked, but not that many. The government will have difficulties, but not being an active warzone. What kind of adventuring could be done?

Political stuff is one, the other is internal order, they could be exciting or not depending on your GM. Other issues could be spetsnaz or GRU incursions against the remaining NATO infrastructure (and they could be played both sides... no one stops enterprising players GM to play the Pact...).

It was the fleet series. I played a whole of wargames (including Harpoon, talking about naval and all that) back then.

Regarding the UK there, that is the problem here. If it isn't a warzone, if there is no political disarray, then you have a setting location that isn't really main focus of what T2K is all about, just another meh are that no one cares about. T2K is about survival in a warzone with some big battles around you ( one of the upcoming three modules will be about large battles). It will be some sort of agent setting or something. Sure, that can be interesting every once in a while, but what else is there to do. If the UK backstory would be changed to that, then we can also cut a lot of the text, because there isn't really that much to write about that is in line with the concept of this game.

Fleet series is excellent, Joe Balkoski, the designer did a really good job back in time. He is also working on a new edition, but his Korean war will be the first out.

I see the UK more as an hub with possibility for some adventures, rather than a warzone. Basically if the entire world is a warzone, it became more of the same without any real distinction. Characters, settings, even enemies became cutouts of more of the same. Of course my two eurocents...

Fleet series is excellent, Joe Balkoski, the designer did a really good job back in time. He is also working on a new edition, but his Korean war will be the first out.

I see the UK more as an hub with possibility for some adventures, rather than a warzone. Basically if the entire world is a warzone, it became more of the same without any real distinction. Characters, settings, even enemies became cutouts of more of the same. Of course my two eurocents...

Oh, I loved Korean War. The playing time was short (well short for a wargame) so you could actually finish the game, even though the playing time tricked you a little bit because you thought that you could manage to play it in one day, but that usually ended up in two players just staring at the map wondering who's turn it is

Regarding UK, fine, but in that case, since it isn't one of the two main setting locations the backstory can be much shorter and also less colourful (some political history and some skirmishes). Dull perhaps, but such a "bland" location also opens up the possibility for someone to do a write up and release it through Free League Workshop.

But such a write-up can of course be done even if the UK current affairs stays in the setting as an alternative to the alternative so to speak.

To me, I am not that upset with the setting so far since it is in the outskirts of the main setting locations, the little direct effect it will have, I can control. It is also written in the player's manual. That info may be according to what the player's know or think they know. And if they change it, fine, I can live with that to, for the same reason.

<thread hijacking starts...>

Fenhorn, Compass is due to reprint The Korean War shortly, I was involved in proofreading. Joe has made some corrections and clarification, but not that many. Be warned that Compass has decided to 'improve' the component for old people... basically enlarging the counters and going from 2 to three maps... they are always enlarging stuff...

<thread hijacking ends>

The issue some people me included have with the current UK setting is that it is quite unbelievable, also while everyone is perfectly right in rewriting the setting for his/her own use, some have voiced concerns that creating something of a 'canon' could hamper these developments.