tonyz wrote:JOETHEMAN wrote:The biggest threat from dragons is that of bombers,
Take a few transport dragons load them with those magical demo charges or some magical naplam and they can do some serious damage.
especialy since the Shornians do not have proximity fuses for their retasked guns.
The Arcanians don't have guided munitions ether. It seems like they have to do most stuff directly with a mage being hands-on, so while they have the ability to move stuff by magic, do they have the ability to steer projectiles into the target? Will they think of it?
I agree that if the Arcanians can develop self guided bombs that they can drop from high altitude and which home in on their target and set off something like their demolition spell, rather then a fireball, when they hit the ground the Sharonans will find that very very hard to deal with.
There is a more fundamental question about that scenario then just guided munitions. That question is can the Arcanians build bombs at all?!?
We tend to assume they can for two reasons but neither is actually convincing. The first is that we find it easy using our technology but their technology is not our technology. The second is that the personal crystal / personal computer and spellware / software comparisons imply that spells can be used to trigger spells but we don't know that their PCs nest spells the way computers nest programs.
If they can build bombs we need to ask why don't the Andaren Scouts issue their men with hand grenades? They were caring a lot of crystals with them, they used them to cremate the dead, to float stretchers, and later Jasek used one to tie up Vos Hoven. Yet they didn't have the ability to use them as hand grenades. Why not??? Given the weakness of infantry dragons it would be helpful in many situations. It is remotely possible that they did use them as such and we didn't see them at Fallen Timbers but it strikes me as very unlikely.
I can think of a number of possibilities including the crystals being too valuable to throw and that scouting in a virgin universe they had sacrificed them so they could carry spells more likely to be useful. Still I think the most probable explanation is that for some reason they can't set up the delayed activation required for a hand grenade to be useful. If it is impossible for them to delay spells that way that will rule out bombs too.
This is a possibility not a conviction but it seems important to me.
Nicholas