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Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Cleveland has a tendency to get destroyed, but the joke's on those writers, Cleveland was destroyed decades ago.

And yet people still show up to Browns games.

Bieeardo posted:

I love it when gaming nerds write stuff about Quebec. It's always some Baskin Robbins flavour of ridiculous.

What, you mean Rifts World Book 22: Free Quebec isn't an accurate portrayal?

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Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
The glitter boys are accurate, but post-apocalyptic French people? Mon verisimilitude!

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Evil Mastermind posted:

H.P. Lovecraft was born here. You'd think gamers could do something with that.

To be fair, we're just kinda here with our own idiosyncrasies and are okay with that. I just find it funny that a lot of the time writers won't even try.

Isn't there a university in Bristol that is the go to place for maritime law?

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

Isn't there a university in Bristol that is the go to place for maritime law?
I don't know about that (in terms of being the go-to place for maritime law), but we do have the best oceanography school in the country.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 hours!
I was working at a law library when Somalian piracy was all over the news, and our collection of 19th-century maritime law suddenly became in-demand. Apparently that's the last time piracy law was a hot topic.

Count Chocula
Dec 25, 2011

WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
IF YOU SEE ME POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE AUSPOL THREAD PLEASE TELL ME THAT I'M MISSED AND TO START POSTING AGAIN
Does Connecticut ever get mentioned in games? I bet rich NYC vampires have houses there. Don Imus had a coffin in his in Halloween.

Australia needs more games. Every year the government pays normal people a few bucks each to catch funnel web spiders for their venom, a literal level 1 RPG quest.

I also remember playing Unknown Armies and assuming my PI could have a gun, before being informed that wasn't that easy here.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



Prism posted:

I can understand how that might have been hard to write but I actually found it pretty interesting. It has a lot of ideas and I'm sorry that they never seem to be brought up again. But as a Canadian, I have to say...

Regina? Really? Regina?

Regina has a population (in reality) of slightly under 200,000. You'd think you'd at least use Winnipeg first. (Capital of Manitoba rather than Saskatchewan; it's closer to the Eastern lands but further away from West and North.) That or Saskatoon, which is a city also in Saskatchewan that is a) larger than Regina and b) not already Saskatchewan's capital; this is normal, Ottawa isn't Ontario's capital either. If you're willing to risk going further west, there's Edmonton or Calgary on top of that, both of which are much larger cities that are presumably at least mostly intact since according to the map they're not in any non-Core realms (though Calgary is getting kind of close to some Dominant Living Lands territory). I'm going to assume they picked Saskatchewan, checked what its capital is and didn't bother thinking about anywhere else.

Also, the territory up by Fort Providence is completely worthless. That entire territory - which at the time is everything from the boundaries to its west out east to Hudson Bay, as Nunavut wasn't founded when Torg was written, plus some stuff so far northeast it's not on the map Torg provides - has a population of about 70000. Like, total. I don't even know how there's enough people up there to get turned into power sources. Good place for a secret lab, but...

Is this where I mention that the capital of one of the four Earth power blocks in the latest Gundam is Edmonton?

Because Edmonton is the capital there, and the center of some open mech warfare in the first season finale.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Part of the reason I did GURPS Autoduel was to leave myself an open door to review the AADA Road Atlas and Survival Guides, which are state-by-state summaries of that setting and have some really bizarre and kooky stuff tucked away in them, like the Beastie Boys becoming a cycle gang after their "failed musical career" (written before Ill Communication, mind) or a Cobra Commander knock-off who is also simultaneously a thinly-viled Edmund Blackadder. Rifts has me busy for the foreseeable future, mind, but maybe? Maybe.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 hours!


Godlike, Chapter V, Part VIII

First, an observation: I’ve realized that doing many brief updates is more readable than doing a smaller number of megaposts out of some irrational fear of having too many chapters.

Second, ALL loving NAZIS MUST loving HANG.




Ahem. The last update ended with Operation Overlord, or Operation Neptune, or the Battle of Normandy--anyway, the Allies launched the largest amphibious invasion in history, establishing beachheads at five points along the coast of Normandy, France. The capture of Omaha beach included the greatest Talent battle in history, dubbed the Ten Minutes of Hell, where 400 Talents fought until only 24 Allied Talents survived.

6/9/1944, Russians Invade Finland, Again: After negotiations for a separate peace broke down, Stalin sent his 7th and 32nd Armies into Finland, destroying much of the Finnish II Corps. The Finns had little defense against Soviet tank divisions until a group of Finnish Talents stalled the invasion by destroying an entire battalion and rallying the Corps. In response, Stalin sent in 450 Talents of his own.

6/10/1944, Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane: The 2nd SS Panzer Division responded to attacks from French resistance fighters by rounding up 642 villagers, locking them in a church, and setting it ablaze, gunning down any fleeing the debris. Only a dozen survived, 11 by playing dead, one by manifesting a Talent.

6/11/1944, Advance on Japan: For four days, the ships of American Task Force 58 bombarded Saipan and other Pacific islands with their heavy guns. The force included the Arizona, a survivor of Pearl Harbor. On the 15th, two Marine Divisions invaded Saipan, cutting the island in half after 3 days of fighting with high casualties on both sides. When they established an uneasy perimeter and landed reinforcements, Japanese forces retreated into the mountains.

6/13/1944, Wittmann’s Ambush: Leutnant Michael Wittman, believing his SS 501st Tank Battalion was in imminent danger of being destroyed, took a single tank to ambush the British rearguard at the French village of Villers-Bocage. He destroyed 25 armored vehicles (most unmanned) before Captain Daniel “Gremlin” O’Connor deactivated his tank. Wittman surrendered in a jovial mood, and remained in a POW camp until 1946. (Note: In the real world, Wittmann escaped after the attack, was promoted and hailed a national hero, died in a later battle, and became an idol to Neo-Nazis.)

5/13/1944, the Buzz Bomb: Four V-1 “Doodlebugs” were launched on London. Only one hit its target, killing 6 people with a half-ton warhead. The world’s first guided missile, these gyroscopic devices were a simple but powerful innovation on par with the Allies’ proximity fuze. The 400mph missiles were difficult to shoot down. Despite the best efforts of Allied flyers, thousands of these devices would kill hundreds of London civilians over the next 6 months.

6/15/1944, Raid on Japan: The U.S. 20th Air Force launched the first successful bombing of Japan, destroying steel works at Yahata. Only 1 of the B-29 force was lost.

6/16/1944, the Taking of Burma: General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell’s 22nd Division captured Kamaing from the Japanese, supported by 14 Talents. The Chindits, Kachin magicians, and “Merrill’s Marauders” drew away Japanese reinforcements and scattered them. By the 28th, the 77th Chindits Brigade had captured Mogaung for the Allies after a fierce battle.

6/18/1944, Cherbourg Cut Off: General Bradley’s 1st U.S. Army secured a perimeter that trapped the German garrison at Cherbourg and seized a portion of France for the Allies. Though Hitler ordered his men to fight to the death, 21 Übermenschen surrendered to the Allies.

Many more German Talents, disillusioned with the war, would surrender over the coming year. On the 29th, Allied advances forced the Germans to surrender after destroying the city’s port. The German Talents responsible surrendered to a lone sentry at a checkpoint after failing to reach German lines.



6/19/1944, the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot: Still hoping to defeat the Allies in a decisive naval battle, the Japanese launched Operation A-Go, a massive nine-carrier force commanded by Vice Admiral Ozawa, to attack Task Force 58. Once again, their plans were foiled by Allied codebreakers, and Vice Admiral Mitscher was waiting for them off the coast of Guam with an even larger fifteen-carrier force.

The initial Japanese air attack was a disaster; Navy pilots dubbed the battle a “turkey shoot” and 240 Japanese planes went down. American subs wrought havoc and Ozawa’s own flagship carrier Taihō was destroyed. The next day, American aircraft pursued the fleeing Japanese ships, sinking another carrier and damaging several more. The U.S. lost 102 planes (most because they ran out of fuel attacking the Japanese at maximum range), but the Japanese lost several large ships and 426 pilots, losses they could not afford.

(Seriously, guys. This is like the third time the Japanese forced a huge naval battle, and lost, because they got hosed in the rear end by Allied cryptographers.)

6/20/1944, Germans Hold the Line: In Italy, British attacks on the Albert Line (a rearguard south of the Gothic Line) were repulsed by German Talents. The Überkommandogruppen destroyed tanks and guns and killed over 500. British forces struggled to prevent a breakout.

6/22/1944, von Ribbentropp Escapes Death: Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentropp was nearly killed by two Russian Talents who attacked his transport plane en route to a meeting with the Finnish government in Helsinki. The plane escaped and made a crash-landing in Estonia. Ribbentropp made the mistake of telling Hitler the truth about the “Russian super-men” and was subject to one of Hitler’s tantrums. He was later heard to say “I hope the next time it happens, he is in the plane as well.”

6/22/1944, Imphal Relieved: The British 2nd Division repulsed the Japanese forces laying siege to the 5th Indian Division at Imphal. Lord Yama’s fanatical worshipers reinforced the line assaulting Japanese positions. When their forces were defeated at Bishepur, the Japanese presence in India was a thing of the past.

6/23/1944, Bagration: Operation Bagration, comprising 1.2 million Soviet soldiers, launched an attack on the German Army Group Centre. The 1st Baltic and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Bellorussian fronts attacked along a 300-mile line in the Ukraine. Already outnumbered 4-to-1, German command was further disrupted when Soviet Talents seized Generalfeldmarschall Busch’s command post. Hitler simply ordered them to “hold the line.”

6/23/1944, Attack on Ploesti: The U.S. 15th Air Force launched a 761-strong force to bomb the oil plants at Ploesti, Romania, which survived half of Germany’s oil. Over a dozen previous attacks had not inflicted enough damage to halt production, and had only resulted in Ploesti becoming the most heavily defended Axis stronghold besides Berlin and Vienna.

Going into battle with poor intelligence and no Talent support, the Americans were easily repulsed by Axis fighters and 126 flying Übermenschen. Allied losses included 204 planes destroyed in battle, 40 crash-landings, 51 lost at sea, 12 missing, and 87 landed in neutral Turkish or Soviet territory.

It was the greatest defeat in the history of the Army Air Corps. The public backlash was immense; General Henry Arnold publicly apologized. President Roosevelt quelled the outcry by announcing a “Talent for every plane” policy, though in practice this was impossible to carry out. The Air Force never attacked Ploesti again.

7/2/1944, the Albert Line Breaks: The British XIII Corps finally broke the German line at Trasimeno in a pitched battle that killed over 40 Übermenschen. Eighty-six more were killed or captured during the clean-up afterwards.

7/5/1944, Minsk Liberated: Russian forces encircled Minsk, killing 70,000 and capturing 40,000 soldiers of the German 4th and 9th Armies. The population was liberated, along with many Talent resistance fighters, but Minsk had been devastated by 4 years of combat.

7/15/1944, the War in Finland: The Soviet offensive in Finland stalled as new Finnish Talents appeared each day, a growing threat to Soviet Talents and conventional forces. Marshal Carl Mannerheim, commander of Finnish forces during the “Winter War,” took control of the government and severed ties with Nazi Germany. Stalin turned his attention to the march on Warsaw.

7/17/1944, Rommel is Injured: After leaving occupied North Italy to take command of Army Group B at Normandy, Generalfeldmarschall Rommel was injured when his car was strafed by an Allied fighter. Rommel was out of action for several days.

7/18/1944, Aesgir Killed in Action: The Norwegian Aesgir used his powers to transport 150 members of the 3rd Canadian Division into Caen, expecting little resistance after days of heavy bombing. Attacking behind the German lines, they were surprised to find the 12th SS Panzer Division, who had hid during the bombing and suffered little damage. After more than a full day of heavy fighting, Aesgir was killed during an attack on an 88mm gun position. Only 14 of his troops escaped. RuSHA SA recovered his fabled “Spear of the Gods” for study.



7/18/1944, the Battle of St. Lô: The U.S. 29th Infantry fought the German 352nd and Überkommandogruppe 65 in the town of St. Lô. The town was a strategic crossroads in the “Battle of the Hedgerows,” a period when the embankments and thickets dividing the borders of country estates allowed the Nazis to stall the Allied advance. The presence of Überkommandos made the battle a bloody house-to-house streetfight, and three TOG teams were brought in to counter them. After several days, Überkommandogruppe 65 were all dead, and few of the 352nd survived to surrender. The TOG flag soon flew over the town’s church. (Note that in the real world, the Allies bombed the entire town to ruins, inflicting high civilian casualties. Playwright Samuel Beckett, then a journalist, dubbed the town “The Capital of Ruins.”)

7/20/1944, Operation Valkyrie: Led by retired General Ludwig von Beck, a conspiracy of high-ranking military men and politicians enacted a plot to kill Hitler. Realizing that continuing under Hitler’s leadership was national suicide, they planned to kill him, take control of Berlin, form an interim government, and make peace with the Allies to stave off a Russian invasion.

The assassin was Oberst Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who was General Fromm’s chief of staff and considered above reproach. He continued to serve loyally after losing an eye and most of his hands in Tunisia, and carefully concealed his hatred for Hitler. His position gave him access to briefings at Hitler’s Wolfsschanze. Stauffenberg became a leader and decisive voice within the conspiracy, and eventually decided to conduct the assassination himself.

On July 20, Stauffenberg arrived for a military briefing with a bomb hidden in his valise. In the conference room, he was distressed to find that Hitler’s bodyguard Null was sick that day, replaced by another Talent, SS Sturmbannführer Otto Foertsch. Stauffenberg decided that the bomb needed to be as close to Hitler as possible to ensure his death. However, a last-minute move around the table saved Hitler when the bomb went off. Stauffenberg and Foertsch were killed instantly; several other officers were killed and many injured. But Hitler escaped with only some nerve damage and a pierced eardrum.

Unfortunately, the other conspirators had put their plan into motion. Within hours, they were rounded up by the SS. The conspiracy set off a witch-hunt by the Gestapo and SS that would continue well after the conspirators were dead. On August 8, eight of the conspirators were hanged in Berlin. They refused to beg for their lives and died with dignity, despite being hanged with piano wire. The paranoid Hitler refused to attend, but had the filmed to be played over and over for his entertainment.

Next time on Godlike: The Warsaw Uprising, Operation Market Garden, and the deaths of some of the most beloved heroes in modern history.

MightyMatilda
Sep 2, 2015
This whole discussion on the capitals of Canada's provinces reminds me of how relatively few people live in Washington D.C. And how even American media will show it as having skyscrapers, when the tallest building there is a church (one of the world's largest churches, but still).

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

When Brave New World was being reviewed, I thought it was a weird coincidence that Chicago or the remnants thereof was the capital of a fascist government in both that setting and RIFTS.

To Protect Flavor
Feb 24, 2016
Really digging the Godlike timeline.

I'm interested to see how they handle the Warsaw Uprising.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

My city is either dunked underwater and taken over by fish people or just nuked first in every fictional future story. Plus we just lost the Chargers.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


I always assume that whatever disaster hits San Francisco or supernatural force takes it over completely ignores the East Bay. And the South Bay. And the North Bay...

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Hey, just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that the actually good nWoD Hunter game is a current Bundle of Holding.

Midjack
Dec 24, 2007



Halloween Jack posted:



Godlike, Chapter V, Part VIII

First, an observation: I’ve realized that doing many brief updates is more readable than doing a smaller number of megaposts out of some irrational fear of having too many chapters.

Thank you. Smaller posts are much easier to read, especially on a phone. I love the information, but it can be hard to find your place again when a single post is 25 screens deep.

Hostile V
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

SirPhoebos posted:

When Brave New World was being reviewed, I thought it was a weird coincidence that Chicago or the remnants thereof was the capital of a fascist government in both that setting and RIFTS.
Well, Chicago wasn't, the capitol is still in DC. Chicago's kind of just the cultural capital of the whole superhero shebang and is supposed to be the signature city of the line but *armpit fart noises*. But yeah I dunno I guess it just has to do with Chicago being synonymous with politics.

Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

Bieeardo posted:

Paragon City and its outlying boroughs from City of Heroes was situated on Rhode Island. I think that was mentioned exactly once in the lore.

And even the designers forgot that ... when they revamped the Faultline zone, it ended up looking like Los Angeles, complete with palm trees.

The Lemondrop Dandy
Jun 7, 2007

If my memory serves me correctly...


Wedge Regret

MightyMatilda posted:

This whole discussion on the capitals of Canada's provinces reminds me of how relatively few people live in Washington D.C. And how even American media will show it as having skyscrapers, when the tallest building there is a church (one of the world's largest churches, but still).

That was a deliberate decision btw; buildings in the city limits of DC are only allowed to be up to 10 stories tall. (~150 ft.) Outside of the city proper, there are taller buildings. Alexandria and Rosslyn in Virginia, right across the river from DC, have some 20-story high-rises as I recall.

I think it's because they didn't want any buildings higher than the Washington monument, but then it just became a tradition.

Doesn't help traffic, that's for sure.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Halloween Jack posted:

(Seriously, guys. This is like the third time the Japanese forced a huge naval battle, and lost, because they got hosed in the rear end by Allied cryptographers.)

Assuming this continues to follow the real world timeline in the Pacific, this won't be the last time either. :v: Japan was badly obsessed with forcing a huge decisive naval battle, and it kept biting them in the rear end. I could give a longer explanation if anyone cares.

The Sin of Onan
Oct 11, 2012

And below,
watched by eyes of steel
we dreamt
I for one am glad that they remembered the land war in India and Southeast Asia. No one else seems to.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Cythereal posted:

Assuming this continues to follow the real world timeline in the Pacific, this won't be the last time either. :v: Japan was badly obsessed with forcing a huge decisive naval battle, and it kept biting them in the rear end. I could give a longer explanation if anyone cares.

Didn't Japan also convince all the civilians living on the pacific islands that the americans were going to torture them to death once they took the islands back and the honorable way out was suicide. To the point that the Allies were basically broadcasting "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE STOP JUMPING OFF OF CLIFFS WE ARE NOT GOING TO HURT YOU" as they marched?

wdarkk
Oct 26, 2007

Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

Kurieg posted:

Didn't Japan also convince all the civilians living on the pacific islands that the americans were going to torture them to death once they took the islands back and the honorable way out was suicide. To the point that the Allies were basically broadcasting "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE STOP JUMPING OFF OF CLIFFS WE ARE NOT GOING TO HURT YOU" as they marched?

Only on Okinawa and maybe the Marianas (although not much), which were actually pre-war Japanese territories. The pacific islanders had a lot of history with Europeans and knew roughly how they actually were.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 hours!

Cythereal posted:

Assuming this continues to follow the real world timeline in the Pacific, this won't be the last time either. :v: Japan was badly obsessed with forcing a huge decisive naval battle, and it kept biting them in the rear end. I could give a longer explanation if anyone cares.
You should. I've learned a lot about the war doing background reading as I read through Godlike (enough to catch occasional flubs and typos even) but I have a rule about not writing review chapters that are even longer than the source material.

Strangely, Godlike has a lot of good info on oft-ignored theaters of the war outside the land war in Europe and the naval battles in the Pacific, but it doesn't feature many Talents that aren't British, American, or German.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Kurieg posted:

Didn't Japan also convince all the civilians living on the pacific islands that the americans were going to torture them to death once they took the islands back and the honorable way out was suicide. To the point that the Allies were basically broadcasting "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE STOP JUMPING OFF OF CLIFFS WE ARE NOT GOING TO HURT YOU" as they marched?

They did this in places like Saipan and Okinawa, yeah, when the Japanese military would retreat, and the common means was to for leave grenades with the civilians with instructions to either kamikaze or suicide. It wasn't unknown for villagers to kill their own people in mass murder / suicides. To call it grim is massively understated; a number of stories I'm looking boiled down to "we survived because our grenade (or grenades) was a dud" or "It turns out it's actually really hard to hang yourself!". That's not to say anything of Japanese soldiers just slaughtering Okinawans for speaking their native language ("if we can't tell what you're saying, you might be spies"). There have been attempts by nationalist elements in Japan to bury this history, not shockingly.

Of course, the Pacific campaign is also where the US military had to institute a rule that servicemen could not decorate vehicles with the dead body parts of enemies, because guys, we didn't think we had to make a rule about that. The Pacific campaign was extremely ugly and the extent of that is largely forgotten to most people.

Thesaurasaurus
Feb 15, 2010

"Send in Boxbot!"

wdarkk posted:

Only on Okinawa and maybe the Marianas (although not much), which were actually pre-war Japanese territories. The pacific islanders had a lot of history with Europeans and knew roughly how they actually were.

Also there is very strong reason to believe that the IJA forced the civilians on Okinawa over those cliffs, although the Japanese Ministry of Education etc. has dug in its heels on admitting anything ever.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 hours!
One thing I forgot to mention is that there's little discussion of the war in China, and speaking as a person with a weird North Korean history hobby, even less on Korea.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Halloween Jack posted:

You should. I've learned a lot about the war doing background reading as I read through Godlike (enough to catch occasional flubs and typos even) but I have a rule about not writing review chapters that are even longer than the source material.

Alrightie!

To understand the Japanese obsession with the notion of a decisive naval battle, you have to dial the Way-Back Machine to 1905. The Japanese have won the Russo-Japanese War, the first time a "native" power comprehensively defeated a colonial European nation in the field, both on land and at sea. Japan's opponent here was Tsarist Russia, about as incompetent a foe as any "native" power could have asked for, and was critically won by essentially two battles: Port Arthur on Land and Tsushima at sea. For various complicated geopolitical reasons, these battles confined the war to Japan's neck of the woods and got Russia to completely back off of Japan as a threat.

Combined with the book The Influence of Sea Power upon History, an extremely influential work of naval history and theory by Alfred Thayer Mahan, the Japanese navy going into WW2 believed that the Russo-Japanese War could essentially be duplicated in the Pacific: like Russia, the British, Dutch, French, and Americans would be operating far from their home waters, and actually striking against the home nations themselves was both impossible and irrelevant. Devastate their military forces in one fell swoop, and the colonial powers will decide to save face and agree to Japanese terms rather than try to fight for distant Pacific holdings. This was effectively what happened in the Russo-Japanese war: when Japan took Port Arthur, they effectively nullified Russian command and control and their ability to militarily respond to Japanese activity in China. When the Japanese sank the Russian fleet at Tsushima, Russia lost any ability to exert force in the region and Russian internal politics lead Russia to sigh and write off the region.

Early war results for Japan seemed to vindicate this approach, taking Singapore and their raid into the Indian Ocean smashed British naval power in the Pacific, effectively taking Britain out of the Pacific theater - though fighting continued in Southeast Asia in defense of the strategic objective of India. The French and Dutch had never had much of a presence in the Pacific anyway to defend their possessions, and these were likewise summarily dispatched.

Almost every strategic Japanese move against the United States was aimed at accomplishing this same effect: take America's serious establishment in the Pacific, smash America's ability to effectively respond, and bam the Pacific is a Japanese playground. This strategic doctrine is what lead to Pearl Harbor, Midway, the Philippine Sea, and Leyte Gulf among other efforts. Japan believed one big and decisive battle would be enough to convince the Americans to bow out of the Pacific.

This did not work against the Americans for quite a lot of different reasons, the first and foremost being that Decisive Battle doctrine requires that the opposing nation be unable or unwilling to replace the losses they suffer in said battle(s) and America in the Pacific war (and in WW2 in general for that matter) was absolutely willing and able to do just that, and Japan simply was not militarily capable of hitting the kind of blow it would take to knock the US out of the war - a discussion in its own right. Japan instead found itself locked into a war of attrition that it was outright incapable of winning even if the IJN had reorganized itself and planned to fight such a war. The IJN did not, on either count. As late as the liberation of the Philippines (and the coming Leyte Gulf), the IJN still sought to wipe out the USN in one fell swoop and save the day.

The Japanese reliance on decisive battle doctrine had a significant number of knock-on effects that informed the nature of the Pacific War. Japanese military equipment, particularly at sea, was built to support a short war of decisive battles. Japanese vehicles, weapons, training, and internal organization were all based around massive firepower, great range, and significant mobility. Defenses, communications, and supplies were not considered priorities. The American military, especially the USN, was well trained and well equipped for the grueling war of attrition that the Pacific became.

Even though the Japanese lost most of the major surface battles of the Pacific, those big battles weren't what doomed Japan in the Pacific. Japan's ambitions in the Pacific died by inches, in the quagmires of China and Southeast Asia, in the aerial meat grinder above the Marshall Islands, and in the steady toll of losses to American submarines based in Australia.

Back on topic to Godlike, I'm going to be woefully disappointed if no big name Talents arise from Taffy 3.


I can go into more detail about any of these aspects if anyone's interested.

quote:

Of course, the Pacific campaign is also where the US military had to institute a rule that servicemen could not decorate vehicles with the dead body parts of enemies, because guys, we didn't think we had to make a rule about that. The Pacific campaign was extremely ugly and the extent of that is largely forgotten to most people.

People also tend to forget about the firebombing, and the use of flamethrowers. Flamethrowers as a military phenomenon, as it turns out, are really an almost exclusively American thing (and shotguns for that matter, Germany in WW1 supposedly issued unofficial orders that any American captured with a shotgun in his hands was to be summarily executed), and the Pacific was where they were first and mostly employed.

Cythereal fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jan 26, 2017

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually
Japan's other big problem was it's fascination with overly complex plans with lots of moving parts that required the enemy to react just so for them to work. My favorite example is Midway, where the basic plan was to send a medium-sized fleet out to attack the island, wait for the US Navy to show up to defend it, and then boom spring an even bigger fleet that was following along a week behind the main fleet. Plus launching diversionary attacks away from Midway so the US can't guess they're being herded into a trap. Except the US cracked their codes and had their fleet waiting at Midway where it smashed that initial invasion fleet and the four supporting fleet carriers while most of the Japanese navy was spread out across half the Pacific as part of their oh-so-clever plan to trap the Americans exactly where they wanted them. The giant counterattack in Burma had the same over intricate plan (four army groups would launch four different advances at four separate times against four different objectives, and the British would get caught up between them and crushed. Um, nope) as did the final big attack on the Philippines (again, four different groups approached from four different directions to trick the US Navy into chasing them and letting another group get in and wreck the invasion beach) - although that almost worked, because they ran into the dumbest and most impulsive US admiral (Halsey) who did fall for it.

Japan's failure to plan for a long war was critical, as you mention. My favorite example was the Japanese approach to pilot training, which was incredibly difficult and had something like a 98% washout rate and so only the absolute best of the best graduated and flew Japanese planes. Which meant that at the start of the war Japan had arguably the finest pilots in the world...and a system that could only graduated 80 or so replacements a year. Meanwhile, the US quickly built out a system (hiring former barnstormers to teach basic flying at local airfields) that cranked out 50,000 trained pilots every year.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
My knowledge of WWII is spotty at best, which makes this kind of thing horribly fascinating for me. I certainly wouldn't mind hearing more.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Bieeardo posted:

My knowledge of WWII is spotty at best, which makes this kind of thing horribly fascinating for me. I certainly wouldn't mind hearing more.

Basically, things come down to a few key things.

1. Japan is a tiny island nation with few natural resources, a small population, and is poorly industrialized.

2. Japan knows that its most likely serious opponent in the Pacific will be the United States.

3. Because of Point 1, and its corollary that the United States is enormous with a massive industrial base and all but limitless natural resources, Japan knows that it cannot afford to trade blow for blow with the United States and win.

4. As such, Japan's strategic doctrine and equipment are all built on the premise of "Overwhelm the enemy with firepower before they can shoot back."

5. America's strategic doctrine and equipment are all built on the premise of "Build tough and don't sweat the offense, be good at recovering losses because we can sustain losses a heck of a lot better than they can."

6. The American approach worked better.

7. For both nations, assume :black101: as standard operating procedure.


Book recommendations: Shattered Sword is a terrific and detailed work mainly about Midway that also does a lot to explain Japan's overall strategy in the war (and how incredibly, spectacularly dysfunctional Japanese leadership was in general), Neptune's Inferno is about Guadalcanal, and Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is about a battle that if Hollywood made a completely accurate movie of it would be badly panned for being incredibly unrealistic.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 10 hours!
I watched Ken Burns' The War and I was surprised at how many Pacific Theatre veterans said, not quite in so many words, that they felt MacArthur had hung them out to dry. But some of them were quite forthright in saying that after they saw how the first American POWs were treated by the Japanese, they gave in to bitter hatred and wanted to just kill as many Japanese soldiers as they could, sometimes committing war crimes themselves.

Cythereal posted:

People also tend to forget about the firebombing, and the use of flamethrowers. Flamethrowers as a military phenomenon, as it turns out, are really an almost exclusively American thing (and shotguns for that matter, Germany in WW1 supposedly issued unofficial orders that any American captured with a shotgun in his hands was to be summarily executed), and the Pacific was where they were first and mostly employed.
Wherever Americans wage war, there will be shotguns. We will even have Gauss shotguns and plasma shotguns in space wars where the concept of a shotgun makes no sense. We will design particle beam weapons that chamber ions by pump-action.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Another subject of note to consider is the difference between the Japanese and American navies' approaches to damage control. The Japanese seemed to hold the idea that any ship of theirs that was damaged would get that way because the engagement was already as good as lost, while the Americans knew that getting big holes blown in a ship was just something that happened when it was around enemy ships with big guns. Part of this stems from their experience with the loss of the Lexington, but a bigger part was the fact that the Japanese loved to carve responsibilities for different areas of the ship into little fiefdoms for the officers, while damage control on an American ship (and remember, in combat this basically means firefighting) was considered a skill that everyone needed to have.

Rather predictably, some preventable ship losses happened. Both sides learned that you couldn't rely on centralized water lines -- those break when the ship gets hit by a huge loving explosion, and that's how we lost the Wasp. The Americans adapted by developing generator redundancies and CO2 systems. The Japanese, meanwhile, had officers screw the pooch so bad they switched on the wrong fans at the exact wrong time, spread aviation fuel through the main air system, and turned their whole ship into a floating bomb.

Japanese damage control did eventually improve somewhat, but it took a long time.

wiegieman fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jan 26, 2017

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Cythereal posted:

Japanese Navy Stuff

It probably didn't help that the previous few times they were invaded from the sea a giant gently caress off hurricane scuttled the enemy fleet.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

wiegieman posted:

Another subject of note to consider is the difference between the Japanese and American navies' approaches to damage control.
That seems of a part with a lot of Japanese military stuff. Carrying the glorious fight to the enemy - everybody wants in on that and spends 24 hours a day thinking about it and preparing for it. Logistics, damage control, training, communications, signal security, escorting convoys, field medicine - bah! A warrior cares not for such things! So pretty much all the boring and unglamorous (and necessary) parts of the army and navy were filled with mediocrities who weren't good enough to be in the real military, and who were treated as such, led by dispirited officers who were all passed over for combat commands and forced to do un-warrior like things while other people got to have all the glory.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

FMguru posted:

That seems of a part with a lot of Japanese military stuff. Carrying the glorious fight to the enemy - everybody wants in on that and spends 24 hours a day thinking about it and preparing for it. Logistics, damage control, training, communications, signal security, escorting convoys, field medicine - bah! A warrior cares not for such things! So pretty much all the boring and unglamorous (and necessary) parts of the army and navy were filled with mediocrities who weren't good enough to be in the real military, and who were treated as such, led by dispirited officers who were all passed over for combat commands and forced to do un-warrior like things while other people got to have all the glory.

Fascists tend to be really bad at war, in one of the hilarious ironies of history.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

Doresh posted:

"You critically failed your diplomacy check. Your character is missing his skin."

"You critically succeed at your stealth roll. You have noclip for 1d6 rounds."

"The ogre hits you. The knockback calculation goes apeshit and you find yourself flying to the other side of the continent."

"You talk a step outside and fall outside the world."

This is from months back, but I'm reading the thread and wanted to say that I'm intrigued about a game where every Bethesda glitch you can imagine is happening in the "real" world. The players obviously can tell something is wrong, and in their investigations discover that the world was supposed to end centuries ago, but questing heroes have stopped apocalypses so many times, essentially extending and "patching" the universe to keep functioning, that the code that handles reality is coming apart at the seams, and they need to decide if they're going to keep going patch-jobs to stave off the end, or if perhaps there's a better solution in starting with a fresh build.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

Halloween Jack posted:

One thing I forgot to mention is that there's little discussion of the war in China, and speaking as a person with a weird North Korean history hobby, even less on Korea.

China would have been very different, maybe like India where a warlord power essentially takes over, but China would have probably fared better. The common portrayal of China during the war is inaccurate, mostly due to racism and communist revisionism but having super powered people would have give China the edge it needed to balance out their forces.

I could make a big post about it, might if grad school calms down.

An abbreviated summary is that Jiang knew what he was doing and before the war started he expected foreign intervention from the British or the Americans during the war. He knew that he would have to outlast Japan in a war of attrition because the Japanese had limited resources and the Chinese just had people, guns, and occasionally big swords. The Nationalists did have competent commanders like Sun Liren but they were not able to shine due to the limitations imposed on them. Li was outfitted by the Americans in Burma though and was one of the best commanders there. Jiang couldn't and wouldn't throw his commanders at the Japanese unless conditions were good because the ones loyal to him would be dead in no time and the one's allied with him would disobey the orders because they were their personal armies, loyal to them. The communists greatly inflate their own involvement in the war but were also not being helped that much, or at all, by the USSR and were saving what they had to survive both the Japanese and Nationalists so you can't blame them for that either. Corruption was rampant and neither the Nationalists or Communists were getting the aid they needed because the Allies as a whole wanted China only to be strong enough to fight off Japan, not to fight off Japan and then fight off them when it comes back to reclaim their unequal treaty concessions.

RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Jan 26, 2017

Nuns with Guns
Jul 23, 2010

It's fine.
Don't worry about it.

marshmallow creep posted:

This is from months back, but I'm reading the thread and wanted to say that I'm intrigued about a game where every Bethesda glitch you can imagine is happening in the "real" world. The players obviously can tell something is wrong, and in their investigations discover that the world was supposed to end centuries ago, but questing heroes have stopped apocalypses so many times, essentially extending and "patching" the universe to keep functioning, that the code that handles reality is coming apart at the seams, and they need to decide if they're going to keep going patch-jobs to stave off the end, or if perhaps there's a better solution in starting with a fresh build.

that sounds like a great pitch for a God Machine-themed hunter game

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PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Cythereal posted:

Back on topic to Godlike, I'm going to be woefully disappointed if no big name Talents arise from Taffy 3.

Wasn't Taffy 3 when miscommunication and general bad decisions by the US Navy lead to a pretty outmatched force facing the Japanese, and then managing to punch remarkably above their weight? In part because they didn't turn and run when they knew they were screwed, but instead started punching and kicking with everything they had, landing blows that made the Japanese think they were in for way more of a fight than they actually were?

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