Combat-Writing Thread

Well, he has control of motion from his shoulder, but wouldn't have as much from his elbows down because it would be prosthetics. He'd have to have a lot of muscle built up in that arm. I would imagine there'd have to be some mechnical locking/unlocking system in place, but I'm not sure how it would work exactly because he'd lack any fingers or something to flip a lever or something.

If it doesn't work, and I figured it might not work/make as much sense as it sounded in my head, I suppose I can try and think up something else but I'm not sure what.

Another question, this time related to swords.

In a sword fight, or in the beginning of one, would this kind of scabbard and technique be useable? Assuming the character using it has the pre-requisite powers to not get his arm ripped off and etc.

edited 1st Feb '15 12:50:10 PM by gameknight102xx

There's a whole katana school of combat dedicated to quick draw slashes like that.

But whole scabbard built from an AR-15 upper that fires blanks to propel the blade is ridiculous.

I'm talking specifically about the use of firepower or other to propel a blade out if its scabbard.

Assuming the user is fast/strong enough to actually use it without injury or losing his blade, what would be the upsides and downsides to this kind of technique?

It's one of those things that's just ridiculous from the get go though, like there's practically no upsides and the entire thing is just unsafe and damaging to the sword.

What Le Garcon says: that's just incredibly impractical and unsafe, and is a sure way to damage the sword's blade (especially given that katanas are not known for durability). There are all kinds of reasons on the scabbard end and on the sword end that it's stupid.

The sword and scabbard are also not exactly made of natural material, and I apologize for not mentioning it.

I'd like to hear more of the "impractical and unsafe" side of this. Like how?

edited 1st Feb '15 1:12:26 PM by gameknight102xx

A recent question I had was: would explosives work on the moon? I know they would work to some extent, but wouldn't it be to a drastically lesser one given that there is no atmosphere on the moon to carry the overpressure wave?

Also, I received zero feedback on my ideas for infantry combat on the moon. I'd like some kind of answer to all I've written, even if it's to say that everything about it is utterly ridiculous.

For one, don't go building scabbards out of AR-15 receivers that explode swords out of them. Like what part of that is safe at all? It's how you lose limbs. It's also how you get chunks of shattered sword going through your right arm. Katanas are fragile as hell.

It's just one of those Metal Gear-isms that you shouldn't think about too hard.

Boomy stuff on the moon would be just boomy stuff in a vacuum, it'd work fine.

edited 1st Feb '15 1:09:43 PM by LeGarcon

re: scabbards: think about the interior of a scabbard. Ideally it should be lined with something relatively soft, like wood or felt. Steel is right out, since it'd dull the blade each time you drew it, or in the worst case rust solid.

Hey, guess which materials you don't want to expose to the heat and pressure of exploding gunpowder?

Also, something to note: a scabbard should be relatively light and handy. An AR-15 mechanism is anything but. I notice the dumb fucker had a magazine, of all things, on his scabbard. For the love of god, why? Is he going to rapid-fire the thing after he drew the sword, assuming he'd somehow adjusted the gas regulator so that it'd cycle with blanks?

A katana blade is much like a surgical instrument: incredibly sharp, comparatively delicate. It's less robust than a comparable longsword or backsword, but even with one of those you want to take good care of the blade.

Remember my point about exploding gunpowder? Yeah, imagine what that'd do to the razor-sharp edge of a sword.

In short: never take Metal Gear-isms for reality or even a rough approximation thereof. The physics engine, political simulation, and practicality settings of those games runs off Kojima and LSD.

re: gault: I don't have much to offer, sadly. The huge changes in environment between the Earth and the Moon results in a huge cascade of second-order effects that I can't predict. I'd say try focusing on the sci-fi threads; they're more familiar with the effects of low-G and vacuum than I am.

I'm sorry if I'm testing anyone's patience. But I don't want to leave with the answer to the wrong question.

The blade and scabbard that do this in my story are almost indestructible. Several attempts are made to shatter it or otherwise deform it, and they all fail with the exception of one.

So assuming the blade and the scabbard are safe from damage, what would be the disadvantages in terms of swordsmanship? I imagine attempting a strike like that might put the user off-balance if it misses, but my own inexperience with the subject matter makes any guess I make speculation at best.

edited 1st Feb '15 1:32:16 PM by gameknight102xx

Okay, first off, look up Iaijutsu Practitioner. Be familiar with it (not just on this wiki—do some research on iaijutsu and come back). Be especially familiar with the hand placement: one hand on the hilt of the blade, one hand on the scabbard near the hilt.

Now imagine that you grafted a rifle mechanism to the far end of the scabbard, the end that would normally bump against the ground. Imagine that you had to operate that with one hand, keeping in mind the length of the sword, while keeping the other hand on the hilt. (I'm going to assume that it's more sensible than the pistol-grip-and-magazine setup in the video. That's just inexcusably stupid and an affront to the idea of ergonomics, that's after it's done affronting the concepts of practicality and physics, of course.)

You should be able to see the problem.

If you wanted the focus to be on quick-draw, the key is making the scabbard lighter and simpler, not grafting a six-pound assault rifle to it, especially since the sword itself only weighs two pounds at most. Also, "scabbard is almost indestructible": how the hell did they manage to carve a hole in the end and modify it with the guts of a rifle, then? Unless you want to imply that the AR-15 is an ancient and powerful artefact along with the sword, in which case you may want to recheck some of your premises. For that matter, what is it doing as a scabbard, where its indestructibility doesn't matter? It'd be put to much better use in industrial applications, where having something lightweight and small yet immune to deformation from pressure or chemicals would be very, very useful.

In short, there already exists a school of combat that's close to what you want. Kojima just took the idea and turned it into something that looks fancy on screen but turns out to be completely unworkable when you think about it. Don't do that.

edited 1st Feb '15 1:44:38 PM by SabresEdge

And even after all of that, the increase in draw time would be negligible. So there's literally no upside whatsoever.

Okay, I can see the problems with that. Thank you for your help, and thanks for the suggestion on how to make another, more practical version (with a lighter+simpler scabbard).

Is there another school of swordsmanship for delivering powerful blows? That was the original purpose of me considering this.

edited 1st Feb '15 2:22:28 PM by gameknight102xx

nooooo, don't make a new version. Just forget it entirely.

A normal scabbard is better in literally every way.

And powerful blows and katanas are not things that go together. A katana is an extremely fragile object, it's power comes from finesse and precision. Start swinging it with the big powerful strokes you'd find in some western schools and you'll just break it.

Japanese swordmanship is much different that say German or Italian schools.

edited 1st Feb '15 2:27:25 PM by LeGarcon

By "more practical version" I mean "more practical scabbard for quickdrawing, removing any extra bits and making it as light and as simple as a scabbard can get".

Seconded. There's no way to make a scabbard/sword system with assisted ejection that would be anywhere close to practical.

If you want powerful swings, get a warhammer or an axe. Swords by their nature aren't designed for raw hitting power, especially the katana. (Or you can get a European longsword, grip it by the blade, and use the crossguard as you would a warhammer. That's called mordhau and was a favored way of defeating armored opponents.)

Otherwise, I am serious: look up iaijutsu. It is exactly what you're looking for in terms of quick draw-slash-return.

edited 1st Feb '15 2:30:07 PM by SabresEdge

Depends on what you're trying to do with them. Something like a HEAT round will work just fine. Standard HE will be less useful because you have to hit the target directly. The layer of lunar dust on the ground in general will be a serious problem because it will dampen ground shockwaves.

Fragmentation weapons like grenades or mortars will become so useful it would actually be a problem. Without air and with weaker gravity to slow them down, the lethal radius of such weapons would be ridiculously large. Any kind of omnidirectional fragmentation weapon could pose nearly as much risk to your own troops as those of the enemy. You would almost need to make sure any frag round you used was some kind of sensor-fuzed design which would be rigged to explode at a set altitude and fire all the fragments more or less down. This is possible with modern technology though it might be expensive. (In fact, given the likelihood that people will be wearing something armored to resist incidental spacesuit damage, something like the XM25 might well be the standard shoulder arm of people on the moon.)

(That in turn should indicate my general thoughts on your Lunar combat scheme.)

edited 1st Feb '15 3:35:47 PM by Night

Thanks Night. I'm glad to get feedback on this.

This changes things quite a bit. Given that fragmentation weapons are nearly useless against vehicles, the most common and effective anti-armor option is going to be direct-fire rockets or railguns. Contact-detonation shaped charges and explosively formed penetrator warheads like HEAT would work pretty much just like they would on Earth, but this means direct-fire only.

Shrapnel doesn't lose killing power on the moon, but it will disperse over distance to make the chance of enough of them hitting a single person to penetrate their hardsuit negligeable, or so I figure.

Indirect really loses effectiveness in this environment doesn't it? Can't drop artillery on swaths of land and kill everything in it, can't drop gravity bombs because they fall too slow to bypass ADS...

Okay, so I'm part of a Humongous Mecha RP Forum, and one of the mecha...

its...okay, its an exercise in Beware the Silly Ones.

Picture a giant flying lemon with wings and a drill on the front. Okay, that done?

Good.

I need a way to make its drill deadly. Like, scary deadly. I've already planned for the drill to spin faster than the speed of sound. What kind of damage would that do to tank armor and the like?

IIRC, modern anti-tank weapons work via firing a penetrator, be it a fin-stabilized dart fired from a sabot or an EFP warhead, at hypervelocity.

Matter interacts with matter differently at high speeds. This lets the penetrator bypass a lot of armor.

If you're using a drill, you're talking about holding something pressed against the hull of a tank for a few seconds at least. That seems less than ideal.

There are more factors at work than just the speed.

Its meant to be used against other mecha, but I figured using it theoretically against tank armor was the appropriate barometer for how to make this drill weapon thing work in a more real sense.

Essentially, the mecha designer's idea was for the drill to take only two to five seconds to shear an enemy apart, and then move on to the next one, and so on and so forth.

edited 11th Mar '15 1:39:55 AM by NickTheSwing

Two to five seconds is a very long time in anti-armor combat; even then, much would rely on things like impact angle. The problem with a drill is that if the impact is at an angle to the surface, the drill bit would likely skid off. Angling armor to hinder penetration is an old trick; it's why you don't see tanks with vertical forward turret faces any more.

For reference: a sabot shell or HEAT jet will slice through the target armor (up to a meter-plus of hardened steel) in microseconds, assuming it isn't stopped by armor thickness or ERA.

edited 11th Mar '15 11:55:58 AM by SabresEdge

Just about, though I'll add some more detail:

To put it simply, modern anti-tank munitions can be put in one of two categories:

• Kinetic penetrators, such as the APFSDS-T (Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Discarding Sabot - Tracer) round that is a favourite of modern armour.
• Explosives, such as HESH (High Explosive Squash Head), HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) and so on. These are more the realm of anti-tank guided missiles, recoilless rifles, and rocket propelled grenades than tank main guns, though HESH and HEAT shells are still in use by tanks as an "all round" munition.

For kinetic penetrators, two important qualities are the velocity of the projectile, and the density of the round. Obviously faster is better, as the round will carry more kinetic energy that it can impart to the target. To expound on the latter, the denser the material the better for similar reasons. As a result, a popular choice for sabot rounds is tungsten, though the most effective is depleted uranium, or DU. DU is self-sharpening (it forms a chisel point when striking armour, maximising its penetrative capabilities) and pyrophoric, meaning it has incendiary properties upon achieving a hit.

The power of modern sabot rounds is immense; a T-72 Ural struck by a APFSDS-T round fired from a M1 Abrams had its transmission ripped clean out of the vehicle and tossed several yards away from the unfortunate tank. This was after the round bored through a sand berm and achieved a penetrating hit on the lower frontal armour, mind!

However, one big disadvantage is that their effectiveness relies on velocity; a round fired from near its maximum effective range is less likely to penetrate than one fired whilst the target is closer. The more effective types of sabot round (i.e. DU) can be very expensive, too.

There are many different types of explosive warhead, and so it would be labouring the point to describe each and every one. Hence, I will describe the type of warhead an anti-tank weapon is most likely to carry - HEAT. The principle of the HEAT warhead is rather simple - upon striking armour, the shaped charge inside the warhead takes advantage of the Munroe Effect^note To quote Wikipedia: "the focusing of blast energy by a hollow or void cut on a surface of explosive" to send a hypersonic stream or spray of molten metal straight through it to cause damage internally.

One of the major advantages of HEAT weapons is that their penetrative qualities are completely independent of velocity - a RPG-7 projectile at the end of its flight is just as deadly as one just out of the launch tube! They are also far more numerous than munitions that rely upon kinetic energy alone to deal damage, and (depending on the exact munition in question) much cheaper.

However, in order to work properly a HEAT warhead must be triggered at the correct distance. This is because if it is triggered too early, it will simply spray the target and deal minimal damage as the molten metal disperses very quickly. And if it is triggered too late, the stream simply does not have enough time to develop, and its power is much reduced. Hence, many modern rockets and missiles with a HEAT warhead have a nose probe to ensure proper "stand off" and hence performance.

As an aside, one development to defeat certain forms of armour (such as slat armour) is a tandem charge warhead. The first charge punches a hole for the main charge - always HEAT, as far as I know - to slip through and hit the main armour. However, tandem charge warheads are still rather uncommon.

And that was anti-tank weapon ramblings 101!

edited 11th Mar '15 2:53:42 PM by Flanker66

How big is the lemon with wings thing? I could see it working if it was really small and fast, like a mini-drone.