Shipbucket

I've got my own AU scenario, including drawings of various warships. As I'm not exactly the world's greatest artist, my drawings are basically modifications of plans I've found on various websites (none from here, of course), and I'll warn everyone now, they are nowhere NEAR the standard of the masterpieces I've seen thus far on this forum. Anyway, if anyone's interested in hearing more about my AU, let me know.
-Matt

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

We're always interested in new AUs. As far as using plans from other sites goes, using SB ones are a good way of learning and ensuring that your work matches up with SB standards. All my growing AU fleet originated from here. Kitbashing is permissable so long as proper crediting is used and your design vaguely rational--no 18" gun turrets and 2 meter drafts. Did I miss anything?

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We can't stop here--this is Bat country!

If it's close enough to cast a shadow, I think the flying house wins initiative.

Bronies are like the Forsworn. Everyone agrees that they are a problem but nobody wants to expend the energy rooting them out.

"That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way."

Here's a basic history of my AU empire. Anyone has questions or wants me to elaborate on events further, let me know here. If you wish to criticize, I don't mind...just do it in a Private Message so as not to cloud up this wonderful forum with animosity.

A History of the Empire
In 1992, multi-billionaire (fortune made by being a Microsoft stockholder from the very beginning) Andreas Thomas won the Mayoral election in Houston, Texas. Soon after, he built a large shipyard in Galveston and began construction on several ships that were completed in record time. In 1993, the Knight's Cross Shipping Line was founded, its first vessels being large passenger liners that were (aside from modifications to current standards) virtual replicas of some of the most famous transatlantic liners ever built. He increased his fortune massively by offering passage on these ships for record-low prices, and most of the time the ships sailed at full capacity. By 1994, Andreas' fortune was a record $36.2 BILLION, and he further showed off his power by the construction of what would become the first vessels of the Imperial Navy, which was formally established on 26 May 1994.

Of course, the U.S. didn't take kindly to a billionaire constructing his own private navy right under their noses, and an attempt by the CIA to confiscate the warships resulted in complete failure, with Andreas subsequently releasing the private identities of nearly 100 CIA agents that had been arrested in an attempt to capture the warships. As no threatening movements had been made towards U.S. forces by Andreas' ships (one BB, one CB, one CL, five DDs, and one AS), the U.S. government left the ships alone. In 1996, Andreas purchased a gigantic tract of land on the northern shore of Lake Huron and began construction on a massive port / naval base. From there, he further increased the size of his navy, and began preparations to move north.

In December 1997, one of Andreas' light cruisers, while on a Caribbean cruise with the rest of the Galveston-based fleet, was torpedoed by what was later revealed to be a British submarine. The situation between Britain and Andreas' faction continued to deteriorate until a section of British military officers (named the Royalists) launched a massive attack on the Galveston fleet, sinking a torpedo boat and slightly damaging the two battle cruisers anchored there at a cost of fifty-nine out of sixty-six aircraft in the first attack wave. The following day, Andreas declared war on the Royalist Faction (in effect, war on the UK).

The conflict that followed - later named the West Keys War - lasted only six months, but in that time the ships of the Imperial Navy proved to be a formidable foe, particularly the submarine branch. Andreas' fleet lost five torpedo boats, and in return sent twenty-eight RN vessels (one aircraft carrier, six frigates, ten destroyers, and one submarine) to the bottom, in addition to the total massacre of a troop convoy off the Florida Keys at the Battle of the South Islands on 27 July 1998.

In March 1999, Andreas lent his support to NATO, sending the Galveston-based units to the Adriatic Sea, and in just under three months had annihilated the surface forces of the Yugoslav Navy, particularly at the 1st and 2nd Battles of the Adriatic Sea in May 1999. The Imperial Navy returned to port victorious, but tragedy struck on 15 April 2000 when the Fleet Commander, Grand Admiral Regent Robert Muldoon, died of a heart attack in his sleep. The state funeral accorded him was the greatest in Imperial history.

One month later, Andreas, his followers, and all the ships pulled out of Galveston and headed to their northern bases. Eleven days later, Andreas' personal army swarmed out of the city surrounding the large port and attacked Canada. The Imperial-Canadian War had begun. A shocked Canada responded frantically, but on 23 May 2001 found itself signing surrender documents. The entire country was renamed the Empire of Germania, with the new capital, Germania Prime, being the city surrounding the large port constructed by Andreas back in 1996. It was at this time Andreas declared himself Emperor Andreas I. Imperial Army units, disguised as oil company workers, quickly moved into Alaska - purchasing huge tracts of land and commencing drilling operations. Huge underground oil sources were tapped, resulting in massive drops in fuel prices in the Empire, enabling it to cease its oil trading with the Middle East.

On 21 June 2001, the remnants of the Royal Canadian Armed Forces banded together to make a stand against Andreas, thus beginning the Resistance War. This conflict barely lasted two months, ending with the Resistance surrendering on the beaches of Hudson Bay on 8 August. On 15 August 2001, Andreas announced that Germania was annexing Alaska and Michigan, causing (naturally) a major outcry from the U.S.. Three days later, while both sides were still at the negotiating tables, Imperial Army units swarmed south out of Michigan, beginning the Imperial-American War, a conflict that would last six years. On 11 September 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks in New York, the Imperial government formally outlawed Islam in its territories, and those who believed in it were relentlessly persecuted.

By August 2006, the war on land had grown to a stalemate, with both sides weary of combat. An armistice dialogue was opened, and on 26 August 2006 a peace accord was reached, bringing the war to an end. In May 2007, the Empire rattled the saber again, suddenly occupying Greenland in a blitzkrieg move that shocked the world. Denmark deployed units in an effort to retake what was rightfully theirs, and the troops were allowed to gain a beachhead and move inland, where they were surrounded and overwhelmed by an entire Army. That same year, the opening of the Dönitz Waterway was celebrated, giving the Empire a mile-wide, 1,500-foot-deep channel between it and the United States, enabling its warships to get to the Pacific much quicker.

In November 2008, when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, many thought a second Imperial-American War was not far off. However, Andreas' formal statement on the results of the election merely stated that the Imperial Government was just thankful that "it wasn't the other Democrat who got the vote". In August 2010, the world was stunned again by the Imperial occupation of Iceland, and once again two months later by Andreas' declaration to Israel that "the Empire stands with you, and against all who oppose you." Today, the Empire is staunch allies of Israel, Germany, Italy, France, Japan, and Australia, and is cordial with Russia and civil with China. Relations with Britain and the United States are considerably shaky. It maintains no relations with any Islamic countries whatsoever.

Government: Totalitarian, with strong emphasis on military
Population: 45,278,571 (including occupied states / countries)
Forces: Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Military Police, Corps of Cadets
Law Enforcement: State (National) Police
Minimum Military Service Age: 10 for admittance into Basic Training, Officer Candidate Schools, or Service Academies; 5 for Imperial Corps of Cadets
Religion: Christianity (all forms) and Judaism are national religions; nearly all others allowed. Islam and Satanism illegal.

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

The Pontiac Incident
In 1995, Andreas Thomas's Knight's Cross Line had been firmly established in the shipping world as a way for families to get the feel of a sea voyage for a very low price. Andreas himself was enjoying his bank account's substantial increase, and (during this period, at least) personally took passage on the maiden voyage of every liner built for his company.

But competiton soon arrived. Jeffrey Collins, the son of a well-known financier, broke away from his father's company and used his trust fund to establish his own passenger line in Galveston. The new Collins Line terminals were just down the channel from the Knight's Cross Line terminals, and the new company offered passage on their ships for nearly 25 % less than the Knight's Cross Line. The only downside was that, while cheaper to operate, their vessels were much smaller, and could not carry as many passengers.

That all changed in September 1995. That month, the Collins Line secretly launched a 42,000-ton ocean liner in Gulfport, Mississippi, and began fitting her out for passenger service. To everyone's surprise, Andreas sent a congratulatory telegram to Jeffrey Collins, welcoming the competition into large-scale passenger service. Collins arrogantly responded he looked forward to "seeing the Knight's Cross ships either painted in Collins Line colors or tied up at scrapyards around the world".

In January 1996, the new liner, christened Pontiac after the Native American chieftain, arrived in Galveston and began provisioning for her maiden voyage. The maiden voyage began on 14 February 1996, with a gala departure witnessed by the crews of several Knight's Cross liners. Helicopters and news crews followed the ship for nearly ten miles into the Gulf of Mexico filming the ship before turning back to shore.

All went well until the early morning hours of February 16. At 2:18 AM, Pontiac suffered an explosion in her forward boiler room. It set off a chain reaction, with three other boilers going up, blowing out her sides in that area and sending flames shooting out of her forward funnel. Exactly two minutes later, a second, even more powerful explosion caused the ship to break in half between her first and second funnels, the weakest spot in the hull due to a design flaw that made the executive suites and bridge a separate portion of the superstructure that were connected only by two sets of stairs.
The stern section, still underway at 24 knots, plowed forward until it rammed the bow section, causing even further damage. Pandemonium ensued aboard, and four of the ship's twenty lifeboats were rendered useless immediately (Boats 1 and 2 by the collision and Boats 3 and 4 by the second explosion). At 2:21 AM, the forward funnel, its position weakened by the damage, suddenly broke free of its mounting and crashed downward, slamming against the second funnel and bringing it down as well.

By 2:26 AM, the stern section had ceased moving forward, as the ship's propellers had by now lifted clear of the water. In a panic, the ship's deckhands cut the lifeboats free of their davits and pushed them overboard, telling the passengers to jump for the boats. At 2:37 AM, both the bow and stern sections stood on end and sank. Tragically, with the radio room being at the bow, power to this area had been cut off with the first boiler explosion, and no distress signal or radio message was able to be sent. Of the 1,456 passengers and crew on board, 1,281 died with the ship, including Jeffrey Collins' fianceé and her mother and sister. Only 175 survivors were pulled from the water when the Knight's Cross liner Conte di Savoia happened to pass by the scene nearly two days later.

The fallout from the disaster was tremendous. Of the ten major investors in the Collins Line, eight pulled their support within ten days of the news breaking. Then came a landslide of lawsuits by the families of nearly everyone on board. These events sounded the death knell for the Collins Line. Within weeks, the company began selling off its vessels to pay for the lawsuit settlements, and construction of a new, even larger liner in Gulfport (she was to have been named Colossus and would have been the flagship of the Collins Line) was halted immediately. The ship, only 23% complete at the time of the Pontiac disaster, was bought, ironically, by the Knight's Cross Line, which ordered construction resumed. She was completed in June 1997 as the Hindenburg, and later served as a hospital ship during the Imperial-American War.

Rumors circulated among the surviving employees that Collins Financial Group would bail out the dying company, but this was proven to be false when Jeffrey Collins committed suicide on April 17, 1996 after his father informed him that the board of Collins Financial Group had refused to bail the Collins Line out of bankruptcy. On May 29, the Collins Line ceased operations for good, and the name and the events associated with it were consigned to the pages of history.


The S.S.Pontiac as completed. The weak spot in the superstructure where the boiler explosion tore the ship in half can be clearly seen.


The would-have-been Collins Line flagship S.S. Colossus, bought by Andreas Thomas while still under construction and completed as the Knight's Cross Line's I.M.S. Hindenburg.

-Matt

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

Dresden-class Light Cruisers

This class represented the last wartime CLs for the Imperial Navy. Dresden was commissioned on 15 April 2002, Hamburg on 15 May 2003, and Augsburg on 15 January 2004. The class proved to be a very well-made design, and the only wartime loss was Hamburg, sunk by submarine U.S.S. Blower between Fortress Countercrook and Conneaut on 19 July 2004.

Postwar, the class was enlarged considerably, and to date, there have been a further nine units built: Germania, Arcona, Kolberg, Breslau, Graudenz, Regensburg, Wiesbaden, Bremen, and Stettin. In the fleet reorganization in January 2011, Dresden, Augsburg, Germania, Arcona, and Kolberg were assigned as destroyer flotilla flagships.

Length: 728 feet
Displacement: 9,256 tons
Armament: 9 x 6-inch guns, 6 x 3.9-inch rapid-fire guns, 3 x rail guns, 8 x 25-mm. AA, 5 x 24-in. TT
Speed: 35 knots
Crew: 912



-Matt

_________________

MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

Atlantis-class Battle Cruisers

Named after the two famous German Hilfskreuzers, the Atlantis and Pinguin were commissioned on 15 July 1998 and 15 July 1999, respectively. Both had undistinguished war records, save for Atlantis surprising and sinking missle cruiser U.S.S. Yorktown in the St. Lawrence River during a classic surface action on 29 September 2004.

In September 2010, both vessels were taken into the massive shipyard at Fort Hiraga for major overhauls, and emerged as almost totally new ships.


R.K.S. Atlantis as completed.


R.K.S. Pinguin as completed.


The two ships as of January 2011.

-Matt

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

wait why would you commission gun cruisers in the late 90s

I mean I'm no expert in these kinds of things but wouldn't you be able to haggle your way into a good stockpile of Termits or Chinese AShMs?

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That's the beauty of AUs...anything can happen!

-Matt

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

I had thought you had made a simple mistake, in stipulating the late 20th/early 21st century, but it seems you are serious:

I'm not even going to mention all the IMO requirements and international laws those liners are breaking.
Nor the fact that even with a trillion dollars of ready cash, he won't be able to afford a navy and supporting infrastructure.
Then there's the fact that the US wouldn't let him build the ships in the first place, nor would Canada or any other country with the capability to do so.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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