Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk X

[Straybow]

Straybow thinks: Must... resist... saying... d20... broken...

[J.Gellert]

Well, in the first place, speeds in 3.5 are extremely simple, so hard to really judge speed penalties.

1rst level 'Barbarian' with Run feat shouldn't be able to cover 90 meters in like 12 seconds wearing scale and a lot of other junk, but then again, he shouldn't be able to cover 120 in such time wearing "only" a robe, axe, and stuff.

Eh, I guess I was asking more about whether or not armor really slows you down that much, actual speeds are another matter altogether.

[gkathellar]

The degree to which armor slows you down is relative to your strength and training in its use on the first count — if you're strong enough, and you know how to move in your armor, you can move just as quickly in it as out of it. Higher quality, better-fitted armor will of course be easier on a warrior in this respect.

The second count is a question of endurance. Moving in armor will tire you out faster than moving without it, so you may end up moving slower in the sense that you'll get tired faster. Of course, again — if the armor is well fitted and well made, you know how to use it, and you have endurance to spare, this won't necessarily become an issue.

[Spiryt]

Eh, I guess I was asking more about whether or not armor really slows you down that much, actual speeds are another matter altogether.

But it's pretty much closely connected, with speeds being pretty damn abstract and vague, one cannot really judge whether said speed reduction is 'right'.

Like mentioned, with 3.5 lacking any serious cardio/endurance system, a lot of drawbacks of being burdened are non existent too.

Seeing how armor actually reduces your general tactical range and limits jumping/balance etc. but not too harshly, I feel it's generally alright for D&D.

[J.Gellert]

The degree to which armor slows you down is relative to your strength and training in its use on the first count — if you're strong enough, and you know how to move in your armor, you can move just as quickly in it as out of it. Higher quality, better-fitted armor will of course be easier on a warrior in this respect.

The second count is a question of endurance. Moving in armor will tire you out faster than moving without it, so you may end up moving slower in the sense that you'll get tired faster. Of course, again — if the armor is well fitted and well made, you know how to use it, and you have endurance to spare, this won't necessarily become an issue.

This tells me it would be plausible to have feats that remove armor speed penalties.

[Mike_G]

This tells me it would be plausible to have feats that remove armor speed penalties.

Kinda-sorta.

Yes, you can move in armor, or you wouldn't be able to fight in it, but nobody, regardless of how hard they train or how well the armor fits, can run the 50 yard dash in plate armor in the same time as they could in shorts and a t-shirt.

Extra encumbrance mostly tires you out faster, but it does slow you down as well.

For game purposes, I'd limit your ability to sprint in heavy armor. So you could have the same walking speed, but the "run" speed would be maxed at a lower multiplier than for an unarmored man.

[deuxhero]

But magic!

Anyways...

Ever any serious military use of two people (on) one horse?

[Matthew]

Light foot are sometimes supposed to have held onto the tails of cavalry and run along behind, but the most famous depiction of two men astride a horse is that of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon:



Of course, if that ever really happened it was in extremis, and not by choice.

[fusilier]

But magic!

Anyways...

Ever any serious military use of two people (on) one horse?

I've heard that "voltigeurs" were trained to do that -- although the purpose was to transport the voltigeur quickly from place to place. I'm not sure if it was ever actually done on the battlefield, however.

[J.Gellert]

For game purposes, I'd limit your ability to sprint in heavy armor. So you could have the same walking speed, but the "run" speed would be maxed at a lower multiplier than for an unarmored man.

That's what I was thinking. Speed 6 squares, run x3.

[GraaEminense]

Ever any serious military use of two people (on) one horse?

I remeber reading that the Assyrians supposedly used horses like chariots without the chariot: one "driver" to control both horses, leaving the other to shoot people. This was a done to avoid the fragile, terrain-dependent chariot but still have mounted archers in a culture without highly developed horsemanship (not unusual for its time, really). So not really what you asked for, but somewhat related.

Can't find other sources than Osprey atm, so take it with the necessary condiments.

[Galloglaich]

That is pretty neat, I'd never heard of that!

G

[Yora]

How much hydrogen is in a "mid range" size fusion bomb, and how much would the equivalent in TNT be?

[Matthew]

Came across another great quote today, in Ambroise's Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, for knights shooting bows during the march from Acre to Jaffa:

p. 117: "there you might have seen knights, when they lost their horses, go on shooting bows with the men-at-arms;"

[Thiel]

How much hydrogen is in a "mid range" size fusion bomb,

None, at least not in modern bombs.

and how much would the equivalent in TNT be?

From what open sources there is it seems that 100-150kT seems to be the average for midsized MIRV warheads currently in service.

[Ashtagon]

None, at least not in modern bombs.

Depends. Are you counting hydrogen's isotopes as hydrogen or as different substances?

From what open sources there is it seems that 100-150kT seems to be the average for midsized MIRV warheads currently in service.

Note that a mirv warhead is actually a cluster of bombs designed to scatter in a specific pattern.

[Yora]

Well, how much fuel that undergoes fusion do you have?
I believe you need a fission chain reaction to create the conditions that trigger the fusion, but I would consider that to be be part of the detonator.

[Autolykos]

Well, how much fuel that undergoes fusion do you have?

Hard to tell from plans/specifications alone, because the Tritium burned in the fusion reaction is usually bred from Lithium in the "blanket", but only a small fraction of the theoretically possible amount will be generated (this trick simplifies maintenance a lot and increases shelf life considerably; it will also give off a little energy, but that's not the reason for doing it).
I'm sure someone did the calculations, but the results are probably secret.

[Straybow]

Nothing top secret about it. If memory serves, E=mc² gives 1g per 10kT in round numbers. The T+D=He reaction is about 0.4% efficient, so something on the order of 250g per 10kT = 3-4 kg for a typical thermonuke. That has to be produced by the neutron flux of the fission trigger hitting the lithium... the mass of all that gets more complicated than I know.

[Autolykos]

That has to be produced by the neutron flux of the fission trigger hitting the lithium...

And exactly that's the point where you'll get stuck with pencil and paper (or even a commercially available CAS if you lack a lot of additional data that's not published anywhere). You'd either need a nuclear reactor and a slab of Lithium-6 for testing, or possibly a incredibly complex computer simulation (not even sure if that will actually yield even halfway accurate data in acceptable time with anything short of some seriously big iron).
EDIT: To actually contribute something useful, you'll find most of the publicly available information on (the most common type of) hydrogen bombs here.

[Yora]

I found an unsourced quote that 1 gram of fusion material produces as much energy as 10 tonnes of coal.
Another one says "One gram of hydrogen releases 6.2 x 10^10 J of energy where as one gram of coal produces 33 KJ of energy."

Wikipedia says coal has 24 megajoules per kg, but that probably depends on the quality of the coal.

TNT produces energy less efficient but much faster at 4.6 MJ per kg.

The Ivy Mike test was over 10 megatons of TNT, which would be:
10,000 kilotons = 10,000,000 tons = 10,000,000,000 kg
10,000,000,000 kg of TNT = 46,000,000,000 MJ

46,000,000,000 MJ divided by 62,000 MJ for one gram of hydrogen would be 741935 gram of hydrogen. Or 750 kg.
At a density of 67.80 g/cm³ as liquid hydrogen, that would be 11 liters.

They probably did not expect complete fusion, so it was probably more. And the entire weight of the bomb was 74 tons, about 100 times the mass of the fusing hydrogen.

[Autolykos]

At a density of 67.80 g/cm³ as liquid hydrogen, that would be 11 liters.

As said before, they don't use liquid hydrogen (or deuterium, which is roughly twice as heavy) in fusion bombs. The most common fuel nowadays is lithium deuteride (density and molar mass can be found in the article). Also, most of the energy in the Teller-Ulam design (over 70% usually) will still come from fission. You can increase the portion generated by fusion (but decrease total yield) by replacing the uranium tamper with lead. That's usually called a neutron bomb.

[fusilier]

Also, most of the energy in the Teller-Ulam design (over 70% usually) will still come from fission. You can increase the portion generated by fusion (but decrease total yield) by replacing the uranium tamper with lead. That's usually called a neutron bomb.

You could also add more stages. The basic idea behind a hydrogen bomb is to use fission, to create fusion, to create even more fission. You could chain the process. The largest was a three-stage, although I believe it's possible to add more stages. Three-stage bombs can get too big. Past about 100 megatons the blast will escape the atmosphere and be directed into space. Look for the PBS show Secrets of the Dead: World's Biggest Bomb

The term neutron bomb, is rather contested: as what's called a neutron bomb nowadays may not be the weapon that was envisioned when the term was first coined. I would avoid using it. Enhanced Radiation Bomb (or Weapon) is less ambiguous. A hypothetical Fusion Bomb (or Pure Fusion Bomb), would create a lot of neutrons for a very small explosive yield (compared to other nuclear weapons).

I think that calling ERWs "neutron bombs" was to make them sound like a new and different weapon, thereby justifying spending. ;-)

[Autolykos]

Agreed and agreed. Even the Tsar (which is the only three-stage design I know of) was kinda excessive. I'd be hard pressed to find a strategic (or, god help me, tactical) use for it. The Soviets seemed to understand this, too. At least they didn't try to build anything even bigger.
And yes, most stuff around "neutron bombs" is propaganda blurbs. There's that widely believed myth it would only kill people but leave infrastructure completely intact and similar bogus claims. It's still a nuke, the radiation will just be deadly in a (slightly) larger radius than the shockwave.

[Dead_Jester]

Agreed and agreed. Even the Tsar (which is the only three-stage design I know of) was kinda excessive. I'd be hard pressed to find a strategic (or, god help me, tactical) use for it. The Soviets seemed to understand this, too. At least they didn't try to build anything even bigger.

Actually, they wanted to put uranium tampers (they put lead instead) in the Tsar, but then they realized the plane dropping it would probably have been caught in the blast wave...

Plus, at that time, that was the best way to ensure destruction of an enemy city; you need a yield much larger than the theoretical minimum because of the inherent inaccuracy of dropping a massive dumb bomb from the high atmosphere (you can't afford to miss the enemy, so you overcompensate so that even if you do miss the target by a couple of kilometers, you still destroy it).

[Mike_G]

Rifled muskets.

A while back, we had a discussion about rifles in the American Revolution. Rifles, while more accurate and able to hit at longer ranges, were a tough sell because of slow loading times and the feeling that the additional training in marksmanship wasn't worth it for the average soldier. The Napoleonic Wars saw infantry armed almost exclusively with smoothbore muskets. The bayonet was still seen as a deciding arm for infantry.

A relative short time later, by the early to mid 19th century, just about every army had changed over their primary infantry weapon to a rifled musket, still muzzle loading but taking advantage of rifling. The bayonet became almost obsolete as a deciding arm. In the American Civil War, only about 1% of wound were caused by bayonets. Infantry assaults had become routinely hard to pull off and with far higher casualties. If a column of Napoleon's Old Guard had shown up for Gettysburg, I doubt any of them would have survived the advance to bayonet range.

So, my question is: do we attribute most of this change over to the Minie ball, which overcame the slow loading, tight fitting bullet problem for rifles, or was it largely a shift in attitudes and doctrine?

[Yukitsu]

Bayonets were considered fairly indecisive in terms of casualties caused even during the Napoleonic era. They were probably more useful for warding away cavalry from squares, and for the psychological comfort and shock they could provide. Since cavalry by Gettysburg seems to have been marginalized, most of the strategic purpose of them seems to have been lost.

Another reason it seems the bayonet charge would have been ignored was the relative inexperience of the Union forces, and the particular battle experience of the Confederates. The Bayonet charge typically required extensive training, drilling and discipline, which Union forces simply didn't have at the onset of the war. By contrast, the veteran Confederate forces had predominantly gained experience in the war against Mexico, where for some reason, a considerable amount of fighting on either side was during sieges against relatively minor fortifications, or where the American army was too small to really provide the necessary weight to panic an enemy army through a bayonet charge.

The actual range, accuracy and rate of fire of a Napoleonic flintlock isn't so poor when compared to a rifled musket firing minnie balls that I'd consider the transition in tactics as likely due to that alone. It was likely due to a general shift in multiple key facets of the army, such as repeating weapons, reduction of the role of cavalry, and the comparative scarcity the Americans had of artillery/artillery munitions during the civil war. Even then, all in all, battles were fought mostly as they had been everywhere else up to that point. The bayonet charge during the Napoleonic era was mostly to shatter an already demoralized enemy force.

Should note as an addendum to that, the bayonet was fairly useful, and still would have been if fighting in a very confined area, such as a narrow city street. They were used apparently to good effect in taking heavily walled farm houses which would not have existed in America at the time.

[Mistral]

Rifled muskets.

A while back, we had a discussion about rifles in the American Revolution. Rifles, while more accurate and able to hit at longer ranges, were a tough sell because of slow loading times and the feeling that the additional training in marksmanship wasn't worth it for the average soldier. The Napoleonic Wars saw infantry armed almost exclusively with smoothbore muskets. The bayonet was still seen as a deciding arm for infantry.

A relative short time later, by the early to mid 19th century, just about every army had changed over their primary infantry weapon to a rifled musket, still muzzle loading but taking advantage of rifling. The bayonet became almost obsolete as a deciding arm. In the American Civil War, only about 1% of wound were caused by bayonets. Infantry assaults had become routinely hard to pull off and with far higher casualties. If a column of Napoleon's Old Guard had shown up for Gettysburg, I doubt any of them would have survived the advance to bayonet range.

So, my question is: do we attribute most of this change over to the Minie ball, which overcame the slow loading, tight fitting bullet problem for rifles, or was it largely a shift in attitudes and doctrine?

I'd suspect that the Minié ball was a contributing factor, but far from decisive. Even with easy reloading, you still have to deal with the fact that machining rifling was difficult, and therefore expensive, for most of the history of rifled weaponry (since the Thirty Years War, at least). Conveniently, however, the Minié ball also appeared fairly close to the Industrial Revolution, which carried with it not just advances in machine power, whether by water or steam, that far exceeded muscle power, but also advances in precision engineering and the development of machine tools (from clockworking, but subsequently generalized) that made reproducible and efficient rifling fast and simple. The lathe in particular was a tremendous advance in this regard. Clamp the barrel, drill in, withdraw the drill, and bam, instant rifling. Without effective and widely-disseminated machine tools, you end up with weapons like the Austrian early rifled muskets (the Lorenz and Augustin, the latter of which being a smoothbore later re-bored for rifling), which were a bit chancy due to inconsistent bore diameters and fittings.

[Storm Bringer]

also, note the fact that while bayonet charges were much harder and costiler, they were still launched becuase the only way, then and now, to get a bunch of infantry out of a defended location is to send your own infantry in.


to paraphrase someone:

"you can shell a hill, naplam it, bomb it until no two stones are on top of each other.....but until you put a 19 year old guy with a rifle and a bayonet on it, it ain't yours".

[fusilier]

Bayonets and rifle muskets

One of the things that I like to tell people, which is admittedly a simplification, is that the point of a bayonet charge wasn't to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat, but to scare him out of his position. Charges, even successful ones, rarely resulted in hand-to-hand combat during this time period. Note, that bayonet training itself, only slowly caught on over the course of a couple of centuries (by the beginning of the Civil War there was more interest in it), and was rarely universally applied.

Rifle muskets didn't really change the tactics used by much. They did make them more deadly. Strangely, the extra range of the rifle musket wasn't used that much, with soldiers typically firing volleys at about the same range they would have with smoothbore muskets. So there were more "hits" rather than the same number of hits at a greater range. If the fighting got really close, which did happen sometimes, then the troops with the smoothbore muskets would have an advantage from buck-and-ball.

Breechloading and repeating weaponry had a very small impact on the war. The main weapon was the rifle musket, and some troops (more likely the farther west you went), fought to the end of the war with smoothbore muskets. This is true for both North and South. Breechloading weaponry, and, more significantly, the self contained metallic cartridge proved themselves during the war, and in that sense, as a testing ground, the Civil War and breechloaders are linked. But too few troops were ever armed with such weapons for it to be a significant strategic issue.

@Yukitsu
I would challenge the assumption that Confederate troops were more experienced or better fighters. While it is true that the South sent more volunteers to fight in the Mexican War of 1846-48 than the North, the main area of support for that war was "the West", and there were veterans on both sides of the Civil War. More importantly, the scale of the Civil War was of such proportion that such veterans would have been a drop in the bucket.

I'll need to check the statistics again, but I do believe a disproportionate number of the pre-war officers had Southern sympathies. However, it should be remembered that most of those officers had been lieutenants and captains, with no experience leading the large numbers of troops they were elevated to lead during the Civil War. In fact, outside of Winfield Scott (who stayed loyal to the Union, and was too old to take to the field), I can't think of any other generals of the Civil War that had been generals during the Mexican War. Not of the top of my head any way. I think Karl Marx observed in 1861 that if you took every single soldier from the regular army and made them all instructors (which most would be woefully unsuited for), there still wouldn't be nearly enough instructors to train the volunteers for the Northern army alone! Both sides began the war with basically ill-trained militia. However, high morale could overcome such deficiencies, and I think that was well recognized at the time, but overlooked today given the modern emphasis on military training. In the 19th century as much emphasis was put on esprit de corps and elan as on training.

Finally, Confederate victories in the Eastern theater in the first years of the war, should be contrasted with their defeats in the Western theater(s) during the same period.