Combat-Writing Thread

That'd be a question of how much weight you want to give to stylistic as opposed to realistic factors. I lean pretty far to the realistic side of the ledger—even in fantasy settings I'm a firm proponent of consistency—but I can appreciate how some might want to lean the other direction.

Well, the thing here is that I'm trying to embrace the over the top-ness of the series and add some Metal Gear flavoring to it.

We have two stealth experts:

The main character who is a Empowered Badass Normal in a world of Magic Knights and he sneaks around using MGS-style and can do many other things like using technology and dirty tactics to win.

The other stealth expert is a Summoner (who instinctively are adept at magic) who is a Ninja and a Time Mage. He can open gate ways to hide, go through walls and generally be a menace. He can also stop and slow a person's time.

Cardboard boxes!

And tranq guns like the M9.

How would a modern military realistically fight an enemy army who has control over the forces of nature themselves?

The scenario is this: the modern army has invaded a world of magic, with technology still in the middle ages. However, instead of directly fighting said modern army, the medieval army has taken to their cities and surrounded them with potent magic barriers, surrounding said barriers with a large area of extreme cold, so cold that technology that relies on heat to work (such as the internal combustion engine) don't work.

Then they simply create tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, poison the naturally-growing fruits and vegetables, and made the local fauna of the land into vicious man-eaters.

Has modern science found a way to fight nature? Or are they just f*cked?

edited 27th Feb '16 2:06:24 AM by gameknight102xx

Use the cold to run technology that works better at cold temperatures?

"Guys, ignore the war and look here! My [gaming computer] runs Crysis so much better now!"

Agent Orange their crops, cover their kids in white phosphorus, start your own nuclear winter.

There's lots of ways to play dirty back if a modern army wanted to.

And I think you're underestimating just how cold it has to be to make the proper gear shut down. It'd have to be a great deal colder than anything on earth.

edited 27th Feb '16 8:05:16 AM by LeGarcon

Not to mention that if they make it so cold and call down such natural disasters they are ruining it for themselves as well, destroying their crops. and thus food supply. And earthquakes really does a number on buildings not built with modern technology to be resistant to them. In short, they are trying schorced earth tactics but modern day logistics are too good, and as said, medieval forces are too primitive to really be able to do anything against armoured convoys.

And on the regards to making it too cold, modern military forces have gear that is supposed to work in -40 to -50 degrees celcius, in arctic climates and high up in the mountains

edited 27th Feb '16 2:55:51 PM by Clawthewolf

Sorry, just to emphasize: the medieval forces are walled up in their cities. Said cities have potent magical barriers around them that can withstand modern day ordinance, turning it into a prolonged siege scenario. And then they surround that with a large area of extreme cold, cold enough to shut down military gear, so yes, below -50 degrees. Below -90 degrees, actually, sorry for not specifying that.

And then they release the disasters outside of these zones.

edited 27th Feb '16 3:07:27 PM by gameknight102xx

Why bother invading in the first place then? If they're a threat that has to be dealt with then just nuke them and go home.

I mean it's now their world, the medieval guys have no way to retaliate and likely no way to defend against nukes or intercept them. There's no SALT treaties or anything.

Why go through all the fuss?

edited 27th Feb '16 3:10:24 PM by LeGarcon

If the fantasy forces can do that it is simply not worth the time and effort to invade, especially since its so cold and inhospitable that if you stay you freeze to death. They way you've described it the fantasy people are basically untouchable.

@Le Garcon That I actually don't know. Someone else wrote this scenario, and in their story the fantasy forces choose to fight head on instead of exploiting their magic and predictably get overwhelmed because there's not much a bow and arrow can do against attack helicopters.

So I'm writing a counterpoint to that story of what would happen if the fantasy forces actually played smart.

@Claw Alright, thank you.

Essentially according to your setting and magical system (cause that is something to keep in mind, magic is only as powerful as the author says it is) the fantasypeoples have power that in our world would essentially be described as godlike. Their warfare would not be armies, but wizards and sorcerers essentially trying to nuke each other. Either that or using magic is the nuclear option for them, that no one dares to try use this godlike magic for fear that the others would do it to them.

The one hope they have is that the fantasy wizards don't understand how science works. So they wont know how to protect themselves, or even comprehend, such things as radiologcial or bio-weapons. Ask for a peace conference, pass out some infected blankets as "presents" sort of thing.

The barriers can withstand ordnance, but could nukes blast them ? Even if the cold areas also keep planes out, ICB Ms will work.

And I think it may be possible to build vehicles and gear that could withstand -90°C. It doesn't exist yet because there's no need for it, but wars have a tendency to stimulate innovation.

I'm writing a special forces character whose speciality is CQB^note I know IRL that wouldn't be an actual speciality, but hold your disbelief for a moment!. Now, the problem is that despite looking around the Internet, my knowledge of both CQB and hand-to-hand techniques is... lacking. And at least for hand-to-hand techniques I wouldn't even know how to smoothly describe them, considering they look fairly complex!

So I suppose my query is this - what are the sort of techniques that CQB calls for (referring mostly to firearms here), and how could I describe them non-clunkily (referring mostly to the hand-to-hand techniques here)?

Well right the hot cool special forces CQC technique is a way of using handguns and short carbines and submachine guns known as Center Axis Relock.

Not sure how one would go about describing it well in words but if you've ever played a Splinter Cell game it's the signature style of Sam Fisher. There are some great instances of it in Conviction and Blacklist.

It involves holding your weapon with both hands at at least a 45 degree angle quite close to your face. Lots of snap aiming and the ability to bring it around very quickly. It also allows you to have an incredible amount of recoil control.

edited 12th Mar '16 4:28:51 PM by LeGarcon

Speaking from a fiction writing perspective, I wouldn't obsess about the technical details. What matters is what the character experiences, what the fight feels like, rather than what martial arts moves they make. It's more important to describe the pain than the punch that produced it. I think the only reason to describe a move in enough detail to reproduce it would be if there was something special about it- it's the flourish that ends the fight, for example.

There's lots of sites that offer advice on writing good action scenes. Here's one, here's another, really good one

@Garcon:

I was already aware of CAR, but thanks nonetheless!

@Marquis:

I definitely understand your point, but 1) it's partially so I know what's happening (rather than having to make very broad strokes¹) and 2) so that I can include little things to make it clear that yes, the character definitely knows their stuff (sort of as Genius Bonus minus the need to be a genius ). Those articles are very useful, BTW. Thank you!

¹: This might not sound like much of a problem, but when it comes to things like this I can sometimes find it useful to go from lots of detail to less, since I can map it out in my mind and then selectively omit things to make things flow properly. I know that economy with detail is a virtue in action scenes, but I would rather not fall into the trap of going in the opposite direction: namely, being so general by necessity that it is to the point of dullness or confusion.

edited 13th Mar '16 5:39:30 PM by Flanker66

Ah, then my advice is to get on You Tube and do a search on "Grav Maga".

This seemed like the place to ask this question. I'm working on a story set during the last days of WWII, and with my love of obscure military vehicles, I've decided to have one of the villains drive a Semovente 105, arguably the best Italian AFV of the war. I've got most of its statistics from a variety of websites, but the one thing I can't seem to find is how much armour its main gun could penetrate, and at what range.

Given that it's a 105mm gun it should—and given its reported popularity with its crews, probably did—open up anything short of the Pershing or the IS-2 like a tin can, and ought to be able to kill both of those as well. I can't seem to locate any stats for it though, and on the offchance it was a complete piece of garbage (not out of the question when dealing with WWII Italian equipment) I'd like to be fairly sure of my assumptions.

So I was wondering—anybody have the statistics for that, or know a place I might be able to find them?

Hm, you're right, google REALLY doesn't want to give me much on this.

The only actual statistics I could find say AP shells flew at 510m/s and penetrated 89/76/62/51/40 for 100/500/1000/1500/2000 meters respectively at a plunging angle of 30 degrees. HEAT 390m/s and 121mm at all ranges and from what I could find on other armored howitzer guns of the time, that seems believable.

The site wasn't what I'd call trustworthy though, it was just the only site that gave me ANY numbers at all.

What would you guys say is the best for use by an organized medieval military army? The bow or the crossbow? Presume that the soldiers are professionals like the Roman legions and every enlisted soldier receives about 6 months of training before being sent out into battle and the contract is for 10 years

Well, the Romans aren't a medieval army. In fact one of the definitive points of a medieval army is that it's not organized on professional lines. That being said...

Depends on what you want. With bows you'll get more shots per minute, with a crossbow you'll get higher penetrating power (at least generally speaking. Exceptions, of course, exist).

Bows require a lot more training. The English were only able to field as many longbowmen as they did because archery practice was made compulsory throughout the country. The construction of bows was a long process too (Wikipedia says it could take up to 4 years) and caused yew shortages in England.