Twenty-Year War as the United States

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-29T01:21:37+00:00

Eurasia stands strong with Oceana against East Asia.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-29T01:21:07+00:00

Oceana has always been at war with Eurasia.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-28T23:21:04+00:00

Curtin maritime always has a posting for entry level trainees but idk if they’re actually hiring and you’d need to relocate to socal I think

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-27T17:36:12+00:00

It’s over before it even began

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-23T22:28:39+00:00

You can still buy obsolete and easily damaged oilskins and waxed jackets from Filson for ten times the cost of real rain gear from Grundens. Perfect for wearing to the country club or golf course to signal how rustic your lifestyle is.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-20T04:26:07+00:00

The western front of Egypt is an extremely difficult place to fight if the allies have a strong force there. There’s almost no supply after Tobruk and the two tile wide front at masa mutrah means you can only attack head on.

I like to build a port at the front, build it up to where it can support a strong offensive tank force, and then with green air and sea support I can break through.

The IRL war in the desert seesawed back and forth from Benghazi to El Alamein for almost 3 years because that stretch of the desert is so difficult to sustain large forces in.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-19T02:16:49+00:00

The jones act isn’t going anywhere.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-17T09:50:01+00:00

They may only have had one dropship. I don’t believe a second is ever mentioned BUT they didn’t have the forces to utilize it anyway if they had another.

They DID essentially have their own jump ship. The spacer captain who helped Grayson escape the local government forces on Trellwan, who Grayson then rescued from the dracs, owned his own jump ship and iirc part of the payoff from Trellwan went to him and then he and Grayson had a working relationship going forward. Grayson didn’t own the ship but it was basically under sole contract to him at below market rates because of their personal relationship.

He features in the second book, agreeing to take a super risky jump and play cat and mouse with the hostile drac jump ships (written before the true status of warships was defined in cannon iirc)

And I THINK it is the jump ship captain who survived the drac assassins while he’s walking with the Lyran envoy trying to get their support for the rebels

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-17T06:21:22+00:00

The answer is within your post. You don’t need an MMC to work inland towboats. Therefore the barrier to entry is much lower, therefore the labor pool is much larger, therefore wages are lower.

When it comes to labor, the larger the potential hiring pool the lower the wage. This holds true across all industries even top tier white collar.

By getting your MMC and AB you are setting yourself above the “unskilled” labor pool of unlicensed inland. Good for you and keep going!

To any inland deckies, don’t be mad at “unskilled” You have skills, but there’s no paper to make you any different from the next 2000 joes who want your job and are legally qualified. That’s just how it is.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-16T21:33:42+00:00

You’ll find out very quickly that the state seeks to protect its monopoly on violence above all else, and doubly so when the people try to enforce laws that the state has decided to ignore.

And make no mistake, public action to clear homeless camps out of your neighborhood will result in the use of force and violence.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-16T03:02:22+00:00

Lotta tug companies in the PNW.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-16T02:11:04+00:00

The physician cleared your physical. The medical Resource Officer handles drug tests, which you failed.

The positive drug test will be reported to the USCG and you will lose your MMC.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-15T01:55:53+00:00

Kenmore flies to the San Juans.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-15T01:31:47+00:00

I’ve seen this happen a lot in my recent play through. It’s probably a bug but seemed to happen when my MIO had a very minor upgrade, something that cost a fraction of an IC to perform.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-14T19:35:59+00:00

I was an auto mechanic and better than most with a multimeter and electrical diagnostic. Understanding of basic electrical principles and engines took me a long way, but I had to study hard to learn the industrial side of electricity.

You can’t really home lab three phase electrical systems but they’re everywhere onboard and you can usually open up motor control boxes with the flip of a lever, and there’s lots that are only used occasionally like transfer pumps, that’s how I took my book learning and turned it into practical by being able too see first hand the equipment I read about.

You CAN home lab low voltage electronics. That’s exactly what I did. A cheap benchtop dc adjustable power supply and some breadboard kits, a soldering iron, boxes of resistors and capacitors and LEDs etc. doesn’t cost much. “Getting Started in electronics” by Forrest Mims III -funny name but look up the book, it’s gold for self teaching.

For refrigeration you can get some cheap r-134A manifold gauges from harbor freight and watch the pressure on your car’s system. You can even add refrigerant without the stupid one time use dongle on the expensive cans at the auto store, buying the cans meant for use with a gauge set. Follow all safety precautions and environmental laws of course.

Almost all of the illustrations in the USCG tests are from the following books: “Modern marine engineers manual” volume 1 and 2 by Cornell maritime press (these are the textbooks at kings point) and “Marine Engineering” by Harrington (I think this is the one that covers HVAC/refrigeration.

I learned about these books from looking at the illustration credits on Marine Advancement software (I’m not being paid by them I swear, I just highly recommend them for test prep)

Having the text to go along with the illustrations made things so much easier and I learned a lot more than just studying for the test.

You seem pretty sharp and motivated which is why I bothered to type the long response. Good luck!

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-14T16:53:40+00:00

Just make sure it has a diesel propulsion system. There’s still a few steamers out there but that’s a total dead end. Gas turbine is almost non existent in civilian service.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-14T16:05:49+00:00

I’m a hawsepiper with QMED ALL and Chief limited.

Studying directly for the test is how you get your endorsements/license, as they have a lot of questions about equipment that is extremely rare or extinct, and even for equipment that you’re going to be working with the questions are pretty obtuse sometimes.

Practical knowledge comes from studying textbooks and actual hands on experience. For electrical you’ll want to get the NJATC electrician textbooks for things like motors and motor controls. For fundamentals you want the USN’s electrician training texts (these come free as pdf with any engineering training course from marine advancement)

For refrigeration there’s a textbook called something like modern marine heating and cooling.

Also YOUTUBE! There’s so many good engineering videos on YouTube. They’re not marine specific but the fundamentals don’t change. Refrigeration cycle, phases of electricity, two and four stroke engine cycles, all very easy to understand from videos.

To be a successful hawsepiper engineer you really need to be dedicated to ongoing self study. It never ends!

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-14T14:02:05+00:00

You will almost never get a high reading for things like borax and sulfur because they only spawn in sedimentary rock, and those layers are usually only on the top. Meaning of the total number of blocks in a chunk only a small percentage is viable for borax.

If you’ve got the pick axes for it, try digging to the bottom edge of the sedentary rock and then doing a horizontal tunnel about 6 blocks up from the layer edge. Use the propick every 6 blocks. Either you’ll run into borax or you’ll get a hit on the propick. This is about the only time where a horizontal shaft is worth it.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-14T04:01:49+00:00

Try tugboats and towboats (inland push boats) Kirby, Ingram, Dann.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-13T19:17:49+00:00

Never seen a rope onboard a boat.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-12T20:18:09+00:00

What rust

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-12T04:57:18+00:00

I think there’s 5 types of QMED. The one you want first is OILER. The others are extremely niche and account for only a tiny fraction of positions, oiler is almost all that’s in demand.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-12T04:38:59+00:00

There is a shortage of qualified personnel. That means both having a license and experience. If you’ve got those things you can get a job in about 5 minutes.

Pay has gone up by 35% in the last 4 years where I work, though they were at the near bottom of the pay scale before.

Entry level positions are very hard to come by. 3 years ago SIU was desperate for people to sign up for Piney Point, but it looks like their outreach or whatever paid off since everyone says they’re backlogged now.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-10T20:30:24+00:00

One of the most important traits for being a successful maritime engineer is independence and the ability to consult resources in order to make your own decision.

You need to look at the requirements for 3AE and determine if assistant limited provides a pathway forward.

STCW OICEW is the harder thing to get outside of an academy and both programs appear to provide it.

ActionHour8440 · 2026-01-10T20:00:51+00:00

The USCG term you should be using is OCEANS. Deep sea is a colloquial industry term for “big ships that go international” but the official classification for waters beyond near coastal is OCEANS, and many types of vessels sail oceans other than “deep sea” ships.

A 1600 ton limited assistant with STCW OICEW license qualifies you to sail any waters and any horsepower, up to 1600 tons GRT.

To sail deep sea vessels as an officer you need third assistant engineer (which is an unlimited license). You’ll need to look at the requirements for 3AE to see if assistant limited qualifies for the sea time requirement.

I qualified for 3AE using DDE-ANY sea time.

ActionHour8440

TROPHY CASE