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Monday, June 21, 2004

The building program game

On occasion, I have "played a game" where the game consisted of designing ships and a shipbuilding program for two or more countries. They would have budgets and would have agreed upon building capacities. Usually, the start date was 1905.

This allowed me to indulge in "what if" scenarios. One game consisted of a scenario that was to lead to a naval war in the Southwest Pacific, starting in 1914, with Great Britain on one side and Japan on the other. The United States and Germany were neutrals.

A feature of the shipbuilding programs is that there were no battlecruisers built, early in then process. The early large cruisers were armored cruisers with uniform main armaments (the British used 9.2in guns).

The combatants also had squadrons of oceangoing cruisers (similar to the Bristol, Falmouth, and Southampton.

I only just barely started a paper war, starting in 1914, which I did not pursue very far. For me, the design of ships and building programs was more interesting than fighting a naval war. I guess that part of the problem was that I did not have a very interesting set of rules for fighting, and that was why I lost interest (that, and having to do solo gaming).

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