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View Full Version : Modern War and Centaurs: An Obsolete Race?



Mr. Mask
2015-06-08, 01:49 AM
Something interesting came up in a discussion about centaurs. The idea that militarily, they would be rendered obsolete, and any great military traditions or culture they possessed may be dashed.

The reason for this thought can be summed up briefly as: APCs are faster than horses, every major army uses APCs for travelling any notable distance in modern war, the speed of a centaur has small use among infantry and cavalry aren't useful outside of specific operations. Also, horses can barely crawl, and have a much higher profile, making taking cover and moving between cover a lot harder. There are other possible issues, but these are the most pressing.

For advantages, centaurs are of course much faster and have better carrying capacity. That latter point means they might be able to wield heavy weapons more commonly and carry heavier mortars and the like into battle.


There are other smaller issues and benefits. Transportation of centaurs and food costs seem like they'd be higher, digging a foxhole for a horse is hard, and may be especially depending on how well their bodies adapt to digging. Centaurs are strong, can wear heavier armour, and it's hard to put down a horse--but they're also bigger targets, and plenty of modern weapons can put down a horse pretty easy, and armour only gets you so far. Fitting inside a human house might be hard, a serious problem for urban fighting in human areas.


I sort of feel that if you had military centaurs, they'd be concerned about becoming defunct, and would develop strategies and tactics to try and play to their strengths in some new way. The question is, does such a way exist, and what is it? Have any ideas?

NRSASD
2015-06-08, 02:20 AM
In urban combat centaurs would face the same issues cavalry does: not enough room to maneuver. They can charge down a street, but they have no way of disengaging after that charge. Not mention the buildings are too small to fight in effectively, decent pieces of cover for centaurs are few and far in between, etc. Cities would be quite bad for centaurs.

A centaur on the modern battlefield would be at a huge advantage in hilly/mountainous guerrilla combat, in places like Afghanistan, Greece, or the Alps. They can pack much heavier weapons than the standard infantry, carry more supplies, access terrain that vehicles can't handle, and possibly even support themselves in the field through foraging (depends on the style of centaur).

They'd be scarily effective as mobile anti-air/anti-armor platforms, being able to turn up practically anywhere with more firepower than a human could manage. Likewise, with lots of loose rock and boulders, it becomes more practical for them to take cover in a fire fight than it would in a city or level terrain. Additionally, they could reposition their forces a lot faster than humans could, which strongly promotes the shoot and scoot style of fighting.

Would they outperform human troops in these conditions? Maybe. Despite it being easier for centaurs to hide in rocky hills than in cities, it's still hard for them to hide. Not to mention that any tunnel system large enough to accommodate a centaur would be easy to detect, so they would lack an easily defensible base to operate from. Ultimately, I think they'd give any modern attacking force a run for their money, but the centaurs would be unable to go on the offensive outside of their terrain. In a best case scenario, it would probably play out like the first Soviet assault during the Winter War of 1939.

Eldan
2015-06-08, 04:54 AM
They could carry more supplies, but presumably, being much heavier, they'd also need more. Depending on whether their physiology was more horse or human, they'd also need a whole lot more water and have less endurance.

Murk
2015-06-08, 05:23 AM
I think the main issue here is that you're putting centaur society/military in otherwise human environments.

Yes, centaurs probably wouldn't fare as well in human cities, because the streets are too cramped and the centaurs too big. They would fare perfectly in centaur cities, though. Humans, on the other hand, would have problems crossing the broad centaur streets quickly or finding cover in the open spaced centaur buildings.

In the same fashion, large centaur societies probably wouldn't evolve in ragged cliff country or dense forests. Large centaur militaries would protect (or invade) large open fields and low rolling hills. In here, having a slightly larger tank to sit in, or having to dig slightly larger fox holes doesn't matter that much: accuracy and being able to attack from larger distances are much more important.
Especially if the playing field is level - if centaurs have the same amount of technology as other races -, the technology should be able to compensate most biological disadvantages. For a catapult, it doesn't matter is the mechanic has four or two legs. An airplane can carry a horse just as well as a human.

It does raise an interesting question about warfare and size. In pre-technology fases, being big is good. The bigger you are, the harder you can smash. It does seem, however, as you stated, that once technology takes over, being small is preferable. Halfling tanks can hit just as hard as human tanks, but they are more maneouverable and harder to hit back.
That doesn't bode well for centaurs, but I think that as technology advances, their biological disadvantages should decrease in importance.

Ettina
2015-06-08, 09:19 AM
Nothing's stopping a centaur from designed a tank shaped for a centaur driver.

Murk
2015-06-08, 10:03 AM
Nothing's stopping a centaur from designed a tank shaped for a centaur driver.

Those tanks will be bigger than tanks designed for humans, which has its disadvantages.
Which makes me conclude that halflings will rule tech-advanced worlds.

goto124
2015-06-08, 10:06 AM
Tinker gnomes.

TurboGhast
2015-06-08, 04:16 PM
Those tanks will be bigger than tanks designed for humans, which has its disadvantages.
Which makes me conclude that halflings will rule tech-advanced worlds.


Tinker gnomes.

It makes perfect sense that Tinker Gnomes would rule the world upon getting modern tech because they already have steampunk!

Segev
2015-06-08, 05:17 PM
It's an interesting question you've openned up, here: how WOULD cities where centaurs were a large plurality look? How would cities built and run by centaurs differ from mixed-race (say just human and centaur for now) cities?

How do horses do on stairs, for example? And, if they have difficulty, how much of it is due to being animal-intelligence (such that a centaur's human-esq mind could overcome it)? Would ramps be the alternative? Aside from the larger space requirements making things more expensive, would any of the centaur-centric architectural choices be as inconvenient for humans as the human-centric ones could make things for centaurs?

Horses can lie down. They don't really "sit" all that well. How would, say, a classroom full of centaurs look? All standing-room, or would they have some sort of furniture for resting on? What would their beds, if any, look like? Their bathrooms? The problem with horses in real life when it comes to their excretions is that they have no self-control; presumably the intelligent centaurs could and would.

WOULD centaurs have clothing for their horse-halves? Would they share human senses of propriety regarding their sex and excretion organs? What would such clothes look like? Can they even meaningfully clothe their hindquarters, given human reach and centaur scale? (Can they clean themselves? There's no part of the human body, save perhaps the center of our backs, that we cannot contort to reach with at least one hand; is the same true of centaurs? I doubt it...)

What WOULD vehicles designed for centaur use look like? Vehicles designed to transport horses would not be considred acceptable by an intelligent species that is peer to humans. Plus, centaurs doubtless would want to be able to drive themselves about, too. It'd be interesting to watch the technical development: horses would be a human's personal choice for carriage-pulling, except when they either don't own a horse (in which case a hired/rented centaur driver is cheaper because he's both driver and steed) or they CAN afford a manservant driver (who is a centaur). As cars developed, centaurs would likely be LATE adopters, if only because they can pull their own wagons around easily using the existing-for-horses harnesses.

But at the same time, would it be a strictly human invention? Even if it were, would it be strictly designed for humans, or with the awareness that centaurs might want it, too...even if just as a novelty? Would the concept of pedals be used for the equine feet of a centaur, or would something else be the preferred means of controlling a car's speeds and gears? Designing the cab of a car for a centaur is a strange prospect.

And would, even pre-car, there be carriages for centaurs to travel "in style" within? I mean, nothing prevents humans from walking from place to place, but carriages were a thing. As were litters/palanquins. Some equivalent may have long since evolved for Centaurs.

A fair number of these questions ca nbe answered in part by determining what a centaur's "sitting" equivalent is. Yes, horses can theoretically mimic the dog-sit position, but is that really going to serve the same purpose? Humans sit to take weight off their feet while keeping upright and ready to move and engage with the world. Centaurs...probably can't lie prone, really. Maybe they'd lay down, horse-style, then lay their torsos forward onto a half-bed sort of thing? Would that be restful for their whole body? Would just cushions on which to fold their legs beneath them work?

Somebody with more experience with horses might have answers.

Eisenheim
2015-06-08, 05:27 PM
Centaurs are at a disadvantage from the true death of cavalry through the second world war and Korean War technology levels, and would presumably mostly serve in logistical roles during such conflicts, in a mixed military.

Once large scale helicopter deployment become feasible, centaurs will excel as a rapid-reaction force, able to usefully deploy from a safer landing zone farther from the enemy and quickly arrive with significantly more heavy weapons and ammunition than an equivalent human force could transport. Thus, in the truly modern military, centaurs serve in two primary roles: artillery and special forces, both roles which make maximum use of their physiological advantages.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-08, 05:33 PM
With the helicopters, apparently helicopter insertions can get within a few hundred yards of the enemy. Which puts a bit of a damper on centaur advantages.

Maglubiyet
2015-06-08, 05:54 PM
Why only centaurs? The arguments you make would apply equally to ogres, cyclops, minotaurs, etc. (Also remember, APC's are faster than humans too!...)

That being said, centaurs might do very well in rugged terrain where their opponents' vehicles can't travel or maneuver well. Mountainous regions where APC's and tanks would be restricted to a narrow valley, heavily-forested areas with old-growth trees, desert canyons, swamps, marshlands, and bogs. They could strike from the flanks with heavy weapons then flee faster than humans could pursue on foot.

The Evil DM
2015-06-08, 06:03 PM
I am of the opinion that many of the arguments made for the advantages and disadvantages in various conditions is part of the argument behind the trope that has the various faerie and fantastic species moving away from agricultural civilization into the rugged terrain and dense forests.

If survival would indicate that these species go where they have an advantage, when civilization presses against them they move away from civilization.

Cealocanth
2015-06-08, 06:32 PM
I could imagine centaurs would be incredibly useful in pre-WWI warfare, but I'm not going to nitpick on your definition of 'modern'.

So the question is whether or not an armed horse is any useful in modern guerilla-style warfare. The disadvantages would be that they are huge and difficult to hide, require more food, are less dexterous on mountainous terrain, and are easier to hit. There are some advantages to having centaurs in modern warfare, though. Centaurs are faster than humans at a sprint and can be mounted by humans for maximum efficiency, making short-distance movement faster. Centaurs are renowned for their marksmanship, and assuming that carries over to assault rifles and machine guns, centaurs would be much deadlier on the battlefield than humans in general. Centaurs can carry heavier weapons and more ammunition, meaning that some weapons that aren't usually quickly mobile (such as a minigun) become much more practical for on the field use. Centaurs are also more intimidating and generally stronger, which makes them good for crowd suppression.

Now that I think about it, while centaurs would be a lousy choice for most actual engagements, they would make fantastic peacekeepers. A large centaur, armored in that which keeps him protected yet mobile (such as kevlar), wielding a suppressive fire weapon, would probably be the one to send in in the event of a riot or other crowd-suppression type operation.

Eisenheim
2015-06-08, 06:40 PM
With the helicopters, apparently helicopter insertions can get within a few hundred yards of the enemy. Which puts a bit of a damper on centaur advantages.

It really depends on the situation. Sometimes you really would prefer to keep your helicopters farther from the enemy. Ever seen Blackhawk Down?

Mr. Mask
2015-06-08, 06:46 PM
The helicopter insertion wasn't so much the issue. It went pretty well. It was the extraction via land route that failed miserably.

Maglubiyet
2015-06-08, 06:58 PM
The helicopter insertion wasn't so much the issue. It went pretty well. It was the extraction via land route that failed miserably.

In that particular situation centaurs would've probably done better than the Rangers. Roadblocks wouldn't have stopped them, the sound of their convoy wouldn't have given away their position, they could've carried a heck of a lot more ammo and firepower, and they could've outpaced all of their foot pursuers.

I'm just having a hard time picturing those little human arms holding up a horse body while fast-roping.

cobaltstarfire
2015-06-08, 08:11 PM
Couldn't some of the problems of size be fixed by giving centaurs as much size variance as there is in real life equines?

Need smaller bodies for various modern war things? The centaur armed forces would likely see a shift in focus towards the pony sized demographic.


Though I'm not sure centaurs would be "good" with trench warfare, even if they could easily dig out big enough trenches for themselves. Trench warfare was really awful on humans, but the super damp/muddy/unsanitary conditions of it would be far worse for the horse part of a centaur, as it'd turn their hooves into infection ridden moosh.

Milo v3
2015-06-08, 08:18 PM
One weakness centaurs would have is that they'd need a human around to get most of their advantages, since it'd be difficult to pick things up or reach anything that's in their packs. Being able to carry more doesn't help if they can't actually reach for the stuff they carry.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-08, 10:24 PM
I figure a centaur would need a greater range of movement around the human waist, so that they could tun around and lean around their horse half. It might look pretty weird to humans, like a contortionist.


Cobalt: They could probably take similar measures to other soldiers in WW1. Wear boots and leggings, and clean your feet regularly.


Anyone know how quickly a horse can crawl?

Leon
2015-06-09, 12:22 AM
Why only centaurs? The arguments you make would apply equally to ogres, cyclops, minotaurs, etc. (Also remember, APC's are faster than humans too!...)


I would say as they have the distinction of being on Four legs instead of Two


One weakness centaurs would have is that they'd need a human around to get most of their advantages, since it'd be difficult to pick things up or reach anything that's in their packs. Being able to carry more doesn't help if they can't actually reach for the stuff they carry.

Why a Human and not an allied Centaur and have stuff not on the ground for access (although they can lie down and such)

cobaltstarfire
2015-06-09, 12:48 AM
Now I'm imagining centaurs with a "waist" area with special bones similar to a birds neck or something to allow more twisting ability.

Though I don't think they need a super huge amount of flexibility just to be able to reach their backs and things, they can reach their human backs, and it's not hard to imagine them able to turn the human part of their bodies to reach some of their horse backs. I imagine that centaurs would be a very social species so they can help each other out with more sophisticated needs.

Picking up fallen objects would be a little more time consuming than for a humanoid, it doesn't strike me as something impossible or even especially difficult for a healthy centaur to do.




Cobalt: They could probably take similar measures to other soldiers in WW1. Wear boots and leggings, and clean your feet regularly.




Yes that's a given, but it didn't make the issues associated with all the muck and wet just go away. Upkeep of a horses hooves is not an easy thing, if it was difficult for humans to deal with, it's going to be much worse for centaurs.


It's a good question on how fast can horses crawl, I don't think very fast. But when I think of a horse crawling I think of a very sick animal, so maybe a healthy horse-like being purposely crawling could go a bit faster.

5ColouredWalker
2015-06-09, 01:33 AM
Centaurs are given human size arms mostly due to scale, specifically making them not look as monstrous. Longer arms [with perhaps an additional joint.] would solve a number of problems.

Also, Centaurs are always represented as a smaller subset of the sentient population than Humans [and their equivalents.], given how Humans treat each other they'd likely only survive until modern times by becoming extremely isolationist, living where no one else wants to [Antarctica?], or becoming a subservient race to humans.
In the case of becoming subservient, centaurs are rarely shown as mounts, but can be mounted. A mixed group with 1-3 humans and 5-10 centaurs would keep all the bonuses of being centaurs while having humans to assist wher scale can become a problem.
However given how Centaurs are supposed to be proud and Humans have treated our own population subsets by phenotype, I don't see Centaurs becoming subservient to humans.


Ok, let's say they go isolationist... Look at modern isolationist tribes such as those in the Amazon, do they look like they'd do well in a modern war?

Mr. Mask
2015-06-09, 02:29 AM
At the very least, centaurs have twice the foot-care concerns.

Crawling is a trick sometimes taught to horses, but I'm not sure how fast they can go or how quickly it tires them.


Maglu, Leon: The main difference is the difficulty crawling. Ogres would have similar issues with being a large target even when crawling, so they might have the same issues.

5ColouredWalker
2015-06-09, 02:42 AM
Maglu, Leon: The main difference is the difficulty crawling. Ogres would have similar issues with being a large target even when crawling, so they might have the same issues.

Yet, they suffer less problems due to not being 'Large Long', and them being of humanoid shape allows them to use many human technologies just by scaling them up, which you can't do with Centaurs.

NRSASD
2015-06-09, 03:59 AM
One thing that I was thinking about is how would size affect weapon development in the modern era. For example, anti-tank rifles became obsolete near the end of WW1 as it became impractical to build a rifle capable of firing a large enough bullet to damage a tank without maiming its user in the process. Centaurs, on the other hand, would probably be able to keep that line of weapons around longer due to their more robust physiques. If centaur civilization was as large and as numerous as humans and had a comparable tech level, I suspect modern ballistic armor would have a hard time resisting shots from Centaur weapons due to the higher velocity and/or caliber that they'd be using. I guess what I'm saying is that Centaurs wouldn't necessarily be packing around human machine guns, but more likely giant-sized version assault rifles.

Likewise, halflings would have a hard time operating firearms that pack a similar punch to human weapons, due to their smaller size. Halflings probably wouldn't be the be-all-end-all infantry in a modern setting, though their smaller yet just as deadly vehicles would probably beat human equivalents in an even fight.

While its true that proper cavalry have a rough time charging or maneuvering in mountainous terrain, a horse or mule can walk on trails pretty much anywhere. Look at how the Afghan forces resupplied when fighting the Russians during the 1979-1989 conflict. They used mule trains to move supplies to positions that land vehicles couldn't reach and helicopters couldn't access without taking fire. With centaurs, they'd be the soldiers and the pack train all in one.

I really do like the idea of Centaur riot police though. No one wants to mess with someone holding a shield the size of your front door who can punch and kick you with both feet while holding the line.

5ColouredWalker
2015-06-09, 04:20 AM
I'd like to point out something rather important.
The human part of the centaur body almost certainly has human level strength.

Sure, you could get around squad level weapons by having them brace against the horse portion, but aiming them will be a bitch. But for regular riffles? They just pack a boat load more ammo than a regular person could. In modern warfare supposedly 100s of rounds are spent per hit/kill, with that mostly being suppression where you get into position to actually kill. Imagine a race where that was just using a large amount of ammo [Say, 1/5th of what you're carrying], instead of wasting all the ammo you have to kill one guy, so now you get to sit there with an empty riffle.

Murk
2015-06-09, 05:39 AM
I'd like to point out something rather important.
The human part of the centaur body almost certainly has human level strength.

Sure, you could get around squad level weapons by having them brace against the horse portion, but aiming them will be a bitch.

That's because weapons as we know it are made for humans: we brace them against/on our shoulders, our arms or sometimes our hips, because those are the most stable body parts we have. Centaurs have other, more stable parts (probably in their horse parts), so their weapons would look differently.

Supporting a rifle with their horse parts would mean those weapons couldn't fire straight ahead (because there's a human torso in the way). However, there's already som discussion going on about the flexibility of the human torso. I'm thinking they could bear huge weapons which they would fire sideways: flex their human torso's 90 degrees and aim perendicular to their horse bodies rather than in its extent.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-09, 07:33 AM
Broadsides with horses is a pretty interesting idea. I'm not sure if their balance and bracing is made for sudden jolts from the side, though. Personally, I figure you'd be better to rig a harness around the horse body that the gun is braced in, then fiddle with the gun directly or via some extension of the trigger. Aiming may still be difficult.

Another possibility is to turn the human body around 180 degrees, then use a gun braced on the centaur's own back like a turret.

Flickerdart
2015-06-09, 08:13 AM
Centaurs are renowned for their marksmanship, and assuming that carries over to assault rifles and machine guns, centaurs would be much deadlier on the battlefield than humans in general.
Damn, that's a good point - a centaur sniper would be able to absorb the impact from progressively heavier anti-materiel rifles than their human counterparts, allowing them to carry ridiculously accurate and deadly weaponry. Centaur special forces would be able to quickly close to range, deliver pinpoint fire, and then turn around and run away at a pace that the enemy won't be able to match unless they scramble vehicles in time. Having a higher profile than a prone human isn't terribly useful when you're three km away.

And physical dimensions stop mattering once everyone is fielding drones, anyway.

hymer
2015-06-09, 08:25 AM
And physical dimensions stop mattering once everyone is fielding drones, anyway.

This. It's maybe a 150 year window, it seems, between the horse becoming obsolete on a human-centric battlefield and the human becoming likewise obsolete. That's not so long in the history of warfare.

Edit: Of course, the horse still had (has?) roles as support and the occasional front line niche for quite a while.

Flickerdart
2015-06-09, 10:25 AM
This. It's maybe a 150 year window, it seems, between the horse becoming obsolete on a human-centric battlefield and the human becoming likewise obsolete. That's not so long in the history of warfare.
I was curious about how long the history of warfare actually was, and went to look it up. Though there are dig sites that suggest warfare due to the number of bodies that met violent ends, the earliest recorded battle we know of is apparently from 3500BC. So that's 5500 years of battlefields, of which the 150yr window is 2.7%.

Segev
2015-06-09, 10:25 AM
Thinking of the heavier weapons, building a weapon whose mass and shock-absorption was designed to channel it back and down through the hindquarters would look bulky, but wouldn't actually be that much more awkward for a centaur. Less so, perhaps, than a backpack for a human. So yes, MUCH larger weapons with much higher recoil would be centaur-fieldable.


If we assume a world of humans and centaurs (and no other fantasy races), the tribalism would be a thing, but I think a certain amount of intermingling would still occur. Let's hypothetically give central Asia to the centaurs, and say that Gengis Khan and the mongols were of that species. (Given the closer relation between mongols and east oriental asians than to Europeans and Africans, let's assume that the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Korean peoples are also predomineantly centaurs.) Genghis Khan ran his military on the power of his cavalry, so this works for that historical period.

I imagine that the chinese immigrants, therefore, to the US during the gold rush and the railroad boom would have, instead, been centaurs, and that they would occupy similar roles in American history. Again, it makes a certain amount of sense: centaurs would be massively powerful laberors for railroad construction, amongst other things.

This would mean they were in a slightly more menial role, culturally, in the US, until fairly recently. Discrimination would have spiked around WWII, assuming the Japanese centaurs had the same sort of aerial bombing capability and perpetrated the attack on Pearl Harbor similarly. The design of a centaur-made airplane cockpit is an interesting engineering question, at least to me.

(Tangentially, this would also mean that anime featured centaurs almost exclusively, and would reverse the stereotype about the relative size of visiting Americans and Europeans: they'd be human and thus SMALLER than the locals. Japanese culture applied to centaurs would also be kind of interesting.)

So, in modern warfare, under those assumptions, centaurs would be the rarer sight in US and other Western armies. They likely would be in more specialist roles. That said, we still would have ample technology designed to accommodate them; it wouldn't be even so rare as handicapped-accessible technology. Especially in the military, where we're not sending somebody wheelchair-bound into combat, but centaurs absolutely could be on the front lines.

In the middle east, the same strengths which made them awesome forces under the Khan would make them powerful anti-guerrilla forces.



Of course, this shifts if you decide centaurs have a different historical distribution. If they were, instead, as common as humans and as diverse as humans, rather than semi-replacing one particualr human ethnicity, then it's more likely that you'd have highly intermixed cultures. You would have some where the humans dominated, and some where the centaurs did, and some where they were generally equal. I imagine, at least for more tribal societies, centaurs would more commonly dominate due to physical superiority. Humans would be handmaids and butlers, equals in crafting but assistants in hunting. Whether this would invert in more civilized cultures is another question. Whether it would invert in some savage tribes just by virtue of humans being able to win fights despite the centaur's size advantages (thus subjugating them) is also a question.

There's a huge amount of room for speculative fiction, here.

Flickerdart
2015-06-09, 11:31 AM
Of course, this shifts if you decide centaurs have a different historical distribution. If they were, instead, as common as humans and as diverse as humans, rather than semi-replacing one particualr human ethnicity, then it's more likely that you'd have highly intermixed cultures. You would have some where the humans dominated, and some where the centaurs did, and some where they were generally equal. I imagine, at least for more tribal societies, centaurs would more commonly dominate due to physical superiority. Humans would be handmaids and butlers, equals in crafting but assistants in hunting. Whether this would invert in more civilized cultures is another question. Whether it would invert in some savage tribes just by virtue of humans being able to win fights despite the centaur's size advantages (thus subjugating them) is also a question.
I would imagine that centaurs would dominate along the steppes of south-eastern Europe and north-western Asia; a possible dromedary variant could reign supreme in Africa and the Middle East. In fact, a successful enough centaur could drive homo sapiens sapiens to extinction before the final exodus from Africa, causing the descendants of Denisovans and Neanderthals to inherit Asia and Europe respectively.

Humans would occupy the forests of Europe and coastlines, where their smaller stature would allow for an earlier development of boats and thus better fishing and travel. This is interesting because the centaurs would control overland trade and humans would excel in naval trade. This means that Scandinavia, England, and the various Mediterranean states would all be human-dominant, as well as Oceania. The East to West migrations of the Völkerwanderung would be predominantly centaur based, leading to an even higher geographic division between centaur and human. Attila and the Magyars would have both been centaurs.

JAL_1138
2015-06-09, 11:48 AM
It makes perfect sense that Tinker Gnomes would rule the world upon getting modern tech because they already have steampunk!

You forget that Tinker Gnomes a) are insane, b) have zero or less common sense, and c) tend to explode. :smalltongue:

MrZJunior
2015-06-09, 12:37 PM
Wouldn't you expect integrated societies to be more effective than unintegrated ones, giving them an advantage and making integration the rule rather than the exception?

Flickerdart
2015-06-09, 01:32 PM
Wouldn't you expect integrated societies to be more effective than unintegrated ones, giving them an advantage and making integration the rule rather than the exception?
Things don't happen just because they would be more effective. Cultural barriers would make integration very difficult, and geographical separation would mean that it would rarely have the opportunity to happen.

BRC
2015-06-09, 01:59 PM
Hrmm, lets think about this.

Frontline combat would be tricky. While they could wield bigger guns, they're less capable of using cover. Their torsos are kind of stuck in the "SHOOT ME!" position.

One place I could see Centaurs coming into play is as field medics (Where, hopefully, nobody should be shooting at them in the first place). With the right equipment, a wounded soldier could be stabilized, secured to the Centaur's back, and carried away back to a field hospital.
Alternatively, while they are vulnerable to sniper fire, they could make excellent support teams. A mortar team of two centaurs and a human would be pretty effective. One Centaur carries the Mortar itself, the other carries the human who (because Centaurs have trouble reaching the ground to set up the mortar) sets up and operates the Mortar, with centaurs acting as loaders/spotters and guards.

Also, as has been mentioned, Centaur snipers.

Hawkstar
2015-06-09, 02:42 PM
Centaurs would probably not abandon plate armor with the development of guns - they'd just wear develop heavier plate - at least on the front, to the point that you need to use anti-armor/material rounds to get through the plating. It may cost them a fair bit of mobility, but being nigh-invulnerable to small-arms fire from the front would be pretty valuable.

mephnick
2015-06-09, 03:02 PM
Man, I love this place. My wife asked me what I needed to finish reading before starting lunch and I told her "A discussion on whether centaurs would be obsolete in a modern warfare scenario." I cannot describe the face she made.

I'm not sure how long I'm going to be married.

Maglubiyet
2015-06-09, 06:23 PM
Latrines. How do they use them?

JAL_1138
2015-06-09, 06:49 PM
Latrines. How do they use them?

A wider opening, a longer stall, and they back themselves into the stall?

Mr. Mask
2015-06-09, 06:57 PM
If a centaur's organs are doubled up and redundant, does this mean many centaur survivors of the war go around in wheelchairs, their horse halves amputated due to gangrene? Is it conceivable that some who suffered fatal gangrene had their human torso amputated, their human head graft to their horse body where the human waist once was?

Hawkstar
2015-06-09, 08:57 PM
If a centaur's organs are doubled up and redundant, does this mean many centaur survivors of the war go around in wheelchairs, their horse halves amputated due to gangrene? Is it conceivable that some who suffered fatal gangrene had their human torso amputated, their human head graft to their horse body where the human waist once was?The first... no. They don't have full redundancy (Though the redundancy MAY be useful to the soldiers) And considering the second requires decapitating them...

Mr. Mask
2015-06-09, 09:07 PM
What do you mean? What are they missing from their redundancy? The only thing I can immediately think of that the upper body might be missing is intestines, and you can survive without those.

And head transplants have been performed successfully, even attaching a second head to a dog, with both capable of eating and behaving normally (the second head is connected to the body's systems via surgery). The dogs die after a while due to rejection, but supposedly the horse body doesn't reject the human body in centaurs.

Cluedrew
2015-06-09, 09:36 PM
Ah, interesting territory here. Classical Centaur biology, while it looks cool, doesn't really make sense if you want to be realistic about it. Normally I would discourage that but here I think it is a valid point.

For instance where do the internal organs go? It is unlikely that a creature would develop two copies of them, so maybe the only vital organ in the "upper torso" would be the lungs. And maybe a second heart or something. This means the upper torso would probably be little more than half the size of a human torso, although it might make up some space to but another and more flexible join in there so they can reach their backs, or lean forward.

Another point is that their legs might be a lot more flexible than an actual horse's, allowing them to roll, kneel and crawl if not as well as human, probably better than horses. I for one have trouble believing any sentient races with opposable thumbs would have trouble reaching the ground.

I don't have time to run through all the repercussions right now but I think that is a start.

Also two races that would really excel in modern warfare: Pixies and anything with an affinity for lightning.

Maglubiyet
2015-06-09, 09:44 PM
A wider opening, a longer stall, and they back themselves into the stall?

This need alone should push them into obsolescence. You can't fit as many centaur Port-A-Potties on the back of a truck.

Leon
2015-06-10, 04:03 AM
This need alone should push them into obsolescence. You can't fit as many centaur Port-A-Potties on the back of a truck.

Backhoe and a few partition walls means no potties needed

Flickerdart
2015-06-10, 07:35 AM
Would centaurs even have such a huge emphasis on privacy when excreting? The classical versions don't even wear clothes.

Murk
2015-06-10, 08:05 AM
Would centaurs even have such a huge emphasis on privacy when excreting? The classical versions don't even wear clothes.

I think military latrines have more to do with your soldiers dying due to bad hygiëne than privacy.

Kind of depends on centaur diet though. If they eat grass, their excretions are bound to be less toxics than human.

Segev
2015-06-10, 09:19 AM
Would centaurs even have such a huge emphasis on privacy when excreting? The classical versions don't even wear clothes.

If we are assuming human minds by-and-large, then it is probable that they would develop social moores akin to those of humans. If nothing else, in colder climes, clothes keep one warmer, and one's "bits" may well benefit from such thermal protection, as well. In terms of privacy and such, the reason why they don't have issue in most fiction is that fiction is written by humans, and humans "forget" that animals have private parts that are exposed due to their nakedness. We tend to assume fur is "covering" in the same way hair is. Add that horses, the part of the centaur which would do excretion, do not care, and the human-centric assumption is that the behavior is the same.

I suspect that a human-headed centaur would appreciate hygene as much as a human-headed human does, however, and thus latrines and later indoor plumbing would be appreciated by centaurs.

Regarding clothing, for a moment imagine animal-headed humans with animal intelligence. If such existed, humans would still probably be equally uncomfortable with their nakedness as we are with human nakedness. If centaurs have a human sensibility regarding sex (which is not unreasonable to assume, particularly if the culture is shared), then they likely are not only uncomfortable having their private parts exposed, but may well prefer to see horses at least wearing some sort of concealing skirt or kilt.

Given how humans react to bared midriffs (that is, we mostly are okay with them, but they're still...alluring), centaurs may feel similarly about equine body exposure. Or they may not, considering it to be no worse than we do having our legs and arms exposed.

endoperez
2015-06-10, 09:19 AM
Hmm what's going on in this threa...


Broadsides with horses is a pretty interesting idea.

BROADSIDES WITH HORSES?! Well that didn't go as I expected, I wonder if...


Another possibility is to turn the human body around 180 degrees, then use a gun braced on the centaur's own back like a turret.

Wait what?!!


Sorry, I couldn't resist. It's an interesting thread, but it went into places I absolutely did NOT expect! :smallbiggrin:

Flickerdart
2015-06-10, 09:29 AM
If centaurs have a human sensibility regarding sex (which is not unreasonable to assume, particularly if the culture is shared), then they likely are not only uncomfortable having their private parts exposed, but may well prefer to see horses at least wearing some sort of concealing skirt or kilt.
If that were a shorter sentence, it would definitely be going into my signature.

Segev
2015-06-10, 09:33 AM
If that were a shorter sentence, it would definitely be going into my signature.

You could probably remove the parenthetical bit, if that helps. Or try "Centaurs are probably not just uncomfortable having their privates exposed, but would prefer to see at least skirts or kilts on horses."

hymer
2015-06-10, 09:43 AM
@ Segev: Just have to point out that not all humans have stereotypical puritanical values with regards to nudity and the like. I'm sure people could learn not to be bothered by centaur 'nudity' if exposed to it often enough.

Segev
2015-06-10, 09:45 AM
@ Segev: Just have to point out that not all humans have stereotypical puritanical values with regards to nudity and the like. I'm sure people could learn not to be bothered by centaur 'nudity' if exposed to it often enough.

You could be right. It would be largely a matter of culture. My point mainly being that the same things which give rise to human nudity taboos could do so for centaurs.

hymer
2015-06-10, 09:47 AM
You could be right. It would be largely a matter of culture. My point mainly being that the same things which give rise to human nudity taboos could do so for centaurs.

I don't disagree with the point, merely with the use of 'humans' as apparently inherently averse to nudity.

DigoDragon
2015-06-10, 09:53 AM
How modern are we talking? With robots and drones entering the battlefield, centaurs can join us humans behind the lines.


Heh, 'battle saddles'-- a harness with guns mounted on either side for a centaur.

Murk
2015-06-10, 10:24 AM
How modern are we talking? With robots and drones entering the battlefield, centaurs can join us humans behind the lines.

Even then, the drones have to shoot at someone. It would be awesome if future wars could be fought by just letting drones shoot each other, and the winner is the one with the strongest drone, but, meh, I don't think so. Nowadays, in any case, there are no drone-on-drone battles yet: it's mostly drones shooting people.

So I assume that even if centaurs had drones, the drones would shoot other centaurs, or humans, or gnomes, or what have you. Size and mobility (dis)advantages would then still play a role (although a smaller one).

Segev
2015-06-10, 10:32 AM
Drone-based warfare will eventually reach a point of drone-v-drone, but the ultimate victory will not be won until at least one side is shooting at the flesh-and-blood targets on the other. The whole reason war happens is because at least one side is willing to perpetrate violence to the point of imprisonment and death upon those who don't do what they want them to. If those so threatened are not willing to capitulate and provide what is wanted (which could be simply their deaths), they will have to engage in enough violence to prevent their destruction or imprisonment and to ultimately convince the aggressor to stop aggressing.

War will never be civilized, no matter how we dress it up. War's rules truly boil down to "what works?" To make the other side surrender, you'll almost always have to at least menace their people. Probably have to kill more than a few.

DigoDragon
2015-06-10, 11:03 AM
Even then, the drones have to shoot at someone. It would be awesome if future wars could be fought by just letting drones shoot each other, and the winner is the one with the strongest drone, but, meh, I don't think so. Nowadays, in any case, there are no drone-on-drone battles yet: it's mostly drones shooting people.

I'm imagining a future world where human-centaur conflicts are settled in an arena via the game show 'Robot Wars'. :smallbiggrin:

Stellar_Magic
2015-06-10, 02:52 PM
This is a rather interesting discussion, but I'm surprised by some of the points for Centaurs that have obviously been missed. While the human portion of a centaur body isn't stronger then a human, the horse portion of the body is a lot stronger. Just using the Pathfinder stats as a base line, how much modern troops carry into battle, and so forth... we get a ratio like this:

Modern human soldier - 100+ lbs of combat gear.
Modern centaur soldier - 600+ lbs of combat gear.

Applying that ratio to ammunition, and you get 1,260 rounds of ammunition to a centaur rifleman, compared to 210 for modern human with an M-16. It gets really ridiculous if you look at say the ammo load for a SAW or other machine gun... You're talking 3 thousand plus rounds of ammunition.

Centaurs don't need over-sized guns to be effective either... their ability to carry more then humans means that they could easily go into battle with 6 times the amount of ammo for normal guns as humans. Instead of an RPG soldier having three RPGs in a backpack, they could have 18!

Plus their racial tendencies for marksmanship and mobility, they would be a devastating force on the modern battle.

There's a reason DARPA is throwing so much money into developing robotic mules and so forth... Centaurs wouldn't need to, they are their own pack mules.

Flickerdart
2015-06-10, 03:22 PM
How often is running out of ammunition really an issue in a real combat zone, though? A soldier doesn't spend all his time with his finger pulling the trigger.

daremetoidareyo
2015-06-10, 04:32 PM
How often is running out of ammunition really an issue in a real combat zone, though? A soldier doesn't spend all his time with his finger pulling the trigger.

WWI slowed to a crawl due to the misplaced assumptions about how quickly machine guns ate ammunition.

Here's the thing, the Tank was invented because of the use of barbed wire on the battlefield. A heavily armored centaur line with the proper leg protection could clear barbed wire in no time, with a phalanx of soldiers behind them. Trenches wouldn't have lasted very long if the Germans had an elitely armored centaur squad invading each new trench.

Centaur tactics would not be able to sustain the worldwide cultural connotations about how to conduct war. They are skirmishers. They aren't known for organizational tactics. They would have far more in common with ancient celtic forces than ancient roman ones. They would be great at sabotaging supply lines, particularly in terrain with high relief. They would not be very good in combat situations on level terrain with little cover and would seek to avoid that or compensate technologically.

Particularly strong centaurs would have an actually effective flamethrowing capacity, seeing as they could hold a bunch of fuel, but the utility of flamethrowing is circumspect. But bazooka and rocket propelled grenades would be grand weaponry for these creatures however.

But lets take a second and ponder what technology a centaur would invent to kill enemies. They don't seem like a race that could easily take to industry, they are too communally based a species, as are most foraging human cultures.

The broadside idea could work in dual centaur teams. One centaur braces the broadside shooter. They then switch spots and the bracer shoots his broadside while the other braces him and reloads.

Centaurs, with the right tools, could destroy terrain for humans. The hooves themselves churn the supple earth. But with power tools, even roads wouldn't be safe. And those power tools could be powered by horseback generators.

Segev
2015-06-10, 04:45 PM
At the risk of arguing for no good reason, I think it is risking falling into a trap to assume that centaur mindset would be different from human in a specific way based on representations in fiction. The "communal" and "gatherer" societies depicted are not so different from human societies of the times from whence those stories come; they're not the societies of the main tale-tellers, but of the barbarian tribes surrounding them (from their perspective).

Centaur would get as much if not more benefit from the same sorts of basic civilizing influences and behaviors that human societies enjoyed, perhaps most notably in agriculture. With the increased caloric needs of the more massive bodies, the much more reliable food generation of a farm or ranch would be of interest to them. Furthermore, their equine legs would enable them to keep up much more easily with herd animals, while their ability to get by without having to have separate beasts of burden for plowing fields and the like would be great boons, as well.

In fact, in simple farm life, I think centaurs would be better at it than humans. I'm struggling to think of what a human partner would have to offer in a shared farm or farming community. (I mean, yes, an extra set of hands is an extra set of hands, but is there anything where the human farmhand contributes something the centaur farmer couldn't get from another of his own kind?)

Anyway, the point here is that we will likely get a more interesting and less arbitrarily uninclusive setting out of assuming that centaur interests are the same as human ones, except where their biological differences would dictate otherwise (e.g. needing more food, or having to have different design requirements for buildings and vehicles meant to accommodate them).

Mr. Mask
2015-06-10, 06:08 PM
Endo: Indeed I agree. This thread has been a lot more fun than I suspected. I might start one about another fantasy race becoming obsolete in modern war, next week.


Segev: It's possible humans' lower centre of gravity might be somewhat more useful for certain jobs, like picking vegetables or tilling, and halflings or the like might be better still. They'd by no means have to hire humans, as could take turns pulling their own ploughs (this makes me wonder how centaurs would see normal horses).


Dare: I'd recommend recoilless rifles. They'll still operate in fireteams, but that way they can fire without much need for bracing. Mortars would also be good, but I'm not sure if a horse would appreciate someone using their back as a base-plate. They might be able to rig some kind of tripod suit, where supports quickly unfurl, taking the energy of the recoil. But that sounds like it'd have enough complications that simply placing the mortar on the ground first isn't a bad option.



I mentioned in another thread that faster soldiers also means a bigger ambush and mêlée radius. Not many bayonet charges have been successfully perpetrated lately, but some have. Centaurs would get some of that, particularly since they can literally run down human enemies. At the same time, of course, centaurs are bigger and harder to hide, and would need to make more effort covering their tracks, so normally their ambush radius would be smaller (though adequate cover and the right situation could still render their radius larger).


One thing to consider, of course, is how humans and other peoples react to centaurs as well. Centaurs can wear more armour and are tougher, so plenty of explosives and artillery to take advantage of their higher profiles seems logical. Centaurs have heavier, longer range weapons, and move faster, of course, and they can advance ahead of their vehicles a reasonable distance if they want to be less conspicuous. So more aircraft would be good, to work as spotters and to take advantage of the fact they are bigger targets. Of course, centaurs can also carry plenty of javelin and anti-air rockets, making aircraft a much riskier idea, and heavy vehicles lose some of their lustre.

So, light vehicles, sneaky aircraft, plenty of artillery, and infantry seem the way to go, to limit centaur mobility advantage and to increase battlefield intelligence for artillery.

Of course, that's for if you were dealing with just Centaur infantry... When you bring in aircraft and centaur MBTs, and artillery, things get more hectic. If the centaurs get near your tanks or get a lock on your aircraft, they have enough firepower to incapacitate them, which is a huge problem. And if you send your infantry forward with limited armour and aircraft support, the centaur armour and aircraft will rip them apart even if the centaur infantry can't.

I will say that the infantry will start carrying a lot more heavy mortars, and start sending out more small scout probes, as well as relying more on their APCs for mobility, range, and firepower.

NRSASD
2015-06-10, 06:50 PM
This thread is definitely a lot of fun. It's really provoking a lot of exciting what-if questions, and I'm half-tempted to start a modern day centaur themed game just so I can use what we've been discussing.

As far as how non-centaur technology develops to counter such a superior warrior race, I've got an alternative hypothesis. I'd suspect aircraft would probably be limited to high-altitude craft, out of range of centaur anti-air for the simple reason that there is no way one can make a plane more effectively durable. Sure, you could add armor to the plane, enough to withstand multiple anti-air shots, but that armor adds weight, which in turn either slows the plane down (allowing more shots to be fired at it) or reduces its fuel capacity and relegating aircraft to defensive roles as they can't travel far from their runways.

I don't think light armor would fare very well at all against centaur forces, because the added firepower each centaur infantryman carries more than outweighs the protection a light vehicle can provide. Blitzkriegs would be much more difficult to pull off, because centaur infantry can reposition so quickly and carry enough weapons to handle any vehicle fast enough to outrun them. I think human vehicles would trend towards the very heavy Challenger-II style tanks, with enough armor to absorb incoming fire and force the centaurs to abandon their positions. After all, those vehicles remain relatively un-threatened by modern infantry anti-armor weapons; the only two that have been lost in service were due to a friendly fire accident and crashing.

I feel that humans would adopt a very WW1 style of warfare, being a slow advance that forces the centaur military into areas that play to their disadvantages, like open fields or cities. Artillery would have a much more prominent role, as would moving-fortress style armored vehicles. Infantry with high-powered long range weapons would probably be standard issue.

Any ideas on how centaurs could counter that? Any other concepts for anti-centaur tactics? Loving the discussion!

Stellar_Magic
2015-06-10, 10:27 PM
Hmm... the Challenger II is good, but the new RPG-29 that the Russians have developed can penetrate it frontally (one driver lost his foot from a penetrating hit from an RPG-29).

I actually disagree with the idea that Centaurs can wield larger caliber weapons, while they easily have a higher carrying capacity than humans, they're upper bodies aren't going to be that much stronger. However, they can probably carry larger crew served weapons... stuff like 80mm field mortars which are traditionally broken down to be carried by three soldiers, could instead be brought to the battle by one, or larger caliber mortars could be broken down and carried into combat.

The biggest advantage the centaurs have on the modern battlefield is their mobility, not just in terms of speed but also in terms of being able to carry more supplies and therefore travel further before needing to be resupplied. Their higher carrying capacity could also allow them to carry more armor into battle then humans can... They already are larger and hardier then a human being, so the small caliber 5.56 and 5.45 that are the mainstay of modern assault rifles might have much more trouble dropping them, even before adding in the additional armor they could be wearing.

On the flip side there's little need for Centaurs to carry larger weapons anyway. A 5.56 caliber assault rifle is going to be sufficient for fighting modern humans, so why bring in something bigger or bulkier aside for killing tanks.

Actually, Centaurs would be a nightmare for tankers. They can redeploy faster then human infantry, carry up to six times as many rockets or missiles (or carry larger crew served ATGMs with bigger warheads), and just imagining a team of them running around with Javelin missiles makes me want to climb out of a tank rather than stay inside them.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-11, 12:07 AM
Hmm... I think strategic movement isn't likely to be a centaur advantage, but might be a disadvantage. Everyone uses vehicles for transport, these days, and vehicles are faster and carry more than horses. If centaurs were going through rough terrain where vehicles actually do worse than horses, they'd be at a large strategy advantage.

While centaur upper bodies aren't much bigger or stronger, I figure they could rig something to make it so the recoil is on their horse-shoulders. That may be wrongful speculation, though.

It's true that at a certain level bigger weapons stop having point. When I say bigger weapons, more specifically I was thinking they'd carry some mortars, recoilless rifles, grenade launchers, battle rifles, sniper rifles, MGs, and anti-tank guns (and possibly some mines). This'd give them good options against vehicles, aircraft, infantry in small or large numbers, allow them to lend mortar support, and to attack from long range. Human soldiers would likely be issued high calibre battle rifles to deal with the Centaur's armour and long range fighting.

Your point about tanks sounds accurate. If they can take out your armour too easily, it stops having point.


NRSASD: Running a centaur themed game sounds like an awesome idea!

Aircraft can be pretty stealthy. Choppers can insert troops within a few hundred yards of the enemy. Several planes can put down a strike before infantry have a chance to let off a shot, or even vehicles.

Your options for centaurs are either to go very heavy, or very light. Very heavy is trying to literally tank their fire, and hopefully hit some of them first. Going light means a lot of expendable vehicles, able to move faster then centaurs, and able to spot for artillery or put out a similar or greater level of firepower to centaurs.

Of course, there is a possibility of using both a heavy MBT, slow core for your force, with a large number of light vehicles acting as eyes and probes, and support against fighting the centaurs and their tanks.


The main counter move I can see for a slow, stubborn force, is to lay down enough mine fields and defences in the areas they might push you towards, that they'll take unreasonable losses even if they pin you down. Or you could just try a constant hit and run from two sides, or lead the enemy into a killzone. For these reasons, I figure a large number of light vehicles and artillery would be important, to stop the centaurs keeping the initiative.

Depending on the qualities of Centaur planes and tanks, there might be minor tactics you can use against them. But how the designs of the vehicles and how they're deployed would be more important to that.

Flickerdart
2015-06-11, 08:08 AM
Of course, there is a possibility of using both a heavy MBT, slow core for your force, with a large number of light vehicles acting as eyes and probes, and support against fighting the centaurs and their tanks.

Isn't that more or less how combat goes, anyway? Throw in your fast-moving guys (cavalry, tanks, missiles) to soften up and distract the enemy in an area while your slower guys (infantry, artillery) pulls in to secure the area you just captured?

Eisenheim
2015-06-11, 09:21 AM
Something to add here. Mongol archers learned to release their arrows at the moment when all four of their horse's legs were off the ground, which was a moment of stability to make aiming easier. Centaurs could certainly learn the same timing, and given their high strength and carrying capacity could certainly do it with heavy weapons.

Imagine a unit of centaurs your position, while still releasing a barrage of precisely aimed fire from recoil-less rifles or grenade launchers.

Strigon
2015-06-11, 10:08 AM
I think that, like most military units, centaurs would have a specific place on the battlefield. Honestly, throughout the entire 19th century, they would have been wonderfully useful (Granted, the trenches of WW1 would have been lethal for many of them, but if you read on I think you'll find they'd have been quite useful as well.)
Equipping a centaur's human torso with armour until it's practically immune to small-arms fire isn't too difficult a prospect, I think we all agree. Furthermore, they can use significantly heavier guns than a human ever could, and offer far greater mobility, coordination, and tactical awareness than most vehicles.
In the end, I think they would have replaced light tanks, or at least been used in lieu of them when even light tanks couldn't viably handle the terrain. Even better, since they don't need fuel.

Allied centaurs would have it rough in WWII, though, especially during landings. They'd have been packed tight in landing craft, probably two or three wide, burdened down by heave weapons and armour; like tank crews, they'd probably often drown when the water was too deep to safely leave the boat.
Germany would have made heavy use of them, near the end of the war, when they were running out of fuel, (although this assumes Hitler didn't kill them all off, or was even put in power) and they might have even helped Poland hold out a bit longer...

No, they wouldn't be obsolete in the 20th century.
21st? Don't have enough data yet.

Strigon
2015-06-11, 10:21 AM
Also, in response to the comments on centaurs not needing to carry heavy weapons; even if they weren't fighting tanks, they'd still need heavy enough weapons to take down other centaurs.

Here's a question; how would wounded centaurs be taken care of? They certainly couldn't be carried out on stretchers.

JAL_1138
2015-06-11, 12:08 PM
Also, in response to the comments on centaurs not needing to carry heavy weapons; even if they weren't fighting tanks, they'd still need heavy enough weapons to take down other centaurs.

Here's a question; how would wounded centaurs be taken care of? They certainly couldn't be carried out on stretchers.

The same way wounded horses are. A gunshot and a call to the glue factory.

NRSASD
2015-06-11, 12:21 PM
The same way wounded horses are. A gunshot and a call to the glue factory.

I approve of this message. So much :smallbiggrin:

Yeah, I agree with Stirgon. I think centaur infantry are more like numerous, inferior light vehicles with better all terrain capabilities than they are infantry at this point, with their heavier weapons and armor.

It just occurred to me that we've all been overlooking one catastrophic disadvantage centaurs would have against any humanoid race: the ability to climb. Defensive walls would probably have more value in a centaur war than they do in modern warfare. They don't need to be tall, just high enough that the centaur can't jump it. One more reason urban combat would really suck for our poor centaur armies.

Flickerdart
2015-06-11, 12:27 PM
Germany would have made heavy use of them, near the end of the war, when they were running out of fuel, (although this assumes Hitler didn't kill them all off, or was even put in power) and they might have even helped Poland hold out a bit longer...
How would they have helped Poland? They didn't actually try to attack Panzer divisions with cavalry, y'know.

Strigon
2015-06-11, 12:36 PM
How would they have helped Poland? They didn't actually try to attack Panzer divisions with cavalry, y'know.

Heavily armoured centaurs would probably have been far more common in this history than tanks were in ours, up to this point. This means every country needs to keep up a reasonable supply of heavy weapons to deal with them.

Of course, this is an assumption based on the high school history class I took. Could very well be wrong, and I'd be interested in hearing what more knowledgeable opinions would be.

Strigon
2015-06-11, 12:47 PM
They would be great at sabotaging supply lines, particularly in terrain with high relief. They would not be very good in combat situations on level terrain with little cover and would seek to avoid that or compensate technologically.

I can't help but disagree with this.
I mean, maybe on the modern battlefield where you can gun a guy down before you can see him with the naked eye, but really, they're basically heavy cavalry/light vehicles.
Vehicles don't do well in situations like that, and cavalry definitely only do well in that flat, level terrain.

Flickerdart
2015-06-11, 12:48 PM
Heavily armoured centaurs would probably have been far more common in this history than tanks were in ours, up to this point. This means every country needs to keep up a reasonable supply of heavy weapons to deal with them.
Why? Sticking armour on dudes happened in our history, too; there's no reason to assume that a centaur can carry more gear than your standard cuirassier. They will become obsolete for the same reason that armoured cavalry became obsolete - bullets becoming too powerful to practically deflect by metal plates. Yes, centaurs could have been loaded up with superheavy plate meant to deflect small arms fire, but that would still leave them vulnerable to artillery due to their slowness. The sort of plating you can stick on a tread chassis is far superior to what even ten horses can carry, not in the least because the distribution of weight means that your ton of steel isn't sinking into the muddy ground up to its knees.

Hawkstar
2015-06-11, 01:01 PM
I think Centaur would probably form strong cultural bonds with Halflings as technology and warfare advance.

As it is, Centaurs can be outfitted to have the firepower of a Heavy Weapons Nest, Precision of a Marksman, and mobility of Cavalry at the same time. If they carry bulletproof shields, they become even more formidable. I think that as humans abandon Knights in Shining Armor in favor of large numbers of riflemen, Centaurs would double down on the heavy plating and shields. Just replace the traditional lance with an automatic or semiautomatic firearm (Belt-fed LMGs are an excellent choice) or anti-armor weapon, and you've got cavalry-infantry that can put out an impressive showing even in contemporary battlefields.

I don't think Artillery is a huge threat to Centaurs, depending on size - they're fast and reactive enough that they can keep an eye on the sky and get out of the way.


Why? Sticking armour on dudes happened in our history, too; there's no reason to assume that a centaur can carry more gear than your standard cuirassier. You mean, other than being able to easily carry heavy armor fitted to its body AND heavy armor fitted to a large human AND a large human? What part of "Has the body of a horse" is so hard to understand? We're talking no less than five times the carry capacity, if not more.


They will become obsolete for the same reason that armoured cavalry became obsolete - bullets becoming too powerful to practically deflect by metal plates. Yes, centaurs could have been loaded up with superheavy plate meant to deflect small arms fire, but that would still leave them vulnerable to artillery due to their slowness. The sort of plating you can stick on a tread chassis is far superior to what even ten horses can carry, not in the least because the distribution of weight means that your ton of steel isn't sinking into the muddy ground up to its knees.The sort of plating you can stick on a tread chassis is also able to take anti-armor munitions. You don't need to stick a ton of steel on a centaur to render it bulletproof. Two or three hundred pounds of steel should be more than enough, and won't over-encumber the horse body. Furthermore, the legs and underside don't need to be well armored, if at all (Maybe a chain skirt to provide concealment and protection from shrapnel)

Flickerdart
2015-06-11, 01:39 PM
You mean, other than being able to easily carry heavy armor fitted to its body AND heavy armor fitted to a large human AND a large human? What part of "Has the body of a horse" is so hard to understand? We're talking no less than five times the carry capacity, if not more.
Do you not know what a cuirassier is? It's a cavalryman. You know, a guy on a horse. A guy on a horse and his horse can carry the exact same weight that the centaur can.



The sort of plating you can stick on a tread chassis is also able to take anti-armor munitions. You don't need to stick a ton of steel on a centaur to render it bulletproof. Two or three hundred pounds of steel should be more than enough, and won't over-encumber the horse body. Furthermore, the legs and underside don't need to be well armored, if at all (Maybe a chain skirt to provide concealment and protection from shrapnel)
The post I was responding to was saying that Poland could have used anti-centaur weapons to defend against a Panzer blitzkrieg. I was saying it wouldn't work precisely for the reasons you're trying to argue with - the calibre of arms is completely different. Please read the context of posts before jumping to conclusions, eh?

JAL_1138
2015-06-11, 02:07 PM
Do you not know what a cuirassier is? It's a cavalryman. You know, a guy on a horse. A guy on a horse and his horse can carry the exact same weight that the centaur can.


The centaur can carry more than a curaisser's horse can, by about the weight of one heavily-armored human. Remember, the centaur isn't carrying a rider, and a humanoid torso minus legs and some of the lower waist/groin isn't a hell of a lot heavier than the entirety of a horse's neck and head, which it replaces. (and the humanoid-torso armor replaces that portion of the horse's barding, without a huge gain in weight).

Strigon
2015-06-11, 03:10 PM
I certainly didn't mean to imply that Poland could repel Germany; only that they wouldn't get thrashed quite as badly.

All that needs to be true for that to happen is that Poland would need weapons capable of damaging Germany's tanks; I would argue that anti-centaur weaponry is better than anti-infantry in this regard.

Flickerdart
2015-06-11, 03:33 PM
All that needs to be true for that to happen is that Poland would need weapons capable of damaging Germany's tanks; I would argue that anti-centaur weaponry is better than anti-infantry in this regard.
I'm still not convinced that "cuirassier plus a horse's head and human's legs of weight in armor" is enough to be comparable to even the most garbage WWII tank in armour strength. Panzer II had 14.5mm armor; you can't put that on a horse.

BRC
2015-06-11, 03:53 PM
Would Centaurs have kept up wearing heavy armor?

IIRC, one of the big reasons for stopping to use heavy armor was economics. Training and equipping a heavily armored knight was expensive, while Pike and Shot formations (And later Bayonets) negated heavy cavalry charges. I don't see how that would have been any less true for a heavily armored Centaur than for a heavily armored Knight. It simply wouldn't make economic sense to outfit heavily armored Centaurs when you could equip several musketeers or pikemen for a similar cost.

Nah, Centaurs would probably have worked as Hussars or Artillerymen, hauling cannons around the battlefield. They may also have served as mounts for Dragoons. A unit of half human Dragoons, half Centaurs would have the mobility of standard Dragoons, but twice as much firepower.

Admittedly, that could still be very true. High-mobility Dragoon units of centaurs and human infantry could have remained on the battlefield long after dragoons fell out of fashion in our world. Mobility on the battlefield never goes out of style, and sentient Centaurs would be easier to bring along/more useful than Horses

Hrmmm, consider this (roughly WWII era). A unit of Dragoons. The Centaurs are equipped with long-range support weapons, either machine guns or sniper/anti-tank rifles. Meanwhile, the Humans are equipped with Carbines, SMGs, grenades, ect.

The Humans ride the Centaurs to a spot on the battlefield. The Centaurs (who can't make as good use of cover) stay back, providing support with their longer ranged weapons. Meanwhile, the Humans, kitted out for more close-quarter gunbattles, dismount, move up, and engage. When the order comes in, the Humans pull back, remount the Centaurs, and ride back, either to safety, or to somewhere else on the line that needs reinforcement.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-11, 05:29 PM
Flicker: Yes, that general model is common in militaries. However, "heavy" and "light" being relative terms. A tank expected to get hit by several anti tank rockets will be extremely heavy, and a light vehicle intended to be totally expendable will be extremely light and cheap. You do also get armies that are more lopsided, like Iraq deploying a lot of cheap rocket trucks against Iran's tanks.


Eisenheim: I figure they'd be able to do some of that.


Dart: "there's no reason to assume that a centaur can carry more gear than your standard cuirassier." That's an interesting question. A cuirassier would wear something like 50 to 70lbs armour (70 being the heaviest you could expect). Depending on how much other gear a centaur wants to carry, they can carry a lot more armour. A horse has greater surface area to cover than a rider, but a centaur has less surface area than a horse&rider, and the weight of the "rider" is reduced by the lack of a lower human torso and its covering. Depending on organ placement and redundancy, they can also risk thinning the armour in certain spots.

So, centaurs can likely carry a bit more than a cuirassier, and have less surface area to cover than barded cavalry do. Of course, many cuirassiers were not armouring their mounts, just letting them get shot and die, while a centaur can't afford that. So, with armour, centaurs are more efficient as heavy, barded cavalry, but it might be cheaper or more efficient still to just use non-barded cavalry with armoured riders, and let some horses die during/after the battle. Centaurs would also make effective light cavalry, and could carry a little more.

As for the question of anti-tank effectiveness being effected by centaurs: Yes, in that centaurs can carry heavier weapons like mortars. In that weapons are prepared to fight centaurs specifically and rekitted for tanks, somewhat. Grenades were sometimes used on the treads of tanks to demobilize them, and thus incapacitate them, and the existence of centaurs may result in some more long-range grenade-like weapons. Of course, that could also decrease effectiveness against tanks, if the necessity to stock those prevented stocking of heavier anti-tank munitions, as the grenades are situational.


BRC: Centaur Dragoons do seem a possibility. Even in the modern day, letting a human hitch a ride so your squad is that much bigger while still being mobile could be an advantage.

BRC
2015-06-11, 05:38 PM
Part of this depends on what percentage of the population is Centuars/how Centaur populations are distributed.

If Centaurs make up only 10% of the population, then fielding human-only armies (Or regulating Centaurs to administrative/support roles) is reasonable. However, if by not using Centaurs you're excluding 30% of your potential able-bodied recruits, that's a different story.

Another thing to think about is transit. While Centaurs greatly outpace human infantry in both stamina and speed, they themselves are outpaced by vehicles. Meanwhile, a Centaur takes up about as much space on a vehicle as three humans. This means that the farther you need to transport your troops (As opposed to having them march), the harder it is to use Centaurs.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-11, 06:10 PM
Agreed. Or if it is a centaur nation made almost entirely of centaurs, then you have to go with centaurs predominantly whether you like it or not (or rely on foreign mercs).

Generally speaking, while transporting horses is more awkward, I figure it won't be disabling to centaur force, even if it give them some disadvantages in strategic mobility. For certain areas, they could rely less on vehicles, and have an advantage over those who do.

Flickerdart
2015-06-11, 06:33 PM
Agreed. Or if it is a centaur nation made almost entirely of centaurs, then you have to go with centaurs predominantly whether you like it or not (or rely on foreign mercs).
Hey, paying the Swiss to fight for you is a time-honoured tradition! There's no reason centaurs would have to be exempt.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-11, 06:49 PM
Gotta keep up with tradition.

RabidKoala
2015-06-11, 07:08 PM
I think that you guys are completely ignoring the Naval aspect of modern warfare. While centaurs would be good on land, the large size and "awkwardness" would make them a poor choice for sailors. Even if they weren't sailors directly, in situations like the World Wars the US had to ship thousands of troops across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. If a centaur takes up three times as much space than a human does, and you can't stack them in racks like humans can, then you are going to have to use three times (or more) as many ships to get the same amount of people across the oceans.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-11, 07:46 PM
Well, economy of scale. Just because they're twice the size, or even if they need twice as much supplies (the only real effect on naval logistics), it doesn't mean it costs twice as much. If you've ever lived in some crowded places, you'll know that twice the people doesn't always necessitate twice the space, by the same economy of scale.

Now, will centaurs have more trouble in naval operations or transport? Not really. Ships carry huge tonnage, and the weight of people has no visible effect on a serious transport or war ship. If they need more supply, that does create some logistical problems. Centaurs wouldn't have any particular advantage on ships, though they could load some pretty heavy shells. The need for higher ceilings and wider passages would have minor effects on their vessels, which their enemies can try to exploit.

For land transport, it becomes more difficult, and more difficult again for aircraft. You can transport horses overland, but normally with big trucks or trains, and rarely with aircraft. So a chopper or APC either needs to be a bit bulkier, which has some issues, or to carry less men and build more (assuming the centaurs have an equal population of troops). That being said, while it has some issues, a larger APC or chopper is still combat ready; so this isn't a disabling issue but a disadvantage.



On the mention of how you'd remove a wounded centaur from the field, I figure the same way as you'd remove a person. Two centaurs with some sort of cart-like stretcher they pull, or even just a stretcher they bare on their backs, which they use to move the wounded to a hospital or evac vehicle.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-11, 08:26 PM
Furthering the naval centaur route, I figure they'd be pretty psychologically averse to naval life. Cramped conditions, ceilings might be low and require their human bodies to slouch when their horse body isn't sitting, no space to run or feel open air through most of the ship, and generally feeling squashed in a box. They'd likely spend a lot of their free time running about the deck of the ship, if the had one of reasonable size.


Also, new question. While centaurs could probably get the timing right to be good horse archers, could they run or walk without looking where they're going?

Eisenheim
2015-06-11, 09:26 PM
The question concerning injuries in the field is really whether centaurs experience shock and infection more like a horse or like a human. Humans, believe it or not, are some of the most resilient mammals when it comes to surviving the shock of a traumatic injury and avoiding or surviving the infection that follows. If centaurs have a human-style inflammatory system, they'd get the same stretcher treatment as humans. If it's like a horse, a merciful bullet is probably the best choice, and they would likely not do well contesting territory with humans.

MrZJunior
2015-06-11, 09:30 PM
My understanding of naval ship design is that you want the internal doors of the ship to be as small as possible to make them easier to seal against flooding, for the same reason the entrance to some rooms will be in the ceiling, so designing a warship with centaurs in mind might compromise the survivability of the vessel. Admittedly most of my knowledge of warships is from the dreadnought era, modern military vessels might operate differently.

One issue with centaurs fighting a modern war would be the amount of land needed to support each soldier. Assuming that two countries go to war, equal in every respect except that one is inhabited by humans and the other by centaurs, the human nation is going to be able to support a much larger army than the centaurs.

Maglubiyet
2015-06-11, 09:33 PM
Also, new question. While centaurs could probably get the timing right to be good horse archers, could they run or walk without looking where they're going?

They probably wouldn't be able to run without looking as well as we (humans) could, and we're pretty bad at it ourselves except for on a flat surface. The increased speed of the centaur would make it more difficult for them to do all of the mental calculations quickly enough as to where to place their feet.

The second set of hooves wouldn't necessarily make this problem worse though. Many four-legged animals practice what's known as "direct register" where they place their hind foot in the exact same spot as their fore-foot.

Murk
2015-06-12, 02:39 AM
Furthering the naval centaur route, I figure they'd be pretty psychologically averse to naval life. Cramped conditions, ceilings might be low and require their human bodies to slouch when their horse body isn't sitting, no space to run or feel open air through most of the ship, and generally feeling squashed in a box. They'd likely spend a lot of their free time running about the deck of the ship, if the had one of reasonable size.

Just want to say that this is true for most humans too. In the historical times where thousands of low-life, unpaid, discardable naval men were needed, most of them were forced on the ships. They probably weren't too happy. Today, with our stable ships, there's still plenty of people with severe seasickness, something that only stops after spending several weeks in total misery on sea. If you've ever been on a replica of 17-century ships, you'll probably remember thinking "Damn, I'm so glad I didn't have to live on this".

It's quite possible centaurs would have it worse than humans. But it seems that throughout history, having an extreme psychological aversity to something doesn't mean someone else won't force you to do it anyway.

Strigon
2015-06-12, 07:29 AM
On the mention of how you'd remove a wounded centaur from the field, I figure the same way as you'd remove a person. Two centaurs with some sort of cart-like stretcher they pull, or even just a stretcher they bare on their backs, which they use to move the wounded to a hospital or evac vehicle.

I'd very much like to see how you would go about getting an injured, panicked horse on a stretcher.

And, that's all true. Judging from my thoughts on being shot at, I feel justified in saying most people are averse to it. Doesn't mean nobody joins the army.

But about transport; just view them as a vehicle, and the problem ceases to be so drastic. We seem to be reaching a consensus that they would fill similar roles, so it's not such a stretch.
Just put them on a bigger boat, and if you must transport them by air, you'll have to use a heavy cargo plane.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-12, 09:57 AM
Eisenheim: Interesting point. I'll looking into that.


Z: I don't think a larger sealing door and a step ladder will effect naval efficiency significantly. Modern war ships are about the same, from what I've seen.

It's true centaurs have a numbers disadvantage, given the same resources. Centaurs have abilities which may enhance the effectiveness of their troops beyond their numbers, if utilized properly. But then, human nations can use numbers to their advantage, denying centaurs ground (at the same time, centaurs can take advantage of that, if humans thin out their numbers too much).


Maglubiyet: Surprisingly, this might make centaurs worse horse archers than those with ahuman and rider. If a centaur has a rider, then they may still be better horse archers, in some respects.


Murk: I agree with your points. While I mentioned it as a difficulty centaurs face, I didn't mean that it would deny them an effective navy. As you say, even if they have it worse than humans, people can manage even if ill-suited.


Stirgon: Well, if they're dumb as a horse, then forget about modern warfare, they're more on the level of dogs of war. Point them at something, and breed some more of them to replace your losses, like other animals. If they're humans that are a bit more panicky and skittish in nature, a a ton of horse muscle ought to be enough to restrain the mad thrashing, and the stretcher can be pretty huge so they won't fall off. If necessary, you can also give a sizeable dose of morphine to dull the pain and hopefully stop their thrashing. If none of these methods are effective... there's always the glue factory.

Cargo planes might be fine for paratroopers. I guess a centaur could parachute. I never tried to put a parachute on a horse. If it does work, thier parachutes will have similar problems of being larger, and in this case possibly too fast rather than too slow. If they hurt their feet in the landing, it'll be a serious issue. It might work out fine.

For stealthy helicopter insertions though, and in general, you want to avoid extra bulk if you can.



Oh right, someone mentioned walls before. Walls would be a good idea against centaurs. With artillery and some modern siege towers, though, they wouldn't be impassable barriers. Prior to cannons and centaurs having good siege towers, walls would be a hurdle they couldn't jump, as such.

On another point on the benefits of crawling, mine sweeping will be a lot more annoying. If centaur upper torsos have reasonable flexibility, they can probably reach down well enough to search for and disarm mines.

Strigon
2015-06-12, 10:17 AM
I think you misread my entire post, though that could have been my fault.
I never meant to imply that centaurs would be as dumb as horses, but instead that restraining a centaur would be as physically taxing as restraining a horse. The morphine would work well, but you still have to lift the centaur, which would be far more awkward than lifting a human just because of the shape, let alone weight.
I also never considered paracentaurs (Although it would probably work quite well; centaur legs would be capable of withstanding quite a lot of shock). I just meant to point out that the methods of transporting centaurs would be very similar to transporting light vehicles.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-12, 10:27 AM
It'd take a little figuring, but shouldn't be too hard for a couple of centaurs to slip a stretcher under another centaur, even if they're uncooperative.

hymer
2015-06-12, 10:40 AM
They probably wouldn't be able to run without looking as well as we (humans) could, and we're pretty bad at it ourselves except for on a flat surface. The increased speed of the centaur would make it more difficult for them to do all of the mental calculations quickly enough as to where to place their feet.

I wonder if that's correct. Erect mammalian locomotion is a pretty new concept, one that proved quite difficult to emulate in simulations and with robots. I've heard human walking described as a series of controlled falls. Quadruped walking is far easier to deal with.
That said, I don't think centaurs would have as easy (if that's the word) a time of achieving basic proficiency in running shots as horse archers have, at least not solo. There's still only one pair of eyes for shooting and running compared to the four for the horse archer.

If one wanted to have centaurs better at this sort of thing, there's plenty of body space that could be used for outer brains or extra sensory organs rather than redundancy.

Strigon
2015-06-12, 10:47 AM
Is walking in a straight line really that difficult?
I mean, you do it all your life...

hymer
2015-06-12, 10:51 AM
Is walking in a straight line really that difficult?
I mean, you do it all your life...

I can suggest trying it. Go somewhere where nobody you care about will see you. Get a long stick to emulate a rifle or some such. Then run as fast as you can, while looking at a point on the horizon some 45 degrees to your left or right, take aim for three seconds or so (intil you get a steady bead), and 'shoot'. And make sure it's natural, rugged terrain.
And please don't tell your mom I told you to do it when she gets angry at the green splotches on your trousers. :smallwink:

Seriously, it's not all that easy.

Edit: To be fair, I'm talking about taking running shots, you were talking about walking shots. I think you'd stop to take a shot if you're only walking anyway.

Strigon
2015-06-12, 10:59 AM
I'm afraid I'll have to take your word for it :smalltongue:

Lord Torath
2015-06-12, 11:31 AM
Is walking in a straight line really that difficult?
I mean, you do it all your life...True. But how often do you look down when out for a walk in the woods? Be honest, now. And how often do you look down when you're running?

Someone earlier mentioned heavily-armored centaurs replacing light tanks. I tend to disagree. Cavalry in modern combat is just plain weird. As long as everyone's on foot, it's the fastest thing around. But once you start bringing in half-tracks, armored cars, and APCs, they just can't keep up. And they're much less likely to do so when encumbered by a few hundred pounds of armor and gear.

Race horses typically go about 30-40 mph. And that's with a light racing saddle, a short rider, and enough weights to make a total load of 126 lbs. And an ice bath and warm mash immediately after a 1.5 mile sprint. And then 2-3 weeks of recovery, minimum, before racing again. Endurance horse races (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_riding) are 100 miles long, and take 14-15 hours to complete, which gives an average speed of about 7 mph (which is about what humans can manage over the same distance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon#IAU_World_Best_Performances), albeit without carrying 126 lbs on their backs).

M1A1 Abrams tanks can go 45 mph, and, with the speed governor removed, have been clocked at freeway speeds (60 -70 mph). It might be worth noting that Germany phased out their Lynx light tank in WWII by replacing it with their regular heavy tanks (Panthers), which were just as fast, and had better guns and armor to boot (at least according to the Wargamer's Guide to Panzerblitz, published by Avalon Hill). So I doubt centaurs will be replacing light tanks.

Strigon
2015-06-12, 11:58 AM
If you're talking about my post, I had qualified it by saying "In terrain where light tanks would be useless", or something similar. Sure, a light tank beats a centaur in an open field, but in a jungle or forest, where the trees are too thick for the tank to move, the centaur wins out every time.

Besides, you're overlooking a number of the advantages those centaurs have over light tanks.
First of all, they'd have far better situational awareness; in a tank, you can see in a pretty limited field of vision, and forget about hearing anything that isn't screaming its location out to you.
Secondly, cost. Assuming centaur warriors require the same salary as normal infantry, they'd be far cheaper.
For a tank, you have to build the tank, supply fuel, ammunition, mechanics, spare parts, and then pay for the crew.
For the same price, you could probably get five or six centaurs with weapons capable of doing the exact same amount of damage to most targets. Slower, but more alert, and able to move - at least with some effectiveness - through just about any terrain.

Murk
2015-06-12, 12:16 PM
I think centaur cultures would become very good at building stuff very fast.
The poor horses can't climb. They can't use ladders, they can't scale walls higher than three meters. Even in very steep mountains they would have trouble.
In the same fashion reaching the ground is much harder for them (they have to bend their knees, probably, to reach the ground with their hands), so indeed, a few broad moats, mines or even the famous spikes used to stop cavalery would still be problematic in more modern times.

Which means they'll have to build a lot of ramps. Want to climb a wall higher than three meter? Build a ramp. Want to cross a moat easily? Build a quick ramp. Uneven terrain? Ramps!
And when we're discussing their advantages in transporting supplies, I can see huge groups of centaurs with quick-build materials on their backs, just rampaging through a battlefield or a siege, building ramps everywhere. Some sort of super-romans.

Lord Torath
2015-06-12, 01:30 PM
*lots of good stuff*Oh,sure! In rough or tight terrain, centaurs rule! In the open battlefield, they're going to want to behave like regular human infantry, just a bit faster.

Randel
2015-06-12, 04:30 PM
Well, if we're assuming the centaurs are at war with other races, it would make sense for them to play to their strengths or team up with other races to shore up any weaknesses.

For example, if the centaurs are particularly good merchants, builders, traders, or generally good at logistics, they could focus on the logistics aspect of war and leave a good deal of the fighting to say... orcs or goblins.

The centaurs set up farms, trade routes, industries, etc, and hire goblins or other races to do the actual fighting. The centaurs themselves aren't going to engage in urban warfare if they can help it (though there might no doubt be a few combat oriented centaurs in the military) and might focus more on getting supplies to the front lines or fighting in areas with rough terrain where vehicles would have problems.

Plus, if we have a setting where modern technology is available and/or magitech exists, it's possible that a centaur could augment themselves with magical items. Centaurs have higher base speed than other races, any magic that boosts land speed for a normal creature should be increasingly effective for centaurs who might be able to outmaneuver vehicles in rough terrain.

So, you have squads with goblins and orcs providing the front-line combat, while centaurs would have more of a support roll. Perhaps making sure the soldiers get supplies if the supply lines are threatened, maybe a few centaurs are trained as healers (with a stash of healing items, maybe some spells, and of course being able to quickly pick up wounded, toss them onto his back, and flee the area. Basically a combat medic.) or they could act as snipers, perhaps using an anti-material rifle (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-materiel_rifle) or another heavy-duty weapon that is normally too heavy for most medium-sized creatures.

So, you wouldn't necessarily see centaurs as front-line combatants very much, but they could surely find work in supporting roles while better-suited races fill the front lines. Really, a well-trained army of goblins, kobolds, and orcs armed with guns would be pretty devastating so long as they could stay well-supplied and healed up.

Yukitsu
2015-06-12, 06:33 PM
If you're talking about my post, I had qualified it by saying "In terrain where light tanks would be useless", or something similar. Sure, a light tank beats a centaur in an open field, but in a jungle or forest, where the trees are too thick for the tank to move, the centaur wins out every time.

Besides, you're overlooking a number of the advantages those centaurs have over light tanks.
First of all, they'd have far better situational awareness; in a tank, you can see in a pretty limited field of vision, and forget about hearing anything that isn't screaming its location out to you.
Secondly, cost. Assuming centaur warriors require the same salary as normal infantry, they'd be far cheaper.
For a tank, you have to build the tank, supply fuel, ammunition, mechanics, spare parts, and then pay for the crew.
For the same price, you could probably get five or six centaurs with weapons capable of doing the exact same amount of damage to most targets. Slower, but more alert, and able to move - at least with some effectiveness - through just about any terrain.

Cavalry is useless in that terrain, and tanks are a bit better than I think you're guessing. Tanks being able to move through and fight through forests was part of what caused the Maginot line to fail. Horses don't actually fair all that well in all terrain types. They'd certainly have been less effective for example in the bocage of France, the muddy no mans land in WWI and no more effective storming soggy beach heads. Treads are actually pretty good with terrain when compared to hooves.

Tanks also aren't bad for situational awareness. A tank commander will have just as much situational awareness as anyone else would, and their field of view is 360. The only time it isn't is when they're buttoned up. The tank goes to a very narrow field of view, though they can sweep their looking apparatus around but in that situation the centuar would simply be dead.

And they wouldn't have anywhere near the level of fire power that anything other than a light tank could carry. A 75 AA could take many horses to drag into position and there's no real way for them to fire while holding it up, a tank can use a 75 or even 85 without much problem. A tank chassis with a fixed gun could be mounted with a 122 by then, or even a 152. Even the 45 AT would be too much for a centuar to remain mobile with. At best you'd have infantry support weapons or close ranged AT like a PIAT or something, but having something about horse sized in a replacement situation for a tank fighting say, tanks, by the time they were in range for a shot they'd have been under fire for a long, long time, both by the main gun and the co-axial. Yes, 6 of them combined can carry a lot of fairly large guns, but when you start looking into tank combat the guns they're using are pea shooters compared to what engineers designed to have a chance against enemy armour. 6 pea shooters still won't cut through a panther's armour for example.

MrZJunior
2015-06-12, 08:33 PM
Z: I don't think a larger sealing door and a step ladder will effect naval efficiency significantly. Modern war ships are about the same, from what I've seen.

It's true centaurs have a numbers disadvantage, given the same resources. Centaurs have abilities which may enhance the effectiveness of their troops beyond their numbers, if utilized properly. But then, human nations can use numbers to their advantage, denying centaurs ground (at the same time, centaurs can take advantage of that, if humans thin out their numbers too much).

I wasn't saying that it would affect the efficiency of the ship, rather that it would affect the survivability of the ship. One of the reasons the British lost so many battlecruisers at Jutland was because their ships were built more for comfort that the German ships. This means larger doors and fewer watertight compartments, leading to worse flooding. Furthermore, any increase in the size of a ship means that speed, armor, or armament will suffer, or you have to increase the size of the engines. The strength of the vessel is more important than the strength of the crew, so I don't see the centaurs getting much if any advantage.

I think that the additional eyes and additional hands holding rifles would help offset quite a few of the centaur's natural advantages.

daremetoidareyo
2015-06-12, 11:20 PM
How does a centaur deal with barbed wire on the battle terrain? Barbed wire was all the rage in WW1. It got so bad that they decided to invent the tank to get through it.

Segev
2015-06-13, 12:12 AM
How does a centaur deal with barbed wire on the battle terrain? Barbed wire was all the rage in WW1. It got so bad that they decided to invent the tank to get through it.

Likely some sort of heavy shield or armored "skirt" modeled after a train's cow-catcher, relying on the centaurs' bulk and strength to rip through it or trample it down.

Yukitsu
2015-06-13, 12:21 AM
Likely some sort of heavy shield or armored "skirt" modeled after a train's cow-catcher, relying on the centaurs' bulk and strength to rip through it or trample it down.

Getting a horse legged creature to slog through the mud with a several hundred pound steel cow-catcher to try and push through entire fields of fairly tough razor wire while under artillery fire would result in some pretty infamous mass slaughters, although WWI wasn't exactly a war lacking in those.

Brother Oni
2015-06-13, 03:53 AM
Is walking in a straight line really that difficult?
I mean, you do it all your life...

Try walking down a straight line with a blindfold on and you'll see how your natural gait will wander.

If you've ever seen toddlers walk, you'll understand why the 'controlled fall' analogy is quite accurate.


Likely some sort of heavy shield or armored "skirt" modeled after a train's cow-catcher, relying on the centaurs' bulk and strength to rip through it or trample it down.

I'm not sure that would be effective, especially in the difficult terrain that was typically No-Mans-Land in WW1.


http://www.uwgbcommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Barbed-Wire-Field.jpg
http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/444045/img.jpg

Bear in mind that the response at the time to these barbed wire defences was artillery bombardment with HE shells, which was only of limited effectiveness - what barbed wire it cleared was countered by the fact that the terrain was a cratered mess, which coupled with the rain, made it into a muddy swamp.

There are reports of soldiers diving into crater holes to avoid enemy fire, only to become stuck in the mud and water in the bottom and drown as a result. This is aside from the fact that some craters still had poison gas in them from earlier attacks (mustard gas especially since that was heavier than air and tended to sink) or the remnants of barbed wire strands still sticking up all around.

Strigon
2015-06-13, 07:59 AM
Honestly, in WWI, I more see centaurs having their torso covered in steel plate, and manning a machine gun.
Defensive strategy, not offensive.

Or maybe loading shells into artillery...

Hawkstar
2015-06-13, 11:21 AM
They probably wouldn't be able to run without looking as well as we (humans) could, and we're pretty bad at it ourselves except for on a flat surface. The increased speed of the centaur would make it more difficult for them to do all of the mental calculations quickly enough as to where to place their feet.
I think you have it backward - Centaurs are significantly better at running without actively looking where they're going. For starters - they have four haptic points of reference for determining the facing of their lower body instead of just two, and they also have anatomy better suited from looking away from directions their feet are pointing. Secondly - they also have much greater need to be going without having to look, simply because it's so much easier for them to turn their upper body, and so much harder to turn their lower body. They know their speed, and they know the ground's not going anywhere. I guess maybe a child centaur would have a harder time not looking where it's going than a child human of similar development due to the difficulties, but by adulthood, the centaur would be MUCH more experienced in not looking where it's going.


Oh,sure! In rough or tight terrain, centaurs rule! In the open battlefield, they're going to want to behave like regular human infantry, just a bit faster.

Hell no. Tight and rough terrain are where Centaurs are at their worst. Tanks can open up Tight terrain, which Centaurs can't. And tanks can truck right over terrain that forces centaurs to a crawl - pits, barbed wire, loose ground, sticky mudholes, concealed shrubs, exposed roots, etc. can all snag, twist, sprain, and break a centaur's legs, while tanks can just grind over those. Centaurs dominate the open battlefields where they function as superior cavalry - faster than infantry, and greater mobility and acceleration (And much smaller profile) than tanks. I figure that their basic strategy for dealing with tanks is "Play whack-a-mole with bullets with anyone who pokes their head out to use the machinegun, and dodge the main gun"


Getting a horse legged creature to slog through the mud with a several hundred pound steel cow-catcher to try and push through entire fields of fairly tough razor wire while under artillery fire would result in some pretty infamous mass slaughters, although WWI wasn't exactly a war lacking in those.Why would it be several hundred pounds? Of course, I think just chainmail and armored leg plates might be enough to protect against them.


Try walking down a straight line with a blindfold on and you'll see how your natural gait will wander.

If you've ever seen toddlers walk, you'll understand why the 'controlled fall' analogy is quite accurate.
But it's much easier with four legs, since it's easier to determine facing with four points of reference than two.

Yukitsu
2015-06-13, 12:51 PM
Chain would simply get caught in the razor wire as would anything made of small parts, you'd have to use a solid plate of armour of some sort. This stuff is tough, no horse armoured or not would be able to push through it. You'd need something with enough mass to essentially crush it down at the posts rather than trying to get through the wire itself, and those posts were fairly durable, either very thick wood or iron. Just giving a horse some light plates wouldn't let them push past the wire.

Strigon
2015-06-13, 12:56 PM
Hell no. Tight and rough terrain are where Centaurs are at their worst. Tanks can open up Tight terrain, which Centaurs can't. And tanks can truck right over terrain that forces centaurs to a crawl - pits, barbed wire, loose ground, sticky mudholes, concealed shrubs, exposed roots, etc. can all snag, twist, sprain, and break a centaur's legs, while tanks can just grind over those. Centaurs dominate the open battlefields where they function as superior cavalry - faster than infantry, and greater mobility and acceleration (And much smaller profile) than tanks. I figure that their basic strategy for dealing with tanks is "Play whack-a-mole with bullets with anyone who pokes their head out to use the machinegun, and dodge the main gun"


I think you're ignoring all the actual obstacles likely faced in a scenario like that; remember, where there are roots, there are trees. Trees that your tank can't simply roll over.
And keep in mind that a tank can get stuck - not easily, but it can happen - whereas a centaur would probably be slowed down at worst under the same circumstances.

Keep in mind, horses were doing just fine in the wild before we domesticated them; you seem to be under the impression that the moment a horse is in a muddy field, or on uneven terrain it suddenly becomes helpless, which just isn't true. The only reason they get injured by that is their riders push them too hard. Leave a horse alone in an area with all those obstacles you mentioned and it'll still do just fine.

Broken Crown
2015-06-13, 12:56 PM
I wasn't saying that it would affect the efficiency of the ship, rather that it would affect the survivability of the ship. One of the reasons the British lost so many battlecruisers at Jutland was because their ships were built more for comfort that the German ships. This means larger doors and fewer watertight compartments, leading to worse flooding.

Actually, no.

The British battlecruisers sunk at Jutland were all sunk as a result of unsafe ammunition handling practices designed to maximize their guns' rate of fire: Shells that penetrated the British ships' turrets started fires that spread very quickly to the magazines. Flooding was not an issue; the ships were blown in half.

(While the German capital ships did have very extensive internal subdivision that made them very difficult to sink, they also had adopted safer ammunition handling procedures after nearly losing SMS Seydlitz to a magazine explosion at Dogger Bank in 1915. A number of German ships at Jutland had turrets burned out, but none exploded as a result.)


Furthermore, any increase in the size of a ship means that speed, armor, or armament will suffer, or you have to increase the size of the engines.

Also no. Unlike a tank, where making it bigger means spreading the armour over a larger area and thus making it thinner for the same weight, making a battleship bigger actually allows it to carry more armour. The difference is that a ship has to be able to float, so to make it buoyant enough to carry heavy armour means it necessarily has to contain a lot of empty space (which also improves survivability, because you can then use it for defence in depth against torpedoes and the like). It's the square-cube law: Surface area, and thus armour area, increases as the square of the linear dimension, but volume, and thus buoyancy, and thus armour weight, increases as the cube of the dimension. Make the ship twice as big, and it can carry armour twice as thick.

Likewise, a bigger ship can also reach higher speeds more efficiently than a small one, partly due again to the immersed surface area and partly due a longer hull being less affected by the waves it creates. Compare the power:displacement ratio of a 100,000-tonne Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (about 2.6 hp/tonne) to that of a ~9000-tonne Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (about 11 hp/tonne). Yet the carrier can easily outrun its escorts if it needs to.

When it comes to warships, bigger = better. Of course, bigger is also more expensive, so it becomes a question of how many ships you can afford to build at that size.

How effective a centaur navy would be really depends a lot on what technology label we're considering. Wooden sailing warships had severe limits on how big you could make them, and needed large crews, so centaurs would be at a severe disadvantage. While their greater strength would mean you'd need fewer of them to run out a cannon, you'd still need just as many to load it at the same speed as a human crew, and it would be impossible to get that many centaurs working in such a confined space; the guns would have to be much further apart to allow them to be worked efficiently, which means that a ship would be able to carry far fewer of them. How useful centaurs would be climbing in the rigging to replace damaged sails or spars, I leave to the imagination.

As stronger iron and steel hulls were introduced, it was possible for ships to be made bigger and armed with a smaller number of much heavier and more powerful guns, so the inherent disadvantages of centaurs would become less of an issue. Still, even post WWII, warships were very manpower-intensive, and over time, an increasing amount of that was for tasks that need many hands (or brains), not just more strength. I expect that, given the higher logistical and volume costs of every individual sailor, a centaur navy would have a very strong and early drive towards automation.

NRSASD
2015-06-13, 01:25 PM
I think a crucial aspect of the tanks vs centaurs in rough terrain debate depends absolutely critically on what level of technological advancement the tank has and what terrain we're discussing in particular.

For example, during the Winter War of 1939, the Finns were able to absolutely rout the Soviet forces (which had superior numbers, tanks, and aircraft) with submachine guns, molotov cocktails, and skis. In the dense and snowy forests of Finland, tanks got bogged down like nobody's business, and the Finns were able to capture them handily. Near the end of the war though, once the Soviets re-examined their tactics and vehicle designs, they were able to defeat the Finns fairly successfully.

WW1 era tanks were designed as trench breakers, and did that job admirably well, though they still got stuck quite frequently. They were far more successful than infantry had been though.

Modern day tanks are able to negotiate both of these terrains very easily, but steep rocky slopes, jungles, and dense old-growth forests are still insurmountable without specialized land clearing vehicles or engineering teams leading the way.

Centaurs would be more restricted by the terrain than human infantry would, nor would they be able to make use of their superior speed while in such areas, but they would still negotiate just about all of these terrains without the need for specialists clearing the path and benefit from the centaurs' superior endurance.

Using cavalry as an approximation of centaur capabilities is somewhat inaccurate as the centaur has more motor control than even the finest horseman, as he literally is his mount. Likewise, they're trying to use entirely different tactics when in combat. A better analogy would be that of dragoons or hobilars.

Wardog
2015-06-13, 01:55 PM
Interesting discussion.

A few random thoughts:

Regarding centaur ecology and society:
It's my understanding that the centaur myths were inspired by the Scythians and other steppe nomads. It seem reasonable to assume that if centaurs were real, they would (originally at least) have occupied a similar environment and had a similar lifestyle (possibly replacing humans in that niche). That means: an economy based primarily on herding and trade (according to one book I've read (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Empires-Silk-Road-History-Central/dp/0691150346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434219115&sr=8-1&keywords=empires+of+the+silk+road) it was the steppe peoples who basically ran the Silk Road trade). Crop-growing might be useful for them (as someone else suggested earier), but much of the steppe environment is less suitible for that. Also, how easy would it be for a centaur to actual plant and tend crops? Maybe they would get humans to do that sort of work for them (either by trading for produce, or having human slaves to farm for them).

Steppe nomad empires were very powerful (in their own element at least) for a long time, but tended to dwindle as firearms became more prevelent. However, as has been discussed, centaurs could carry more ammunition than humans, and probably bigger guns as well. So the centaur steppe empires may well hold out longer than their human equivilents did. Although they would probably become more settled, in order to develop the industry needed to produce more modern weapons.

Centaurs and Modern(ish) warfare
The centaur nations would probably be able to hold their own in any major war, up to the end of the 19th Century. while centaur emigrants and mercenaries would probably have their place in other nations armies.

WWI would change things. Some people have suggested that centaurs with armoured skirts would make barbed wire and trenches ineffective, but I'm sceptical of that. If that was true, then people would probably have done the same with horses. Apart from the early and final stages of WWI where cavalry actually had a place, centaurs in WWI would probably be best of working logistics.

Of course, that's assuming they even gove involved in WWI in the first place. Which leads me to:

Centaurs and geopolitics
If the central Eurasian steppes were ruled by centaur empires up to the Early Modern era (or beyond), that could have some quite major effects on how the rest of the world developed. If Russia never managed to take over that part of the world, they would presumably be a lot weaker going into WWI, which could change the whole course of 20th century history. On the other had, if they did manage to colonize there, Russia now has a major centaur population. Which could also have some quite profound effects on 20th Century events.

Centaurs and more modern(ish) warfare
According to an article I once read in National Geographic, the Hazara people of northern Afghanistan had quite a lot success fighting against the Taliban tanks by using RPG-equipped cavalry. The cavalry had better mobility over rough ground, and could use terrain for cover, hiding behind hills, poping over the ridge to launch missiles at the enemy, then retreating out of the lien of fire before they could respond. Centaurs would presumably do the same, which means (as others have already suggested) centaurs could still have a useful role in post-WWI warfare, as "fast heavy-weapons" squads, and in any sort of terrain or theatre where horses are superior to vehicles.

Proper modern warfare
On the other hand, once you get to modern, high-tech / industrialized warfare, I'm note sure centaurs will be of much use. Centaur tank, ships, and aircraft will all either be less effective or more expensive than human ones (or both). So outside of some very limited roles (e.g. special forces, heavy-weapons squads, and "modern tech doesn't help us here" scenarios) they won't be doing much in war. Which brings me back to:

Politics and society
I think a lot depends on how centaurs fit into the wider world. If centaurs are a non-dominant minority in whatever society they live in, then they will probably be recruited to serve in the roles they are good at, as long as those roles exist. And then when technology or society changes so that they are mostly obsolete, people will just stop recruiting them.

On the other hand, if centaurs are the majority, or a dominant minority, that might affect how technology develops. If most people (i.e. centaurs) don't benefit from or can't use vehicles, then vehicles might never get invented, or might just be curiosities. If centaurs are a ruling minority in a human-majority society, they might deliberately suppress the development of technology that could threaten their power.

Or at least, it could alter how the technologies developed and were used. Someone earlier said they thought centaurs wouldn't let humns drive them around in horse-transport like vehicles. If centaurs are a powerless minority in a human-run society, they will ride in whatever their masters tell them. Conversely, if centaurs run everything, humans will chauffeur centaurs around because they're paid (or ordered) to - at least in the case of centaurs rich enough or important to afford a comfortable centaur truck. Even if its completely unnecessary or impractical. Especially if its completely unnecessary or impractical.

And that scenario potentially sets up a future humn rebellion, if the centaur elite don't realise that their obsession with designing pointless vehicles to ride around in is giving their serfs the tools to surplant them...

Strigon
2015-06-13, 04:12 PM
Modern day tanks are able to negotiate both of these terrains very easily, but steep rocky slopes, jungles, and dense old-growth forests are still insurmountable without specialized land clearing vehicles or engineering teams leading the way.

Centaurs would be more restricted by the terrain than human infantry would, nor would they be able to make use of their superior speed while in such areas, but they would still negotiate just about all of these terrains without the need for specialists clearing the path and benefit from the centaurs' superior endurance.

Using cavalry as an approximation of centaur capabilities is somewhat inaccurate as the centaur has more motor control than even the finest horseman, as he literally is his mount. Likewise, they're trying to use entirely different tactics when in combat. A better analogy would be that of dragoons or hobilars.

This is exactly what I was trying to say; my apologies if anyone thought I was merely referring to uneven terrain, or deep mud.

Segev
2015-06-13, 04:13 PM
I see it as one of two ways: Centaurs replace specific ethnicities of human in this hypothetical society (probably the horse-nomads of the central asian steppes and maybe north american (midwestern and western) indians (who took to horses like ducks to water as soon as they were introduced; it changes little to have them already have them when Europeans encounter them). OR they are mixed in pretty much every human society, with numbers probably in the "dominant minority" to "majority" range, depending on their physiological success in the region. Places where horse-riders are kings would probably see a majority (or ruling minority) of centaurs, while those where horses find it more awkward would be more in the minority (but still a large plurality) and would be less dominant culturally.

In either event, I see them being prevalent and common enough that they would be a market for goods and services which meet their physiological constraints. If cars develop, some sort of "centaur seat" will be introduced, up to and including means for centaurs to drive them. I could almost see, say, over-the-road semi cabs having a design that does not require pedal-operation, and has a seat which is raised such that a centaur can just rest his chest on it to ease long-term standing at the wheel. Maybe the rest doubles as an elevated seat for a human driver, making for a "universal" driver's compartment that can be sold to any kind of driver.

The tricky thing would be that there are still going to be centaur-only designs, and human-only designs, because humans just pack that much more efficiently so somebody will make the cost-savings vehicles et al that pack in human riders.

This would become awkward for, say, kids' polo games, where moms want to carpool their kids and half the rest of the team. When some of the kids are human children and others are centaur foals, you'll need a minivan-equivalent that can accommodate both, at least as passengers.

Brother Oni
2015-06-13, 05:15 PM
The tricky thing would be that there are still going to be centaur-only designs, and human-only designs, because humans just pack that much more efficiently so somebody will make the cost-savings vehicles et al that pack in human riders.

This would become awkward for, say, kids' polo games, where moms want to carpool their kids and half the rest of the team. When some of the kids are human children and others are centaur foals, you'll need a minivan-equivalent that can accommodate both, at least as passengers.

Perhaps something similar to wheelchair adapted cars, with seats up front and a wide flat space at the back with a foldable ramp, where the centaurs can kneel down and get in/out (I wonder how seatbelt requirements would be enforced?).

Hawkstar
2015-06-13, 06:02 PM
I think you're ignoring all the actual obstacles likely faced in a scenario like that; remember, where there are roots, there are trees. Trees that your tank can't simply roll over.
And keep in mind that a tank can get stuck - not easily, but it can happen - whereas a centaur would probably be slowed down at worst under the same circumstances.No, there aren't always trees where there are roots - there are often bushes, or long-gone stumps, or other things I stumble across. Besides - a stuck tank is a defensive fortification. Slowed centaurs are a turkey shoot.


Keep in mind, horses were doing just fine in the wild before we domesticated them; you seem to be under the impression that the moment a horse is in a muddy field, or on uneven terrain it suddenly becomes helpless, which just isn't true. The only reason they get injured by that is their riders push them too hard. Leave a horse alone in an area with all those obstacles you mentioned and it'll still do just fine.
Horses in the wild aren't horses on a battlefield.

Strigon
2015-06-13, 07:26 PM
No, there aren't always trees where there are roots - there are often bushes, or long-gone stumps, or other things I stumble across. Besides - a stuck tank is a defensive fortification. Slowed centaurs are a turkey shoot.


Horses in the wild aren't horses on a battlefield.

When was the last time you saw bushes with roots big enough to be a hazard to horses?

And, no, slowed centaurs are not a turkey shoot, nor a stuck tank an effective defensive fortification for long. Slowed centaurs still have heavy armour, and dangerous weapons. They'd still win in a fight against infantry.
Sitting still in a tank? Before long, someone's going to come at you with anti-tank weapons, and then your defensive fortification becomes a deathtrap.

And, yes they are. They might not be engaging tanks or drones, but every day in the wild is a battle against everything else out there. Horses survive by being mobile enough to avoid wolves, not by tiptoeing around every shrub and gopher hole in sight.

MrZJunior
2015-06-13, 07:42 PM
Actually, no.

The British battlecruisers sunk at Jutland were all sunk as a result of unsafe ammunition handling practices designed to maximize their guns' rate of fire: Shells that penetrated the British ships' turrets started fires that spread very quickly to the magazines. Flooding was not an issue; the ships were blown in half.

(While the German capital ships did have very extensive internal subdivision that made them very difficult to sink, they also had adopted safer ammunition handling procedures after nearly losing SMS Seydlitz to a magazine explosion at Dogger Bank in 1915. A number of German ships at Jutland had turrets burned out, but none exploded as a result.)

I defer to your superior knowledge of the Battle of Jutland. Do you think that it would be fair to say that a ship designed with centaurs in mind would not be able to implement the same sort of internal sub divisions that the German Navy had?


Also no. Unlike a tank, where making it bigger means spreading the armour over a larger area and thus making it thinner for the same weight, making a battleship bigger actually allows it to carry more armour. The difference is that a ship has to be able to float, so to make it buoyant enough to carry heavy armour means it necessarily has to contain a lot of empty space (which also improves survivability, because you can then use it for defence in depth against torpedoes and the like). It's the square-cube law: Surface area, and thus armour area, increases as the square of the linear dimension, but volume, and thus buoyancy, and thus armour weight, increases as the cube of the dimension. Make the ship twice as big, and it can carry armour twice as thick.

Likewise, a bigger ship can also reach higher speeds more efficiently than a small one, partly due again to the immersed surface area and partly due a longer hull being less affected by the waves it creates. Compare the power:displacement ratio of a 100,000-tonne Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (about 2.6 hp/tonne) to that of a ~9000-tonne Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (about 11 hp/tonne). Yet the carrier can easily outrun its escorts if it needs to.

When it comes to warships, bigger = better. Of course, bigger is also more expensive, so it becomes a question of how many ships you can afford to build at that size.

How effective a centaur navy would be really depends a lot on what technology label we're considering. Wooden sailing warships had severe limits on how big you could make them, and needed large crews, so centaurs would be at a severe disadvantage. While their greater strength would mean you'd need fewer of them to run out a cannon, you'd still need just as many to load it at the same speed as a human crew, and it would be impossible to get that many centaurs working in such a confined space; the guns would have to be much further apart to allow them to be worked efficiently, which means that a ship would be able to carry far fewer of them. How useful centaurs would be climbing in the rigging to replace damaged sails or spars, I leave to the imagination.

As stronger iron and steel hulls were introduced, it was possible for ships to be made bigger and armed with a smaller number of much heavier and more powerful guns, so the inherent disadvantages of centaurs would become less of an issue. Still, even post WWII, warships were very manpower-intensive, and over time, an increasing amount of that was for tasks that need many hands (or brains), not just more strength. I expect that, given the higher logistical and volume costs of every individual sailor, a centaur navy would have a very strong and early drive towards automation.

If this is all true why was there a distinction between battleships and battlecruisers? I thought that the whole point was that battleships traded speed for improved armament and armor while battlecruisers traded armor and armament for speed. If bigger is always better why would you need two distinct styles of ship like that? I believe that the distinction disappeared latter so perhaps it's a technology thing.

Broken Crown
2015-06-13, 10:45 PM
I defer to your superior knowledge of the Battle of Jutland. Do you think that it would be fair to say that a ship designed with centaurs in mind would not be able to implement the same sort of internal sub divisions that the German Navy had?

I can't say; I've read multiple sources which mention how the German dreadnoughts had a much greater degree of internal subdivision than their British equivalents, but the plans I've been able to find only show the main transverse bulkheads, which were no more numerous in German ships than in those of other navies, and which would leave plenty of space even for centaurs, so that's no help.

Warships of any era or nationality are generally not known for spaciousness or comfort: Consider sailing warships, or WWII submarines, which really packed the sailors in like sardines, but were somehow able to maintain fighting efficiency. Then again, many sailors who wrote about their time aboard such ships mentioned the long-term effects of the living conditions on the crew's health. It would be far worse for centaurs, especially as you'd have to devote a lot more space to corridors and gangways just to allow the crew to move around the ship. As was mentioned earlier in the thread, it's a question of the extent to which you're willing to sacrifice the crew for the sake of the ship.

Sorry if this is an unsatisfactory answer, but I can't find better information at the moment.


If this is all true why was there a distinction between battleships and battlecruisers? I thought that the whole point was that battleships traded speed for improved armament and armor while battlecruisers traded armor and armament for speed. If bigger is always better why would you need two distinct styles of ship like that? I believe that the distinction disappeared latter so perhaps it's a technology thing.

Without going into a century's worth of naval history, the distinction was that battleships were battleships, while battlecruisers evolved from big cruisers. The designs of the two distinct ship types basically converged until, by the end of WWI, there was no difference between them.

Battlecruisers were very much a transitional design. Only three navies (Britain, Germany, and Japan) built them (the US Navy started a few, but turned them into aircraft carriers before they were done), and the concept was starting to be considered obsolete even before Jutland, because it was possible to simply build a bigger ship which could carry heavier armour and achieve higher speeds. "Slow" battleships hung around for a while because, if your battle fleet was going to be operating as a single unit, there was no point in any of your battleships being faster than your slowest class, so you might as well save weight and cost by installing smaller engines.

lightningcat
2015-06-14, 12:13 AM
I personally don'the see centaurs being big into any type of maritime pursuits. Both their size and build discourage it, hooves are much less solid on wet surfaces than human feet. This is even more true in older times, where wet wood was dangerous even to those wearing boots. Exceptions would exist for individuals, but I think a centaur navy would be a relatively new thing for a pure centaur country, assuming it is not a landlocked country. Likewise in mixed navies I don't think that there would be a lot of centaur sailors, the same reason they don't have many sailors over 6' tall.

Wardog
2015-06-14, 04:03 PM
If this is all true why was there a distinction between battleships and battlecruisers? I thought that the whole point was that battleships traded speed for improved armament and armor while battlecruisers traded armor and armament for speed. If bigger is always better why would you need two distinct styles of ship like that? I believe that the distinction disappeared latter so perhaps it's a technology thing.

Bigger is better (until planes and torpedoes mess things up). Battle cruisers were similar in size and armament to battleships, but had less armour, and therefore less weight/mass, making them faster.

They went out of fashion because the advantages of increased speed were outweighed by the disadvantages of not being properly armoured. (Especially I think given that going faster than a battleship meant you outran your own fleet and met the enemy without the support of your battleships, while sticking with the rest of the fleet meant you had sacrificed your armour for no reason).

Silus
2015-06-14, 05:13 PM
See, I think "Centaur in modern war" and this is what comes to mind:

http://img02.deviantart.net/a0f9/i/2014/031/b/5/world_war_centaur_by_jakeparker-d74lmtu.jpg
Centaur running about with anti-material rifles and similarly large caliber weapons generally suited for stationary fire?

Sounds like a plan to me.

Edit: Found a better picture.

Brother Oni
2015-06-15, 06:56 AM
http://img02.deviantart.net/a0f9/i/2014/031/b/5/world_war_centaur_by_jakeparker-d74lmtu.jpg
Centaur running about with anti-material rifles and similarly large caliber weapons generally suited for stationary fire?


While it's a good picture, why is the human portion armoured and not the larger horse part? Surely a direct hit to the main horse body will incapacitate the centaur just as easily?

I'm also not so sure that the centaur's anatomy is any better than a human's for taking recoil - it's still going through the shoulder and arms, plus you now have a increased curvature of the spine (or whatever mechanism is used to let the spine go through 90 degrees) which would increase stress to the skeleton, rather than reduce it.

Segev
2015-06-15, 11:02 AM
I'm also not so sure that the centaur's anatomy is any better than a human's for taking recoil - it's still going through the shoulder and arms, plus you now have a increased curvature of the spine (or whatever mechanism is used to let the spine go through 90 degrees) which would increase stress to the skeleton, rather than reduce it.

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm picturing a bracing structure which rests along the back and against the rump, supporting the shoulders to help with recoil when I think of centaur advantages, there.

NRSASD
2015-06-15, 12:33 PM
Love the picture! I figured they lean forward when firing, like riflemen behind an embankment

Stellar_Magic
2015-06-15, 02:12 PM
Battlecruisers were very much a transitional design. Only three navies (Britain, Germany, and Japan) built them (the US Navy started a few, but turned them into aircraft carriers before they were done), and the concept was starting to be considered obsolete even before Jutland, because it was possible to simply build a bigger ship which could carry heavier armour and achieve higher speeds. "Slow" battleships hung around for a while because, if your battle fleet was going to be operating as a single unit, there was no point in any of your battleships being faster than your slowest class, so you might as well save weight and cost by installing smaller engines.

Hence why the Japanese converted Kongo-class battlecruisers into 'fast battleships' by up-armoring and rebuilding them. While you could get a bit more speed by using less armor and more engine power, it proved to be an inefficient trade... Also battlecruisers were originally conceived of as cruiser hunters, they were never meant to be put into the main line of battle like they were at Jutland.

Icewraith
2015-06-15, 03:23 PM
The "fire while running" bit reminded me of one more reason why centaurs don't work.

Horses have an extremely wide field of view due to the placement of their eyes. They're sort of built to look at the ground and the surrounding terrain and nearly behind themselves for predators all at once. To keep horses docile we put blinders on them, significantly restricting their vision.

If centaurs do have the human head thing going on, they have huge blind spots due to their binocular vision. Or they have both sets of eyes on the head like an insect, which would make them truly terrifying snipers. Or there's a second set of eyes in the back or side of their head, Centaurs are usually portrayed as being oracles. Or they just have psychic powers or blindsense within 5" so they can run full speed, look at something in a different direction with their binocular vision, and still avoid tripping on any gopher holes or fallen logs in their path.

I suppose an alternative, mostly human-like skull structure with the eyes more widely spaced might also be possible. However, Centaurs stop being "part human, part horse" and instead become "part horse, part hammerhead shark".

There's a related sensory problem with ears where horses I believe can rotate their ears semi-independently, so the human ears are again probably a drawback. You could again solve this problem by giving them both sets of ears, or maybe giant elf ears.

The tail is another issue. I can see it developing more of a trunk-like structure or even forking into a pair of semi-opposable digits while retaining the whip action used to deter pests. It would also make grooming significantly easier.

...Y'know, I might be siphoning information based of half-remembered traits from the Animorphs book series, I had a friend who was really into them growing up and I will read almost any book if it's left lying around. Andalites are actually a good example of a sci-fi centaur.

Edit: I'm thinking of some sort of sling bracing a high recoil weapon on the sturdier horse body that is aimed and fired via the arms.

Segev
2015-06-16, 10:08 AM
A friend IRL pointed out that horses' tails are how they handle issues near their rumps. Centaurs, as tool-using creatures, might develop elaborate tail-braids with tools that weave into them and can be used for various purposes. With intelligence and need, they might even be able to do some tricks of tail-based dexterity that horses cannot. Even something akin to the litter-spears that people cleaning up the sides of roads use could be a useful tool in the tails of intelligent creatures that practice spearing things and flicking them into the reach of their arms. A small array of specialized tools that can be fastened to a grip at the end of the tail, flicked into place with practiced care, might even be feasible.

Or perhaps the tools are each tied to a different set of tail-hairs, separated, and the one's not in use are lashed to their flanks so that only the portions meant to be in use are flicked. The trick is how they tie them in place to begin with; that may require help in the morning, whether from parents or siblings or spouses.

Flickerdart
2015-06-16, 02:24 PM
Given how flexible modern prosthetics are when attached to damaged limbs, I can't imagine centaurs having great difficulty in coming up with some sort of advanced mechanical attachment for their entirely functional tails. Hell, we can just go full Doc Ock and give them some kind of arm assembly that they wear on their backs.

Segev
2015-06-16, 02:40 PM
Perhaps, but I'm thinking in terms of historical development as well as modern-day. The idea being that this hypothetical alt-earth has always had centaurs around.