As the writing of the bulk will primarily be in a form of archives detailing the different years of combat, the entirety of this 'chapter' is going to be a large scale reference guide to the arsenal of the nation known as United Forenia, the nation that is the end state of a weapon design based forum game this story will be centered around, as attempting to squeeze all these aspects into the initial part dealing with first contact would bloat it severely. To get to the story proper, advance to the next 'chapter'. New weapons will be introduced after initial contact, but will be detailed in the top of the chapter they are introduced in rather than being edited in here so you don't have to constantly be digging into this to find the new stuff.
Side note only relevant when this is first posted. The initial few years of conflict have been written up prior to posting and will come out at a fairly rapid pace. Once past that point, things will be slowing down. While they could be posted all at once, I want to hedge my bets on possibly having the seventh done by the time the sixth will be posted so there is a good length of time for regular updates rather than all at once followed by an unknown length hiatus before the seventh year comes out. For now, there will be this archive, the initial contact with the Grimm, and the first year of warfare.
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Rifles:
-M2 Osprey: The Osprey is a bolt-action rifle, chambered in 7.62mm, intended for snipers and marksmen. It is bolt-action, and has a 10 round magazine. It has a wooden stock, and the magazine protrudes a few inches beneath the rifle. It features a heavy barrel, and with its bolt action mechanism, has excellent grouping at long range. On top of the gun is a set of adjustable iron sights with a fine crosshair, and a rail for a telescopic sight.
-Eagle Sight MkII: A refractive telescopic sight designed with the Osprey rifle in mind. It is available in two types with variable magnification from 4x to 7x (long-range type), or from 1.5x to 4x (short-range type). Has a large objective lens which creates a bright picture, but short eye relief and a narrow field of view. They are [Complex], and they must be custom fitted to weapons which do not have rails.
-AS-F14A: A 7.62mm, semi-automatic rifle. It is an open bolt blowback action, and uses a 12-round box magazine with a small charge handle on the side. It has adjustable iron sights. The weight of the moving action makes the gun difficult to control, but this is mitigated by a heavy barrel. The blowback action is fairly reliable despite being open bolt. Also available as a carbine.
-AS-AR34: The AR34 is an assault rifle chambered in new 7.62L ammunition, an intermediate powered cartridge. It is fed at the bottom from a wide 24-round magazine, or a 40-round drum, and ejects cartridges to the right side. It has a tactical rail an adjustable iron sights on top. It is select-fire, with a sliding knob for either single-shot or automatic. The knob is very stiff and requires soldiers to take their left hand off the weapon and force it. It has aluminum furniture, and a vertical pistol grip and foregrip. It weighs under 6kg. It has good stopping power and accuracy out to medium range, and is relatively easy for users to control even on automatic fire. It's about as long as the AS-F14, which means it is usable in close quarters but not ideal.
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Machine Guns
-Cascade Sub-Machine Gun: This is a sub-machine gun, firing the 8.89 mm short pistol round. It uses a reliable closed-bolt blowback system. The bolt system is large, leaving room for an 8 inch barrel with a slotted hand guard. The stock is wooden, ugly, and stops at the receiver, where brass is ejected from the bottom of the gun. The short barrel gives poor accuracy, especially when hot, and the .35 cal short bullets have short range. The system fires about 400 rounds per minute.
-M3 Sorraia GPMG: A 7.62 mm machine gun fed from a belt. 50-round belts can be strung together for extended fire or stored in a belt box attached to the Sorraia, which for practical purposes is similar to a magazine. It uses a recoil action, and is configured to fire around 800 rounds per minute, achieved with the help of a muzzle booster (which looks like a flared end on the barrel). Weighs 22 pounds. Comes with a bipod, or tripod for emplacements. It uses copper heat sinks, which are now shrouded. It has a changeable barrel, which is necessary for emplacement use. It is effective to about 800 yards when mounted.
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Heavy Weapons
-AS-AC18: An advanced primer ignition autocannon, which ignites cartridge primers before the round is fully chambered. It fires the 20x100mm round, fed from a top-mounted 25 round C-shaped magazine with a powerful spring, about 600 times per minute. The weapon is quite large with a simple action but heavy barrel, weighing over 40 kilograms, and it requires being mountedto fire with accuracy, although recoil is reduced by the nature of its action. It is dependent on a careful balance between the force of the shell and the force of the action, which means that different ammo types cannot be interchanged without recalibrating the gun, AP rounds are used most often.
-Incinerator Flamethrower: A heavy weapon, consists of two tanks on a soldier's back (one of harmless nitrogen as a propellant, and one of flamethrower fuel) and a nozzle with a pilot light. Shoots a jet of burning liquid about 25 feet. Includes an emergency cutoff valve.
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Sidearms:
-AS-SP30: General infantry sidearm. An Arstotzka-made semi-automatic pistol, firing 9mm. It has a 10-round magazine and can fire quickly with moderate accuracy, at short range. Moderate stopping power. It is pretty reliable, and has a threaded barrel and can be fitted with a suppressor.
-Sawed-off Shotgun: General infantry sidearm. Fires twice before breech loading, very effective at short range, ineffective otherwise. Poor armor penetration. Uses 12 gauge shells.
-Scimitar: [Expensive] Officer sidearm. Elite soldiers receive a scimitar, a deadly curved sword which can be used on foot or horseback. Even in 1938, an officer's uniform is incomplete without his sword.
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Explosive Weapons:
-AS-1911 8cm Mortar: A light mortar tube with rocket-propelled explosive shells, which fire after being dropped into the tube and striking the bottom.
-AS-RPG28 A: A rocket-propelled grenade, fired out of a launch tube. The grenade itself consists of a conical shape with a narrow tube of propellent out the back, and twisted fins in the middle of the tube. The launch tube is 3cm wide, a meter long and the rocket fits in up to the fins, and is just a metal tube with a handle. To ignite the propellant, soldiers remove a pin, on the rocket, which is first clipped by a short chain to a trigger on the handle. The tube itself and each grenade each weigh 3kg. It is accurate enough to hit a tank out to almost 100 meters, after which it drops quickly. Rockets are available with warheads based on each type of grenade, including a HEAT conical shaped charge.
-AS-G27: The basic AS-G27 grenade is an oblong ball that fits comfortably in the hand, with a four second fuze started by pulling a ring. The casing breaks into fragments when it explodes. The AS-G27I is incendiary, the AS-G27S deploys smoke. The AS-G27AT is a cylinder shaped, magnetic shaped charge for tanks. A soldier can penetrate medium armor with it, but they have to run right up to a tank to stick one on.
-AS-LM20: A landmine! Consists of an explosive, metal shell and button. Armed by removing a key. The mines are cheap and simple, and reliably kill or dismember infantry who step on them.
-M34 Viper Landmine: A multipurpose landmine, but mainly used for tanks. It's a disc shaped box full of explosives, with a trigger on top. The mines are specially designed to be stacked, their triggers ignite eachother simultaneously. The trigger is locked with a removable pin. The mines weigh 2.5 kilos each. Two or three are effective against vehicles, but a bit taller and heavier than a single mine would be with the same explosive content. Be extremely careful when stacking the mines!
TPD 'DOLPHIN' 38-1: This is an aerial torpedo, weighing in a bit more than half a ton. It is powered by a wet heater motor, and stabilized by a gyroscope. Both of these have proven to be delicate and finicky devices, and so much time was spent getting them to work that a planned magnetic detonator was never implemented, so it sits close to the surface and detonates on impact. Both the wet heater and gyroscope are delicate, so it must be dropped close to the water and at a low speed.
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Radios
-Model 3 Radio: Vacuum tube radio, in two separate 30-pound boxes requiring two men to carry. It also includes a light, flexible antenna to attach to a tent pole or vehicle frame. It can fit into most vehicles without affecting performance. Transmits and receives audio.
-Tiger's Whisper: This radio device, instead of being used to transmit speech, issues and receives 26 discreet amplitudes on a given frequency. The amplitude broadcast is selected with a dial, and the amplitude received is is used to indicate a letter, using a fully circular meter which reads amplitude and is labeled with letters. When the dial, or meter, falls to zero after displaying a letter, it moves the paper indicator by an amount based on its highest position, like a rotary telephone dial. This means that the messages are bit more complex than a simple substitution. A communications officer must jot down each letter as he reads it. The letter indicators both on the dial and meter are pieces of card paper which can be changed, so that new substitutions can be issued to communications officers regularly in case a radio communicator falls into enemy hands.
-AS-DC29: An Arstotzkan device design to solve Moskurg's cipher. It is basically a Tiger's Whisper, with its own code card with the numbers 1 through 26. It uses a typewriter mechanism to stamp each number onto a ticker tape. The numbers on the ticker tape are the simple cipher version of the Moskurg message, which is relatively easy to solve by hand. In addition it includes a counter for each letter, displaying the frequency in which letters occur which helps solve ciphers faster. An average Arstotzkan officer is clever enough to use this to crack a Moskurg message in five to ten minutes. With a stolen code card, it can also act exactly as a Tiger's Whisper would, where communications officers must write down each letter as it appears. It fits into a very heavy backpack.
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Uniforms:
-Uniform AS-GU23: The Forenian uniforms are based on the 1923 Arstotzkan ones, and come in patterned camouflage colors, grey/white, beige and olive. The uniform has parade dress colors on the inside, so can be worn inside-out at official funtions. Armor plates and helmet are lightweight Aluminum. Includes all the pockets and bandoliers a soldier could ask for, and one right on the elbow that nobody asked for.
-AS-P32: Parachute rigging. The parachute itself is large and round, and various straps, clips and buckles allow a soldier to carry a light primary weapon, their ammo and a grenade. Alternatively, a paratrooper could also bring a mortar or LMG and a few rounds, but only their sidearm with it. Radios need to be dropped separately.
-Tiger Infantry Armor: Infantry armor made of a forged manganese steel alloy. All of the armor plates are relatively thick for infantry, and the full suit weighs in at 36 pounds. The helmet is particularly thick, and fits round and close around the head, low over the eyes and down to the neck with a little outward slope. It can be attached with a face mask, which when worn allows a wide but very narrow viewing slit between the mask and helmet, while even covering the neck. The breastplate is curved outwards for optimal armor angle, with appearance of a ridge down the middle. The backplate is thick, but flat. At the waist these plates end and there are flat curved single-piece taces to protect the upper legs, below the knee the armor has no coverage. The pauldrons allow comfortable shoulder motion, being made of three layered plates, and the upper arms are covered by rerebraces, which are round fitted plates to the outside of the arm. While the lower arms, lower legs, and sometimes gaps around the shoulders are exposed, most parts of the armor will stop a pistol bullet at point blank. The breastplate and taces will stop rifle bullets at all but very close range. AP Horsekillers easily penetrate at medium range. The armor is tiring and cumbersome, troops cannot effectively crawl and kneeling is difficult, as is aiming down rifle sights while using the mask.
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Defensive Structures
-Trenches: An excavation of the ground deeper than it is wide and narrow compared to its length that can be dug to be as deep as a man is tall. A fire step built of wood allows soldiers inside deep trenches to be elevated above the lip to fire at enemy forces. The side closest to the enemy often has barbed wire guarding it, with exception of areas with ladders to allow soldiers inside to advance upon enemy forces.
-Pillboxes: Small, hexagonal concrete structures with loopholes that weapons are fired through. Often equipped with an M3 Sorraia GPMG or a AS-AC18.
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Artillery
-AS-1912 Artillery A: A field gun firing 80mm shells, loaded through a sliding bolt. The action is not dissimilar to a bolt action rifle, where the old casing is ejected when the bolt is opened. Must be towed by a truck. It can fire about 12 times a minute, and the barrel rests on shocks which keep it on target after firing. Aims between 0 and 90 degrees vertical. It has several kilometers of range.
-B2 Destroyer: A big, long piece of artillery with firing 100mm rounds. The barrel is nearly 3 meters long, for maximum muzzle velocity and accuracy. Its barrel sits on a hydro suspension mechanism, and lurches back each time the gun fires. It weighs more than a ton and can fire at great distance around 10 times a minute, when hand loaded in its locking screw breech. These rounds can be placed with pretty good consistency, for their range. Must be towed by a truck.
-Bumblebee AT/AA: A 92mm gun. It can be aimed down close to the ground, or up the sky. It is aimed by a gunner who sits in a seat which inclines and declines with the gun itself, and has an iron sight which consists of two rings, the front of which has a "spiderweb" design. The gun is aimed with two traversal wheels. Fires fuzed flak rounds, which have an adjustable timer set by a dial on the gun itself. There is also a mechanical targeting calculator, which has a dial for target range, and rate of change of range, which can set the fuze time for shells accurately as the target moves. Additionally given an altitude and angle, the sight will automatically offset so that the gunner need merely keep the crosshair over the target. It is pretty effective, and also cheap and reliable. However, adjusting targeting calculator takes too long to aim at dive bombers and close, low-altitude planes. Fires about 15 times a minute.
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Ground Vehicles:
-L-1 Tiger: The Tiger is, despite its fierce name, a truck. It has a long, narrow nose in front of the cab containing a twelve cylinder engine, and the steering wheels are next to it under round cowls. It has a bed where a hopper, tanker, seats, trailer hitches or other things can easily be attached. There are six rear drive wheels, on independent suspension.
-AS-M17A: A motorcycle which seats one passenger, and a second in a sidecar. The petrol motor is Arstotzka's first, with three in-line cylinders. On its own, the bike is capable of more than 80 kilometers per hour, cross country, and 110 on a road. The sidecar is available with a machine gun, sometimes on a pintle mount to aim at aircraft.
-AS-MV21-AL: This is an armoured car, designed to be maneuverable in tight quarters and offroad. The frame, armor and engine block are all built from aluminium for reduced weight. It sits on four big tires, the rear ones shrouded by armor, on hydro suspension. The V-6 motor gets it up to 70 KPH. Its shape is tight and rectangular around the crew cabin, which holds only a driver and gunner, to minimize the quantity of armor needed. The engine is in the rear, and includes the lightest (thin) armor in the slats over the radiator. The front armor is medium and most of the armor is light. A belt-fed AS-AC18 gun fires from the top of the car, with the gunner's hatch open. The gunner hatch provides the gunner a small amount of cover.
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Armor:
-SPAT: A self-propelled gun vehicle consisting of a petrol engine, caterpillar tracks, and a forward-facing Bombardier howitzer with just enough armor plating to hide the crew behind. Rolls on treads with 4 driving wheels. The armor is light, with a gap in the middle for the gun to rotate, raise and lower. Ammunition sits in racks behind the armor. The vehicle has a top speed of about 8 mph. The gun is just a Bombardier, fixed to the SPAT on a frame which pitches and yaws on a pair of hand cranks. The SPAT has a set of jacks to use when firing, which improve accuracy considerably by preventing the vehicle from shaking.
-AS-MAT26-50: A light tracked platform for the DT25 50mm gun originally designed for the AS-T25 tank. Moves on a simply 8-cylinder motor and treads. It has thin RHA armor in the front only, with the rest open to the air. The DT-25 gun has an extended barrel with a muzzle brake, and is mounted on a front-facing armature with good side-to-side and vertical angling, for direct fire. It includes an M3 Sorraia for good measure against aircraft.
-T2 Breaker: A tank. It is medium armored throughout with RHA, with a slanted front but mostly square. The turret is specially cast as a rounded dome and rotates with electrical motors. Includes a 41mm rifled Breaker cannon, with a long barrel, suspension and muzzle brake. The Breaker cannon can fire about 24 times a minute, it is single loaded by hand. It also has a coaxially mounted M3 Sorraia. The exit hatch is towards rear with another MG. The tank is a heavy, it sits on wide cowled treads and is powered by a big 12-cylinder diesel engine, and can get up to about 35 kph. Crewed by a driver, loader, gunner, and commander. Now with extra slat armor.
-AS-T33: A tank similar to the AS-T25, with Heavy frontal armor, a radio as a standard feature. The shape is basically the same, a wedge with a cylindrical turret towards the back. It is powered by a turbocharged and fuel injected diesel engine, with twelve cylinders, which allows the tank to reach 45 kph. It is also armed with a new, enormous DT33 75mm cannon, which loads with a screw breech and can be fired about 12 times a minute, which happily penetrates medium armor at long range with HEAT rounds, and has similar accuracy but better range than the DT25. It includes one M3 Sorraia coaxially in the turret and one for a commander/spotter to use on a pintle. The turret is now operated by an electric motor on the horizontal traverse, and the tank has light spaced armor skirts around the turret, and on the sides down to the treads which help defend against HEAT rounds. A bit prone to running short on ammunition.
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Air Force:
-Model 4 Yellowjacket: A fighter aircraft, built fully of aluminium. It has flat low wings on a relatively long, narrow fuselage which holds its V12 motor. The motor is fuel injected, and cooled by a water radiator. It has six exhaust pipes poking out under the wing on each side, and a canopy-covered pilot seat close to the tail. It is relatively sturdy and maneuverable, it is fast and makes tight maneuvers but is "temperamental", prone to going into out-of-control rolls and requiring a tight grip on the joystick. The canopy includes a tubular gun sight. The six Sorraia guns in the wings provide ample firepower, but the six guns and their ammo are somewhat heavy. Moves faster and maneuvers better than the Wasp, as well as having a higher altitude ceiling.
-AS-DB-HF-23: An airplane built entirely from aluminium. This lighter, sturdier frame allows the plane be reasonably fast with a 9-cylinder radial engine and make aggressive dives and recoveries for bombing, with half a ton of bombs. The radial engine is designed entirely around an AS-AC18 which fires through the prop shaft, necessitating a relatively heavy and thick prop shaft. It has decent maneuverability, with its metal design allowing for strong forces on the wings and tail, and large control surfaces, but it is best at dogfighting while not carrying a bomb load.
-AS-HF-32: An aluminum built fighter with a mid wing. It has a long narrow fuselage with a water cooled, turbo charged and fuel injected V10 motor. It has a square-ish closed canopy and fixed landing gear. It is armed with 2 AC-18s in the wings and 2 Sorraias in the nose, on an interrupter gear. It is faster and can climb higher than the AS-DB or AS-1931 by a good margin, and despite some turbulence from the landing gear it has better maneuverability at high speeds. Not often, but sometimes, the landing gear breaks off in an extreme maneuver, forcing pilots to land the craft on its belly. It also includes two bomb mounts (up to 200 kg of bombs), which can be fitted with extra fuel tanks (+1 oil when in use).
-AS-1931-HAFB: A three-engine bomber with a shoulder wing. It is constructed of a geodetic aluminium frame with resin-treated fabric skin. The pilot sits in a cockpit on the front of the plane with a pyramidal canopy, and between the two wings is an AC18 gunner, on top of the plane, with a 360 degree rotation under a trapezoidal canopy. Has 3 turbocharged and injected engines, one in the nose and under each wing. Despite its size, this enables it to almost keep pace with AS-HF-24s and gives it a high altitude ceiling. These engines burn a lot of fuel, limiting range. It carries a two-ton payload of bombs, and a bomber with a sight which can be adjusted based on a written table for airspeed and altitude. At full altitude, these bombs are incapable of hitting precise targets, and especially moving targets. The plane also has fixed landing gear.
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Navy:
-AS-CV22: A steam-powered ship, worthy of sea travel. Uses two AS-51 S steam engines, which each power one screw. The vessel is around 60 meters long, and carries cargo enough to provide +1 Transport Capacity. It mounts an AC-18 on the bow for air defense, and an AS-1910 on top of the con tower. Costs 3 ore.
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Wonder Weapons
-The Death Ball: A 30-foot boulder, on two equally large steel wheels, which themselves are lined with rockets to propel it. The boulder is hewn smooth and round, and hollowed by stoneworkers (in 1935!) to support a stabilizing gyroscope. It can reliably roll in something resembling a straight line thanks to its gyroscope, although large moguls or divots will send it wildly off course. For the ten seconds or so it keeps to speed, it can crush a tank hull. In fact the most difficult thing about its use is moving it around before firing it. It, or the boulder from which it is constructed, is too large to move around on a truck, so it is instead dragged on a sled by several trucks, in a modern mechanized method which resembles the way in which ancient people moved stone megaliths. Once hewn into shape and given their gyro, chassis and rockets, they are generally not moved, but kept in place and rotated to aim. It can only be deployed in areas with flat land access to a stone quarry.
-AS-ARAC-35: The ARAC is a mobile runway, carried by coal train on more than 30 consecutive train cars, which unfold their top armor into a runway long and wide enough for a HAFB to land, be drawn back by a winch and cable (as it cannot taxi), then take off after being refueled and rearmed. The runway panels are supported by jacks on either side and take about a day to setup or pack away. The process of landing and takeoff takes about forty minutes, limiting the amount of traffic that can use the runway. The train also requires a sufficiently flat and straight railway to be useful as a runway. This often constitutes making a special track, but is easier than building a runway. There is a good section of track in the central desert, east desert, and plains. There is currently no system to move aircraft from the runway to the ground and back. The runways can land a few planes and take them off in order, which park on the ends of the runway, but far less than a normal runway could store.
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Design Doctrines
-Vehicle Radios: Most vehicles are equipped with a Model 3 Radio set, in a configuration suitable to the size and power source of the vehicle.
-Fuel Tank Liners: Unarmored combat vehicles have foam fuel tank liners which can stop or slow leaks if the tank is punctured.
-Warheads: Missiles, shells and bombs of various sizes can have various types of warhead attached, such as high-explosive, HEAT, incendiary, and so on. Developing a new warhead type means it will be available in other applications where it could easily apply, and new sizes of shells or bombs are available with various warheads.
-Pintle Mounts: Following old Arstotzkan design doctrine, machine guns are placed on pintle mounts where possible, to give them a good vertical aiming range capable of hitting ground and air targets.