This is *my* understanding, elder players and Mods are of course welcome to berate me and issue corrections.
1) News and stories are not necessarily restricted to countries. However, there are practical problems with non-country stories.
The player of a country has control of events inside that country and must be consulted regarding events directly effecting that country. Further that player is custodian of that country's history and past events.
Example : I posted a hypothetical raid on India, a real raid never would happen (much to Admiral Pienaar's disappointment) without first discussing it with the Indian player.
However, the Indian player can indicate support for insurgent movements in my realm...but it's up to me how and if I want that support to bear any fruit.
Since most locations are within player countries (not many NPCs out there), or effect them, thats where most of the news is.
2) In Wesworld, there have been substantial historical deviations from OTL, but the sharp break was about 1917.
Generally speaking Wesworld is on the OTL for technology.
The biggest exception is the aeronautical realm, which is +3 years for "current" (i.e. OTL 1938 production tech is "current" for 1935 Wesworld) and up to +5 years for "bleeding edge", which often requires some backing story if it is particularly innovative.
Italy is the best example, RA pushes that curve aggressively, but has built a storyline of Italy being a world leader in aircraft engines and being willing to field limited numbers of combat aircraft with engines requiring large amounts of handwork.
It should be noted that the point of the aircraft advance is to toy with advanced prop planes in the 1945-1950 period, as Jet tech will not be similarly advanced.
As a result of advanced aircraft, naval AA tech is also a bit ahead of the curve, with the vessels being far heavier armed with AAA, the first radar sets fielded, etc.
Tanks and armor started to creep ahead, with 50-55mm cannon fielded, but after a discussion (Indian thread? SA?) tanks are supposed to be 'period' or reasonably close. Again, a good rationale helps "sell" anything odd.
3) Production time... no stipulation other than be reasonable. Tanks 10-20/mo, planes probably twice that for a single firm.
4) Production capacity...also be reasonable.
Examples: Reynard aircraft is a small Belgian concern with one factory. They will be gaining a government order for the R-37, at which point it will take some time to gear up and then they might generate 20 fighters a month.
Fokker Aircraft is one of the leading manufacturers with a substantial civil division and factories and affiliates in several countries. They could generate a great deal more fighters should the financial incentive be there.
This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Kaiser Kirk" (Jan 17th 2008, 9:51am)