Shipbucket

Pallamara isn't a massive nation, and I'm honestly surprised I've managed to come up with as many designs for it as I have managed to, albeit many weren't actually used. I have been thinking of doing a new AU after I wrap things up with Pallamara, as I'm running out of modern vessels to design for a navy of its size. I doubt I'll scrap it completelty, but updates will come far more slowly as time passes, or I decide to do historical vessels, but prior to WWII, these were rather few.

My idea when creating it was a nation that slowly grew into a respectable naval power, the lack of population and money prior to the first oil deposits being discovered in the 1960s restricting fleet size. I expect the WWI era fleet, for example to have mainly consisted of torpedo boats, maybe some Torpedo gunboats, and perhaps a single cruiser to show the flag, or perhaps a class of 3 vessels like the Greek Helle. By the beginning of WWII, this fleet would have expanded somewhat, mainly with subs and few light cruisers, (which I've depicted) but, all in all, not an impressive naval power. Postwar, they recieved 6 modern DDs, and these were the beginnings of what would eventually become a most impressive postwar fleet, and one of the most advanced in the region. (The USN being, of course, the most)

For a new AU, I want to do the opposite of Pallamara, and start with a nation that is industrialized enough by the 1900s to have a respectable fleet by WWI, and has a good fleet by WWII, but will actually draw down its fleet by the modern era to a much leaner entity. The problem is I'm having trouble determining the location of where to actually put it, with the following criteria:

(1) must be a new nation, probably an island somewhere, not using any existing geography. (may, however, replace existing geography)

(2) Must have a mainly European population.

(3) Must have been settled early enough to have a decent population and time to have become industrialized by the late 1800s.

(4) Must have some sort of resources to pay for said fleet. Pallamara has oil, but I don't want to reuse it, and with the US and the Netherlands supplying relatively cheap oil prior to WWI, it really isn't all that good of a choice, anyway for the period.

(5) Must occupy a location that actually requires a decent fleet, or at least did at one time. (For example, I initially was going to use St. Helena as a location for Pallamara, but given the local neighbors, a handfull of frigates and some land based F-18s would completely dominate the area, not requiring a large, modern fleet. Even the current fleet is a bit of overkill for the area of ocean it occupies)

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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."

What I did for the Republic of Texas was use their population from census records and their gross domestic product. If you pick a US state, you can generally find that information online or in various almanac. That gave me some realistic limits on how many people I could put in uniform and how much money I could spend year to year.

You might be able to find the same for a South American country, and if you wanted to take the time to dig, you could extrapolate the annual value of their natural resources based on the money generated in the US for the same resource.

It all depends on how much work you want to put into it. I've only taken Texas to 1896 because, well, I'm deployed and it's just a hobby.

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Redhorse

Current Projects:
Republic of Texas Navy
FD Scale F-14s

Well, for Pallamara, I did a complete economic model, based on Austrailia's GDP per Capita, with a full budget, so that part isn't a problem. Militaries should be limited to 2% of the population total, and this includes reserves. Placement is the main issue here.

Incidently the formula is GDP per capita * population * tax rate to give you your total budget, then you break that down by priorities. Defence should occupy no more than 20% of your total budget, IMHO.

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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."

Spamface! I have an idea for you!

According to plate tectonics,

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"All your base are belong to us"

Specifically for this thread, I've conjured an idea of a Chile, that is not part of the South American plate, but rather, is on the Nazca plate, which is just a little ways west of South America. If you imagined a fictional Chile, which was on the very eastern edge of the Nazca plate, rather than the South American plate, you can create a hypothetical scenario (not completely realistic of course) where due to plate movements, what is modern day Chile broke away from South America early on, following the breakup of Pangea.

Because of it's proximity to the S.A plate, it is very volcanically active. And you can hypothesize that a volcano on par with Mount Tambora erupted in the 1500's, making the island chain uninhabitable for a few years. Thus the island was discovered by colonial Europeans in the 1700's, and was found to be devoid of human populations, though was heavily forested in the far northern and southern expanses (where there was the least ash fall). Because of the volcanic soil covering the middle expanse of the island chain, crops grow readily with proper preparation and treatment (for soil acidity), thus the island produces heavy crop yields year round.

If the island chain had much smaller active volcanoes, the colonists could use the resulting volcanic ash and soil to fertilize their crops with. And because the island chain experiences tropical climate in the middle and upper portions year round, you could have a year round growing season, thus allowing you to maintain a large population while exporting large amounts of food.

I'd imagine that the main resources of the island chain are it's crops (think of all the luxury/cash crops you could grow) and hugely dense deposits of iron, nickel and bauxite ores. It could also have offshore oil if you so desired, though not for becoming wealthy, but just sustaining your nation through industrial years. The island chain could also have some rare-earth metals such as lithium.

As for necessitating a large naval defense, you could imagine that the island was colonized by multiple European powers early on, and the island slowly declared independence from them, causing a strong backlash and subsequent wars of small or large scale (your choice). This requires a heavy navy presence to deter the world powers of those times. However, in later years, it could arrest some of it's vast fleets since the European powers are no longer colonial in nature.

The island chain has 1,024,971 km/sq in land, of which, the eastern sea border is heavily mountainous due to it's early proximity to the S.A plate. If you want it to be just Chile, you could erase the two little islands at the top. Which would leave you with 756,950 km/sq.

Of course, you wouldn't call it Chile, since Chile would not exist in it's modern context, since it would have been devoid of life upon it's discovery and colonization. It'd be a mostly new nation....shaped like Chile.

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"All your base are belong to us"

One could also speculate a "Line of Fire" in the Atlantic, almost similar to that of the "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific. But, One would then have to look at Iceland. The creation of Iceland was done by constant volcanic explosions along that part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Some (I'm not sure how plausible though) speculation could be made that, an island (or continent??) could have popped up, forcing the surrounding plates to move, possibly shrinking the size of the Pacific, and making this imaginary place a center for overseas commerce, and with that, a great opportunity for a large navy. A while back I took a course in the Tectonics of Earth, but it wasn't the most detailed one out there,so if there are any errors, please point it out.

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Worklist:
Puerto Oeste - AU - WWI-WWII

Chile is an irl geography troll.

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Probably posting from and iPhone and naval terms befuddle it. If I say a ships' hill, you know what I meant.

Really? So Chile broke away from South America IRL?
...troll de doll de rolllllll.

a video just for you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMEe7JqBgvg

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"All your base are belong to us"

No, I mean, it's all like "i herd u leik coastline so fuck you"

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Probably posting from and iPhone and naval terms befuddle it. If I say a ships' hill, you know what I meant.

WARNING

We don't want a feud here gentlemen, and it isn't even your topic; so maybe leave it?