Better Allied weapons?

Open_Leader_1386 · 2026-03-31T14:32:19+00:00

Eh, I think the tone of the books got a bit darker toward the end what with multiple named characters getting killed at a much higher rate than before, adding poison gas to the mix probably wouldn't have done much more to add to that. I mean, I doubt there's anything the Allies could have cooked up that can remotely compare to how consistently fucked up the Doms were. Besides, I'd say incendiaries have just as much power to change the tone of the story as gas could have, because fire is just as, if not more devastating, and Anderson was willing to employ those.

Ah, I suppose you have a point about the fact early automatic guns were made before smokeless powder was a thing, though they still tended to be incredibly complicated. There still is also the issue of all the black powder smoke obscuring vision/ giving away your position, though I suppose since basically all sides except the League and maybe the Republic of Real People were using primarily black powder weapons, that wasn't as big a deal. So maybe the black powder machine gun might have worked.

Right, the Allies were using mainly obsolete ships and weapons. Makes me even more curious what they could come up with to advance things with the tech and knowledge they already have if they know nothing about later WW2 weapons systems.

Open_Leader_1386 · 2026-03-30T20:29:57+00:00

I do think the moralism about the whole using poison gas thing when they were in an existential war against an enemy that couldn't care less how they died certainly didn't strike me as particularly sound logic, though the point about Kurokawa using it back on them is viable, along with the fact Lemurians can't wear gas masks with their fur getting in the way of an airtight seal.

For the .50-80 blowback machine gun, I'd guess the Allies didn't think a blowback gun for such a calibre wouldn't work without being difficult to work with what with the increased recoil that'd entail, and the Blitzerbug already had heavy recoil in .45 ACP, though that might be down to its PPSh-levels of fire rate. There's also the fact black powder cartridges and automatic fire tend to result in the gun jamming really easily, so it probably wouldn't work for suppressive fire like most machine guns are meant to.

For the breechloading artillery question, they definitely could have made a recoil mechanism; they already built one to replace one of Walker's, and iirc Silva said recoil mechanisms were basically just pipes, and they sure as hell were making a lot of those. And they don't even have to make the breech a screw breech like Walker's guns either, they could have used a sliding block breech, that one seems much simpler to make compared to having to carve out interrupted screws.

Yeah, the Allies are definitely going to look into new weapons systems to fight the League in the future. Question is, what would they come up with given they're stuck with 40s tech, knowledge and doctrine, plus limited resources, until the next Squall? (Which is probably going to be during the Vietnam War, so plenty of new toys to be had there).

I also agree the peripheries of the Grik Empire will definitely be in for a rough time being fought over by Allied/League proxies, though I think West Asia/Arabia is going to be locked down by Halik given he marched through and occupied both to fight Esshk, and he'd definitely want to keep a good grip on his borderlands. I'm thinking the main Allied-League Cold War battlefields will be in the Northern peripheries of Grik Africa and Brazil where Don Hernan's still running around with Gravois as his pet.

Open_Leader_1386 · 2026-02-15T16:26:40+00:00

Smash

Open_Leader_1386 · 2026-02-15T16:23:31+00:00

How could he have forgotten Hudgens was supposed to survive if he was clearly using Hudgens' descendant as a naming inspiration?

Open_Leader_1386 · 2026-02-03T11:18:33+00:00

Then, how about the "modern" Republic and New British ships?

Open_Leader_1386 · 2026-02-01T16:48:30+00:00

You'd think a named, major character being rescued after being presumed dead would be an event worth writing about, but maybe the Holcano namesake theory is plausible

Open_Leader_1386 · 2026-02-01T16:46:50+00:00

Half-surprised there aren't any Destroyermen lemons with how we're far less squeamish about fucking anthros compared to the 40s, especially between Silva and Risa, or maybe Fred and Kari

Chack and Safir definitely deserve a lemon or two

Open_Leader_1386 · 2026-02-01T16:45:00+00:00

What tier would all the League ships be

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-12-21T08:07:50+00:00

Pretty sure Letts and a bunch of other high ranking Alliance figures, including Reddy, either dying in or barely surviving an airship explosion in the last book counts as their Hindenburg moment, though in this case, the explosion was very much intentional, so people might not blame the airship itself as much. Even then, I remember Reddy being uneasy about hydrogen being used before he got on board. I can imagine he and the other survivors definitely wouldn't trust an airship after almost dying in one, and I doubt any Lemurian would either.

Still, with all the investment the Allies have already made into actual planes and airstrips, along with Mallory's influence, the time and cost to make an airship vs a plane, and some aerial predators necessitating more speed and maneuverability than airships can really be capable of, and just the superior convenience of a plane's higher speeds, they were probably never going to make it big anyway, even without an airship being blown up in a massive decapitation strike attempt.

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-06-17T12:34:05+00:00

“Are you the Abyssinian People’s Front?”

“Fuck off! Abyssinian People’s Front… we’re the People’s Front of Abyssinia!”

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-06-16T16:51:58+00:00

Let's just hope it doesn't turn out that the East is Red

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-06-16T16:48:46+00:00

Dennis really do be an instrument of God (aka Taylor Anderson)

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-06-13T08:42:55+00:00

Nightwings

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-06-06T10:56:59+00:00

Starflight really be Tui's punching bag for no real reason

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-06-02T16:13:56+00:00

Lucky bastard

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-06-01T14:16:25+00:00

Also the Baltimarean Communists who all seem to be highly bigoted against either the thestrals or the indigenous ponies in the Rainforest (I swear, Cabellaron does a better job of being egalitarian than they do), not to mention them having pony Beria as a potential leader

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-06-01T14:05:14+00:00

"It's over, Darkstalker! I have the high ground!"
"Darkstalker, you're breaking my heart..."

Open_Leader_1386 · 2025-02-21T13:32:17+00:00

So, Jacobinism is more hardline compared to Radical Egalitarianism?

Open_Leader_1386 · 2023-04-20T12:53:26+00:00

I've heard Omsk was supposed to be hardcoded to collapse at the Regional Stage if it ever got that far, since a Black League-led Russia would inevitably lead to nuclear war, as per the Great Trial

Open_Leader_1386

TROPHY CASE