DocSolarisReich
Esoteric Spaceman
Georgian mountain-men showed up to fight the Turks in WWI wearing mail and carrying bucklers and swords along with their jezails.
Why fantasy avoids gunpowder?
- Thread starter Aldarion
- Start date
Georgian mountain-men showed up to fight the Turks in WWI wearing mail and carrying bucklers and swords along with their jezails.
Sappers digging tunnels were historically a thing, but yes, fantasy creatures can do it so much better that realistic fantasy-verse fortifications would have to evolve much more robust underground defenses.
Not much can be done about something the scale of a dragon -- fantasy style dragons are physically ludicrous enough to be a severely out of context problem for any realistic fortification -- but something like spiked wooden scaffolding could be erected over the battlements, plus spike strips on the edges and tips of roofs. Kinda like the anti-bird spikes they put on a lot of buildings now, only scaled up.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Agreed. Fantasy-scale dragons that can soak hits from modern day naval artillery have either already taken over the world, or human(oid) heroes can become so powerful they can punch harder than naval artillery and keep them in check. I'm looking more at griffon/pegasi/wyvern cavalry, who may also land troops on the wall, and generally presuming that individual humanoids don't level up into one-man armies as that produces a very different situation.
Eh, the 30 years war and pirates are gunpowder dominated eras, at least in the common conception, at least as I'm aware of them. At least as I understand it, guns were more or less dominant in major armies by the 1600s. Pikemen and Calvary exist, but increasingly exist to support the infantry/musketeer, not the other way around.
The roll of Calvary in that balance is certainly something that throws things off any easy answer. Which adds to difficulty on rules of thumb and dynamics. At what point can cavalry no long charge through the center of infantry and win? Hard to really say. As late as the Napoleonic war cavalry were so dangerous that infantry were generally forced to form immobile squares to protect themselves, but breaking a square with pure cavalry was also apparently fairly rare. But, by the civil war, squares seemed to have been more or less unnecessary.
Though, I guess your example does highlight that in small unit actions, the guns reign is much later: the fact that as far as I can tell you really can't leave an old style musket loaded makes swords and knives a much more important tool of personal combat/defense. Close combat and the bayonet also stays pretty relevant for a while: while a great deal of a pirates ships firepower is the cannons, boarding actions might still come to one pistol shot and saber. Hell, I recall some stories circulating of house to house fights in the Iraq war coming down to a knife or flashlight to the skull!
DocSolarisReich
Esoteric Spaceman
By the USCW, cavalry exists to attack artillery, which exists to punish infantry in the open, which exists to protect artillery from cavalry using a combination of socket bayonets and volley fire from rifled muskets with minie balls (quick loading black powder rifles).
Rock, Paper, Scissors.
By the end of the USCW early repeating arms are threatening this balance of the battlefield, but this isn't fully realized by any major powers until the outbreak of the first world war, by which time we've gone from black powder spencer carbines and hand-cranked gatlings to smokeless powder, spitzer small caliber, high velocity projectiles, and short recoil operated, belt fed machine guns.
Neither the Austro-Prussian war nor the Franco-Prussian war lasted long enough nor featured developed enough weapons to demonstrate the needed the lessons.
Val the Moofia Boss
Well-known member
What is the exact tradeoff versus a cannon? I suppose it's better than regular cannon balls, as a regular cannon ball just passes through one or two or three guys and that's it, whereas 50 arrows raining from above can hit a dozen guys or so. Sounds like its better than cannons until exploding shot starts showing up, at which point everyone in the vicinity is going to get shredded by shrapnel.
Netting and barbed wire nets enclosing an installation would be a good deterrent for small-medium sized flyers like pegasi, I think.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
In comparison to a cannonball yeah, area of effect vs. penetrating power. Vs. grapeshot the Hwacha has a serious range advantage, about 2 kilometers max vs. 1-400 yards for grapeshot. Hwachas can also fire incendiary rockets while it's difficult (not impossible) to use a cannon to light things on fire. The other thing is that a Hwacha is extremely lightweight compared to a cannon and can be more easily transported and aimed more quickly. This is why I feel the Hwacha would be a more viable answer to, say, harpies than a cannon that simply couldn't be aimed quickly enough to deal with a platoon of them trying to land on top of you.
The downside is that a Hwacha is much less versatile. A cannon can swap out shot and solid rounds as needed while a Hwacha is never going to be viable for hitting heavily armored targets that don't catch on fire. A Hwacha's rocket-assisted arrows are also much more labor-intensive to make than cast iron balls.
ShieldWife
Marchioness
If there were flying cavalry that wasn’t extremely magically powerful - like a dragon - it would have to be used in very specific ways. Something like a griffin or winged horse would be outrageously expensive to breed, raise, and train along with the rider. Such a creature being able to fly at all is a departure from physics, but assuming we try to stick to physics at least a little regarding flight, we can’t have these creatures carry too much weight. A rider is already pushing it, we don’t want to give them barding or a bunch of heavy objects to drop on the enemy. They don’t want to get too close either, because one lucky bullet or arrow would be the end of an extremely expensive unit.
What could we use our flying cavalry for then? Fly way over the enemy and drop darts or rocks? Maybe, but these won’t be that accurate and you could probably field 100 archers for the price of one griffin rider.
Reconnaissance would be a good use. It might be good to drop incendiary bombs into buildings behind walls, or maybe on enemy ships.
What could we use our flying cavalry for then? Fly way over the enemy and drop darts or rocks? Maybe, but these won’t be that accurate and you could probably field 100 archers for the price of one griffin rider.
Reconnaissance would be a good use. It might be good to drop incendiary bombs into buildings behind walls, or maybe on enemy ships.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Thinking on it, if pegasi cavalry were a thing, I'd expect horse-archers to be the best use of them. With gravity working for their arrows and against anybody on the ground, they could pepper enemy infantry with no real chance of taking a hit in exchange unless the enemy also has pegasi archers to go up and fight them. Harpies as commonly depicted probably can't wield a bow and fly at the same time so I'd expect them to be whatever the flying equivalent of a dragoon is. Paratroop? They use flight to maneuver into position and then attack on the ground. In comparison to typical mounted infantry, though, they could take back to the air in moments if the shape of the battle changes.
Doomsought
Well-known member
They would use a type of plunging dart designed to take advantage of gravity. Some early biplanes were armed with boxes of them to use as makeshift bombs. Litterally a box full of darts that the pilot would just chuck overboard.
Unless "taking over the world" is human-type thinking that the dragons of the setting simply don't share or relate to. Maybe they are content to leave humanity alone as long as we leave them alone. Maybe a dragon just wants a nice big pile of gold to sleep on, and that's all. They only get aggro if people try to steal it.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Meh, I don't necessarily mean that the Dragons would be setting tax policy and deciding immigration reform. If they hang out in their lairs with big piles of gold and every living cell on the planet steps lightly around their territories while offering tributes of virgins and gold, they still rule the world to my way of thinking.
Put another way, DnD style dragons with 1500HP and an armor class of "Ha ha, no you can't hurt me" are basically forces of nature unto themselves unless heroes are also able to do the same.
Flying horses would be skeet, unless you armour them to an impractical degree. It's the same problem as with jetpack infantry. Up in the air, there's no cover.
"They're sending in their Winged Horses! Look, it's awesome!"
"Shut up and help me aim this thing!"
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Well yeah, once you have AA guns and SAMs obviously that's the case, much in the same way we don't do saber charges on horseback in the age of machine guns. At that point either mages can cast "Protection from bullets" or the fantasy aspect is diminished to having minimal effect. There's a reason every mage in Youjo Senki can produce a bulletproof shield.Flying horses would be skeet, unless you armour them to an impractical degree. It's the same problem as with jetpack infantry. Up in the air, there's no cover.
"They're sending in their Winged Horses! Look, it's awesome!"
"Shut up and help me aim this thing!"
Armor. If the army are some kind of peasant rebellion, hitting a dozen or so guys may be worth it. Arrows are notoriously unreliable when it comes to incapacitating targets even then, but when the targets start wearing something like chain hauberk or halfplate, at long distance they are little more than an annoyance, even a decently sized shield with the right formation does wonders against arrows, ask Romans and everyone who used shieldwall tactics. Meanwhile a cannonball will kill or at least crush limbs even through the best of plate armor or shields.
Depends on how would they attack. Melee would be the riskiest option, i think the most popular nasty tactics any flyers would use would be to drop whatever incendiaries they can figure out. Worked great in WW2, even Korea and Vietnam, would work even better in times with even more construction being wooden.
Nah, depends on the weapons available *A LOT*. There were 2 revolutions in AA gunnery's ability to hit targets. First one happened in mid-late WW2, with more complex sights, mounts and basic radar; the most obvious sign was turning the notoriously slow, low flying and vulnerable dive bombers from the scariest thing a soldier may see in the sky, which they were in early WW2, to the meme skeet and withdrawal later in WW2. Still, aircraft that did more evading and faster flying had a reasonable chance to not be hit, hence ground attack planes like Il-2 and A-2 Skyraider, nevermind fighter-bomber tactics like those used by USAF in Europe survived that revolution well enough.Flying horses would be skeet, unless you armour them to an impractical degree. It's the same problem as with jetpack infantry. Up in the air, there's no cover.
"They're sending in their Winged Horses! Look, it's awesome!"
"Shut up and help me aim this thing!"
The second revolution, from after which pic related comes, is fully radar guided, computer based automatic targeting, roughly late 70's technology . The weapon no longer relies on the ballistic skills and reflexes of the operator. He only picks the radar contact and decides he wants it gone, the computer does the predictive targeting, aims the gun at the right spot in the air, and picks the right time to shoot with precision much beyond what human reflexes, intuition and training allow. That's where the skeet meme comes from.
Its all fun and games until the pegasus knights get revolvers and start fighting as Texas Ranger style cavalry.
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Navarro
Well-known member
The first Narnia movie had an interesting depiction of flying units in a medieval context, where they dropped rocks on the enemy army from above.
ShieldWife
Marchioness
So, how useful would dropping darts be? I asked my husband to do some calcs for me and he said that if we had some sky cavalry flying at about 500m or 1640ft then a dropped dart might be going as fast as 220mph when it got to the ground, maybe less depending on air resistance. Bigger, heavier, skinnier denser darts will be less affected by air resistance. Maybe we can make them out of lead, with iron tips maybe, and fletching to make them fall straight and tip down. This is faster than even the fastest modern arrows which max out at around 200 mph. But an arrow is about 1/10 of a pound while these darts could be a lot heavier, maybe a pound or more. I could imagine a metal dart going faster than any long bow arrow but weighing 10 times as much or more could pose serious risks to even heavily armored knights, or penetrate roofs that aren’t specially armored as well.
A downside is wind. Once you get a few hundred feet off the ground, there is a pretty strong breeze and even a light wind could cause the darts to land dozens of feet from their intended targets. These weapons couldn’t really be aimed and would have to be used on very large units or maybe towns or fortresses.
Getting higher can make the projectiles go even faster, but takes more energy for the flying creature and will make the weapon even less accurate. Flying lower makes the darts less deadly but more accurate, but flying low enough to be hit by enemy archers is a big no no.
Gaining that much altitude would probably be exhausting for the mount, like a hard gallop for a horse. This might be a once a day sort of attack. Would it be worth it? I think it would depend on the circumstances. I think the sky cavalry needs a secure place to land after conducting their attack. If they don’t, normal cavalry might be able to follow them, catch them as they are forced to land from exhaustion, and would tear them to pieces.
A downside is wind. Once you get a few hundred feet off the ground, there is a pretty strong breeze and even a light wind could cause the darts to land dozens of feet from their intended targets. These weapons couldn’t really be aimed and would have to be used on very large units or maybe towns or fortresses.
Getting higher can make the projectiles go even faster, but takes more energy for the flying creature and will make the weapon even less accurate. Flying lower makes the darts less deadly but more accurate, but flying low enough to be hit by enemy archers is a big no no.
Gaining that much altitude would probably be exhausting for the mount, like a hard gallop for a horse. This might be a once a day sort of attack. Would it be worth it? I think it would depend on the circumstances. I think the sky cavalry needs a secure place to land after conducting their attack. If they don’t, normal cavalry might be able to follow them, catch them as they are forced to land from exhaustion, and would tear them to pieces.