Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk X

[fusilier]

Fire away, but I am not hugely more reliable than the internet I inhabit!

Haha, I'm tempted to make this my signature line -- which is saying something, because I've never used sig lines. :-)

[Joran]

I have a BA and MS in Computer Science.

/high5. I also have a BS and MS in Computer Science. Computer Science is much better at paying the bills and I realized after doing my senior thesis that I didn't much like archives diving.

[Fortinbras]

Crecy, 1346
Philip is able to persuade his knights that it is wiser to wait a day to attack. The following day, the Genoese crossbowmen are able to advance under the cover of their pavises and are able to shelter behind them while reloading.

What happens?

Do you folks think that crossbowmen equipped with pavises would have been a match for English longbowmen?

[rrgg]

I don't believe they dropped their spears because they couldn't use both a spear and the pilum. Regardless, the velites carried enough javalins to make it unlikely that you couldn't carry that number of spears, and at any rate, a pilum is about the same length as the old hasta. Carrying 2 pilum wouldn't be harder than carrying a pilum and a spear.

The skirmisher's javelins were only finger thick and much shorter. They also didn't pack nearly as much punch.

If the legionaries carried one pilum and one spear then they would have one less pilum to throw. Not to mention that less than 30 yards doesn't nescessarily give you a lot of room to fiddle around with many bulky weapons.

[Yora]

Crecy, 1346
Philip is able to persuade his knights that it is wiser to wait a day to attack. The following day, the Genoese crossbowmen are able to advance under the cover of their pavises and are able to shelter behind them while reloading.

What happens?

Do you folks think that crossbowmen equipped with pavises would have been a match for English longbowmen?

Hard to say. I imagine they would be used quite differently.
What is their effective range? What is the rate of shots? How compares their mobility? How much ammunition does each soldiers carry? How does armor penetration compare?
My best guess would be that it depends on the situation which one would be more valuable to have.

If the longbowmen and crossbowmen are shoting at each other, then the pavises would make a very big difference. But I don't know if this happened often, or even at all.

[Spiryt]

Crecy, 1346
Philip is able to persuade his knights that it is wiser to wait a day to attack. The following day, the Genoese crossbowmen are able to advance under the cover of their pavises and are able to shelter behind them while reloading.

What happens?

Do you folks think that crossbowmen equipped with pavises would have been a match for English longbowmen?

Froissart suggested that the very first charge of the French was clunky mess, and all following ones had to be even worse, with casualties and battlefield chaos raising.

Also says that English were very well positioned and organized. Dunno what other chronicles say about it.

So the question is if Phillip and other French commanders would be actually able to actually launch more coherent attacks and break English lines despite charging uphill - considering that French forces were supposedly ill-disciplined and disordered.

If crossbowmen had pavises, it wouldn't be wise for English to get into shooting exchange, certainly, with opponent ducking behind 4 foot (or more) high shield, percentage of successful hits would drop dramatically.

[Norsesmithy]

The French are actually sitting on the only line of retreat for an English army that's been cut off from its logistical corps.

There is zero reason to attack the English position at all, apart from vainglory.

[Storm Bringer]

Out of curiosity: This seems to be a quite small group of "regulars" who do by far most of the posting.
What are your backgrounds from which you have your knowledge?

As for me, I studied Cultural Studies and Intercultural Interaction, picking lectures and seminars focused on religious history and Asian philosophy. Now I branch out into Japanology to become an "interpreter or mediator", assisting with adjusting to foreign societies and avoiding backlash from misunderstandings for buiness, tourists, and migrants.
Military technology and tactics is really only a hobby, but from my academic background I am used to always question if any activity that people do is actually what it appears to be and done for the purpose I assume, or if there is something going on that you only notice when you know the context and the believes of the people. I am also fascinated by physics, and in military technology you have these two things come together like nowhere else, especially when there is a lot of material in form of movies and video games that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. And I was born in the early 80's. Nothing on TV did make any sense.
So every time I see a movie or play a game, and there's tactics or special weapons involved, I always have to know what the reasoning behind it is.
And just this year I've been found to be affected by ADD, which actually makes it that I HAVE to know! Once I'm hooked, finding the answer is the only thing that matters.

And I have to say, every time I arrive at an answer that I still have doubts about, I ask you guys if you think it's plausible.

I'm a serving solider in the British army, working as a comms specialist. I have a working knowledge of some elements of modern combat, but as i am a classic REMF i don't claim to be an expert in current infantry tactics, or urban armoured warfare formations, or correct FAC procedures, etc.

My knowledge of military history is mostly gathered by a mix od osprey books, this thread, and general military books and internet reading, I have a preference for the "redcoat" era (ie. ~1700-1900AD).

[Conners]

I have an odd question as to whether something is scientifically/physically possible. What I'm wondering, is if you could use the speed of a projectile against itself, via some kind of barrier. So, the faster an object is going when it hits the barrier, the more likely it is to be deflected. That kind of thing.

[Telok]

I have an odd question as to whether something is scientifically/physically possible. What I'm wondering, is if you could use the speed of a projectile against itself, via some kind of barrier. So, the faster an object is going when it hits the barrier, the more likely it is to be deflected. That kind of thing.

A couple of pages back someone mentioned Whipple Shields, designed to protect against high velocity micrometeorite impacts.

One thing I've read (but haven't tried) is cornstarch. Supposedly if you mix up some cornstarch and water in a bowl and punch it hard enough the mixture will solidify and crack. Even simply violently shaking it should get it to stiffen up. The theory behind this is that the cornstarch mixture is full of long chain molecules that slide past each other, as more energy is applied the molecules start to knot up and interlock. So if enough energy is applied fast enough the mixture should act like a solid for a short amount of time.

Let me know if it works.

[Spiryt]

I have an odd question as to whether something is scientifically/physically possible. What I'm wondering, is if you could use the speed of a projectile against itself, via some kind of barrier. So, the faster an object is going when it hits the barrier, the more likely it is to be deflected. That kind of thing.

The greater the velocity, the greater drag, or resistance of the medium.

And since it depends on velocity squared, for the same kinetic energy, the object that flies faster, will generally be stopped way more violently. Of course in real situation, it's usually way more complicated than that.

So "speed of projectile" against itself is pretty much built into the universe for us.

Very quick, but light bullets (like 5.56 nato from more 'solid' barrel) tend to have very high energy, that's upon hitting something more substantial, is getting spend very rapidly due to it - usually resulting in severe deformation of object and bullet itself.

So there certainly would be the way to use this effect to stop such missile, using such an effect - back in the WWII improving armor penetration with 'normal' cannons via improving the velocity hit the dead end when 'standard' shells started shattering while penetrating the armor.

[Yukitsu]

Chobham type armour works on that principle. Increasing the kinetic penetrator's velocity doesn't correlate very highly to an increase in the armour penetration against Chobham armour. Explosive reactive can as well to a point.

[Galloglaich]

Isn't this ... chemically, something similar to how kevlar and silk work?

G

[GraaEminense]

Not strictly a weapons/armour question, but definitely real-world:

Does anyone know of a good source for pictures (photos, drawings, paintings... anything) to illustrate places? Especially dark age, medieval and renaissance cityscapes?

After a session where the GM used photos of the area to give us a feel of the place (the game was CoC, set in England in the 40s, so material was readily available) I've been wanting to build up a portfolio of pictures to be able to do the same in other settings.

I could of course Google away, but there's so much chaff -especially since I need pictures without obvious anachronisms like a million tourists.

So, if anyone got any ideas I'd be happy to hear them.

[fusilier]

Not strictly a weapons/armour question, but definitely real-world:

Does anyone know of a good source for pictures (photos, drawings, paintings... anything) to illustrate places? Especially dark age, medieval and renaissance cityscapes?

After a session where the GM used photos of the area to give us a feel of the place (the game was CoC, set in England in the 40s, so material was readily available) I've been wanting to build up a portfolio of pictures to be able to do the same in other settings.

I could of course Google away, but there's so much chaff -especially since I need pictures without obvious anachronisms like a million tourists.

So, if anyone got any ideas I'd be happy to hear them.

I don't think this exactly what you are looking for, but they do have some cityscapes from the Renaissance:

http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/

[Conners]

So "speed of projectile" against itself is pretty much built into the universe for us.

Was hoping that was the case. Can that principle be used to protect a spaceship from space-dust at light-speed travel?

[The Boz]

Most likely no. Even if you could safeguard the ship from the penetrating impact, you'd still have a large heat buildup on your hands.

[Conners]

With body armour, could it become that you need to use slower, bigger weapons like a pole-axe?

[Yukitsu]

With body armour, could it become that you need to use slower, bigger weapons like a pole-axe?

Not realistically. The amount of energy per unit of area being deformed is what honestly matters, not the velocity compared to the mass of the impact.

A slower, larger weapon could penetrate more armour, so long as the amount of energy it can convert into work over the same target area is higher, but all things otherwise equal, faster always = better.

[Conners]

Hmm... what is a plausible way to deal with a space-dust when travelling at high speeds, speculatively speaking?

[The Boz]

Ablative multilayered shielding, if we're talking very long trips. That way the little strikes can be easily deflected, the larger ones are absorbed, and a fair amount of the "armor" ablates, taking with it excess heat. A key element with this is shape and weight balance. You only ever need forward facing armor, nothing can really come at you from behind, and smart design should reduce the chances of side impact to 0.
Also, applied phlebotinum force fields.

[Telok]

There is one reasonable "force field" model using current technology, for a certain value of "reasonable" and enough cash to fund the engineering.

If you can give matter an electrical charge then you can shove it aside with a sufficiently powerful magnetic field. The Earth's natural magnetic field does this with charged particles coming off the sun. The best application would be to protect interstellar spacecraft from dust and random atoms at the speeds required to reach another star.

The power output, of course rises, dramatically as the speed, mass, and flow rate increase. And this is assuming that you have at least ten thousand kilometres of empty space to play with.

[Yukitsu]

There is one reasonable "force field" model using current technology, for a certain value of "reasonable" and enough cash to fund the engineering.

If you can give matter an electrical charge then you can shove it aside with a sufficiently powerful magnetic field. The Earth's natural magnetic field does this with charged particles coming off the sun. The best application would be to protect interstellar spacecraft from dust and random atoms at the speeds required to reach another star.

The power output, of course rises, dramatically as the speed, mass, and flow rate increase. And this is assuming that you have at least ten thousand kilometres of empty space to play with.

IIRC, that requires that the dust or atoms be displaced a distance away from the ship fast enough that any dust headed dead center will have time to bypass the front facing surface of the ship. That means the force field has to displace the dust sideways faster than light, or has to project the field out several hundred times further than the width of the ship. Either way, you're going to wind up with some fairly massive power requirements.

[fusilier]

. . . Either way, you're going to wind up with some fairly massive power requirements.

If you're travelling at "light-speed travel" you can probably meet those power requirements! ;-)

[GraaEminense]

I don't think this exactly what you are looking for, but they do have some cityscapes from the Renaissance:

http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/

Not quite what I was looking for, but quite a useful resource.

Bookmarked, and thanks!

[Conners]

Hmmm... how much power would it require to travel at light-speed? Are there are loop-holes which seem plausible?

[Xuc Xac]

Hmmm... how much power would it require to travel at light-speed? Are there are loop-holes which seem plausible?

All of it.

[Autolykos]

All of it.

Even that won't be enough (unless, of course, you don't have a rest mass).

Depending on whom you ask, "wormholes" are the only plausible way to cut interstellar travel times. Not by going faster, but by taking a shortcut. The problem is that there is no known way to shape space-time in a controlled way at these scales.

[Conners]

I see you point o.o".

All right, let's change the question: What are the most plausible speculative ideas for space travel which come to mind?

[Tarinaky]

I see you point o.o".

All right, let's change the question: What are the most plausible speculative ideas for space travel which come to mind?

The most plausible speculative idea is sublight travel using sufficient quantities of handwavium to keep the crew alive over the centuries it'd take to get anywhere interesting (suspended animation, advanced cloning). This requires only the assumption that it's probably easier to change the rules of human biology than it is to change the rules of physics ('design' a better human as it were).

Depending on your philosophy - if you can reduce a single person into nothing more than a stream of analogue data (DNA, personality... et al) beaming that information with a laser would be a very energy efficient way of travelling long distances.

A less philosophically challenging version of this is to send smart machines to explore the stars - sufficiently advanced machines that can suspend their function in the same way a laptop does. During the long journey we can perfect the software and send out firmware updates... and they can return information or even resources.