IOT Developmental Thread

Sonereal · Mar 15, 2020

Link to video.

WARDENCLYFFE, LONG ISLAND
2 JUNE 1917

Anne's new cottage overlooking the Long Island Sound was blueprinted, approved, constructed, and furnished with all the modern amenities in a week. She sat in one of the chairs forming a half-circle around a sleeping fireplace in moonlit darkness. Across from her was a large man richly but conservatively dressed. His hair was largely gone and what God saw fit to leave him was white as snow, forming a crown around his head. Oh how he looked so much like father! Her brother tried to check his time piece but gave up. "How much longer?" He yelled to the third person in the cottage, an engineer standing in the open entrance to the cottage.

The engineer checked his time piece, designed by a member of Anne's husband's team, and said, "Two minutes and fifteen seconds, sir." Her brother grunted in approval and then looked at me.

I hadn't seen that look in....fifteen years. "It will work," I said.

"I know he's your husband and that he did well by father and us, but this, Anne....this-"

"This will change everything, just like fifteen years ago."

Silence. One minute, fifteen seconds. The engineer entered the cottage and walked across the room to where the radio rested like a king on his oak throne. He pulled a large, bulky metal rectangular box hanging from his heavy belt and talked into it. A tinny buzz answered. What they were saying was still above Anne's head all these years, but the engineer understood well enough it seemed because he began to comb the room, making sure to check light fixtures and other electronics in the room. Thirty seconds, "Your husband asked me to escort you two to the parlor."

They followed the engineer to the parlor. It was a beautiful room! She hadn't known this room would be built! Large glass windows and doors faced east. Hanging down from the ceiling was an electrolier, dark and foreboding, one of her husband's personal designs. Very little moonlight graced this room. The engineer led them into the room; there wasn't much they could possibly trip on. Besides a few chairs situated centered against the wall opposite the glass wall in alignment with the electrolier, there was very little furnishing in this room.

My brother sat in a center chair while the engineer and I sat in chairs flanking my brother and waited. One final tinny message from the talk box: t minus five seconds.

Four...three...two...click. Light! The electrolier cast forms and patterns on the three solid walls of the parlor! Stars and constellations and suns pulled by chariots! From the other room, the radio played and the station's operation advertised...a radio. Fitting, Anne thought. That's when she heard it, a humming sound just beneath the range of normal human perception, close enough to the edge to be unnoticed but close enough to center that once she heard it she could not un-hear it. Her brother asked the engineer, "What's that sound?"

"The tower," the engineer answered. The light flickered. "It generates a hum; pretty nasty if you're too close. We're still testing and engineering around that."

"Range?"

"This cottage is on the edge of the suspected range: two hundred and a half yards."

"And...and the electrolier? The radio? They're...?"

"No wires, Mr. Morgan. All the appliances and fixtures in this cottage were designed to be powered by power transmission from the tower. The wall switches and dimmers use radio to turn off and on the lights."

John Pierpont Morgan Jr. stood up, "This is incredible! Absolutely incredible."

The engineer smiled. Anne Tracy Tesla stood up and stretched before turning to her brother. "Father had his doubts too. Back in 1902 I mean. When he first met my husband, before he had married, he told me, 'Annie, this man's head is in the clouds, and so will my money if I invest into any of his schemes!'" She chuckled.

J.P Morgan Jr. said, "This project should be spun off to a new company."

"What's wrong with Morgan-Tesla?"

"The Morgan-Tesla Radio Company is for radio. This is power transmission."

"It's all radio at the end of the day, isn't it?"

Her brother looked at the electrolier and then at the constellations on the way. "I suppose you're right, Annie. I suppose you're right."
Click to expand...

GERMAN CIVIL WAR ENDS. FIELD MARSHAL AUGUST VON MACKENSEN PLEDGES REFORM. Berlin, German Provisional Government, 3 October 1936. The German Civil War ended after seven months of intense fighting in the Central European country that left two million dead and millions displaced in the largest refugee crisis since the Great War. The intense urban fighting saw Nazi loyalists fanatically fighting against Wehrmacht troops in every major city of Germany and culminated in the intense Battle for Berlin that lasted three weeks in early-September, culminating in the suicide of Adolph Hitler.

Field Marshal August von Mackensen, the leader of the coup forces, gave a speech over Radio Berlin declaring the beginning of a new era for Germany beleaguered from two decades of economic depression, political instability, and military conflict. He stated that the provisional government will take steps against embedded fascists in all levels of society host free elections by the spring of 1937. The provisional talk is in talks with representatives of the House of Hohenzollern and the remnants of the Zentrum democratic opposition in establishing a new government.

USSR ANNOUNCES LARGE-SCALE EXERCISE ON WESTERN BORDERS FOLLOWING ADENAUER'S "RED MENACE" SPEECH ON RADIO BERLIN. 14 June 1939. Joseph Stalin announced that the Soviet Union will conduct military exercises along it's western frontiers after President Adenauer delivered a fiery anti-communist, anti-Soviet speech over Radio Berlin three days ago. Rising tensions in Europe over Albania's annexation by Italy, the United Kingdom's rapid "guided autonomy" programs for its colonies across the world, and Hungary's renouncing the Treaty of Trianon, have ratcheted up the tensions even as the Spanish Civil War winds down with a Nationalist victory.

President Adenauer has told reporters when asked about the planned Soviet military exercises that this is more proof of the dangers of Bolshevism to Europe and the free world and that his administration will have an answer to these "provocations" in the coming months.

AUSTRIA VOTES TO JOIN GERMANY. 15 December 1939. The Central European Alliance has lost one member today after a plebiscite held yesterday saw the Austrian people vote overwhelmingly in favor of unification with their northern neighbors. The other member of the two-nation alliance, Czechoslovakia, was the first to send congratulations to the German people. This comes during a period of rising hostilities on the continent, with Hungary in negotiations for the return of Southern Slovakia with the Central European Alliance, Moscow's announcement of a massive ramp-up in military production, and German and Czech leaders in talks with the leaders of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway for those nations to join the growing anti-Soviet alliance.

CRISIS IN THE BALTICS. 8 February 1940. Three days ago, the USSR began a military offensive against the small, defenseless nation of Latvia. The next day, Germany declared that it will need the full use of its internal space to defend itself against "likely Soviet aggression" in the future. Today, Latvia's beleaguered government announced that it would join the Central European Alliance. What this means is unclear as, without Lithuanian or Polish approval for military access, the Alliance's ability to defend Latvia is in doubt. What isn't in doubt is that we are looking down the barrel of a Second Great War at a time when the United Kingdom is slated to dissolve in twelve days. The traditional counterweight to powers on the European continent, increasingly under the sway of powerful communist influences, has disappeared along with an empire that has existed for centuries. Harry Pollitt, the legendarily pro-Stalin leader of the CPGB, told BBC that the coming war on the European continent between the reactionaries in Germany and the progressive Soviet Union "is capitalism's last-ditched attempt to put the genie back into the bottle."

TROTSKY SURVIVES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT IN MEXICO CITY. 3 August 1940. With the Central European Alliance embroiled in a sitting war with a Soviet Union fresh off victory in Latvia, Stalin's agents in Mexico saw a chance to do away with long time rival and enemy of their leader: Leon Trotsky. Trotsky denounced the attempt on his life. Premier Harry Pollitt told the BBC that "Trotsky's continued attacks on the USSR during the former's war against the Central European reactionaries and on Great Britain during our and France's defense against Italian fascism is appalling. There is no room for Trotsky in the international socialist movement."

THE EASTERN WAR BEGINS. 28 November 1940. As the Central European Alliance grew to include Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, Belgium, and the rest of the Baltics and Finland after the Soviets were expelled from Latvia, the German-led alliance staged a desperate defense of Poland as Soviet troops pushed west before being stopped in Polesie. For months the front was at a stalemate before, finally, an artillery barrage stretching north to the Baltic Sea down to Odessa on the Black Sea kicked off the largest invasion in human history, rivaling the invasion of Russia by Napoleon a century ago. This comes just as the Communist Party of Great Britain announce they will expel the British Royal Family to Canada.

THE SUN SETS ON THE SOVIET UNION. 17 August 1941. As the War in the Pacific expands to engulf the United States, France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain and her rump "Commonwealth of Nations", Soviet losses of Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, and now Vladivostok to Japan has left many observers to believe that the USSR will soon be forced to capitulate despite Great Britain and India's declaration of war on the Central European Alliance. The Japanese-Italian Pact has also led to the US to join the war against Italy after the latter declared war on the former. The United States has signaled a "Europe First" policy. The alliance between France and the United States has left many observers scratching their head considering the Communist Party of France recently seized power in the country.

FRANCE SURRENDERS TO CENTRAL EUROPEAN FORCES. FREE FRENCH, DUTCH, AND AMERICAN FORCES CONTINUE WAR ON ITALIAN PENINSULA. 29 March 1942.

JAPANESE SEIZE PEARL HARBOR; INDIA STRUGGLES TO CONTAIN JAPANESE ON SUB-CONTINENT; GREAT WAR DEAD APPROACHES 53 MILLION FROM EUROPE TO CHINA. 17 September 1943

AMERICAN ATOMIC BOMBING OF BOLOGNA SIGNALS NEW ERA OF WARFARE AS FRONT CONTINUES TRENCH WARFARE; CHINA ON THE VERGE OF SURRENDER TO IMPERIAL JAPANESE FORCES; NEGROES NOW FIGHT IN INTEGRATED UNITS ITALY. 7 January 1946.

"WE NEED MORE ATOMIC BOMBS!" AMERICAN GENERAL TELLS REPORTERS AS ALLIED FORCES EVACUATE ITALY. 8 January 1947

"THIS WILL BE THE MOTHER OF ALL BATTLES." GERMAN ATOMIC LANDINGS IN DOVER AND PORTSMOUTH AGAINST ANGLO-AMERICAN RESISTANCE. 21 July 1947.

TREATY OF GLASGOW SIGNED. END OF THE WAR IN EUROPE? 25 November 1947. The Americans were not present during the intense negotiations that ended with Great Britain's surrender to the Central European Alliance. War on the European mainland may be over, but American forces in Scotland and Southwest England signal that the war on the island may continue for some time yet. Nevertheless, it's unlikely that the American position on the island is tenable. Already, the fighting has shifted to North and West Africa for control of Free France's colonies.

THE SECOND GREAT WAR COMES TO A CLOSE. 27 February 1951. After US forces evacuated West Africa in 1949, the war entered a stalemate. The US has lost all her Pacific positions, including Hawaii, to Japan. In the North Atlantic, the US had taken Iceland and Greenland but lost both islands after years of intense fighting, but the Central European Alliance's ability to launch an invasion of the US mainland continued to be in doubt. The Second Great War left 96 million dead including 25 million in the southern half of the Italian peninsula in mutual atomic combat and nearly a decade of intense trench warfare.

The Treaty of Washington signaled that the United States would be forced to give up her Pacific possessions to the victorious Japanese and that the Central European Alliance and Imperial Japan would respect the United States' "natural sphere of influence" over North and South America.

TOKYO OLYMPIC GAMES. 10 October 1964. A German Me 264 carried the Olympic Flame from Berlin to Tokyo to commemorate warming relations between the two countries and as a signal of Germany's successful moon landing earlier that a year, a feat matched by the Americans two months later but...two months later. As Germany, the United States, Belgium, Italy, Russia, and Japan continue to expand their space programs, some fear it will only be a matter of time before the hydrogen bomb is mounted on a satellite. Scientists point out that why mount a bomb when you can just mount a tungsten rod?

LEAGUE OF NATION JOINT-STUDY PROGRAM SCIENTISTS ANNOUNCE BREAKTHROUGH IN SPACE PROPULSION. THE STARS ARE WITHIN REACH "FOR ALL MANKIND". 14 March 2020. A scientist tried to explain the concept of the "skipdrive" to me, and most of it went over my head. He then told to imagine walking down the street to my friend's house (as if Generation Sunflowers like myself talk to our friends outside of the worldnet these days). Slow, right? But what if you skipped. Skipping is faster. The skipdrive allowed a ship to "skip" across the universe by phasing in and out of "real space" into "jump space". "The range is limited," the spokesperson for the discovery committee told me, "and it has a lot of limitations. Doesn't work well in gravity wells unlike our reactionless drives, but the test ship was able to reach Alpha Centauri and return in roughly 410 hours
Click to expand...

I revisited the idea and decided I wanted to go with an althist. This althist is based on Gernsback from GURPS Alternate Worlds/Infinite Worlds combined with the German Democracy route in HoI4. It will be IOT's first, functional, interstellar IOT and be based on Pocket Empires for Traveller.

Decamper · Mar 14, 2020

Looks very, very neat. Are you making your own system, or using FATE/Traveller/GURPS/etc derived rules?

Sonereal · Mar 14, 2020

Decamper said: ↑

Looks very, very neat. Are you making your own system, or using FATE/Traveller/GURPS/etc derived rules?
Click to expand...

I'm using Pocket Empires for Traveller 4 from back in the 1990s with some modifications of my own.

JohannaK · Mar 15, 2020

How does Franco win without Nazi planes to transport his troops to Spain and no Nazi threat to prevent France from providing direct aid to the Republic? grumblegrumble

Omega124 · Mar 15, 2020

Do you have a map of the general political situation at the start of the game?

Sonereal · Mar 15, 2020

Omega124 said: ↑

Do you have a map of the general political situation at the start of the game?
Click to expand...

I need t open up the HoI4 save with toolbox to make a map that isn't ugly as hell. Western Hemisphere is same as OTL except for Guyana being a little weird. I'll get something up later.

JohannaK said: ↑

How does Franco win without Nazi planes to transport his troops to Spain and no Nazi threat to prevent France from providing direct aid to the Republic? grumblegrumble
Click to expand...

The Italians were more belligerent ITTL than IOTL and France was too busy dealing with its own internal political crisis, the rapid dissolution of the British Empire, and the German Civil War.

JohannaK · Mar 15, 2020

Bah! BAH! throws tantrum

Tani Coyote · Apr 12, 2020

Not everyday you go to the development thread for a game that's already in progress but here we are.

So given MP's mechanics as inspired by Thorvald's ancient essays are working thus far, I guess I'm onto the next phase of things: international organizations. Going full neorealist I'm letting the players structure them however they wish (so yes, each one can have its own rules... I intend to create a master page with each one and its procedures), while going full neoliberal I'm assigning material benefits to membership.

I suppose what I'm asking is: am I asking to be driven insane by allowing a theoretically infinite proliferation of international organizations each with their own internal way of doing things?

On one hand a part of me is nervously laughing at how this could quickly get out of hand, but on the other, by golly, I feel like I finally have that soft power element 19-year old me fell short in modeling.

Fortunately it's only 5/6 players so shouldn't get too crazy but still.

Sonereal · Apr 12, 2020

I suppose what I'm asking is: am I asking to be driven insane by allowing a theoretically infinite proliferation of international organizations each with their own internal way of doing things?
Click to expand...

Yes, because NGOs don't matter in the real world except as expressions of existing class interests within imperial powers so by focusing heavily on NGOs you're just diluting the focus of your campaign already.

Tani Coyote · Apr 16, 2020

Great Battles Reimagined: The Conquest of Xinjiang

Under the divinely-guided leadership of Otto von Constantine, the Chinese Resistance Forces throw all they have at the obviously weak forces of the Cooperative Federation of Xinjiang; with air superiority, victory is assured. Soon, Wuhan, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Shanghai shall be reunified as the world's foremost power!

... with 1 Army attacking and 3 Units in Support, the CRF are soon pinned down by 2 Armies that come to the province's aid. 4 vs 3. The CRF forces lose, and they lose badly. While most escape back to CRF-corrupted Wuhan, the so-called Kingdom is clearly not going to take over China again any time soon.

***

Testing the combat mechanics of Multipolar Politics to see how they'd stack up to the original. The provincial force limits mean zerging becomes extremely difficult, and then the 3x requirement for victory does the rest. The Conquest of Xinjiang is rendered borderline impossible under the new system, barring perhaps an ambitious sabotage campaign that would keep Xinjiang's forces from tapping into their Support for a turn.

Bosnian Fanatic · Apr 18, 2020

Nice to see IOT still active after all these years

JohannaK · Apr 18, 2020

N-Nedim?

Ailedhoo · Apr 18, 2020

NN has come back to IOT?

NedimNapoleon · Apr 18, 2020

It is me yes, it's been a long road hehe

Thorvald of Lym · Apr 18, 2020

I'm glad you're back, but can we debrief in Argentina?

JohannaK · Apr 18, 2020

Valkyrie 2 when

Ahigin · Apr 29, 2020

Not an announcement yet, but this weekend I suddenly woke up with a fully formed idea for a game I thought was unmanageable. I haven't done any spreadsheets, maps, or even pricing for the various "things" in the roster, but it's fairly doable, all of a sudden. Of course, the actual start depends on the IRL factors - I didn't retire my previous game for no reason.

Check out the ruleset (again, no pricing/attributes are assigned to any building/weapon, vehicle component). Just an outline of the game rules. Any feedback is welcome.

Pilot name is Icerust. Think Mad Max meets Snowpiercer meets S.T.A.L.K.E.R. For the veterans of this forum: think BOTWAWKI on wheels.

JohannaK · Apr 29, 2020

I'm in only if I can play Sikhs again.

Ahigin · Apr 29, 2020

Such games usually have player-made factions, and I see it the same way. So yeah, you probably would.

NinjaCow64 · Apr 30, 2020

This looks pretty cool and I'd be interested in playing.

What's an Oz?

Log in or Sign up

IOT Developmental Thread

Sonereal ♫We got the guillotine♫ Supporter

Decamper ..!

Sonereal ♫We got the guillotine♫ Supporter

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Omega124 Challenging Fate

Sonereal ♫We got the guillotine♫ Supporter

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Tani Coyote Son of Huehuecoyotl

Sonereal ♫We got the guillotine♫ Supporter

Tani Coyote Son of Huehuecoyotl

Bosnian Fanatic Chieftain

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Ailedhoo wonderer

NedimNapoleon Weird Little Human

Thorvald of Lym A Little Sketchy

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Ahigin Emperor

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Ahigin Emperor

NinjaCow64 Thought Bubble Thinker Supporter

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

IOT Developmental Thread

Sonereal ♫We got the guillotine♫ Supporter

Decamper ..!

Sonereal ♫We got the guillotine♫ Supporter

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Omega124 Challenging Fate

Sonereal ♫We got the guillotine♫ Supporter

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Tani Coyote Son of Huehuecoyotl

Sonereal ♫We got the guillotine♫ Supporter

Tani Coyote Son of Huehuecoyotl

Bosnian Fanatic Chieftain

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Ailedhoo wonderer

NedimNapoleon Weird Little Human

Thorvald of Lym A Little Sketchy

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Ahigin Emperor

JohannaK Heroically Clueless

Ahigin Emperor

NinjaCow64 Thought Bubble Thinker Supporter

Share This Page

Useful Searches