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  1. - Top - End - #91
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Agreed on all points, but this point specifically brought another possibility to mind: there was a comment in an early episode of the Revoutions podcast of the English civil war that their cannons were not just expensive and hardly reliable, it also slowed the armies way down - the things weight far more than the roads could take, so they frequently slowed down the army trains to a standstill while they dug them out of this or that mud puddle. And yet, they kept using the damn things, and dragging them everywhere regardless of how often they were more a liability than an asset.

    The Revolutions podcaster didn't really offer an answer as to why, as far as I can remember (he's more interested in the politics than the tactics), but there was a heavy hint of "boys and their toys". Not saying he was right; I'd argue that, like with the elephants, it probably came down to "the army'd take a big hit to morale if they were the side without the big loud beast/cannon", but, well, I might be wrong and he might be right: it might be that the people in charge really were like "this is the shiniest toy, and we're taking it to battle, because how else are we going to prove our manhood otherwise?". I'd have dismissed that as unrealistic a few years ago but these days it looks a hell of a lot more plausible.

    Grey Wolf
    Battles in the pike and shot era could be decided by who had their artillery deployed (even going along into the Napoleonic era). Pike blocks are desperately vulnerable to cannon fire actually. They rip enormous holes in the rank in a way musketry won't do (and if they do you can charge them). An army that has to deploy under fire of their enemies cannon is in trouble because they have no answer of it. If I have guns and my enemy has not I will stand at range and blast until morale and cohesion of the enemy is starting to fray.

    There are a couple of famous battles in the 30YW effectively decided by cannon. One prominant Swedish commander of the era had it as a bit of a speciality having sort of rises from the artillery arm.

    And in most cases if you want to have any lasting impact you have to be able to assault towns and fortifications. This is why you drag the artillery along as insane it may seem to those with 20/20 hindsight vision armchairing the whole thing.

    There's a really nasty tactic in Napoleonic warfare where your cavalry threatens the infantry so it must form squares. As it has done so your artillery pounds the now massed group of soldiers killing and wounding in a manner a line formation would never have to endure. Which is half the reason you actually have cavalry on the field.

    If we generalise extremely broadly in the 1500-1800+a bit era you needed all three branches of an army, infantry, cavalry and artillery because if you lacked any one piece of the puzzle the military system of the time just didn't function properly. You would be unable to perform certain vital tasks which would invalidate everything you did up to that point. You can't just send for the guns if turns out Carlisle wasn't ready and willing to join up on your team when you show up with the army.

    Similarly elephants seem to work in ancient warfare. There are several battles where effectively the elephant corps are mutually cancelling each other (so eg if you look at the battle elephants do not even seem to matter), but woe betide the army who shows up without the elephants.

    Dig hard enough and there will be examples of grossly overblown deployment of something, be it artillery (e.g. I seem to recall an Ottoman invasion of the Balkans that failed as they brougth too big and too heavy an artillery train along and the weather turned on them) or elephants. But generally speaking most of it tends to be appropriate for the time and place. Even the comically overblown Ottoman artillery turned out to be exaclty the thing you needed as they besieged Constantinople in 1453.

  2. - Top - End - #92
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Agreed on all points, but this point specifically brought another possibility to mind: there was a comment in an early episode of the Revoutions podcast of the English civil war that their cannons were not just expensive and hardly reliable, it also slowed the armies way down - the things weight far more than the roads could take, so they frequently slowed down the army trains to a standstill while they dug them out of this or that mud puddle. And yet, they kept using the damn things, and dragging them everywhere regardless of how often they were more a liability than an asset.

    The Revolutions podcaster didn't really offer an answer as to why, as far as I can remember (he's more interested in the politics than the tactics), but there was a heavy hint of "boys and their toys". Not saying he was right; I'd argue that, like with the elephants, it probably came down to "the army'd take a big hit to morale if they were the side without the big loud beast/cannon", but, well, I might be wrong and he might be right: it might be that the people in charge really were like "this is the shiniest toy, and we're taking it to battle, because how else are we going to prove our manhood otherwise?". I'd have dismissed that as unrealistic a few years ago but these days it looks a hell of a lot more plausible.

    Grey Wolf
    I can absolutely believe that, and especially of Charles I who spent a lot of money on image-maintenance through statement pieces such as art collections and ships. It seems that in the early modern period the essential penis-extensions were a massive artillery train and/or a massive warship. The early Ottomans built some unjustifiably huge cannon which proved a nightmare because they were too big to move. During the member-measuring between Henry VIII and his northern neighbours, Scotland maintained one of Europe's most impressive artillery parks, which saw hardly any action, as well as making a play for the "biggest ship" title with the Michael.

    If you could combine the two and have a massive warship rammed to the gills with artillery then so much the better. Indeed one of the factors in the buildup to that war (as you are probably aware) was collection of "ship money", much of which went towards construction of the Sovereign of the Seas, which apart from its massive tonnage was covered in enough gilt to do justice to a small palace.

    Though at least the Sovereign was an effective warship if an unnecessarily expensive one. The reconfigured and overgunned Mary Rose was a famous failure, and the Vasa didn't even make it out of the harbour on its maiden voyage before sinking.

    Quote Originally Posted by snowblizz View Post
    Battles in the pike and shot era could be decided by who had their artillery deployed (even going along into the Napoleonic era). Pike blocks are desperately vulnerable to cannon fire actually. They rip enormous holes in the rank in a way musketry won't do (and if they do you can charge them). An army that has to deploy under fire of their enemies cannon is in trouble because they have no answer of it. If I have guns and my enemy has not I will stand at range and blast until morale and cohesion of the enemy is starting to fray.
    The rock-paper-scissors interaction between infantry, cavalry and artillery was definitely a thing, but only really came into its own during the 18th century. Napoleonic gunnery was much, much better than during the Thirty Years War, which was partly because of improvements in the guns themselves (and to their ammunition) but also because of general improvements to understanding of mathematics, leading to better training of the gunners themselves.

    During the English Civil War, at least, artillery do not seem to have been particularly effective outside sieges. The only major contribution I can think of artillery making to a field engagement was at Lansdowne, where Waller's bombardment of Hopton's march provoked the battle. Hopton's troops then promptly stormed up the hill and took the position despite Waller's artillery being well-set.

    The Swedes did manage to make effective use of it, but they were also the best army of their era, and Torstensson was an unusually talented artillery commander. It might be that his success encouraged other armies to persist with their own artillery even where it wasn't really making much practical difference.

    It must be admitted that the quality of troops in the English Civil War* was not for the most part particularly high until the later stages. Many of the officers were excellent, having served in Dutch or Swedish armies, but the soldiery were mostly levies, and it frequently showed. There is an infamous account of a cavalry troop being wholly routed by a field of runner beans. Where troops had been properly drilled, like the Cornish trained bands who joined Hopton, the gulf in quality between them and their opponents was often remarkable.

    So it's likely that Civil War armies did not make the best use of the artillery available. Even if they did adopt Swedish tactics (and Rupert in particular was a big proponent of them), the Swedish system relied quite heavily on the troops themselves being disciplined and experienced. The tendency of royalist cavalry to rout their opponents and then hare off all over the place rather than regroup to support infantry is well-known. Similarly, it's been suggested as a factor in the stalemate at Edgehill that the adoption of the on-paper superior Swedish system by the royalist infantry in fact handicapped them, because the troops weren't good enough to make proper use of it and it just led to confusion. I'd be surprised if artillery didn't suffer from the same handicaps.

    *no offence to Scottish, Welsh or Irish theatres intended
    Last edited by Aedilred; 2020-05-20 at 07:18 AM.
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  3. - Top - End - #93
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
    The weird part about ships is that, absent gunpowder, it seems entirely possible to build an essentially unsinkable warship. You wouldn't even need the ridiculous levels of belt armor seen on actual late 19th/early 20th century warships for this purpose; I have a hard time figuring you could use a torsion engine to shoot a projectile capable of punching through, say, 2 inches of Krupp cemented armor. Plus no explosives means no torpedoes, which is even more weight savings. So you could get a ship whose hull was completely resistant to literally every projectile weapon known to mankind.
    This reminds me, it may not be as good, but there are quite cheap and light ways to put good armour on a structure that are surprisingly resistance to bullets/shrapnel/quarrels etc.
    During WW2 the British navy deployed something they called "plastic armour" for ship superstructures - primarily for merchant ships. This was essentially a coating of tar containing small granite cubes (about 1/2 in iirc - quite a bit of research went into finding the optimum size and density). This provided a cheap method of protecting the crews from aircraft strafing them.

    Something similar on the walls of buildings or ships would protect against pretty much any small-arms equivalent projectile attacks.

  4. - Top - End - #94
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    I agree with the Swedish Model idea. Everyone saw how well it worked and figured they could do it too, but of course didn't realize just HOW disciplined the Carolean Armies were. I mean, we are talking about guys who march up to the equivalent of spitting distance to unleash hell and then charge.

    It's a risky strategy, but works wonders when you know for a fact that your men will hold. Hell, kinda reminds me of the Irish regiments in the American Civil War, except they used buck and ball.

    In any event, cannons are great, if your gunners don't suck. Otherwise they are a giant pain that only work on mostly stationary targets.
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Checked the op again. Assuming modern metallurgy and engineering tolerances, not chemical knowledge though, and typical fantasy dark ages society otherwise.
    Except you can't have modern metallurgy without the requite advanced chemical knowledge. Unless you know how to incorporate manganese, chromium and vanadium/uranium reliably into your metallurgy (rather than fluke it ala Damascus steel), you're not getting anywhere near the same quality as modern steels.

    Quote Originally Posted by warty goblin View Post
    The weird part about ships is that, absent gunpowder, it seems entirely possible to build an essentially unsinkable warship. You wouldn't even need the ridiculous levels of belt armor seen on actual late 19th/early 20th century warships for this purpose; I have a hard time figuring you could use a torsion engine to shoot a projectile capable of punching through, say, 2 inches of Krupp cemented armor. Plus no explosives means no torpedoes, which is even more weight savings. So you could get a ship whose hull was completely resistant to literally every projectile weapon known to mankind.
    You don't even need that - Korean turtle ships (거북선 or geobukseon) were pretty much immune to anything the invading Japanese forces had during the late 16th Century Imjin Wars. Admittedly they did use cannon, but they also had rams and sulphur based chemical weapons from the bow mounted dragon head.

    Quote Originally Posted by Blackhawk748 View Post
    In any event, cannons are great, if your gunners don't suck. Otherwise they are a giant pain that only work on mostly stationary targets.
    Even then, you can substitute other loads - grapeshot would be useful for fast moving targets and what chainshot would to anything that's not an adult dragon doesn't really bear thinking about.
    Last edited by Brother Oni; 2020-05-20 at 09:59 AM.

  6. - Top - End - #96
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Of course, if you create a ship which is essentially unsinkable using your available weapons technology, and you can't develop any way of defeating them, you'll probably find other ways around the problem--e.g. you'll build your vessels to be small and fast so they can evade the lumbering "turtle" ships rather than try to fight them, and all battles between big ships would devolve into boarding actions.

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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Well, that or incendiaries. Greek fire was a thing for a reason.

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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Brother Oni View Post
    Even then, you can substitute other loads - grapeshot would be useful for fast moving targets and what chainshot would to anything that's not an adult dragon doesn't really bear thinking about.
    You lose range then, though. Chain shot is much less accurate at any sort of distance than roundshot, and while grapeshot will hit things outside of arrow range, I wouldn't expect it to do anything more than annoy a dragon except at close range.
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Aedilred View Post
    You lose range then, though. Chain shot is much less accurate at any sort of distance than roundshot, and while grapeshot will hit things outside of arrow range, I wouldn't expect it to do anything more than annoy a dragon except at close range.
    Canister OTOH is fantastic. It had half again the range of a musket and fired much bigger rounds then grape, it helped end linear tactics because standing and exchanging fire with cannister rounds was suicide. That is why Napoleanic tactics had so many bayonet charges. Even if the 3 inch balls didn't kill it I'm willing to bet they shatter the dragon's wings and it falls from the sky.

    Then rifles became popular and had more range and canister disappeared again. A sad day for cannon kind.
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    Canister OTOH is fantastic. It had half again the range of a musket and fired much bigger rounds then grape, it helped end linear tactics because standing and exchanging fire with cannister rounds was suicide. That is why Napoleanic tactics had so many bayonet charges. Even if the 3 inch balls didn't kill it I'm willing to bet they shatter the dragon's wings and it falls from the sky.

    Then rifles became popular and had more range and canister disappeared again. A sad day for cannon kind.
    Ah yes, canister is great stuff (if you're trying to kill people). But true canister is pretty decidedly modern (as opposed to medieval). That said, the principle isn't that complicated and doesn't require electronics or special chemical compounds to create, so depending on how we interpret what we're permitted by the OP, I guess we probably do have it available.
    Last edited by Aedilred; 2020-05-20 at 11:47 AM.
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Of course, if you create a ship which is essentially unsinkable using your available weapons technology, and you can't develop any way of defeating them, you'll probably find other ways around the problem--e.g. you'll build your vessels to be small and fast so they can evade the lumbering "turtle" ships rather than try to fight them, and all battles between big ships would devolve into boarding actions.
    As far as I'm aware, Turtle Ships weren't much slower, if at all, than their Asian contemporaries. They're a bit less manueverable, but trading in a bit of maneueverability to be boarding proof, so Cannon resistant to basically be Cannon proof and small arm proof is worth it.

    I'm not sure how fire resistant they were, but there was a fair amount of metal so getting it to catch may be an issue
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Of course, if you create a ship which is essentially unsinkable using your available weapons technology, and you can't develop any way of defeating them, you'll probably find other ways around the problem--e.g. you'll build your vessels to be small and fast so they can evade the lumbering "turtle" ships rather than try to fight them, and all battles between big ships would devolve into boarding actions.
    Yeah but by 1800 ships could massively damage cities using rockets and cannons, and by 1900 the British could level a city. Air-cannons might be less penetrative then gunpowder but they also can fire explosive or incendiary rounds with less problems, so a massive armored ship just sailing into harbor and destroying your docks would be a real threat.

    On that note; in RL Ironclads were cannon proof until a decade into smokeless cannons. Cannons that could penetrate their armor had a tendency to explode (the US Secretary of War was killed in a testfire for instance), and they were built to ram each other until the late 1890s because of this.
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    Yeah but by 1800 ships could massively damage cities using rockets and cannons, and by 1900 the British could level a city. Air-cannons might be less penetrative then gunpowder but they also can fire explosive or incendiary rounds with less problems, so a massive armored ship just sailing into harbor and destroying your docks would be a real threat.
    That's in real life, I thought the discussion was revolving around the idea that weapons like you've just described simply couldn't ever be developed in this fantasy world?

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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    [Canister] fired much bigger rounds then grape
    Pretty sure you have that backwards - grape consists of fewer, larger rounds while canister has more, smaller rounds and may use such things as fragmented scrap metal or broken nails instead.

    Also, if you're looking for a sort of area-of-effect shot for cannons at long range, what you really want is something more like a shrapnel shell (spherical case shot) or a time-fused high explosive shell (impact-fused might also work, but probably won't affect as wide of an area and may bury itself in the ground prior to detonation, significantly reducing its effect; proximity-fused could be better at sufficiently long range since it would more reliably burst at the optimum height above ground for maximum effect, but is unlikely without electronics); grape and canister are more for use against nearby targets.

    That's in real life, I thought the discussion was revolving around the idea that weapons like you've just described simply couldn't ever be developed in this fantasy world?
    The scenario in the original post only explicitly posits a lack of electronics, and at least into the 20th Century you don't really need electronics to make explosives and propellants for gun and rocket artillery.
    Last edited by Aeson; 2020-05-20 at 01:27 PM.

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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    That's in real life, I thought the discussion was revolving around the idea that weapons like you've just described simply couldn't ever be developed in this fantasy world?
    Was it? I thought we were limited to modern stuff that didn't include modern chemistry and electronics but def including metallurgy. That means airguns are totally on the table (I posted about Napoleanic air rifles on the first page) and at least naptha style weapons that existed in medieval times. An armored ship with any sort of launchable flame weapon is going to clean up wooden cities.

    @Aeson cannister refers to the rounds being in a cannister of some sort to keep them grouped together in flight, the rounds are over an inch in width. The rounds got smaller in the mid-Ninteenth century as the cannister got more solid instead of wood and ropes, but they are not small rounds. Grape is literally just packed rounds fired at close range from the cannon, the size is in the name.
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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    @Aeson cannister refers to the rounds being in a cannister of some sort to keep them grouped together in flight, the rounds are over an inch in width. The rounds got smaller in the mid-Ninteenth century as the cannister got more solid instead of wood and ropes, but they are not small rounds. Grape is literally just packed rounds fired at close range from the cannon, the size is in the name.
    'Grape' refers to the shape of the munition - it looks like a bunch of grapes - not to the size of the shot.
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    Also, I invite you to peruse the Ordnance Manual for the use of Officers of the United States Army, 1862 edition, if you disbelieve me that the balls used in canister are smaller than the balls used for grape.
    Last edited by Aeson; 2020-05-20 at 01:43 PM.

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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    As I understand it, canister is essentially a lot of musket balls crammed into a cannon-sized shotgun shell.

    And the OP says nothing about restricting chemistry. Only electronics.

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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    And the OP says nothing about restricting chemistry. Only electronics.
    Then you've got modern arty with a steam engine and zeppelins with machine guns and howitzers. Bombs of RFNA and elemental flourine, nerve gas, v2 rockets. The megafauna will either sit down and play the civilized people game or go extinct, no questions asked.

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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Then you've got modern arty with a steam engine and zeppelins with machine guns and howitzers. Bombs of RFNA and elemental flourine, nerve gas, v2 rockets. The megafauna will either sit down and play the civilized people game or go extinct, no questions asked.
    You've got modern rifles and handguns which would be enough to do the job--I doubt a dragon or any other mythical beast is going to live long if you start shooting it from half a mile away with an anti-materiel sniper rifle. For that matter, what does "electronics" mean in this context? Has literally nobody ever created a battery or figured out that moving a magnet near a metal wire causes weird stuff to happen?

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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    For that matter, what does "electronics" mean in this context? Has literally nobody ever created a battery or figured out that moving a magnet near a metal wire causes weird stuff to happen?
    Good question. Traditionally, there is a distinction between "electrical", which can involve wires, resistors, capacitors, and inductors (including electromagnets, and so relays), and "electronic", which includes vacuum tubes like diodes, triodes, pentodes, & cathode ray tubes, and semiconductor devices like transistors. If I recall correctly, World War II technology mostly used electronics for radio communication and radar.

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    Default Re: What kind of medieval armour and weapons can you make using today's sciences?

    Quote Originally Posted by Aeson View Post
    'Grape' refers to the shape of the munition - it looks like a bunch of grapes - not to the size of the shot.
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    Also, I invite you to peruse the Ordnance Manual for the use of Officers of the United States Army, 1862 edition, if you disbelieve me that the balls used in canister are smaller than the balls used for grape.
    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    As I understand it, canister is essentially a lot of musket balls crammed into a cannon-sized shotgun shell.

    And the OP says nothing about restricting chemistry. Only electronics.
    Evidently I was incorrect, thank you for the correction
    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Vibranium: If it was on the periodic table, its chemical symbol would be "Bs".

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