Thoughts on Twilight 2000

[Timerover51]

I have been spending some time looking again at Twilight 2000, including buying three of the online modules at DriveThru: Gateway to the Spanish Main, Korean Peninsula Sourcebook, and the East African Sourcebook. I bought the module Gateway to the Spanish Main when it came out and then bought Twilight 2000 to see how it worked. I am a sucker for ships, including sailing ships. (See my Horatio Hornblower collection along with others.)

In looking at some of the other modules, I keep thinking that there was some wishful thinking when it came to nuclear weapon targets, primarily New London and New York. Given that Groton, Connecticut, right across the river from New London, is one of the two yards for building submarines in the U.S., and New London houses the Navy Sub School, those two places are going to be thoroughly clobbered in a nuclear exchange, with likely two warheads on each. Then you do have the problem of fallout from weapons hitting New York. Several high-yeild weapons are going to hit New York, probably leveling most of it, and leaving it pretty hot as well.

Texas is target-rich as well, and given the one of the attack scenarios covered in the OTA study, The Effects of Nuclear War, which can be downloaded here, http://atomicarchive.com/Docs/pdfs/7906.pdf, the refineries are going to be hit quite hard. Also, all of your major ports are going to be hit, both here and in Europe, so that would make problems for a some of the other modules. Aircraft assembly plants and shipyards, in the U.S., primarily building naval vessels, will be hammered as well. It is hard to say if Diego Garcia would be hit, but if for game purposes it was not, there would be an immense amount of equipment that would be there in the pre-positioned ships and warehoused on the island.

The interesting thing is that South America probably would be pretty much unscathed, along with Africa, and Australia and New Zealand would also not be hit. Brazil would be a source for ammunition and some spare parts, along with Australia. It is hard to say how much Japan would be hit, but their problem would be fuel and food, otherwise, they would be another source of supply, albeit a ways away from most other places. All this would place some emphasis on shipping, which is not really touched on in the game. I do have some interest in ships and shipping.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

I don't know...

I mean, it's not like I went to War College or anything, but the idea of nuking Texas with strategic weapons seems foolish to me. Save the tac nukes for the bases when we take the state. Great Soviet Republics still need gas for glorious T-62 tanks of International Revolution, comrade! :devil:

In truth, I'd nuke as little of the infestation I could so as so use it when I invade.

 

[Timerover51]

I picked up the Twilight 2000 V2 Bundle, along with some other stuff. Looking at the prices for some of the weapons and gear, I kept thinking that those are pre-war pricing, not the current pricing. Equipment like combat vehicles, combat aircraft, along with ammunition are going to be very hard to replace, if that is even possible. Some forms of small arms ammunition probably will be available, but some of the rarer types, like the .460 Weatherby Magnum, you batter have some handloader equipment, along with correctly sized bullets and the right kind of powder.

Also, in any of the various scenarios that show up in Challenger magazine, is there anything about Turkey trying to recover her lost territory in the Balkans, or expanding in Iraq to acquire the northern oil fields? That pretty much seems like a given for the world situation as described.

I am assuming that China is not a major factor, having been thoroughly nuked by both the USSR and the US, although the Soviets or whether they can be called, may have managed to grab Manchuria again. Against that, the North Koreans may have decided to head north for easier pickings.

 

[Timerover51]

I mean, it's not like I went to War College or anything, but the idea of nuking Texas with strategic weapons seems foolish to me. Save the tac nukes for the bases when we take the state. Great Soviet Republics still need gas for glorious T-62 tanks of International Revolution, comrade! :devil:

In truth, I'd nuke as little of the infestation I could so as so use it when I invade.

It is called taking out the oil refineries along with military bases, and probably the state capitol. Take a look at the link that I posted to get some idea as how nuclear targeting works. I figure that one multiple warhead ICBM will work its way done from Milwaukee to Whiting, Indiana, picking up all of the power plants, Mitchel Air Port, Great Lakes Naval Training Base, O'Hare Air Port, and Chicago on the way.

 

[jcrocker]

Also, in any of the various scenarios that show up in Challenger magazine, is there anything about Turkey trying to recover her lost territory in the Balkans, or expanding in Iraq to acquire the northern oil fields? That pretty much seems like a given for the world situation as described.

No. There was an article called "Taking a Stand in Kurdistan" and it's been a couple of decades since I've looked at it. There was the Eastern Europe Sourcebook, that had some info on the region. [edit - I looked it up, it was a Merc:2000 article]

And right there, 'Turkey wants Iraq oil fields', you could hang a couple of campaigns on that one idea.

Part of T2K's strength is that is was a high-level overview, and it left the rest of the sandbox for you to tailor. Or fix. I've caught some of the original modules out in mistakes, fair enough, but it's pretty easy to correct. "Ignore that last sentance, here is where it really hit." In the v2.2 book, I think they swapped the map points of two of the targets in North Dakota for example, minor things like that.

There are the target lists (adjust to suit your campaign) and over-arching ideas. The modern fleets are gone, but there is some shipping. US troops want to get home, and home isn't exactly how you left it. A relative handful of weapons were delivered compared to the how many thousands it could have been, and while they were more than enough, there was still something left to rebuild. Good think your characters are passing through, there's work to be had for capable vets like yourselves! Now, there's this guy with a gang of about twenty, he's set himself up as a bandit king...

 

[Timerover51]

I just picked up the RDF Sourcebook for Twilight version 1. That probably will be the last book I pick up for now. In the entire book, there is no mention of Diego Garcia, which was already being built up as a supply base for combat operations in the Indian Ocean. There is no mention of the Indian Ocean in the entire book. Did the authors of the various books know that the U.S. Navy exists? Did they know that other countries also have navies that might possibly have ships? I understand that the books were written in the 1980s, but the U.S. Navy was still around at the time. The Nautical and Aviation Handbook has U.S. Navy aircraft. What were there supposed to be operating off of? I will not comment on what they do for the "nautical" portion of the book.

Aside from the very odd way they assume a strategic nuclear war would be conducted, how do they wipe out the U.S. Navy? They do mention one nuclear submarine, The City of Corpus Christi, which is supposedly the last U.S. nuclear submarine in existence, and a still operational New London, Connecticut base. Where did all of the other ships go, including the Ohio-class Fleet Ballistic Missile subs, that would have been surged to see at the first indications of a possible nuclear exchange? Then there are countries like India, that would have a large amount of interest in activities on the Indian Ocean, while Brazil had built up a fair good arms industry during the Iran-Iraq War, including armored vehicles, along with having a fair-sized navy.

For East Africa and the RDF book, where does Australia figure in? In Australia, U.S. naval ships would have an Allied base to operate from along with resupply. Australia also has a fair number of petroleum refineries using Indonesian crude, which could be shipped to East Africa and the Persian Gulf region. That refinery in Mombasa becomes quite a bit less critical now. Is the Suez Canal totally blocked? If not, you also have refineries in Israel that would be happy to ship refined products were needed, otherwise, it might go out through Eilat.

Edit Note: I can remember discussions in the late 1970s and 1980s over the Soviets attacking in Western Europe. I would ask how willing a Soviet commander would be to do such a thing, when all of his supply lines ran through Poland and Czechoslovakia? Amazing how quiet things got. No one could visualize the Poles or the Czechs supporting a Soviet invasion.

 

[jcrocker]

The US Navy, and everyone else's, suffered from attrition, enemy action, and writers' fiat. I guess they decided that one major surface combatant would really warp the play balance in any given area, and came up with reasons that they were no longer around. Spies, sabotage, bad luck, it came down to a simple "nope, gone."

I didn't find them very plausible, but life went on. And according to the official timeline, life went on without anyone having a navy as such.

Still enjoyed the game, though.

For Diego Garcia, feel free to have some equipment there. Sounds like another good campaign. It was absent from the rules, doesn't mean you can't add it, or anything else for that matter, back in.

 

[epicenter00]

In looking at some of the other modules, I keep thinking that there was some wishful thinking when it came to nuclear weapon targets, primarily New London and New York.

There most certainly is a certain amount of contorted plausibility in the hit list.

There is a kind of logic they wanted in the hit list, however.

The central point of 2k's hit lists is that:

1. The world sort of inches over line into nuclear Armageddon in fits and starts, not in a huge exchange; this is the explanation why there isn't a nuclear winter. The impression I get is that they launch a few nukes here and a few nukes there. There's a period with a single one going off. Then there's another very limited exchange.

2. The two sides wanted to avoid a huge nation (or civilization) ending nuclear exchange (the point is made that it happens anyway, but slowly). So they limited the number of weapons they used, avoiding civilian targets (like New York) which would emotionally lead to a desire for retaliation leading to a general nuclear exchange. Even targets that you would think would be obvious hits, like Washington DC were not hit for this reason. Non-nuclear nations in Europe did not get this benefit - like Warsaw was leveled by tactical nukes. Instead, they decided that by mostly hitting POL facilities and the other side's nuclear weapons they could hope to end the war in their favor. A lot of industrial targets aren't hit with the reasoning that you can make fancy airplanes and tanks ... but they can't do anything without fuel.

My speculation:

The two points suggest that both sides had their nuclear weapons destroyed in the silo; they exchanged missiles to destroy the other side's static launchers that they knew about and these were probably destroyed in the first round. The other weapons were simply written off as acceptable losses (I'm a bit skeptical on this, but it might happen). The Hit Lists -- for the US I think it was published in the original rules or Howling Wilderness and for the Soviet Union, it was in a Challenge article -- read like much larger weapons were used, but it seems more plausible in a scenario where both sides are only launching nuclear weapons under specific circumstances that a lot of nukes would be lost before firing - destroyed in silos, sunk in their SSBNs, and destroyed by their own side (eg; a gravity bomb nuke stored at a USAF base might be ordered destroyed by the US National Command Authority when it was realized there were no more planes to carry them anywhere for hundreds or thousands of miles - it's more hazardous a nuclear weapon exists on American soil at that point when there's no delivery method) and that a lot of the nuclear weapons used would be smaller tactical, relatively "clean" nuclear weapons.

As for the navy - it feels like the GDW staff had ex-army guys but no navy (?). I think it was generally thought that Soviet and American navies would sink the other in combat over the years of warfare and the rest would basically become unserviceable through a lack of spares and POL shortages as the war ground on, year after year. Yes, I'm aware that the nature of naval combat isn't like that - navies tend to be used up in furious rounds of fighting in the beginning of the conflict then the winner's navy pretty much has free reign.

Edit Note: I can remember discussions in the late 1970s and 1980s over the Soviets attacking in Western Europe. I would ask how willing a Soviet commander would be to do such a thing, when all of his supply lines ran through Poland and Czechoslovakia? Amazing how quiet things got. No one could visualize the Poles or the Czechs supporting a Soviet invasion.

And

I am assuming that China is not a major factor, having been thoroughly nuked by both the USSR and the US, although the Soviets or whether they can be called, may have managed to grab Manchuria again. Against that, the North Koreans may have decided to head north for easier pickings.

There's two versions of the Twilight 2k (main game) background - I don't include Merc:2000 in this.

Of the two, Twilight 2k v1 had the better and more functional background. Twilight 2k v2 attempted to update the scenario for the Collapse of the Soviet Union, but the v2 scenario felt less plausible to me than v1 scenario.

In the v1 scenario, WW3 actually starts in China after a protracted series of border skirmishes which erupt into full-blown land war between the USSR and China. The war initially goes very well for the USSR (remember this is 1980s China) who rip through China's outdated military in the first border battles and start driving towards China's "core" (the coast). However, the coast is a long ways away, and eventually the Soviet drive bogs down due to logistics issues, Chinese partisan resistance, and American military aid to the Chinese which turns China into a huge meat grinder (of particular note is that the Americans send weapons like the FOG-M and so on which were specifically developed to destroy massed armor making the Soviet massed armor strategies that had worked so well against the Chinese initially into suicide). The Soviets pull their best divisions out of Germany to send east to replace the enormous losses they take.

IIRC (I'm a bit foggy on this - it's been decades since I've read the rules), the Soviets start calling on their Warsaw Pact allies to start aiding in the war against China. Regardless, the Soviet Union is so weakened by the continuing war that some in the East German military start talking to their Western counterparts to reunify. The West German forces roll into East Germany (iirc accompanied by US and UK forces, but the French protest and pull out of NATO). So in the west, it's basically NATO that starts the war. The Germans misread the Soviets when the Soviets don't accept what the Germans thought would have been a fait accompli and go to war. The Warsaw Pact's communist regimes fall in line behind the Soviets as they feel they're fighting a defensive war to protect themselves against Western aggression against the Pact.

The nukes actually start to fly in China first - and China gets really severely plastered by nuclear weapons - the Soviets use it in a sort of feigned retreat as well as to destroy Chinese industrial targets.

 

[Timerover51]

Epicenter, you might want to take a look at the OTA study, The Effects of Nuclear War, which can be downloaded here. and was published in 1979, well before the rules were written. That does look at the U.S. casualties if a counterforce strike was launched.

http://atomicarchive.com/Docs/pdfs/7906.pdf

The other problem is that if the Soviets launched a strike at the ICBM silos, we would launch on warning, so the Soviets would be hitting empty silos. Also, because of the geographical spread in missile silo locations, unless the Soviets went for a Time-on-Target strike, a fair number of the missiles further to the south would launch even without launch-on-warning.

As for the Soviets attacking China, the primary area of border skirmishes has been the border with Manchuria, which means that you do not have extremely long distances to get to the coast, as the Soviets can come in from both directions, east and west. They are not going to attack through Western China, as that is some of the worst territory in the world to move through. Once they have Manchuria, a fair chunk of China's industrial base is gone. Remember to, the Chinese do not really have any major sources of oil, so would be dependent on foreign imports in a big way, so major ports would be hit hard with nukes.

U.S. policy on tactical nuclear weapons use was to use them primarily on Soviet targets, and avoid hitting Eastern European countries at all costs. One reason for the neutron bomb was to make it possible to strike large armored formations with a lot less collateral damage. As for France, it has its own nuclear force, which if the Soviets start firing, is going to be hit.

I understand that they had to get creative to somehow avoid a massive nuclear exchange, but as the game background also mentions chemical and biological weapon use, that pretty much nullifies the avoidance of significant nuclear weapon use. Besides that, the biological agents are not simply going to go away. They are going to be part of the environment for a while.

The rest of NATO also had navies, which would have to be accounted for in figuring out how much is sunk. Given the existence of the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, I do not see how you eliminate the U.S. and other NATO navies so casually. Nor do I see NATO starting an invasion. I do see the Eastern European countries starting a revolt against the Soviets, with NATO moving in to assist them. Now, that would trigger a massive Soviet response.

The designers and writers did pretty much ignore anything south of the equator in the game, which is also a problem.

I like the idea of poking around with the game, as I also like poking around with the Morrow Project, it is just the background they have written up that bugs me. In reading through it after many years, I still keep asking myself is there a world outside of the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, and NATO. As I indicated in the first post, I bought the game because of the module with the Constitution replica. That I can see playing around with a bit. As the refineries on Curacao and Aruba have been there since before World War 2, they would still be able to operate, add in some Dutch naval and military forces in the Netherlands Antilles, along with a bit of British and maybe French as well as the U.S., and it makes for some nice possibilities.

 

[Putraack]

Like a lot of GDW's RPGs, the designers wanted to leave lots of blank space for the referee to fill in. One of the core concepts of T2k is that the PCs have freedom of action amidst chaos. They also have enough firepower & skill to matter on at least a local level.

If there were fleets still in operation, then things might be too organized to fit the above conditions, so lack of fuel and spare parts has beached nearly all the vessels, after the intense fighting that did occur.

 

[Timerover51]

Like a lot of GDW's RPGs, the designers wanted to leave lots of blank space for the referee to fill in. One of the core concepts of T2k is that the PCs have freedom of action amidst chaos. They also have enough firepower & skill to matter on at least a local level.

I can understand that, as the Morrow Project has somewhat of the same problem.

If there were fleets still in operation, then things might be too organized to fit the above conditions, so lack of fuel and spare parts has beached nearly all the vessels, after the intense fighting that did occur.

The problem that I have with this is that the designers wrote as if the rest of the world did not exist. I have been going through the CIA World Factbook for 1994, looking at the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean ares. Quite simply, fuel is not going to be a problem in either area, not by a very long shot. In the Caribbean, you have petroleum production in both Mexico and Venezuela, with refineries scattered about the area, besides the ones on Curacao and Aruba, which have been running since prior to World War 2. You also have a very large production of ethyl alcohol on the various islands of the West Indies. That does not count production and refining in Ecuador. Brazil had a fairly large navy, to include a helicopter carrier, along with a substantial armaments industry. As for the Indian Ocean area, you have Indonesia as a starter for petroleum production, along with Sarawak and Brunei, and refineries all over the place. None of those are going to be knocked out. Australia provides a strong industrial base for supplies of ammunition and spare parts, along with a Navy and Air Force, with refueling tankers. Singapore also is in the mix, as is Taiwan. This does not count India or Pakistan at all. South Africa had an industrial base as well, along with the Sasol gas gasification plants.

The other problem is that if there is no fuel for naval vessels, nor spare parts, then there is going to be no fuel or spare parts for civilian shipping, which apparently is taking place. There is a lot of civilian merchant shipping in existence that appears in the southern hemisphere, along with shipbuilding and repair installations. Quite simply, that is not going to disappear overnight, as the designers appear to believe.

As the CIA Factbook can be downloaded in a PDF copy and paste format, I might put some of the data in it into a background piece for the game. And before someone says that the designers would not have access to a PDF file back then, you could buy hard copies from the Government Printing Office for the year of 1986, when they were designing the game. As for the East African Sourcebook, which came out last year, they would have access to the files.

 

[whartung]

The problem that I have with this is that the designers wrote as if the rest of the world did not exist.

When you're huddled around a fire in the cold with your mates, counting ammo and rationing food, "the rest of the world" doesn't really matter. T2K is a local game, not a global one.

I have been going through the CIA World Factbook for 1994, looking at the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean ares. Quite simply, fuel is not going to be a problem in either area, not by a very long shot. In the Caribbean, you have petroleum production in both Mexico and Venezuela, with refineries scattered about the area, besides the ones on Curacao and Aruba, which have been running since prior to World War 2.

Having oil fields and refineries don't mean a whole lot when you don't have the people, expertise, and other infrastructure to operate and support them.

 

[Timerover51]

Having oil fields and refineries don't mean a whole lot when you don't have the people, expertise, and other infrastructure to operate and support them.

Are you telling me that Australia does not have the infrastructure to support oil refineries? The Mexican ones and the ones on Curacao and Aruba have been running since before World War 2. Brazil is also running oil refineries. Are you saying that Brazil cannot run an oil refinery? Then there is Singapore and Indonesia. Indonesia has been running refineries since before World War 2. South Africa was running the Sasol coal gasification plant without outside assistance, as well as oil refineries. Then there is Taiwan and India, along with Sri Lanka. Ireland is also doing oil refining, and with the very odd nuclear attack pattern given in the various Twilight 2000 books. so is the United States Gulf Coast, along with Texas. I am not sure about California. Then there are the refineries in Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. Malaysia also produces and refines petroleum, with some of the refineries dating from prior to World War 2.

As for the rest of the U.S., aside from the refinery concentration along the southern tip of Lake Michigan, there are also refineries in the area of Kankakee and Joliet, as well as a couple of small ones in the more central part of Illinois. There are also some along Interstate 80 in Ohio that you can see flaring gas off from the Interstate.

What you claiming is that all of the people running these refineries suddenly have vanished into thin air, leaving the refineries behind intact.

As for the comment on being huddled around a fire, I am mainly looking at the Caribbean and the East African sourcebook. The replica Constitution is sailing in the Caribbean, and the East African sourcebook is set in Kenya. By the way, there is a refinery is Tanzania listed by the CIA, along with refineries in Madagascar.

 

[aramis]

Are you telling me that Australia does not have the infrastructure to support oil refineries? The Mexican ones and the ones on Curacao and Aruba have been running since before World War 2. Brazil is also running oil refineries. Are you saying that Brazil cannot run an oil refinery? Then there is Singapore and Indonesia. Indonesia has been running refineries since before World War 2. South Africa was running the Sasol coal gasification plant without outside assistance, as well as oil refineries. Then there is Taiwan and India, along with Sri Lanka. Ireland is also doing oil refining, and with the very odd nuclear attack pattern given in the various Twilight 2000 books. so is the United States Gulf Coast, along with Texas. I am not sure about California. Then there are the refineries in Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. Malaysia also produces and refines petroleum, with some of the refineries dating from prior to World War 2.

The nuclear targeting lists that have been leaked put fuel refineries on the target list as operations targets. Right along with coaling stations (which haven't had coal since before WW I, but Dieseling stations has other connotations).

 

[McPerth]

Without entering on the plausability of the scenarios (neither v1 nor v2), according the backgrouns, IIRC, it is said that most of the fleet was lost (or damaged beyond repair capcities) in heavy fighting in the morth sea (mostly in the GIUK line). I guess the Mediterranean had also some hevay fighting when Italy enter at war on the WP side...

No details are given, but I guess the long range URSS air would be the main killer of NATO ships.

As for France, remember it remained neutral (as Germany was the attacker, they claimed not to be bound by NATO defensive treaties), as did Benelux and Spain. The Soviets only made some chirugical strikes on all of them, but France keeps most its nuclear arsenal and remains more or less intact (the lack of fuel due to worldwide shortages is the main damage to all those countries).

 

[jcrocker]

What you claiming is that all of the people running these refineries suddenly have vanished into thin air, leaving the refineries behind intact.

According to the Howling Wilderness module (and pretty much all of canon, really) that's pretty much what happened, yeah. DC got nuked, lots of people in lots of cities bugged out, leaving empty cities to get nuked or not according to the target list and the whims of the referee. The people survived, or didn't, and the survivors made do the best they could in the circumstances.

As for the comment on being huddled around a fire, I am mainly looking at the Caribbean and the East African sourcebook. The replica Constitution is sailing in the Caribbean, and the East African sourcebook is set in Kenya. By the way, there is a refinery is Tanzania listed by the CIA, along with refineries in Madagascar.

Given that the CIA had a bigger budget than GDW, you're right, one could discuss many sites around the world and the divergence from in-game and real-world happenings. GDW never put out exhaustive sourcebooks for the entire planet, and if it gives you more fun to have any given refinery on the planet up and running, go right ahead.

 

[Timerover51]

Without entering on the plausability of the scenarios (neither v1 nor v2), according the backgrouns, IIRC, it is said that most of the fleet was lost (or damaged beyond repair capcities) in heavy fighting in the morth sea (mostly in the GIUK line). I guess the Mediterranean had also some hevay fighting when Italy enter at war on the WP side...

No details are given, but I guess the long range URSS air would be the main killer of NATO ships.

As for France, remember it remained neutral (as Germany was the attacker, they claimed not to be bound by NATO defensive treaties), as did Benelux and Spain. The Soviets only made some chirugical strikes on all of them, but France keeps most its nuclear arsenal and remains more or less intact (the lack of fuel due to worldwide shortages is the main damage to all those countries).

What fuel shortage? Aside from the Arabian Gulf countries, which are apparently still producing oil, you have all of the rest of the world still capable of production. Libya and Algeria are still producing in the Mediterranean, while Nigeria is probably still producing, along with Indonesia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and several other countries, along with all of the offshore wells. With most of Europe no longer consuming, apparently, as well as the US and the USSR, China, and I guess Japan, you are going to have an oil surplus.

As for France staying neutral, where do you think that all of the fallout from the UK hammering is going to go, along with the USSR as a precaution taking out France's land-based missiles as well as the nuclear missile submarine bases?

I assume all of Europe, including the major portion of the European USSR has been thoroughly nuked, Poland and Czechoslovakia possibly excluded.

I will not even get into the unlikelihood of massive NATO fleet losses, especially in the Med. Have any of the forum looked at exactly how large the total NATO fleet is, without even counting the US Pacific forces? I know that, at the time, most of the US naval analysts were only counting a straight US-USSR naval forces and assuming that the rest of NATO did not exist.

As for Germany deciding to invade on its own, NATO is a defensive alliance, with treaty obligations only operating when a member is attacked. If Germany, for some bizarre reason, decided to launch a "lone wolf" attack, the rest of NATO would say that they are on their own. That would definitely include the US. My assumption is that with the Soviet offensive in China, Poland and Czechoslovakia go into revolt, and NATO moves in to help them. That would be what touches off the war, not some German offensive.

 

[McPerth]

What fuel shortage? Aside from the Arabian Gulf countries, which are apparently still producing oil, you have all of the rest of the world still capable of production. Libya and Algeria are still producing in the Mediterranean, while Nigeria is probably still producing, along with Indonesia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and several other countries, along with all of the offshore wells. With most of Europe no longer consuming, apparently, as well as the US and the USSR, China, and I guess Japan, you are going to have an oil surplus.

The one caused by the loss of most oil fleet and the nuking of many refineries just to deny them to the enemy.

As an aside, IIRC, Japan also remained neutral in the war, keeping some marine fleet, but also needing oil too.

As for the rest of the background, well, be it believable or not it gave an interesting setting to play on. i agree some parts of it are quite difficult to swallow, though. Probably your view is more realistic, but would it give a setting equally interesting (and allowing most players to play people from their own countries)?

 

[Timerover51]

The one caused by the loss of most oil fleet and the nuking of many refineries just to deny them to the enemy.

As an aside, IIRC, Japan also remained neutral in the war, keeping some marine fleet, but also needing oil too.

Does that nuking include the refineries in France and Japan, and also the tanker fleets supplying them with oil? Remember, most of the tanker fleet are ships owned by oil companies but operating under what is called "flags of convenience", so staying neutral when tankers are being sunk is going to be very difficult.

As for the rest of the background, well, be it believable or not it gave an interesting setting to play on. i agree some parts of it are quite difficult to swallow, though. Probably your view is more realistic, but would it give a setting equally interesting (and allowing most players to play people from their own countries)?

I suspect that rather than continuing this thread, it might be better to set up some sort of an alternate universe thread for my ideas. As for allowing players to play people from their own countries, I am not sure.

 

[BRJN]

it might be better to set up some sort of an alternate universe thread for my ideas.

You could. You also could be less 'prickly' when people speculate and arrive at different conclusions than your own. We have already established that Twilight is a rough estimate, not a close model, of the real world as it was.

For what it is worth, the current situation in Venezuela could be used to explain why some long-standing Third World refineries are out of operation or only producing a trickle. Humans cannot eat or drink oil.

Plus, both USSR and NATO would react badly if/when they found out about a third party selling lots of oil to the other combatant. They might lob a 'don't do that again' warning warhead on an offender who cannot do anything to retaliate. As noted above, the rulebooks are silent on conditions in much of the world, so you can decide what sounds reasonable to you and work from there.