So this topic serves for the discussion and setting the time-frames/availability of technology in the taijitu world RP. We've agreed that Taijitu World has smaller nations and less evolved tech than Earth but that it is very close to real-life earth. My mindset is usually like "Do you know that thing they use at that time in real life?
In Taijitu it hasn't been invented yet"
For instance the: matchlock (1400s) > wheellock (1500s) > flintlock (1600s) rifles in real life would be a century or two older, or lasting longer before being obsolete.
For the boats, I'd start with the Caravel (1400s real life) around 1500s and they turn into a square-rigged caravel a century later, the carrack appearing in 1600s and turning into huge galleons near the 1700s. The introduction of new ships from British influence would be about a century later as well like the East Indiaman tea clippers in 1800s, an extreme clipper in the 1900s.
1900-2000 is a whole different business.People want to RP a WWII-style conflict starting at 1940, you might as well be using 1920s tech. What is the difference? In real life pre-WWII brawls are done with biplanes, this WWII sees the first uses of the first monoplanes in war theater, and they were TERRIBLE. So if you think you're going to do a Dresden bombing in Rykkova, nope!
D3A1 (oh my what a beautiful plane) is used in RL by Japan around 1940. What was there before? in 1922 the Japanese have the aircraft carrier Hosho carrying these 1MF and B1M
by the begining of the 2nd Sino-Japanese war (1937) Japan was still using mostly biplanes, here's one that wasn't a Ki-2 light-bomber, just look at how awful it is.
Do you think this is just Japan?
US only uses monoplanes after 1930s
the American Curtiss P-36 is introduced in 1938
Germany uses monoplanes a bit earlier, maybe 1925ish and mostly terrible monoplanes for civilian use (they weren't allowed to have military planes).
Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe famous Focke-Wulf 190 and Messerschmitt 109 are very late 30s to 40s as well
What was there before? It's hard to say in the german case since they officially couldn't have military branches or vehicles in aftermath of the first World War, but for instance the Fokker d13 was around 1924 and was used in Russia to train German fighter pilots (yeah weird, I know).
The Junkers G31 was around 1926 and was an ugly one of the first all-metal monoplane.
Dornier Do10 around 1931, about the same time as the Focke-Wulf Fw 44
In the Spanish Civil War (36-39) they use the first monoplane bombers, shiny new military editions out of Germany (shamefully shipped to Portugal and sent to Spain by train) and Italy.
This SM81 bomber was escorted by CR32s biplanes, picture taken in the spanish civil war, likely the 1936 Battle of Mallorca:
Why planes? Well I love planes, but also they're a pretty good way to tell technology state during the 1900s, you can clearly see the advances, the planes look better built the later they are designed, and they usually limit the range of operations. They are also a piece of tech that evolved tremendously between and during wars, in WWI planes were a game changer even if they were pretty terrible and highly flamable. Maybe some of us are more comfortable talking about other issues, Guns also have limitations if we're talking about RL earlier tech than 1940s.
So what do you think? Do we start the war at 1940 with biplanes and work up from there? Shall we say to set our technological clocks of the 1940s RP to RL 1920s, or to put it another way, start the Great War with late WWI tech?
I mean...I still get my Battleship Mikasa (1905) to begin the Honto expansion anyway and likely attack Oz's Australis colony around 1920
which I'll do as parallel to the
Russo-Japanese war
