Historical, Alternate History, Modern Era or Future Tech, Weapons, Vehicles, Equipment and Tactics

Maybe dispense with the multiple lever wind up function and just keep the rapid fire function. One pump, one shot. Like a Chu Ko Nu where you can aim down iron sights as you fire without a magazine getting in the way.

edited 30th Nov '14 9:33:49 PM by zepv

The other problem is that the capacity to mass-produce metal hard enough for gears to work like that didnt arise until much later than the Middle Ages.

edited 3rd Dec '14 8:33:31 PM by demarquis

Thanks for the feedback.

On another point I was wondering how viable updated steel versions of a Khopesh and Thracian or Dacian-style Falx would be in an army operating in the late 12th to 14th centuries?

If they are viable, in what way would you employ these weapons? Would you employ the Khopesh as a main infantry sword?

edited 26th Dec '14 3:14:50 AM by matti23

Not sure about the Khopesh, but the Falx is possible, based on the fact that the English in particular used the Bill (a billhook on a pole, sometimes with an extra spike on the top) as a weapon in place of the more common halberd.

About the very first post, the weapon seems plausible and in fact seems to resemble the Raufoss_Mk_211. Instead of having a committed weapons system for it, these could be bullets distributed to be used in other existing weapons. Add in a Iron Man Bullet Backpack and you're really cooking. Currently these bullets can be inserted into sniper rifles and 50 cal machine guns.

I did some research and it seems that the steel Khopesh is plausible. The new material compensates for its most glaring weaknesses against late 12th to 14th century weapons.

edited 30th Dec '14 5:48:07 PM by zepv

Wondering what everybody thought of this general concept. The use of a Gatling gun with explosive munitions (like in a Phalanx CIWS) for area suppression. Soldiers can radio in the approximate location of the target, or use a special laser rangefinder. This will calculate the distance from itself to the enemy. Based on information from a GPS on the device (or the soldier) it determines what direction the target is in and uses that information to plot the position of the enemy.

Targeting data is shared across the military network. A vehicle carrying the Gatling gun can select a target. The on board computer will calculate where it is relative to the target and will aim the gun so it arcs the bullets onto the target's location. An alternative mode allows the vehicle to act as point defense against artillery and rockets.

edited 12th Jan '15 11:28:08 PM by matti23

Thread title changed per request.

How might tactics in the middle ages be affected by the proliferation of soldiers armed with Molotov Cocktails?

edited 13th Jan '15 3:38:39 AM by zepv

They did have basic firebombs during the classical period. Greek fire, for example. Fire arrows were a thing since the dawn of military archery as well. Overall, it's not a major change but you might turn the tide of a battle or two by putting up a wall of flame in front of a cavalry charge. Don't try to toss them into melee, it will end badly for everybody.

Thanks for your help . I've changed the opening post back.

As for my idea, it pretty early and still needs a lot of work. Wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work. Wondering if anyone had any advice how such as vehicle might function. It is a Mayan vehicle called the K'i'xooch (porcupine). It's a large buggy armed with a missile launcher. The back of the buggy holds the ammunition and the launcher lies on top of it. Missiles are packed together in an upright position and the missile launcher rotates to face up when reloading so the system can push missiles straight up from the loading chamber below directly into the launcher. Built for speed and intended to have a multi-kilometer range. Can use anti-tank, anti-air or anti-infantry munitions.

How big might this vehicle be exactly? Currently it's about 5-6 meters long. What kind of missiles might work in a vehicle like this or would it be possible to build missiles for this vehicle with 20's century tech? Would this vehicle be effective in battle or would it be better to just go with a light armored vehicle? How long a range might this vehicle have? longer than about 3.5 Km perhaps?

Two questions.

First, would it make sense for space-based autocannons to be multi-barreled gatlings in order to reduce barrel heating? To be more specific, heat dissipation in space is nowhere near as efficient as in atmosphere, so automatic weapons are given multiple barrels without increasing the rate of fire so that it can keep firing longer before overheating.

Second. Let's consider an interstellar civilization with no Subspace Ansible and slow (<100 c) FTL that takes weeks at the least to go from one system to the next. What would be an optimal time interval between sending out couriers to keep star systems in touch with each other? And how many couriers would we need for, say, a dozen systems? We can't have a single courier for each system-pair due to the required number of couriers rising factorially.

Some of my settings are based in alternate history. Definitely one of my main works, it's a Cyberpunk setting with quite a bit of Alternate History. The Divergence point is around the late 70s to early 80s with the rise of a secretive scientific research group calling themselves PHOENIX.

Phalanx tank concept should work. Looks like an actual concept if you substitute the phalanx with a railgun.

K'i'xooch sounds plausible. The size of wire guided missiles and the FGM-128 Javelin look like they'd fit on the back of this buggy. The maximum range on these missiles is 4 KM and 4.75 KM respectively so this vehicle would be actually quite useful.

Multi barreled gatlings would increase the cooling rate of the weapon, it would be less in space but it would still help. Would probably help that some of the barrels are unused, allowing faster cooling.

Depends what type of communication needs to happen between the systems. If it's just government communication between relatively independent systems and intermittent civilian communication probably weekly to fortnightly ought to do it. To get the amount of couriers just get the total travel time of a tour of the dozen systems and divide by the time between visits.

How effective might the K'i'xooch be as rocket artillery?

edited 21st Jan '15 11:29:11 PM by Matm

What might the effects of 60 nuclear devices being detonated have on the environment or the involved nations? How about 90? The devices are 50 kilotons and are fired shortly after the discovery of the nuclear bomb in one of the AH worlds I'm building. Would the effect be a nuclear winter or a nuclear autumn and how long might this last? One faction covers nations from all of North America, South America, Europe, East Asia, Oceania and Southern Africa. The nukes are fired with 10 each at Britain, France, Spain, Central Western Europe (where Germany is IRL), Russia and North America.

Almost the entire world (with the sole exception of the other faction consisting of the nations of the Ottoman Empire) in this AH is under the control of European Empires. The attack sows panic and after surrendering the European faction splits up. Some of the nations try to survive on their own, some follow the Ottoman Empire and some try to maintain the original European faction.

The world plunges into a state of nuclear autumn for 5 years and some of the protagonists a decade after the event are part of a Organisation called the Iron Patriots, who are working on creating a nuclear bomb of their own to fight back against the Ottoman Empire and their allies. The story has protagonists on both sides.

As you may have guessed this particular story leans heavily towards dystopia rather than being high on the sliding scale of alternate history plausibility.

edited 23rd Jan '15 4:22:40 AM by matti23

Britain is pretty much a total loss in that scenario. That much infrastructure and population lost is not something that can be recovered anywhere within a decade. France, Spain and Germany would heavily suffer but they might come back. America can recover fairly fast and Russia will most likely shrug it off.

edited 23rd Jan '15 6:57:56 PM by amitakartok

Roughly how big of a numbers advantage would you need for a group of foot infantry to defeat cavalry? In this case we're dealing with light infantry equipped with armor similar to Persian light infantry in 334 BC (mostly cloth). For weapons they have 60cm long steel axes with a wooden handle and a steel head of 180 mm. The cavalry are armored similarly to the infantry and wield 3.5 m long wooden spears with a steel tip.

The horses are 1.6 m tall at the withers and have the opportunity to get a running start and charge the infantry. The infantry are in a block formation as deep as it is wide. As tactics and training make a huge difference we'll assume they both originate from an environment similar Darius' Persian army during the campaigns of Alexander the Great.

Cavalry aren't going to be wielding 3.5m spears, 2.4-2.5m is about the maximum practical length that can be weilded in one hand, although if you use a counterbalanced weapon it can be longer, but you will be using less than it's full length. Also, the infantry will be far more likely to have spears than the cavalry, especially if they know they're dealing with cavalry.

As for numbers, at the Battle of Omdurman the 400 men of the 21st Lancers managed to drive off a force of some 2,500 infantry.

Generally speaking, all tech and equipment being equal, infantry have the advantage over cavalry in most eras, particularly before the invention of the stirrup (late 500's or early 600's AD for Europe) which allowed horseriders to carry much heavier arms and equipment. Unless the cav can outflank the infantry and take them from the rear, or get surprise, I would say the cavalry need a ratio of at least 2 to 1 or even 3 to 1 in their favor to have a chance.

Actually, it's usually the other way, one cavalryman is worth 3-4 infantrymen, but that's the sort of odds they're up against anyway, because horses are expensive.

It wouldn't make any sense to have cavalry if it was inferior to infantry...

You do see these large swaths of history where it's generally a bad idea to charge infantry with cavalry. Most of the time cavalry are used as skirmishers or harassers, tossing spears or shooting arrows at their enemies. Other times they're only useful from the sides or rear. You only see cavalry as a breakthrough force after the stirrup but before the pike.

Or after the pike but before the machine-gun.

Heh, the entire history of the ancient Greek and Roman eras argues otherwise. Before the stirrup and after the pike mounted troops were not the decisive element of war.

edited 29th Nov '15 6:01:33 PM by DeMarquis

They won pretty decisively at Omdurman, and also at Mars-la-Tour. Hells, even as late as the Second World War, in the right situations cavalry proved quite effective.