|
Maybe we should also include the capabilities of the Marine Amphibious Assault Vehicle into the VTOL Combat Dropship as well. That way after our boys take off vertically from their not-carriers (gently caress The Navy), singlehandedly shoot down the enemy fighter jet force, bomb their destroyers, stealth behind enemy lines, and fast-rope down their Marines, they can then land (vertically of course), pick up their Marines and drive them through the NBC environment, provide their own fire support, shoot the enemy battle tanks, then speedily cross the river to reach their objective. We shall call the vehicle MARVELOUS. Insert the words into the acronym as appropriate. edit: Tranche Mk 2 will also include the capability to then drive back into the river and sail back to America. Kaal fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Jan 24, 2015 |
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 02:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 19:58 |
|
|
Kaal posted:Maybe we should also include the capabilities of the Marine Amphibious Assault Vehicle into the VTOL Combat Dropship as well. That way after our boys take off vertically from their not-carriers (gently caress The Navy), singlehandedly shoot down the enemy fighter jet force, bomb their destroyers, stealth behind enemy lines, and fast-rope down their Marines, they can then land (vertically of course), pick up their Marines and drive them through the NBC environment, provide their own fire support, shoot the enemy battle tanks, then speedily cross the river to reach their objective. We shall call the vehicle MARVELOUS. Insert the words into the acronym as appropriate. I think at that point we're so deep into crazy town I would expect those marines to use farcasters to just straight up teleport behind the enemy. gently caress that, teleport bombs into the enemy. Instant victory.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 02:25
|
|
|
Well at least there's a loving line I suppose.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 02:27
|
|
|
HEY GAL, is buying and reselling cloth like what you're planning the kind of thing a mercenary around your level might do on the side, or is it too hard for them to build up cash?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 03:04
|
|
|
Rockopolis posted:HEY GAL, is buying and reselling cloth like what you're planning the kind of thing a mercenary around your level might do on the side, or is it too hard for them to build up cash? Looting and selling cloth might be more accurate.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 03:13
|
|
|
Rockopolis posted:HEY GAL, is buying and reselling cloth like what you're planning the kind of thing a mercenary around your level might do on the side, or is it too hard for them to build up cash? If they're doing well, it's actually not hard at all for them to get currency; they prefer to carry cash rather than goods and will flip plunder for money amazingly quickly. Like, the night of a sack. (Editing this because I'm not sure whether your question meant assets in general or specifically currency: a soldier probably carries more cash than a civilian who is doing comparably well. If they're doing badly, of course, then they're doing badly.) Food gets requisitioned, goods get sold, plate gets hammered flat and sold by weight, all windows get knocked out for the lead in their frames. (Civilian accounts mention that this happened but they don't know why, so they just perceive it as a special cruelty, in winter.) You know those big beds with the posts on them? The cords that tie the curtains to the bed can be used as matchcord if you soak them in a saltpeter solution. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Jan 24, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 03:21
|
|
|
HEY GAL posted:Food gets requisitioned, goods get sold, plate gets hammered flat and sold by weight, all windows get knocked out for the lead in their frames. (Civilian accounts mention that this happened but they don't know why, so they just perceive it as a special cruelty, in winter.) You know those big beds with the posts on them? The cords that tie the curtains to the bed can be used as matchcord if you soak them in a saltpeter solution. Holy poo poo. I assumed they'd be stealing food and valuables, but that is thorough looting.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 03:39
|
|
|
Take everything that isn't nailed down, and if it can be pried up with a crowbar, it ain't nailed down enough to count.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 03:47
|
|
|
Malachite_Dragon posted:Take everything that isn't nailed down, and if it can be pried up with a crowbar, it ain't nailed down enough to count.  (That's their own suburbs the Dutch are setting fire to at Breda)
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 03:50
|
|
|
Nails are valuable I'd definitely resell them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 03:54
|
|
|
If your in a place that been ravaged by a decade of warfare everything is valuable.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 03:59
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:Nails are valuable I'd definitely resell them. The first European sailors to land at Tahiti nearly disassembled their own ship prying out nails to trade to local women for sex. Being an island culture at Stone Age levels of technology they had never seen metal before and clearly saw the value in it quite quickly.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 04:21
|
|
For sci-fi purposes, you pretty much need paras in order to conduct a planetary invasion, if only to secure landing zones for more conventional forces. So there's a niche right there.Kaal posted:Maybe we should also include the capabilities of the Marine Amphibious Assault Vehicle into the VTOL Combat Dropship as well. That way after our boys take off vertically from their not-carriers (gently caress The Navy), singlehandedly shoot down the enemy fighter jet force, bomb their destroyers, stealth behind enemy lines, and fast-rope down their Marines, they can then land (vertically of course), pick up their Marines and drive them through the NBC environment, provide their own fire support, shoot the enemy battle tanks, then speedily cross the river to reach their objective. We shall call the vehicle MARVELOUS. Insert the words into the acronym as appropriate. No, no, you've forgotten to add in the spaceplane which can run SSTSO twice on a tank of gas and is STOL.
|
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 05:00
|
|
|
Effectronica posted:For sci-fi purposes, you pretty much need paras in order to conduct a planetary invasion, if only to secure landing zones for more conventional forces. So there's a niche right there. Pshaw, just take an idea from Mass Effect 2 and just ram a shuttle at FTL speeds into a planet to clear out your LZ.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 05:42
|
|
|
Eej posted:Pshaw, just take an idea from Mass Effect 2 and just ram a shuttle at FTL speeds into a planet to clear out your LZ. Wasn't "instant LZ" the plan behind daisy cutter bombs?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 06:20
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Unless your power armor is made of magic, this will never work. In order to have your guys not turn to goo inside their suits, you're going to need to slow down somehow. Propulsive landing would work, but you're going to need to it over a long period of time to spread the g-load, and then your guys are going to be just as vulnerable to counter fire in the period where they're decelerating to safe speeds, and in very complicated drop pods to boot. You might as well just run some sort of SEAD mission from orbit, and then land troops in more conventional landing craft, assuming you need to at all. Phobophilia posted:Just have your soldiers be combat drones they can take g-forces. So what they're saying is that your premise is OK if you remove or change everything about it. If the guy wants to write a story about guys dropping from orbit and shooting stuff and calling Space Army pussies who need dropships and secured LZs, battledroid erotica or ansible drone operators who spend most of the operation jacking off in a ship on the far side of the system don't really work. If the technical details aren't that important to the story, don't bother. Unless you want to do the "landing trench" thing, which would be awesome and anime if you could upgrade it to three point landing. Alchenar posted:The orbital-drop Gavin. Gavin is seriously becoming my trigger word. Kaal posted:edit: Bradley Joint Integrated Future Warfare Vehicle Mk 2 will also include the capability to then drive back into the river and sail back to America.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 06:25
|
|
|
So the thing I feel about the scifi paradrop idea is that there's plenty of potential for it but maybe your having problems characterizing it or otherwise coming up with a focus. In real life as with anything in military history paratroopers came out of problem needing a solution; has all sorts of risks, dangers and costs, performed wildly well in some cases and disastrously in others. That drops were typically rare or costly isn't a problem or a flaw with the idea for the story, but can be seen as fodder for providing contextualization for the sorts of risks and dangers your fictional soldiers may face. In general, start from the beginning, you want a somewhat hard scifi story that's generally something you want realistic/plausible? A'ight, so lets move on from there, what specifically do you want? Generally ideas for stories start with a premise either rooted in something you think is cool or some sort of wish fulfillment. I'm presuming you want something as closely analogous as possible to "dudes jumping from a thing from high up, preferably low orbit." I think this easily rules out the transport as the means to land; usually I'd expect your transport to be a dedicated warship in of itself and you wouldn't want to throw it away testing surface air/orbital defences or generally you just don't want to get too close for some reason or another. So the meet of the matter is, is how are they going to land? Are they going to jump from the frigate itself, or ride some sort of craft? broadly speaking I think this falls into two categories but I'll point out for good reason that this sort of thing scifi writers also mix it up with naval marine landings because everyone saw Saving Private Ryan and storming the beaches will always be seen as the poo poo, so I think there's room for three categories. Individual drop, pilotable craft drop, or fixed landing craft drop. Each i think its fairly easy to come up with a list of trade offs in a plausible scenario using real life examples, in fact you're not even limited to choosing one, you can use them all and then have them used where and when its appropriate. If its pilotable, then its likely also serving as your extraction craft (Pelican from Halo), or as a weapons platform. If it isn't, then you're maybe considering having something D-Day ish of a sardine can in which grunts spill out of as soon as it hits the ground (those weird platform things from KillZone 2). Individual drops your choice is probably between some sort of wingsuit or propulsion kit on the uniform/armor of the soldiers (Think every soldier is Iron Man or that guy from the second Cpt. America movie), or drop pods (Halo, War40k, etc). As said above by Effectronica, scifi easily provides the niche required for this sort of set up, so that isn't a problem, and how dangerous or infeasible is up to you as a writer; scifi gives you a lot of freedom for this and I think most armed forces would be hard pressed to readily resist a orbital drop (See Battlefield 3 with the GRU HALO drops).
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 06:34
|
|
|
Chamale posted:Holy poo poo. I assumed they'd be stealing food and valuables, but that is thorough looting. All this is perfectly normal, expected, and upright, but at the level of the average Giuseppe, it could easily become illegitimate:  ("Despite" is an interesting word choice: I wonder why military historians continue to confuse discipline in combat with discipline in other contexts? You can have crack regiments that you wouldn't trust out of your sight with a loaf of bread, at least in this period; Montecuccioli performs well here because his people fight well, no matter what they do at other times.) HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Jan 24, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 08:17
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk Can anyone comment on this? It looks like all sorts of goofy Gavin-ry 
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 10:09
|
|
|
If you’re going to do a sci-fi combat airdrop, you might as well do it like this.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 11:33
|
|
|
JcDent posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk Didn't we discuss this before? What he's doing is militarily useless.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 11:52
|
|
|
Rabhadh posted:Didn't we discuss this before? What he's doing is militarily useless. While I understand that there's little military value in shooting down arrows or shooting two dudes while sitting down for a drink, I wonder if his stuff about holding the arrow on the right side and holding arrows in the draw hand is true. Even if you did discuss it, I have not read the entire thread and I think I've seen a few people advocating such behavior 
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 13:24
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:Individual drops your choice is probably between some sort of wingsuit or propulsion kit on the uniform/armor of the soldiers (Think every soldier is Iron Man or that guy from the second Cpt. America movie), or drop pods (Halo, War40k, etc). One scifi option would be the method they use for landing Mars rovers. A small chute to slow the descend just enough (but not so much that ground forces have time to react or for winds to drift you miles away), then close to ground retrorockets slow it down so airbags would absorb the impact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyktvC7w7Js although instead of bouncing wildly around (that wouldn't be good if you were to land on a mountain) the airbags should work something like this: http://videos.howstuffworks.com/podtech-networks/4807-nasa-gantry-airbag-test-video.htm Just instead of a rover it would contain a man with all his gear and maybe a little ATV.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 13:45
|
|
|
Nenonen posted:One scifi option would be the method they use for landing Mars rovers. A small chute to slow the descend just enough (but not so much that ground forces have time to react or for winds to drift you miles away), then close to ground retrorockets slow it down so airbags would absorb the impact: They did that in Red Star (Chechen war/dissolution of the USSR with magic and airships), where they dropped tanks from sky Java crawlers. So you're g2g.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 14:10
|
|
|
JcDent posted:While I understand that there's little military value in shooting down arrows or shooting two dudes while sitting down for a drink, I wonder if his stuff about holding the arrow on the right side and holding arrows in the draw hand is true. There's a lot of reasons why bows were not a weapon that dominated any particular period of warfare, though you'd have to be specific to a period to get more specific reasons.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 14:36
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:There's a lot of reasons why bows were not a weapon that dominated any particular period of warfare, though you'd have to be specific to a period to get more specific reasons. They were fairly dominant in steppe warfare. e: Or have I been mistaken all this time?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 14:47
|
|
|
my dad posted:They were fairly dominant in steppe warfare. Yeah, that's actually kinda true. The Ottomans used a lot of steppe cavalry and that made the Austrian cavalry on the Ottoman border wear significant armor well into the 1700s. The problem with youtube video compilations is that I could use one to give proof that people regularly take and make half court shots in basketball. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Jan 24, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 15:03
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:There's a lot of reasons why bows were not a weapon that dominated any particular period of warfare, though you'd have to be specific to a period to get more specific reasons. Err what, bows dominated multiple periods of warfare. In terms of stuff in the video, the arrow on the right side of the bow is definitely the way I've been taught by my English longbow instructor/history teacher. I didn't actually notice that films had them on the left before. Drawing using both hands is also perfectly legit and a pretty natural technique if you are trying to do it quickly. Arrows from the hundred years war period were generally planted into the soil in front of yourself, or so I was told. This is super convenient to pick up and shoot, and also I hear nasty stories about arrows causing infections. Certainly longbow archers didn't shoot on the move, to the contrary, they set up mini forts with stakes etc on the battlefield. Difficult arrow in hand techniques to improve rate of fire wouldn't be useful for such archers, since you'd run out of ammo fast, and besides you'd mostly be firing in volley. Maybe things are different for mounted archers or chariot archers, where you might only have a small window to do damage. Stunts like shooting other arrows in mid air is impractical. But they are pretty awesome to look at, though. Seriously if I saw some of this in a movie, I would not have believed it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 16:07
|
|
|
Fangz posted:Err what, bows dominated multiple periods of warfare. I should have said something specific to European warfare, but you'll have to explain to me which ones. I'm not really sure the English longbow dominated late medieval warfare in any real way.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 18:03
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:I should have said something specific to European warfare, but you'll have to explain to me which ones. I'm not really sure the English longbow dominated late medieval warfare in any real way. I think you will have to define 'dominated' here. I would define it rather loosely in terms of 'be the fundamental weapon in some sense, such that commanders in at least some major armies planned successful battles around them, with other units to support their use rather than the other way round.' In which case, surely the longbow *was* dominant during the hundred years war for a period (in a similiar sense to how machine guns and artillery were dominant during WWI on the western front). Then you have stuff like the Egyptian-Hittite wars, where chariot-mounted archers ruled the battlefield.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 18:35
|
|
|
I would hesitate to say the machine gun was dominant on the western front, since most of the actual killing was done with heavy artillery. The big guns are the dominant weapon. Machine guns certainly do contribute, but massed riflery could have achieved the same effect. Artillery barrages are what all the generals planned their attacks around, and the inability to retrain the guns on new targets (due to lovely communications) was perhaps the biggest reason why the front was so static.Rabhadh posted:Didn't we discuss this before? What he's doing is militarily useless. Indeed, it seems like he's trying to learn how to be Legolas. Which is cool, but armies are usually more one dude, and you can't have whole formations running around pulling stunts like that. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jan 24, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 18:50
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
I'd say that heavy armour won out over the longbow to "dominate" the hundred years war battlefields. When the French wised up and stopped attacking the English in their perfect defensive positions they won in the end. Fangz posted:Certainly longbow archers didn't shoot on the move, to the contrary, they set up mini forts with stakes etc on the battlefield. If you're a highland Scottish/Irish archer fighting a war of raiding and skirmishing then you're moving all the time. Sheaves of arrows were carried on the waist.   Bows were used much more frequently in Scotland than in Ireland but their battlefield use is basically with the rest of the infantry, shooting while charging as the one mass.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 19:09
|
|
PittTheElder posted:I would hesitate to say the machine gun was dominant on the western front, since most of the actual killing was done with heavy artillery. The big guns are the dominant weapon. Machine guns certainly do contribute, but massed riflery could have achieved the same effect. Artillery barrages are what all the generals planned their attacks around, and the inability to retrain the guns on new targets (due to lovely communications) was perhaps the biggest reason why the front was so static. I don't think this is correct. The death toll inflicted by artillery didn't force a stalemate on the Western Front. You said yourself, poor communications made it difficult to receive responsive artillery fires. Responsive artillery fires would be necessary to provide the suppression necessary to force men to seek cover or dig trenches. This problem wasn't resolved until after the war. Instead, the increased firepower that an infantry unit gained with the advent of machineguns restricted the mobility of a rifle unit in the assault. The purpose of a machine gun is supression, whether they realized it in 1914 or not. I suppose you could say that artillery, modern bolt action rifles and machineguns had a synergistic effect that led to WWI as we know it. But, I don't think it would be accurate to say that breech loading recoil dampened artillery was the sole cause. vains fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jan 24, 2015 |
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 19:21
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Indeed, it seems like he's trying to learn how to be Legolas. Which is cool, but armies are usually more one dude, and you can't have whole formations running around pulling stunts like that. The voiceover with "natural and simpler" "true" techniques of "master archers" reeks of obvious bullshit, yeah, but would it really be completely useless? I mean, if we're talking formations that are semi-static and supposed to put out a shitload of arrows at an enemy army then sure. But I'd imagine that "shoot a ton of arrows accurately while running the gently caress away" was a useful skill for, say, scouts and other skirmishers?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 19:23
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:I would hesitate to say the machine gun was dominant on the western front, since most of the actual killing was done with heavy artillery. The big guns are the dominant weapon. Machine guns certainly do contribute, but massed riflery could have achieved the same effect. Artillery barrages are what all the generals planned their attacks around, and the inability to retrain the guns on new targets (due to lovely communications) was perhaps the biggest reason why the front was so static.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 19:31
|
|
|
Were catapults used as battlefield artillery before the advent of field guns? I was under the impression that catapults and early cannon were only used at sieges, but I could be wrong.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 19:35
|
|
|
Fangz posted:I think you will have to define 'dominated' here. I would define it rather loosely in terms of 'be the fundamental weapon in some sense, such that commanders in at least some major armies planned successful battles around them, with other units to support their use rather than the other way round.' In which case, surely the longbow *was* dominant during the hundred years war for a period (in a similiar sense to how machine guns and artillery were dominant during WWI on the western front). Then you have stuff like the Egyptian-Hittite wars, where chariot-mounted archers ruled the battlefield. The general trend was toward heavy infantry, though, rather than everyone adopting longbows. In fact, most armies were switching to crossbows and later firearms to deal with the steadily improving armor on both infantry and cavalry. And, yeah, I do think machine guns were a serious tactical concern, particularly in stifling the ability of cavalry to overwhelm infantry, which made them now worthless even in pursuits. Once cavalry left, armies had the problem of being unable to pursue and destroy, so the 1918 offensive by the Germans didn't end up wrecking the Entente armies.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 19:51
|
|
|
Is there a diagram or something of how trench-lines were organized, or how you'd go about taking one? I can picture the basic cinematic setup of opposing trenches with wire between and all, but reading actual accounts portray a much more extensive battlefield. Specifically: A lot of times people talk about moving to fire positions in preparation for receiving an attack-from dugouts or rear positions. Where were dugouts in relation to the front line? Was everyone in the unit sitting in the front-line trench or did you just post sentries up front while everyone else hangs back? There's accounts where the artillery stops and you rush forward, set up your machine gun, etc. There's also accounts of *defenders* fighting not in their trenches but in prepared positions further forward, in shell holes and such. And again talk of moving forward to your firing position. Was it doctrine to move out forward if possible rather than fighting directly from the trenches? It seems logical to me- even if you win the fight you might end up with bodies in your living space, stuff destroyed or broken. You'd rather meet them further up if you could. And finally, I really can't picture the actual trench assault. I imagine the attackers aren't leaping in piecemeal but gathering somewhere near the trench where they're in cover, say a crater, and making the final assault in groups. How did squads co-ordinate while in no-man's land? How do you go about retreating from a trench? Do you go through perpendicular communication trenches or do you clamber out and go overland? When your side counterattacks, the same. And how do the attackers secure their position? I'm picturing a situation where platoons are squashed end-to-end from shore to Switzerland. How do you go about securing the bits of trench on either side of the position you've taken? Is the image of being able to walk the frontline, in a trench, from end to end false? I'm not clear on whether a trench line had ends or whether it was a continuous mass, and I've never been able to picture taking one bit of front without the rest following- you've got this trench but a thousand yards down there's more trench where the attack failed- those guys are still in the same trench as you, no? It seems like a doomed proposition from the word go. You take the trench opposite your position but you're now in a trench with enemies on either side shooting down the trench at you, potentially. So you literally can't push the front up unless you push the *entire* front up. EDIT: on an unrelated note, how did fraternization go in premodern wars? It seems like it'd be a lot more likely for groups of enemy combatants to accidentally meet up in the days before front-lines and total war. Like, two armies are maneuvering around in campaign, not quite ready to give battle. It seems like some parties of soldiers foraging or scouting or what-have-you might blunder into eachother, and it's not likely they'll feel the seething hatred a russian would feel for a german, for example. Hell, they might be mercs from the same area working for opposing sides. Do they fight or is it more friendly? I have the impression of soldiers in the ACW, especially, being uninclined to shoot if they encountered their enemy peers, say, taking a piss or trying to sleep. They'd even trade goods sometimes. vintagepurple fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jan 24, 2015 |
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 20:37
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:The correct answer is to jump out of a damaged landing ship, onto an enemy air-defence unit, punch it a bit and ride it down to the ground. Where it explodes and you're fine. Well it sounds alright, but are you sure the Codex Astartes supports this action?
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 21:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 19:58 |
|
|
Deptfordx posted:Well it sounds alright, but are you sure the Codex Astartes supports this action? The awesome part.
|
|
#
?
Jan 24, 2015 21:51
|
|