Print

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

[Solarn]

What would you like. One master soldier, or one thousand recruits?

See, that's the thing. We don't necessarily have to choose anymore. Well, we might still, but very soon we won't have to, and in a lot of other fields, we already don't.

In most fields, at some point in time a transition was made from one superior attribute to another (quality of weapons and armour to quantity, penetrating power of bows to ease of handling of firearms, yield of crop to ease of cultivation, etc.) because the latter one was more desirable in a changed situation (armies became more numerous, earlier the population decreased, etc.). But since then, the situation reversed (war is less and less about huge armies facing each other on a battlefield, new teaching techniques allow for quicker and more uniform mastery of combat skills by a large number of people, the population increased by several orders of magnitude) and yet we keep using the trade-offs when we could in many cases return to the advantages of the old techniques without losing those of the new ones.

[Solarn]

Not magic. Craftsmanship. Which modern civilization essentially doesn't have. It's the same reason nobody can fucking figure out how Damascene blades were made. When demand ceased, the swordsmiths simply took their techniques to the grave.

Absolute nonsense. For one thing, just because we don't know exactly how they did something doesn't mean they were somehow better than ours. Their exact techniques are unclear, but it's pretty obvious that ours are still superior. Damascus steel was forged with pattern welding. Big. Whoop. Pattern welding isn't rocket science, ok? I know plenty of METAL CRAFTSMEN today who don't work in factories, have their own forges, and produce blades just as artful and powerful as anything people made 500 years ago. WE STILL HAVE CRAFTSMANSHIP. You're just spouting nonsense romanticism without any knowledge of the craftsmen and artists out there working today. I've worked in a metal forge. Have you? Tell me about your practical experience in metalworking.

Bit of a technophile, are ya? Anyway, basically, you're wrong and you're defending a stupid point. The craftsmanship we have now is fundamentally different from the craftsmanship of pre-industrial times because it isn't actually used in any meaningful way. The craftsmen of today create art pieces, not tools. Sure, they might pride themselves on the utility of their creations, but pray tell, how are they going to know that when their swords are never going to be used to cut people up regularly?

Also re: agriculture. Have you ever heard of the Butser Ancient Farm? It's an archeological research site where prehistoric grains, living conditions and methods are reconstructed to the best of the researchers' knowledge to gain a better understanding of what life must have been like for ancient man. They found out that the wheat used by Iron Age Britons has a much higher yield than modern strains of the common wheat, although it is more labour-intensive. Again, a superior ancient technique lost to time because at a certain point in history, ease of harvesting was more important than quantity or quality.

That's not a superior ancient technique, that's a trade-off. If we wanted a higher-yield strain that required more labor, we could have one next year. We could genetically engineer it or just use old cross-fertilization techniques to make it. You aren't describing a superior ancient anything, because if it were superior, we'd still use it. Duh?

Are you an idiot? No, seriously.

Uhh... you think it'd be economical to put all our untrained and unemployed people to work in the fields?

Are you joking? You really just keep spouting things off that you have no idea about.

As it stands, the price of food is dramatically lower than it has ever been historically. Hunger is basically eradicated in the developed world. You think it would make any sort of economic sense at all to put people to work in the fields? Here's a newsflash: if it were, they'd have already done it. We already waste more food than some countries produce. The last thing farmers need is more labor.

Yes. Yes, it would be economical if we spent some time educating them about the basics first and then let them learn by practice. It's not like we'd need to immediately switch over to the new grains with the untrained labour force.

As for the price of food, it's kept artificially low. The only reason the "developed world" has a surplus is because the much more numerous populations in undeveloped countries are left to starve.

And as for your repeat claims that if any technique or resource was superior, we'd already be using it, that's bullshit. Habit is a force that shapes countries and if we already gave something up once, it's going to be incredibly hard to return to it exactly because of the retarded absolutistic "newer is better" mentality that you espouse.

[CognitiveDissonance]

What would you like. One master soldier, or one thousand recruits?

See, that's the thing. We don't necessarily have to choose anymore. Well, we might still, but very soon we won't have to, and in a lot of other fields, we already don't.

In most fields, at some point in time a transition was made from one superior attribute to another (quality of weapons and armour to quantity, penetrating power of bows to ease of handling of firearms, yield of crop to ease of cultivation, etc.) because the latter one was more desirable in a changed situation (armies became more numerous, earlier the population decreased, etc.). But since then, the situation reversed (war is less and less about huge armies facing each other on a battlefield, new teaching techniques allow for quicker and more uniform mastery of combat skills by a large number of people, the population increased by several orders of magnitude) and yet we keep using the trade-offs when we could in many cases return to the advantages of the old techniques without losing those of the new ones.

For the sake of argument... modern warfare changes are much more because armies now have to be active on a multinational scale, with awareness in air, land, sea, space as well as internet, radiowaves, logistics, peace divisions.

Modern warfare, partially through changing reality, partially through highly effective crowd control, has outdated large armies. Yet, we still need a LOT of military personnel.
And, as you mention, the low-skill is severely over-compensated for by the booming population - simple law of averages produces more skilled people, plus the modern focus on education and training.

Yet, we don't really have real "masters" in warfare anymore, unlike ancient times. Then again, we have Greece and Rome and Mongols.
EDIT: By masters, I mean both of technique and source. Master gunsmiths are no longer a realistic option as we need a lot of guns, and masterful craftsmanship cannot be mass-produced.

[Solarn]

What would you like. One master soldier, or one thousand recruits?

See, that's the thing. We don't necessarily have to choose anymore. Well, we might still, but very soon we won't have to, and in a lot of other fields, we already don't.

In most fields, at some point in time a transition was made from one superior attribute to another (quality of weapons and armour to quantity, penetrating power of bows to ease of handling of firearms, yield of crop to ease of cultivation, etc.) because the latter one was more desirable in a changed situation (armies became more numerous, earlier the population decreased, etc.). But since then, the situation reversed (war is less and less about huge armies facing each other on a battlefield, new teaching techniques allow for quicker and more uniform mastery of combat skills by a large number of people, the population increased by several orders of magnitude) and yet we keep using the trade-offs when we could in many cases return to the advantages of the old techniques without losing those of the new ones.

For the sake of argument... modern warfare changes are much more because armies now have to be active on a multinational scale, with awareness in air, land, sea, space as well as internet, radiowaves, logistics, peace divisions.

Modern warfare, partially through changing reality, partially through highly effective crowd control, has outdated large armies. Yet, we still need a LOT of military personnel.
And, as you mention, the low-skill is severely over-compensated for by the booming population - simple law of averages produces more skilled people, plus the modern focus on education and training.

Yet, we don't really have real "masters" in warfare anymore, unlike ancient times. Then again, we have Greece and Rome and Mongols.
EDIT: By masters, I mean both of technique and source. Master gunsmiths are no longer a realistic option as we need a lot of guns, and masterful craftsmanship cannot be mass-produced.

That's certainly true. However, the point is that in many cases (most infantries for example, at least in Europe), they are still using either outdated drilling methods or new drilling methods, but with old material, which makes combat training horribly inefficient, even though the new methods could be used to teach much better combat skills to entire armies now instead of just special ops units. I don't have any first-hand experience with this though, only what I've been told by people who were/are in militaries or what I've read, so I might be wrong.

The quality vs. quantity battle has been, barring some future miracle that combines craftsmanship with mass production, decided though.

[Dwarfoloid]

Whether or not powerful metals with secret production techniques in history were more powerful than the stuff we can make with the techniques we know is unanswerable if we don't know the techniques ancient smiths used.

Either way, to assert superiority of the past over the present or vice versa are both unresolvable debates.

Even with our modern metallurgy, who knows if somebody developed a counter-intuitive and yet insightful way to pull off results that we nowadays lack to incentive to devote resources to reproducing.

Ah, but the thing is, there are no ancient secret steels that I know of at least. My statment about them was made tongue in the cheek. Now the smiths of old achieved very good results in what they did across the globe, using experimentation, tradition and possibly good deal of accidents to come up with some pretty amazing stuff, but they can't really compete with modern material science in terms of end product performance. Ofc, there is nothing inheritly wrong about the last paragraph I quoted from you either. 

While I don't think the exact methods they used for making wootz in the past are known, we do know what kind of end products came out from it, and to a good degree know why they came out of it like they did and can even replicate the said products in terms of performance, if not entirely in form.

It is also worth noting that the historical wootz blades really aren't that hard. Within margins or even below the finer European blades of the same time.

Heres one of Verhoeven's papers on wootz: http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeven-9809.html

And a site of a modern wootz making smith: http://doorcountyforgeworks.com/Wootz.html


Bit more on the actual topic of this thread, I don't think the combat example in OP is really that wrong. GCS isn't really that big, not even half the size of troll, so it makes sense that a fully armed dwarf can take it down if it can't inject it's poison. However the game really begs for some kind of "go for the throat" mechanic, as that kind of behaviour is pretty instinctive in many animals (mammals at least). That would help finishing restrained or uncouncious creatures who have otherwise impenetrable armor.

The group combat machanics also need some improvements. I'd really love to see a large group of lesser fighter restrain and slit a throat of a much more skilled combatant. But that will be far in the future with the current dorf AI I think. Currently, when you pit a highly skilled dwarf with a shield against a group of less skilled elves with wooden weapons, you get this nifty combat report page filled entirely out with shield blocks.

What do you even call that? Space-time parallel shield block? Do you have to shout that out loud for it to work?

[Hygrom]

It wouldn't be an ancient SECRET steel if you knew about it though. It wouldn't be a secret. Which is the whole point of calling it an ancient SECRET steel, we do not know about it, thus it is a secret.

[Rowanas]

We know of it, but cannot reproduce it. That's what makes Damascus steel swords secret.

[123BIG]

As it stands, the price of food is dramatically lower than it has ever been historically. Hunger is basically eradicated in the developed world. You think it would make any sort of economic sense at all to put people to work in the fields? Here's a newsflash: if it were, they'd have already done it. We already waste more food than some countries produce. The last thing farmers need is more labor.

We owe massive amounts of food to cheap fossil fuels. The discovery of cheap, high yeild energy sources began the industrial revolution and allowed mankind to make a tremendous jump forward in pretty much everything, including agriculture. Today, we use automated farming equipment, chemical fertilizers (many of wich are based on oil products), and genetically engineered monocultures, which give us large increase in food production and availibility, largely eliminating threat of hunger for the first time in human history.

As everyone knows however, fossil fuels are not here forever. As they start to dwindle, chemicals and machinery will become more and more expensive, until using them will no longer be economically viable. After that happens, we will have to return to manual farming traditions of pre-industrial era. Sure, the theoretical base is there, but theory and practice tend to greatly vary. Even the  mentality of manual labour, let alone know-how and practical skills will likely have to be recreated from scratch, especially in the developed world.

[Dwarfoloid]

We know of it, but cannot reproduce it. That's what makes Damascus steel swords secret.

Leaving Hygrom's semantic nitpicking aside, did you read the paper I posted a link to?   

In recent work, a technique to produce blades that match the best museum-quality wootz Damascus blades in both surface appearance and internal microstructure has been developed.

A major conclusion of the studies on reconstructed wootz Damascus steel17-18 is that the band formation in these steels results from microsegregation of low levels of carbide-forming elements from V, Mo, Cr, Mn, and Nb, with vanadium and molybdenum being most effective.

And a comparison to the historical blades:

The data of Table III show that all of the hypereutectoid steels contain vanadium at or above this level, except for the Voigt blade. However, the Voigt blade contains manganese at the 500 ppmw level, and experiments show18 that banding is induced with manganese levels of only 200 ppmw. Hence, analyses of the seven genuine wootz Damascus steels of Table III are consistent with the theory that low levels of carbide-forming elements, apparently mainly vanadium and to a lesser extent manganese, are essential to the surface-pattern formation of these blades.

I think somebody mentioned "cheap" modern alloying (boron->bainite could be called such) techniques as something directly opposed to ancient craftsmanship. But the famed qualities of wootz came just from such "cheap" alloying. This doesn't mean that there wasn't amazing craftsmanship involved there as well though.

One of the biggest mysteries left with wootz (ie. true damascus steel) is how they managed to get those patterns so pretty, but there are sucpicions that the best quality museum pieces are simply giving a skewed point of comparison. Meaning that getting blades to look like that might be a product of very specific circumenstances that ancients themself didn't quite know how to reproduce.

On the other hand, with pattern welded damascus ("fake" damascus) I think they can suprass the ancients in ability to make complex patterns on purpose. Pattern welding or forge welding is a well known technique with nothing particularily secret about it. It seems to have seen use in many if not most ancient iron working cultures, including in Europe.

[Solarn]

We know of it, but cannot reproduce it. That's what makes Damascus steel swords secret.

Leaving Hygrom's semantic nitpicking aside, did you read the paper I posted a link to?   

In recent work, a technique to produce blades that match the best museum-quality wootz Damascus blades in both surface appearance and internal microstructure has been developed.

A major conclusion of the studies on reconstructed wootz Damascus steel17-18 is that the band formation in these steels results from microsegregation of low levels of carbide-forming elements from V, Mo, Cr, Mn, and Nb, with vanadium and molybdenum being most effective.

And a comparison to the historical blades:

The data of Table III show that all of the hypereutectoid steels contain vanadium at or above this level, except for the Voigt blade. However, the Voigt blade contains manganese at the 500 ppmw level, and experiments show18 that banding is induced with manganese levels of only 200 ppmw. Hence, analyses of the seven genuine wootz Damascus steels of Table III are consistent with the theory that low levels of carbide-forming elements, apparently mainly vanadium and to a lesser extent manganese, are essential to the surface-pattern formation of these blades.

I think somebody mentioned "cheap" modern alloying (boron->bainite could be called such) techniques as something directly opposed to ancient craftsmanship. But the famed qualities of wootz came just from such "cheap" alloying. This doesn't mean that there wasn't amazing craftsmanship involved there as well though.

One of the biggest mysteries left with wootz (ie. true damascus steel) is how they managed to get those patterns so pretty, but there are sucpicions that the best quality museum pieces are simply giving a skewed point of comparison. Meaning that getting blades to look like that might be a product of very specific circumenstances that ancients themself didn't quite know how to reproduce.

On the other hand, with pattern welded damascus ("fake" damascus) I think they can suprass the ancients in ability to make complex patterns on purpose. Pattern welding or forge welding is a well known technique with nothing particularily secret about it. It seems to have seen use in many if not most ancient iron working cultures, including in Europe.

This is very interesting. I was aware that we already knew what made true Damascus blades special, but I thought we didn't know how to replicate them.

[Arkenstone]

*REDACTED*

[Earthquake Damage]

Something that's worked on for years will always be better than something put together in a short amount of time, no matter what the tech level:  just take Dwarf Fortress as an example!

I call bullshit.  I assume, of course, that "better" is not defined as "took longer to produce".

In essence, what I'm saying is that you can't just take modern technology and slap something together in a few months and have it turn out better than what was the culmination of a life's work from any age.

Clarification:  I'm taking this to mean "no matter the difference in technology, the slower process always yields a better result" (i.e. a stone hand axe built with care over a great many years will always outperform and outlast a rapidly manufactured product, no matter what technology goes into that product).

Also, DF is a poor example.

[Seraph]

You can't really use modern factories- they all are quantity over quality.  Just take that lightbulb that's been burning for a hundred years.  It has been able to do so because it was hand crafted with patience and care.  Our modern lightbulbs are more "technologically advanced"; but they barely last one!  In essence, what I'm saying is that you can't just take modern technology and slap something together in a few months and have it turn out better than what was the culmination of a life's work from any age.

The life of the centennial bulb has nothing to do with the fact that it is hand-made, and everything to do with the fact that it's a 4 watt bulb.

For a normal light bulb the amount of light that a bulb produces goes as about the 3.5 power of the voltage ratio.  The lifetime goes as the inverse twelfth power of the voltage ratio. So if you took a 100 watt 120V lightbulb that lasts for an average of 500hrs and lowered the voltage until it was a 4 watt bulb you would be at ~48V (a reduction of 2.5). 2.5^12 is ~60,000. So a 100 watt bulb run as a 4 watt bulb will last 60,000x as long. 60,000x500hrs is better then 3000 years.

For what its worth the article on wikipeidia suggests that my numbers are worst-case, which I suspect is reasonable given where I knew my numbers from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamp_rerating

[Scribble]

Honestly this is one of the best places on the interent. Every time I see someone make a wild and ignorant statement someone gives a reasoned and well researched counter, often including references that i can learn a great deal from. Thanks all!

  But on a slightly unrelated note, what are the effects of material on shields?   Here there is definately an argument for divorcing material quality from effectiveness. For instance historically shields have often been deliberatley composed or 'fronted' (sorry I can't think of the corect trerm) of soft(er) materials such as wood and brass to better 'catch' oponents weapons.

  I can certainly see a wooden shield being more effective than an iron one simply as the latter would transmit shock more directly to wielder. (I'm assuming we are limiting ourselves to 'pure' materials here, obviously an iron frame, wooden front and leather backing would be more ideal than either of the above)

[Arkenstone]

*REDACTED*