Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Happerry]

All-Weather Protection Storm Strike: (1) Madman198237
Adamantium: (2) Detoxicated, Crazyabe
Mirage Shield: (1) Happerry

[Madman198237]

Fine, I'll answer my own question. This has become an artillery war. You know why people didn't wear bulky armor in WWI/WWII? Because guns and artillery made armor almost useless. It'd stop shrapnel, but with the encumbrance of the armor you'd just get hit more and more.

We do NOT need better infantry gear, because it's not working. Infantry can't get to the fight. Using this storm might make it possible for our infantry to close to range again, but it will, at least, give us better killing rates. Ballistae can't cover the area covered by a good old-fashioned storm of death.

[Devastator]

Adamantium would also mean adamantium ballista bolts, allowing us to one-hit kill their cannons much better, not to mention providing adamantium cables and such which could probably be revised into a longer-ranged ballistas.

Madman, why not?  We're not facing machine guns.  We're not facing high-velocity rifles.  We're facing low velocity cannonballs, and the goal of the armor is to limit the killing ability to one person per hit.  Ridiculous rate of fire aside, they still reload at only musket speed, and they don't have every man with a musket like during the Napoleonic Wars.  It should probably work fine.  It's even concievable that someone would survive a hit with an adamantium pavise shield.

So yeah, it would help, it would let our infantry get into the fight.  It could solve our armor penetration problems with arrows, meaning they'd only need to get into medium range.  It's easy to say it's not working when you continually vote it down.
Of course it isn't working, it hasn't been tried!

Plus, if nothing else, it would significantly improve the survivability of the carpet riders.

I'd recommend trying to cheapen Lucky Strike or one of our many, many, expensive spells with the revision.  Frees up more carpet riders and enchanters.

All-Weather Protection Storm Strike: (1) Madman198237
Adamantium: (3) Detoxicated, Crazyabe, Devastator
Mirage Shield: (1) Happerry
Fire Whiskey: (1) Kashyyk

[Happerry]

But the thing is we already can one-hit kill basically anything we can hit when you combine lucky strike and the fire rounds. Adding more damage when we already get one shot kills is useless. And I'm still doubtful about the idea of it solving our arrow penetration issues as well. Weight is as important as sharpness for arrow impacts, and adamantium was described as super light, so...

Also, it really doesn't matter how hard the armor is if you get hit by a cannonball. Just because the armor is fine doesn't mean the transmitted blunt impact won't turn your insides into goop anyway.

As for swords and such, we were already winning when it came to melee fights, so no current need for upgrades there.

Really, the only useful thing I can see adamantium doing is the Pavise shields, and honestly I think normal metal would work just fine for that.

[Detoxicated]

Dont forget that they get a super metal too, i guess once they reinforce their cannos it will likely be good to have something to counter it...
Also almost everything can get a boon from it, whats not to like...

[Madman198237]

It doesn't matter what our bows are tipped with, because we aren't getting into range. And Happerry is right anyway. Unless it is literally sharper than physically possible, an arrow constructed of a Mithril-like ultralight metal won't have the punching power required to penetrate armor. We'd be better off spending this design to improve ballistae or the Firestorm shells, which are already the ultimate killing tool. We'd get almost the same effect. Unless you weight said adamantine pavise shield/person wearing said armor, they're going to get hit, and regardless of the damage actually dealt to them, the hit object is going to go flying, causing more casualties.

Adamantine is no longer capable of turning this tide. We should up the magic. Work our wind magic, all of it, into a powerfully useful state. They can't kill us from beyond LOS if they can't get near enough to load their metal cannons because of our ungodly thunderstorm.

[Devastator]

Oy, the arrow isn't much lighter, you still have the wooden shaft to carry momentum.  I'm also not describing it as super-light.  That's how DF treats it, but that wasn't in my description.

And I don't care if it kills one soldier.  The important part is it would be strong enough to stop the bouncing or the rolling, preventing their cannonballs from killing more than one person per shot.  Without that, we have little to fear from their artillery.  A cannonball weighs a lot less than a man, and a man falling down isn't enough to kill six other guys.

It's not like I'm hearing reasonable suggestions to fix the problem of the enemy killing our guys.  No earthworks, that got voted down.  No super-armor, that got voted down.  No divination-based precognition to use our formation bonus, that got voted down.    No smokescreens, it's raining continually.  The only actual suggestion is mirages, which is also a new field and doesn't work in the rain or cold weather, which we are fighting in.

The reason we aren't getting into range is because whatever I suggest to help us do so gets voted down.

In favor of wind, which can neither kill the enemy, nor protect us from cannonballs.

[Madman198237]

But it WON'T stop it killing many people. It might, MIGHT, stop the projectile (As opposed to just sending the whiplashed and thoroughly liquefied soldier flying into more buddies while the cannonball continues to hit more people). But that is at the exchange of the person it just hit going flying and killing or crippling other soldiers in his path.

A cannonball doesn't have to weigh more than a man. KE=.5*m*v². In other words, the velocity is a SQUARED TERM. If you double velocity, you quadruple impact force. And so on. The cannonball has high velocity, which makes it deadly. It has the mass to back it up, as well. The trick would be making this super material not bend, break, or MOVE when impacted. I think that that's less practical than upping the ante on our wind spells.

Wind can't do that yet. But an improved Storm Strike can kill them, most certainly. And a revised Cyclone Shield can also protect us a lot, but we won't need it if we can just electrocute their cannon operators.

[Devastator]

Oy, it's not KE that matters, it's momentum for that application.  KE can deform the armor.  Momentum is what pushes the recieving creature back.  KE is what kills the person hit by it.  If the armor deforms properly, the cannonball will dump most of its KE into smashing the target, but momentum is still mass times velocity, and as such it'll stop with that one person.

That's how it works, and why people aren't actually blown away by normal guns.  Normal guns kill people by shredding their internals, but don't actually blow people away, which is an effect of momentum, not kinetic energy.

They're using steam cannons and not gunpowder, so don't have nearly the force of gunpowder weapons and likely lower muzzle velocity anyway.  If the cannonball weighs say, six pounds and it hits a guy weighing 120 pounds, if it's stopped the guy will be moving backwards at 1/21 the cannonball's velocity, which will be a lot less, and the extra energy goes into deforming / breaking the armor and damaging internals.

KE being velocity squared is why I don't think the armor could save the guy getting hit by the cannonball.  But since it's momentum that actually knocks the guy back, that's why I think it can limit it to one kill per shot.

[Madman198237]

Not if they can shoot from beyond visual range. They shoot plenty fast, or are enchanted with magic. Take your pick, either one is bad news.

The point is, a cannonball will take somebody off their feet and take out the people behind them. This is well-known and well-documented behavior of cannons. People go flying. Or just disintegrate. Depends on how effective they are at absorbing the energy of the impact.

Better armor will NOT prevent us from losing multiple guys. It won't. You're just making our soldiers more effective at collecting that KE from enemies. Read: acquiring acceleration and liquefying their internals before flying into their comrades, all because their armor was so inconsiderate as to not deform like it should.

[Devastator]

None of those problems are solved by wind spells.  We can't use storm strike against beyond visual range targets either, due to not being able to direct it.

Even if it was the case that it's all about the energy, it's still better to collect more KE for each soldier, as you can't kill a soldier more than dead, so if it takes even twice as much energy out of the cannonball, that's half as many people killed because the cannonball can only kill five guys instead of ten.

Same diff about their cannons.  These aren't gunpowder cannons, they just shouldn't have the same power.  Which makes this solution more reasonable.

I'm not dribbling about claiming that it'll make our soldiers immune.  I'm claiming that a supermetal will make it take a lot more force to kill an individual soldier, which will reduce the number killed for each shot.

And their cannons are magical.  If we get to medium range, they can't shoot.

[Madman198237]

Here's the thing: The Hammer doesn't need precise targeting. You just paint a path of storm out generically "in that direction" and it hits tall things and metal things. Their cannons satisfy, in these burned wastelands without trees, both requirements.

[Devastator]

Here's the thing: The Hammer doesn't need precise targeting. You just paint a path of storm out generically "in that direction" and it hits tall things and metal things. Their cannons satisfy, in these burned wastelands without trees, both requirements.

Do remember that the storms don't work in the cold.  Right now they're at half effectiveness in the mountains and zero effectiveness in the plains or tundra.

[Madman198237]

.......
Hence my arguing with you about the value of our competing suggestions----mine for an all-weather version of Storm Strike, yours for adamantium.

[Devastator]

.......
Hence my arguing with you about the value of our competing suggestions----mine for an all-weather version of Storm Strike, yours for adamantium.

One of these can be done with a revision.  And I'm tired of us blowing our design phases on revisions.