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Skanky Burns posted:http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/3000/most-powerful-trebuchet-%28with-projectile-weight-of-1-20-kg%29 Edit: Not to mention, of course, that one advantage of the weed-cannon is that it's highly mobile. The weed-trebuchet would have to be on the back of a pickup as well, and that sounds quite unwieldy. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 10:22
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In trying to get illegal drugs over a border I would believe rate of fire is the primary concern.
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Jan 6, 2014 10:25
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ArchangeI posted:In trying to get illegal drugs over a border I would believe rate of fire is the primary concern. Weed gatling (preferably gas-operated so you get maximum fire rate right from the start).
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Jan 6, 2014 10:28
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What we really need is a weed-railgun.
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Jan 6, 2014 10:29
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If you absolutely have to do if as far from the border as possible though, air cannon would be your best bet. Assuming pumpkins are interchangeable with weed packages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin_chunking quote:The devices used include slingshots, catapults, centrifugals, trebuchets, and pneumatic cannons.
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Jan 6, 2014 10:29
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a travelling HEGEL posted:My boyfriend said you'd get better range from a weed-trebuchet. Who's right? If you are supposed to be able to shoot from a (most likely moving) pickup truck, the potato cannon wins. For that record breaking trebuchet you need a semitrailer on something. Can on scale up a potato cannon to semi-trailer size? Serious-post: which factor actually limited the size of real life trebuchets? And ins't 1200 feet still less than the maximum range of longbows? Apparently this was not an issue because you still can't hit the crew from that distance?
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Jan 6, 2014 10:38
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quote:Teams compete in the following divisions: Air Cannon, Female Air Cannon...
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Jan 6, 2014 10:39
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For practical purposes, a Holman projector Mk.2 would be best. It's a battle-proven design that can fire several packets up to 300 meters into the air in one shot. If it can ward off Luftwaffe, it can be potentially useful on the Drug Wars! 
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Jan 6, 2014 10:42
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Ha ha, that's absurd. Apparently, physics, math, and a sweet-rear end pneumatic cannon are different for the fairer sex. Evidently men have more practice shooting things out of tubes.
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Jan 6, 2014 10:59
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veekie posted:Evidently men have more practice shooting things out of tubes. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 11:10
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I guess the actual most important factor is whether all the packages land at the same, predictable spot and can be swiftly collected. Trebuchet would probably be worse at that. Also, a pneumatic cannon is most likely easier to rig so you can fire it from the carriage platform of a truck without any delays on arrival & on departure.
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Jan 6, 2014 11:43
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sullat posted:They were oral histories, eventually recorded in Greek. The modern names for them are ”the Iliad” and ”The Odyssey”. This isn't even close to being true.
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Jan 6, 2014 12:02
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feedmegin posted:Edit: and if we're talking about Mycenae, to name one bronze age civilisation, yes, they did write down quite a lot, but it was like 'received by the temple: 100 oxen, 50 jars of olive oil'. Not, like, useful stuff/poems/first-hand accounts of military anything. Egypt and the Near East in general are somewhat different, of course. I know most of the writings we have from the Mycenae are inventory type lists, but what makes you say that it's useless information? You can learn a lot from inventories. What people ate, what goods they had access to (and therefore, who they may have traded with), how many soldiers they could equip, how wealthy they were, etc. Hell, from the example you used it's illustrating that they believed in making sacrifices or paying some kind of tribute to the gods via the temple. I get that it's not always the most exciting information, but I don't see why that's not useful information to have.
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Jan 6, 2014 14:26
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canuckanese posted:I know most of the writings we have from the Mycenae are inventory type lists, but what makes you say that it's useless information? You can learn a lot from inventories. What people ate, what goods they had access to (and therefore, who they may have traded with), how many soldiers they could equip, how wealthy they were, etc. Hell, from the example you used it's illustrating that they believed in making sacrifices or paying some kind of tribute to the gods via the temple. Heck, I think it builds a better picture than "so and so ruled here and kicked a lot of rear end" since inventory records are inclined to be accurate and reliable. There's no political gain to be had for making poo poo up or delivering sick burns. No artistic interpretation or inflation(as happens with saying a thousand dudes marched etc).
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Jan 6, 2014 14:46
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I built a ~18' trebuchet in highschool and lemme just say, you would not want to mount one with a ~500+ lb counterweight on a pickup truck.
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Jan 6, 2014 14:57
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Would it have been possible to load the Paris Gun with weed and use that? With 130km of range, you could almost send it right to San Diego from Mexicali.
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Jan 6, 2014 16:19
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Moist von Lipwig posted:There's some evidence behind it, Egypt survived the collapse and had some records of the names of the tribes that made up the 'Sea Peoples' who weren't so much an organized force as they were wandering tribes. For example the Pelest could have easily become the Palestinians etc Peleset became the Philistines, I thought? Which is where the word Palestine comes from, yeah, but today's Palestinian people are mostly just the descendants of the people who didn't leave in the Jewish Diaspora. The Philistines themselves have all but left the genetic pool. And yeah, for most major happenings in history, climate is, at the root of it, the reason why. veekie posted:Heck, I think it builds a better picture than "so and so ruled here and kicked a lot of rear end" since inventory records are inclined to be accurate and reliable. There's no political gain to be had for making poo poo up or delivering sick burns. No artistic interpretation or inflation(as happens with saying a thousand dudes marched etc). Reading people's interpretations of events can do a wonder to reveal how they thought, though. Both are extremely useful in different ways!
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Jan 6, 2014 16:27
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gradenko_2000 posted:Would it have been possible to load the Paris Gun with weed and use that? With 130km of range, you could almost send it right to San Diego from Mexicali. Yes, but the muzzle velocities would probably turn the projectile into a massive cloud of rapidly-expanding ganja that would make the entire population of National City stoned out of their minds. Dozens would be trampled to death trying to reach the nearest Taco Bell.
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Jan 6, 2014 16:43
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Bacarruda posted:Yes, but the muzzle velocities would probably turn the projectile into a massive cloud of rapidly-expanding ganja that would make the entire population of National City stoned out of their minds. Dozens would be trampled to death trying to reach the nearest Taco Bell. That's a feature, not a bug.
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Jan 6, 2014 17:58
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If anyone lives in or is visiting Central Texas, I'd definitely recommend visiting the Texas Military Forces Museum at Camp Mabry in Austin. The exhibits focus for the most part on Texan units throughout American history, but it's still pretty interesting. They also have lots of old tanks, more M113 variants you can shake a stick at, and a Jagdpanzer 38(t)!
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Jan 6, 2014 18:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:Would it have been possible to load the Paris Gun with weed and use that? With 130km of range, you could almost send it right to San Diego from Mexicali. If we're going for "most absurd," one of the envisaged uses for what became the Saturn rocket was to resupply Army units in the field. I'm pretty sure whoever came up with the of using what is effectively an ICBM to deliver bullets and beans to some troops on the next continent over was high as a loving kite.
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Jan 6, 2014 18:53
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Phanatic posted:If we're going for "most absurd," one of the envisaged uses for what became the Saturn rocket was to resupply Army units in the field. I'm pretty sure whoever came up with the of using what is effectively an ICBM to deliver bullets and beans to some troops on the next continent over was high as a loving kite. Oh god, do you have a source for this?
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Jan 6, 2014 18:57
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Phanatic posted:If we're going for "most absurd," one of the envisaged uses for what became the Saturn rocket was to resupply Army units in the field. I'm pretty sure whoever came up with the of using what is effectively an ICBM to deliver bullets and beans to some troops on the next continent over was high as a loving kite.  Who is Hermann Goring? 
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Jan 6, 2014 19:05
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Phanatic posted:using what is effectively an ICBM to deliver beans to some troops ... was high as a loving kite. They merely studied the Molotov school of bread distribution.
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Jan 6, 2014 19:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:
It would have worked, (see: Berlin airlift). They just needed air superiority and way more aircraft.
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Jan 6, 2014 19:09
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Saint Celestine posted:It would have worked, (see: Berlin airlift). They just needed air superiority and way more aircraft. What are two things the nazis would never have? I'll take historical heroin addicts for 800 Alex.
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Jan 6, 2014 19:26
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Moist von Lipwig posted:There's some evidence behind it, Egypt survived the collapse and had some records of the names of the tribes that made up the 'Sea Peoples' who weren't so much an organized force as they were wandering tribes. For example the Pelest could have easily become the Palestinians etc I'm still not sure this "collapse" ever happened. Everything I can find just points to those "sea people" going on a rampage of conquest, which is impressive, but not necessarily a sign of the violent collapse of civilization itself. Just business as usual. (Well not for Egypt, mind you, since they had to fight them off, apparently.) Libluini fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 19:28
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Raskolnikov38 posted:What are two things the nazis would never have? I'll take historical heroin addicts for 800 Alex. Well right, I'm just saying, an airlift could have kept the 6th army supplied for a good long while, if those two factors weren't an issue.
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Jan 6, 2014 19:28
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Libluini posted:I'm still not sure this "collapse" ever happened. Everything I can find just points to those "sea people" going on a rampage of conquest, which is impressive, but not necessarily a sign of the violent collapse of civilization itself. Just business as usual. (Well not for Egypt, mind you, since they had to fight them off, apparently.) I apologize if I read this incorrectly but I want to be sure. You're saying that the Bronze Age Collapse wasn't A Thing?
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Jan 6, 2014 20:34
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handbanana125 posted:I apologize if I read this incorrectly but I want to be sure. You're saying that the Bronze Age Collapse wasn't A Thing? I think he means that to him, the "collapse" just sounds like the Sea People went through and conquered a bunch of civilizations. Why he doesn't think that's a collapse, I'm not sure. Personally I think entire cultures and empires ceasing to exist, cities being violently destroyed and replaced by mud villages, trade routes being unused, and literacy dropping by a massive degree constitutes a collapse of civilization.I'm not sure that warfare was the only cause of the collapse though, I would think that there must have been other factors too.
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Jan 6, 2014 20:44
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canuckanese posted:I think he means that to him, the "collapse" just sounds like the Sea People went through and conquered a bunch of civilizations. Let's not forget the super-power nation of its time exhausting itself just to survive and ~90% of population centers in Southern Greece straight up disappearing. While we are on the subject, I got an advance copy of a book coming out on the subject that I think people in here would like: 1177B.C The Year Civilization Collapsed. It attempts to explore potential causes and motivators for the raids/reactions in a way that I found to be really accessible for books on the subject and era. I had the chance to meet the author a couple of years back as an undergrad and he has a pretty good body of work, as well as a solid writing style. It comes out in March but if you're a student and your school has a half-way decent Classics department, it should be relatively easy to request an advance. Immanentized fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 20:52
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Bacarruda posted:Yes, but the muzzle velocities would probably turn the projectile into a massive cloud of rapidly-expanding ganja that would make the entire population of National City stoned out of their minds. Dozens would be trampled to death trying to reach the nearest Taco Bell. Please, this is southern California. They get their tacos via truck. Extra cilantro.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:11
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Libluini posted:I'm still not sure this "collapse" ever happened. Everything I can find just points to those "sea people" going on a rampage of conquest, which is impressive, but not necessarily a sign of the violent collapse of civilization itself. Just business as usual. (Well not for Egypt, mind you, since they had to fight them off, apparently.) What? This isn't some kind of fringe theory; yeah, the explicit details of the collapse are still very much up for debate, there's still a great deal of it that's a mystery, and even what we do know can be hard to make sense of, but that there was a catastrophic and violent collapse of the major near eastern civilizations in this period is pretty drat near irrefutable, at least to the point of anything that happened three thousand years ago is. No, the Sea Peoples invading isn't a sign of collapse in and of its self, but the archaeological record, the written sources of the time, the massive setback in civilization in Greece and Anatolia and Syria, the power vacuum that enabled the Levantine City States to grow? There is no shortage of evidence for this having happened. And as Canuckanese mentioned- the Bronze Age Collapse is not solely because of the Sea People (I've been mentioning the two next to each other quite a bit 'cause they are related, but they're not one and the same, sorry if I confused anybody). They were maybe the catalyst (or more likely they were just a symptom of an already broken system), but there were a whole myriad of factors, and the repercussions were much more severe than a few great civilizations going kaput. And yeah, even that is not at all business as usual.
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Jan 6, 2014 21:28
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handbanana125 posted:Let's not forget the super-power nation of its time exhausting itself just to survive and ~90% of population centers in Southern Greece straight up disappearing. Thanks, I started searching in our German-wide online system and finally started finding books. (I tried several times to google people like Eric H. Cline because I wanted to know what you weird English-speaking people mean when talking about the "Bronze Age Collapse", but I never found anything on my side of the ocean and got frustrated. The historians mentioned on English Wikipedia on the page about the Bronze Age Collapse don't even have German entries!) Now I don't have the time to do much reading (except the stuff I'm supposed to read) in January, but I'll try to get some of these books, including some from the other authors I found mentioned, like Mario Liverani and Leonard R. Palmer. Maybe I even change my mind after I read something from a valid source (Wikipedia isn't), who knows? Edit: It's kind of embarrassing, but before you mentioned the possibility, it didn't even occur to me I could use our library-network to try to track authors I couldn't find the normal way. I guess Google and Wikipedia made me too lazy. Koramei posted:What? This isn't some kind of fringe theory; yeah, the explicit details of the collapse are still very much up for debate, there's still a great deal of it that's a mystery, and even what we do know can be hard to make sense of, but that there was a catastrophic and violent collapse of the major near eastern civilizations in this period is pretty drat near irrefutable, at least to the point of anything that happened three thousand years ago is. No, the Sea Peoples invading isn't a sign of collapse in and of its self, but the archaeological record, the written sources of the time, the massive setback in civilization in Greece and Anatolia and Syria, the power vacuum that enabled the Levantine City States to grow? There is no shortage of evidence for this having happened. The trouble is, everything I see written down in German, by German academians, downplays the "collaps". If you try to find anything about the Bronze Age Collaps in German, you have to find a combination of euphemisms that work, or you find nothing. I sure as hell didn't anything under any combination of Bronzezeit and Kollaps (the German words). Most likely because I translated too literal. So in short, after finding nothing for so long, it looked like this entire theory was ignored by our academics. Since I know how much important work German historians and archaeologists have done and still do, this entire business started to look increasingly fishy to me. Well, that's all water under the well now. In February I will read some of those books for myself and since they are aknowledged by our academical system, I can reasonably be sure they aren't full of bullshit. To give some sense of context why I'm so distrustful of unknown sources, I normally have a high interest in more political stuff and if I see too much divergence between academics of different cultures, alarm bells start ringing in my head. It's just something I learned the hard way over the years. Libluini fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 22:08
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Tevery Best posted:Every game about naval combat in the Age of Sail I've played featured round shot, chain shot and grape shot. My question is were there any more types of ammunition in use? How did artillery munitions develop over the centuries? The first cannon shot was carved stone. Early guns were often artisan-built one-offs of widely varying sizes and calibers so stones had to be hand carved to match individual guns. This was extremely labor intensive and made logistics a real problem. As metallurgy improved multiple guns could be cast to the same dimensions and so iron shot could be mass produced in standard sizes. Though stone shot remained for some time in areas that lacked the industrial capacity to produce iron shot and modern guns. Iron round shot remained the mainstay of naval gunnery until the development of the Paixhans and Dahlgren guns in the in the early to mid 1800's. A gun that could fire a reliable and safe shell at high velocity over a flat trajectory made wooden ships obsolete and ushered in the age of the ironclad. As technology in metallurgy and chemistry progressed naval shells were loaded with progressively larger quantities of progressively more powerful explosives. A race between shells and armor continued until the Second World War when it became clear that aircraft were going to replace the big guns.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:05
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What was the best way for a pre-industrial army to defeat a modern fortress with its glacis, bastions, casemates etc. if starving it out was not an option. Something more subtle than burying it in bodies? Mining operations? Sustained artillery fire? Was there a general framework to which commanders adhered, or did they come up with ad hoc solutions based on each individual layout? Basically, I've been rereading Tristran Shandy and wondering if, given the intellectual power behind constructing fortifications, there was an equivalent creative force involved in overcoming them.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:12
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steinrokkan posted:What was the best way for a pre-industrial army to defeat a modern fortress with its glacis, bastions, casemates etc. if starving it out was not an option. Something more subtle than burying it in bodies? Mining operations? Sustained artillery fire? Was there a general framework to which commanders adhered, or did they come up with ad hoc solutions based on each individual layout? 'By storm' actually worked more often than you (and contemporaries) might think.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:29
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I wonder about the ratio of garrison:wall. The really complex star forts seem like they would need a ridiculous number of men to defend the entire circumference. It seems to follow that if the enemy had numerical superiority they wouldn't be hiding in a fort, so surely just spreading your entire army evenly around the circumference, with a several reserves positioned to take advantage of any breach, would be a decent way of taking a fort?
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Jan 7, 2014 00:32
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Libluini posted:Thanks, I started searching in our German-wide online system and finally started finding books. (I tried several times to google people like Eric H. Cline because I wanted to know what you weird English-speaking people mean when talking about the "Bronze Age Collapse", but I never found anything on my side of the ocean and got frustrated. The historians mentioned on English Wikipedia on the page about the Bronze Age Collapse don't even have German entries!) You should check out the Roman History / Totally Sweet Ancient history thread. Lots of cool people in there who are all about it, a couple of whom are German if I remember right.
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Jan 7, 2014 00:47
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Slavvy posted:I wonder about the ratio of garrison:wall. The really complex star forts seem like they would need a ridiculous number of men to defend the entire circumference. It seems to follow that if the enemy had numerical superiority they wouldn't be hiding in a fort, so surely just spreading your entire army evenly around the circumference, with a several reserves positioned to take advantage of any breach, would be a decent way of taking a fort? It'd take significantly more men to actually perform a full circle attack than to garrison the fort to the minimum degree though. Just think on the geometry of it, you'd need 10 times as many people to make it feasible, and that's against an understaffed fort that can't cover all it's approaches. A fully staffed fort would find such an attack a slaughterhosue..
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Jan 7, 2014 00:55
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