Aurora is an interesting game, and now we'll turn to one of the parts that make it so unique: the ship designer. RTW2 is the only game I've ever seen that comes close to matching it in depth and complexity, and even that is more limited. It's probably best to check out the first installment before you dive into this one. I'm assuming that we're continuing with the game we created last time, although the few changes we made won't actually affect this part.

As our eventual goal is to colonize the universe, we're going to need ships, and the game didn't start us with any. Today, we'll build 3, a survey ship, a cargo ship, and a colony ship. First, we need to turn on Spacemaster mode, the lightbulb on the right of the top bar. This will let us instantly research components for the ship, instead of having to wait for them to be developed normally. Next, open the Class Design window, and hit New Ship Class. If you want to change the name, feel free to do so, although that obviously has no mechanical effect. The block on the right gives all of the important data about your ship, including size, crew, cost, speed, maintenance life, and range. Right now, there's just the default components, but we'll need to change that. Let's do the survey ship first. Open up Geological Survey Sensors in the menu on the left and double-click to add 2. If you add too many and need to take them off, change to Class Components using the radio buttons at the top. Read more...

While doing research for a separate post, I discovered that one of my basic assumptions here was wrong. It turns out that the Nimitz group was not the first deployment of CEC in any sense of the word. In fact, a 4-ship at-sea test was run in 1994, a decade before the "Tic Tac" incident. The first operational deployment was with the Kennedy group in 2002, also before the incident. I'm not sure why Tyler Rogoway missed all of this, and I didn't think to check his assertion.

Despite this, I still think the incident was probably a CEC glitch. The performance of the radars exactly matches what we would expect if that was the case, and it was still quite early in CEC's operational life. Also worth noting is that most of the early tests were carried out in the Atlantic instead of the Pacific, and radar can be surprisingly vulnerable to atmospheric conditions messing with propagation.

A year or so ago, the internet was aflutter about reports that the Navy had set up a program for reporting UFOs, or at least encounters with unidentified aircraft. Why exactly they did this was not and is not clear, with some taking it as semi-official confirmation of the existence of either UFOs or some sort of highly-classified aircraft with performance vastly greater than anything the public knows about.

Nimitz and cruiser Princeton, major participants in the "Tic Tac" incident

I want to focus on this article from The War Zone's Tyler Rogoway. Let me start by saying that Tyler Rogoway is one of the better defense journalists on the internet. He's knowledgeable, writes well, and frequently manages to produce some insight that's worth reading. But in this case, I think that leads him to the wrong conclusion. Read more...

Said Achmiz is looking into the Captcha bug, but I figured out a way around the problem. Commenting is working normally for people with an account, so I've set up a commenting-only account. It's named Commenter and the password is commenter. If you want to log in and comment, do so. I can't promise this will stay active forever, but it should let you avoid filling out the captchas.

Aurora is a unique game. It's the hobby of one man, Steve Walmsley, who shares it with the world for free. It's a game where you handle everything from the highest levels of strategy to the finest details of the design of your spacecraft. It has depth unmatched by just about anything else I've ever played, although the learning curve is steep, and there's no official tutorial. Also, no graphics, and no win condition. It's not for everyone, but for the right kind of person, it's about the best game ever.

Let me start by emphasizing that your first game on your own will almost certainly not end well. Either you'll build a fleet that mysteriously becomes floating debris in the face of a much smaller enemy force, all of your ships will run out of fuel and you won't be able to retrieve them, or you'll accidentally bombard your homeworld with high-speed minerals. Or you'll find some new way to have problems.¹ To get started, download the game from the Aurora forums. Start with the stickied Full Installation for C#, and then any sticked patches. Instructions should be in those posts.² Once you've done that, start up the game. It comes with one pre-loaded, but you'll want to make a new game, using the settings icon in the top bar. Leave all of the options for the new game screen at their defaults. On the create new race screen, be sure to check Auto-Assign Tech Points (doing this manually without running out early is very tricky)³ and set the Themes, images and race titles to whatever you want.⁴ Read more...

Oil fuels the world. Despite the promise of other energy sources, it's vital to the world economy, and that means it needs to be moved around the world. As usual, the best way of doing so is by sea. Oil forms a major part of the global maritime trade, and is responsible for the largest ships ever built.

Whaling ship Charles W. Morgan at Mystic Seaport

Liquid cargo has long been transported by sea, although the usual method was to load it in barrels and transport it as break-bulk cargo. This was inefficient, and not just in the traditional way that break-bulk cargo was. Barrels didn't stack very well, and they had a tendency to leak, usually losing 10% or more of their cargo during a typical voyage. Despite this, they were used exclusively in the first maritime oil trade, that of whale oil. Demand for this product soared in the first half of the 19th century, driven by the development of kerosene lamps, and the collapse of the whale population drove a search for other sources of lighting oil. One of these was petroleum, which began to take off in the 1850s, particularly in Pennsylvania. By the late 1860s, oil was America's second-largest export, and various parties began to experiment with better ways to carry oil across the Atlantic. Read more...

Coastal defenses have a long history in the United States, with Charlesfort, the earliest example, located at Parris Island, South Carolina,⁵ and dating back over two centuries before the country won its independence from Britain. It, like most other early coastal fortifications, was a simple construction of a few guns protected by earth and timber walls. During the pre-revolutionary years, the sea was the best way of moving between isolated settlements, and most major communities built such batteries in times of crisis, abandoning them to the elements after the threat had passed.

Fort Independence, Castle Island, Massachusetts⁶

A few prominent sites had more permanent fortifications built, most notably Castle Island, ideally positioned to cover the main shipping channel into Boston. The first fortifications were built there in 1634, and expanded as Boston grew in importance, being rebuilt first in wood and then in stone. In 1692, it was rebuilt once more and named Castle William, while an expansion in 1701 saw it grow to over 100 guns, the largest fortification in British North America. It formed an important stronghold for the British in Boston as the inhabitants of that town grew increasingly restless, and was destroyed when they evacuated Boston after George Washington emplaced anti-ship batteries of his own to dominate Boston Harbor. Read more...

It's once again time for our Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, even if it's not military/naval related.

I have another documentary recommendation, How to Command a Nuclear Submarine on Amazon Prime. This is a look at the RN's famous Perisher submarine command course, widely known for its difficulty. Four RN and one USN officers are evaluated at the helm of HMS Triumph in a variety of exercises. Overall, it's well-done, although there's nothing groundbreaking in it. It's also narrated by Peter Capaldi, better known as the Twelfth Doctor, which occasionally resulted in me getting confused over what show I was watching.

2018 overhauls are British Battleships in WWII, two more of Jim Pobog's sea stories, the first three parts on main guns, Life Aboard Iowa, and the first part of So You Want to Build a Modern Navy. For 2019, we have my Easter post on the four chaplains, Continuous At Sea Deterrent, the review of Polly Woodside, So You Want to Build a Battleship - Construction Part 3 and Shells Part 3.

While the container ship is perhaps the public face of maritime trade today, they make up only about 13% of the world's shipping fleet.⁷ For all of the TVs, car parts and clothes that cross the oceans in containers, oceanic transport is dominated by bulk cargoes like coal, iron ore, oil and grain. These cargoes are measured by weight and handled entirely differently from containerized cargoes. While liquid cargoes definitely deserve their own discussion, today we'll focus on the solid bulk carrier, which makes up 43% of the world's shipping fleet.

Bulk carrier GH Fortune heads to sea

Until the end of the 19th century, oceanic bulk cargo was largely carried by sailing ships, which were cheaper than steamships until the development of the triple expansion engine. Coastal trades made more use of steam, with early examples like the John Bowes entering service from the middle of the century, particularly in the coal trade. But even then, bulk cargoes were often bagged and loaded and unloaded by hand, much as contemporary break-bulk cargo was. These were some of the staples of the tramp trade, which saw vessels chartered for specific loads of cargo, usually only one way, and their owners had to string together a series of contracts to make a profit. While ore and coal were quickly moved to specialized bulk carriers, other bulk cargoes remained aboard tramps well into the second half of the 20th century. Grain, the flow of which greatly depended on harvests worldwide, was a common tramp cargo, as were smaller-volume goods like sugar, forest products, and scrap metal. Read more...

In early April 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a few desolate rocks in the South Atlantic. The British mobilized their fleet in response. After a fierce battle in the air and at sea, the British gained the upper hand, and began landing troops on May 21st at San Carlos Water on the west coast of East Falkland. The Argentinians attempted to defeat the invasion with air attacks, but the British eventually gained the upper hand. On the 28th, the British, despite some setbacks, began the ground campaign, defeating the Argentinian garrison at Goose Green and opening the way to lay siege to the main enemy positions near Stanley. The first days of June saw the islands shrouded in clouds, but that didn't prevent the British from leapfrogging forward to Fitzroy and Bluff Cove, just to the south of Stanley.⁸

Uganda and Bahia Paraiso transferring casualties

The bad weather persisted on the 4th, keeping the Harriers grounded and slowing helicopter operations. Unloading and reloading continued at Ajax Bay, with Sir Percivale preparing to take another load to Teal Inlet while Sir Tristram took on supplies for Fitzroy. A captured coastal freighter was used to carry two companies of the Gurkhas forward to Bluff Cove, near Fitzroy. Argonaut, damaged on May 21st, was finally repaired enough to make her way home. She departed at noon after transferring all of her excess supplies to other ships. In the "Red Cross Box", Argentine hospital ship Bahia Paraiso arrived to take Argentine wounded from Uganda, and announced her intention to retrieve more wounded from Port Howard and Fox Bay on West Falkland. This caused a scheduled bombardment by Plymouth to be cancelled. Read more...

Gentlemen,

It has been a quiet year. We have focused on handling the transition to peace well, with our only new construction being the carrier Bearn. La Fayette, commissioned a year ago, is the most formidable carrier in the world, and Bearn is a major step beyond that.

We will have two CLs commissioning later this year, and need to decide what to replace them with. Our preferred option is destroyers, probably armed with twin 4" guns. This gives easy DP conversion in the next few years, as well as reasonable size compared to a twin 5" ship.

Read more...