Aravala (Gollyverse) Main thread

Foreword to Interkommunaali project

My "Big" AU has always been some sort of pseudo-soviet union in various forms, whether Novgorod, AU Soviet Union, Far Eastern Republic and as its latest incarnation, the S.N.T.L. here in Aravala universe. It has also been mostly made up from soviet and Russian never-where projects which I have collected and studied as long as I've been in the internet and thats quite long now. I've toyed around of my own personal designs back with the Far Eastern Republic but decided that for this new Aravala AU world, I would return to the my beloved soviet never-wheres. I did some diggings in my own archives and also spend some considerable amount of money by purchasing a lot of Russian naval literature including the complete set of Gangut journal...I even subscribed it for one year! Since last time I did the whole set with my Novgorod AU, I had discovered quite a lot of new interesting stuff, specially for the imperial Russian era. So everything was set, I already started doing gunboats and river monitors but the 24.2.2022 happened and nothing was ever the same. My heart was broken and I couldn't continue anymore. Enough has been said on that and I wont venture that in here in details.

So I felt homeless and helpless and I couldn't decide what to do. Although it had been interesting to do the personal design concept with Far Eastern Republic, it was still merely doing Russian-style variants of existing foreign ship designs. My own designing skills are not good enough to produce workable original ship designs which would satisfy my critical mind. Thus my enthusiasm for the never-wheres. With the Small AU Nation, Evo, I try sort of cheating, as to decorate existing neverweres (and some "weres")into different quise, but I feel where it works on the small* setting, for the Main nation, I needed more solid and honest approach. So what I where to do? What nation would give similar level of variations and pool of never-wheres? My mindset had been so long in the Soviet/Russian way that not only did I need to come up with new base, I needed complete turn-around in my strategical and geopolitical way of seeing things. I've always liked the underdog and been interested of those who the majority would consider the enemy...that is why I ended up being interested on Russia in the first place. That thing is bit hard to explain by I could not just jump straight to doing USA or UK stuff (despite the USA one would be what I really should be doing regarding my taste of being big). So what nation would be at the same time as far away from Russia and its geopolitical apologist, but at the same time the underdog and sort of "enemy" to the major western public? What nation would still have enough big naval scene and pool of never-wheres that my type of nation building from those ingredients would work?

Well I only came up with one possiple solution...Allons enfant de la patrie, Le jour de gloire...

For the starters I would like to collectively punch the french naval internet community in the face...you don't make this too easy for me thats for sure

. I mean we are talking about as western and as European nation that there is and one would assume that the reference material would be easy as hell to acquire, well at least easier than with the notorious enigmatic and byzantine totalitarian Russia and Soviet Union. Oh No...I've actually found more information on french never-wheres on Russian language books than I have from french language internet, not to mention english one! I've spend little over 1,000€ on french language books now since last February and I've hardly kept my nose over the water in the sense that this project would be futile and that there would be any point to go on. But luckily I have most of the bricks in the wall now from 1880 to the present day. There are still blanks but I try to fill them as I go along. As my desire of big carriers and true global superpower is somewhat hard to achive with french designs (but don't tell this to the french themselves) I have to come up with some rather unique aspects especially in the post 1945 era. But more on that as we go along.

All ships posted in the colors of Interkommunaali are based on real French never-wheres, preliminary projects and projected configurations. Some are from very well known and well detailed plans but some are mere mentionings in ála "There were to be 3 funneled follow on to this ship..". In fact over half of the designs there is no more than textual reference and the end product is my own interpretation on given data. And before anyone (looking at you Ewsube

) gets to say anything, I will post all those ships which are drawn by existing picture references as real life french never wheres as well. If anyone is interessed, I can give description and background for each designs as requested.

If you want to help me in this project, I more than happy to recieve any information of any French never-where ship or shipborne systems of any era from 1880 onwards. I most likely have all the obvious ones so no need to send me stuff on Normandie, Lyon or any other ship famous from WoW to the new generation. But everything else is more than welcome.

*After managing to get around some sort of workable historical story and timeline, I realised that the Evo I allready posted here was whoelly too small for this particular era and to maintain its desirable size trough the entire timaspan of this AU. So i sort of have to redo it, by adding more ships and rewrite the templates. It will be my next project for this remaining year.

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