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2020-10-15, 12:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Earth
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
Got a problem coming up in the next session of my weekly game, and I'm hoping the lovely geniuses on this thread can help me out. Thanks in advance!
A coalition of disparate troops totaling 10,000 soldiers plus their respective support units is required to take a heavily fortified mountain fortress. The coalition force does not need to maintain control of the fortress, they just need to get in, destroy a critical target, and get out. The coalition force is made up of highly trained soldiers, but the individual groups that make up the army have not worked together before, and a few have been enemies in the recent past. The troops are primarily close-quarters infantry, with only about 700 total troops equipped for long ranged combat.
The defenders number about 5,000 total troops. They are well trained and highly organized. They are almost exclusively equipped for ranged combat, and have several artillery batteries at the ready. They also have two A7V tanks. Moral is low due to standing guard at a very remote location, but retreat won't be an option since they have nowhere to go.
The attackers will have to pass through a half-mile long mountain pass to reach the fortress. The pass in only 60 feet wide. The defenders have dozens of bunkers and pillboxes along the pass, but are not expecting an attack, as their scouts did not detect the attacker's approach. The battle will be taking place at midnight.
So, that's a long-winded way of me asking for help figuring out how all of this is going to go down
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2020-10-15, 01:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2011
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
So...circa 1918-1919 for technology, organizations, etc?
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2020-10-15, 03:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
With regard to shotguns, I was reading a reddit post by an infantryman armed with one for CQB work during Iraq. Aside from the specialist rounds and breaching, you could also 'bounce' the shot off smooth concrete walls and floors, enabling you to hit targets from unexpected angles.
Someone who's just had their ankles smashed out from under them, isn't going to putting up much of a fight for next few seconds, giving your team time to get in and kill/secure them.
With a bit of wear and tear and some 'modifications', he could get the firing pin to protrude, resulting in the weapon being able to slam fire (ie when you cock the weapon, the shell discharges, rather than needing the trigger to also be pulled), thus he could maintain the necessary rate of fire for when things go loud.
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2020-10-15, 03:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
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2020-10-15, 05:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2010
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- Slovakia
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
There are several odd thing here already. My first thought is, where's the artillery? It was the critical component of a WW1 era armies, and unless we're dealing with something like colonial troops, there should be plenty of it to go around.
I'll assume there is arty present, because without it, the attackers have no real chance of taking that fortress.
Well, in that case my strategy would be to siege the fort. 2:1 are terrible odds if you are attacking a fortified position. Sure, battles like Verdun didn't need this disparity in numbers, but those were fought with odzens of divisions, and heavily fortified positions were suppressed and surrounded, creating a local outnumbering/defeat in detail. We're dealing with a sub-division scale here.
If the attackers have to attack, they are at a disadvantage and have exactly one shot at it, if they fail, odds are their manpower will be low enough to be routed by counterattack.
What is ranged vs close combat anyways? WW1 infantry has rifles almost exclusively, with only some LMG support (not even mortars, at least not universally), with some small assault trooper units getting submachineguns. Everyone also has some sort of bayonet or melee weapon. So, our standard, run of the mill infantryman has capability to engage from bayonet range to half a click away (well, in theory, battlefield marksmanship usually stops at 100-200 meters).
This may not help at all if the attack really is a surprise, at least not for the biggest arty pieces. At this time, you get pre-aimed artillery and balloon or landline observers, and that's it. You can't exactly react to sudden developments with great agility.
These are almost irrelevant, they are effectively just another pillbox. Tanks were not meant for defense, they are there to bust through trenches specifically. If you want defenders to have some sort of agile counterattack response, go with armored cars instead.
Well, what about surrender? Especially with that low morale.
How close tot hat pass can the attackers get before they get spotted? Are the defenders not running extensive patrols? Because that's a supremely bad idea, but the morale is low, so...
This is not a good idea, you need soldiers specifically trained in night combat to do even halfway decently at it, especially at this time.
If the initial attack fails, attackers will descend into chaos. There is no night vision yet except flares, and no man-portable radios.
Well, the absolute best bet the attackers have is to creep as closely as possible, initiate a counter-battery arty barrage to supress all pillboxes they possibly can, and then swiftly storm the fortress. This is still a bad idea that will result in absolute hell of an urban fight as they go deeper and deeper into the fortress - all sorts of grenades and chemical weapons will be used.
The plan for the attackers is to hit the fortress so quickly and so hard that the defenders, already at low morale, simply surrender - the night concealing the attacker's low numbers will also help in that regard. If the initial attack fails, or you don't want an immediate orgy of violence, attackers could try for some psyops shenanigans where they attempt to make their numbers and equipment seem better than it is - parading troops in a circle and so on.
If that initial attack fails, the defenders will launch a counterattack that will destroy opposing forces - they may not kill that many, but they will capture or wound a lot of them, rout them and loot a lot of equipment. And probably also get a morale boost. The defenders will have to play defensive roles from now on, as the attackers now outnumber them and have a strong point to retreat to.That which does not kill you made a tactical error.
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2020-10-15, 07:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2011
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
So, the good news is that given the lower troop densities, the attackers actually have quite a few options because this isn't "lines in flanders" it's a 360 degree strongpoint in the mountains.
The first and foremost would be to simply bypass the pass. It's only half a mile. You aren't going to outrun your artillery support or your logistics. You have well trained troops high on human capital. Great. March right over those mountains, use the backsides to shield your approach from direct fire and artillery while small detachments make sure no one is coming up the slopes. You may even own the high ground by the end, and be plunging fire into the fortress - building anything more than field fortifications on the very tops of mountains is rarely practical unless you actually dig out the mountain as it's own fort. And hey. why not knock out the artillery while you're back there? Artillery requires big patches of semi level ground to work on (again, assuming you haven't just hollowed out the mountain and gone full Maginot/North Korea). Set up some machineguns and rake those firing positions but good.
At the very least the defenders have to consider withdrawing to the fort main rather than holding the pass - and then you can bring up your heavy stuff.
----
Even if you decide to go up the gut for the drama plot, assuming you have your own artillery and the enemy is conveniently in a box with not that many semi-level open areas where artillery could stage...well, you care going to offline his batteries pretty early in the game. You know where they are, WWI batteries don't displace quickly and if they do they lose most of their commo and accuracy. So smash those guys down with HE and short persistence chemicals. Slime the tanks while you're at it.
If he is actually only defending a few hundred meters wide in a known position, you can roll a pretty intense barrage right over the bulk of his forces easily enough. There was a reason the Germans stopped holding the forward trenches with heavy troop concentrations. Opening barrages will never kill everything, but enough shells on known targets in a small area kills quite a few people none the less.
Or siegfried line it. Suppress his heavy stuff. Probe forward. Bunker shoots. Gunners leisurely identify and destroy bunker from unanswered long range with direct fire. Repeat until you're in Germany. (Or, in this case, the fortress).
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2020-10-15, 08:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2008
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
This might suggest some sort of small commando raid, and not a full fledged attack. Perhaps with the main force creating a distraction to draw some of the garrison out? Although, if it just puts the garrison on alert it may make it harder for the infiltration team. If the defenders' morale is low, it may be hard to draw them out of their fortifications.
Otherwise, if the fortress is not sufficiently manned, it may be possible to storm it. But I'm guessing 5,000 men can easily defend the perimeter? If there are too many defenders, then besieging the fortress may starve them into surrendering quickly, especially if morale is low. A siege would be relatively low risk, and wouldn't require much coordination among the coalition forces*, but would be more time consuming.
Surprise is then the next best option for storming. If the coalition can move their forces over the mountains as KineticDiplomat suggested, avoiding the well defended pass, and get them in position without being detected, then maybe they could achieve surprise. Depends upon their intelligence of the terrain around the fort.
There's always the old fashioned, bribe the commander to leave the fort. But I suspect you want something more climactic than that! ;-)
*Perhaps it would be better to say that a siege is usually easy to coordinate. Whereas a complicated battle plan can be more difficult.
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2020-10-15, 09:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
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2020-10-16, 01:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
If this is the full picture, I'd expect the attackers to get a bloody nose, very very quickly, and retreat. What you describe is a classic death trap, which your attackers intend to walk into with no plan. They fail, at best they retreat quickly - at worst, they are killed to the last man.
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2020-10-16, 03:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2016
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
One fairly smart way of going about conflict is not doing what your enemy wants you to.
At Alesia Vercigetorix wanted Caesar to perform a head on assault, and then slip out the back once he had bled the attackers as much as he could.
Having previously been a victim of that ploy, Caesar instead flipped the script and forced the Gauls to assault a defensive position of his choosing.
At Tyre, the defenders had built an invincible fortress by placing it on an island and being on the same side as the greatest fleet around.
Alexander flipped the script by making the island into a peninsula and subverting said navy.
In countless wars from the beginning until today, defenders have built fortifications that it would just be too expensive to attack head-on.
The job of attackers has always been to flip the script. By digging underneath the defenses and collapsing them. By inventing siege weapons. By infiltrating. By cutting off supplies. By demoralizing.
So are your attackers smart enough to flip the script?
Whatever the answer, just make it play out in an amsuing and exciting fashion. Go where story takes you.-
What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder, stronger, in a later edition.
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2020-10-16, 09:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
You could look to real-world conflicts for inspiration. In World War 1, there was a lot of fighting in the Alps, especially between the Italians and Austro-Hungarians. Research there is likely to be fruitful, as it's pretty much an exact match for the sort of situation you describe in terms of tech and environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_War
Things of interest:
-Avalanches, both natural and those triggered by artillery, intentional or not. This killed thousands of soldiers.
-Absolutely brutal close-in fighting. Fewer ways to bypass strongpoints (though it was very much possible) means ramming through an enemy defense is horrible. Taking a mountain fortress instead of bypassing or demolishing it means pushing your way through prepared killzones and trying to bust in and through labyrinths of tunnels in the hard rock. If you do the obvious, you will lose. By the end of the war the elite Italian Alpini had counted 114,948 casualties, over 50,000 of which were killed or missing.
-Everything is harder on the mountains. Less oxygen means you get exhausted quicker. Rapid elevation changes are treacherous and energy-intensive. And you need to drag all your supplies with you. Without roads.
-A need for special troops is apparent. From the Italian Alpini to the Austro-Hungarian Imperial-Royals, you need people specially trained to deal with these rigors, especially if you don't want to grind your army to a paste in direct frontal assaults. Engineers and artillery are also critical, to destroy mostly immobile fortresses and infantry, and demolish whole mountains, which might entail tunneling and placing explosives deep beneath.
Now, not all of these things are a factor if this is an isolated strongpoint, but if this is a proper conflict on the peaks? There are a lot of considerations.Last edited by AdAstra; 2020-10-16 at 09:44 AM.
The stars are calling, but let's come up with a good opening line before we answer
Spoiler: Homebrew of Mine
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2020-10-16, 03:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2012
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2020-10-16, 03:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2016
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
As others have said a stright attack is doomed to fail.
The options for the attackers are
1) Psyops. Convince the defenders that they are a vanguard of a much more significant force and that it’s best to just surrender now.
2) Find an undefended route in to the fortress. Like the British at the Battle of Quebec, scale an unsaleable cliff and get behind the defenses.
3) Lure the enemy out where they can be defeated. What would induce a demoralized force to come out of their fortress is the difficult part, they aren’t going to send a large part of their forces out to attack a small group of enemy.
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2020-10-16, 06:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
Equipment like shotguns, SMGs, and carbine-like designs over more traditional rifles? But it sounds like the terms of engagement (crowded spaces and poor visibility, especially if it is carried out as a night battle) will make it so that any potential range advantage the defenders might have will be largely irrelevant .. outside of the attackers being dumb enough to march into an obvious killing field with floodlights on it or something.
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2020-10-16, 06:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
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2020-10-17, 02:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2008
Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
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2020-10-21, 01:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2009
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
So the German Army has three divisions. The 1st Armored Division, the 10th Armored Division, and the Rapid Response Division.
Within these are 7 Tank Battalions. Which are numbered the 93rd, 104th, 203rd, 363rd, 393rd, and 414th Tank Battalions, and the 8th Mountain Tank Battalion.
Seems like they are missing at least 7 Divisions and 407 Tank Battalions. Where those all scrapped after the Cold War? Did they ever exist?We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2020-10-21, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
Last edited by Max_Killjoy; 2020-10-21 at 02:14 PM.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2020-10-21, 02:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_...dierdivisionen Here's a list of the historical and active Bundeswehr Panzer granadier divisions, with the dates of their disbanding or integration or conversion in a different unit (like tank divisions). Lower there is a table with a list of the Panzergrenadierbattalionen, which were disbanded or turned into Panzer battalions.
Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2020-10-21, 04:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
For those who are curious but can't read the German article:
The 2nd to 9th divisions did exist anymore but once did, and the 10th division was not renamed. The West German Army had 36 divisions (1st to 36th) and the East German Army 6 divisions (which became the 37th to 42nd).
They really downsized after the Cold War and once conscription was suspended. (From 360,000 in the 80s to 60,000 now. Which means the sizes of the three remaining divisions doubled.)
Batallion numbers are codes that list both the battalion and its brigade one level up. 391st to 399th battalion would all be battalions of the 39th brigade, of which only the 393rd is a tank batallion.We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2020-10-21, 06:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
Most European powers retain comparatively small militaries. Frankly, most powers in general retain smaller militaries than they had at the zenith of industrial war writ large. So units keep famous designators. The 82nd airborne still exists in the US, as does the 25th Infantry Division, in an army that can field 10 active divisions...theoretically. (Realistically readiness rates mean getting more than six out the door would mean stripping a lot of the globe. )
Anyhow, was it ‘91 or ‘03 where the British ground force commander basically got a letter from the national leadership saying “what you have is what we got, no more is coming, and any tank or helicopter you lose won’t be replaced for a good long while. So if you lose it, GB just won’t have it anymore.”
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2020-10-22, 11:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
3) Deliberate misinformation to potentially hostile foreign nations.
As an example - SEAL Team Six. At the time, there wasn't actually 5 other SEAL Teams (there was 1 other), but the numbering kept the Russians guessing.
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2020-10-22, 11:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
AFAIK Russians engaged in that themselves. There was, obviously, significant downsizing of the military after the WWII ended, and some regiments kept their famous numbers, but even newly-formed units sometimes were numbered out of sequence with the same aim - keep "potential enemy" guessing.
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2020-10-22, 01:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
This one is more important than one might think. In WW2 the germans used sequential numbering on their tanks. When one of the new varieties was rolled out the allies only encountered a handful, but using statistics they calcuated the probable size of the total production to date (no, I don't know how the maths works, though I think I did once) and they got it approximately correct. Random issuing of serial numbers for some things is actually quite important.
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2020-10-22, 04:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
Ah, the "German Tank Problem" --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
I'm not sure if the Germans were so careless as to sequentially number the tanks themselves, but they did sequentially number some of the components, like gearboxes. (Wikipedia says that the chassis and engine numbers were used in analysis too, but they were more "complicated.") Also the wheels indicated a limited number of molds were used. It was from these that the Allies were able to perform a statistical analysis to get quite an accurate estimate of the number of tanks produced in a month. Which was confirmed after the war by looking at the official documentation. This statistical approach was far more accurate than the intelligence estimates, which greatly overestimated the number being produced.
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2020-10-22, 04:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
Randall Munroe ("the XKCD guy") explained that one. Here's the post. He mentions Seal Team Six and the German tanks, too.
Here's the relevant bit (for someone who encounters a German tank in the field, that is):
Originally Posted by Randall MunroeLast edited by ExLibrisMortis; 2020-10-22 at 04:54 PM.
Spoiler: Collectible nice thingsMy incarnate/crusader. A self-healing crowd-control melee build (ECL 8).
My Ruby Knight Vindicator barsader. A party-buffing melee build (ECL 14).
Doctor Despair's and my all-natural approach to necromancy.
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2020-10-22, 05:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
For a single known registry number, that's the case. It becomes much more interesting when you have a couple more numbers. If you have 14, 26, 31, and 37, which you assume to be a random sample, there's a statistical method that can get you a pretty good estimate of the total number range.
Obviously, a range of 1-60 seems much more likely than a range of 1-100. And even intuitively you'd be really surprised if the highest number turns out to be something like 200 or 300. Statistics is rarely intuitive, but here it's fairly easy to see.
If you have something like a hundred samples (which are assumed to be random), you can get a really good estimate, even when the numbers you got range from 80 to 23.000. I believe it's not even a very complicated equation.
The German Border Guard did used to have eight regular Groups (7 land, one sea), which made the later introduced counter-terrorism unit Group 9.
The Border Guard has since been transformed into the Federal Police and been restructured, but the unit is still called GSG9 because it's famous.Last edited by Yora; 2020-10-22 at 05:09 PM.
We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2020-10-25, 09:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
Another instrument to add to our list of battlefield music: Aztech Death Whistle.
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2020-10-27, 02:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
Hypothetical for those black powder experts on the board.
Is is plausible to blast open a old fashioned lock, (Victorian Age or older. Picture the lock on a cell door in a western movie) by pouring gunpowder into the keyhole and setting it off with a long match?
If so, how much powder, and how big a boom, for purposes of safe distance do you think?
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2020-10-27, 02:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIX
Not an expert expert, but that seems extremely unlikely to me. Old locks aren't tightly sealed and you wouldn't really be able to tightly pack the powder inside the keyhole. You'd probably get a flash and woosh, but that would be it.
We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying