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Arcana attacking

"Hell's Gate" and "Hell Hath No Fury", by David, Linda Evans, and Joelle Presby, take the clash of science and magic to a whole new dimension...join us in a friendly discussion of this engrossing series!
Re: Arcana attacking
Post by Howard T. Map-addict   » Thu May 21, 2015 4:49 pm

Howard T. Map-addict
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Six to nine months?
50,000 soldiers per 1000 line-of-supply miles?
(Which doesn't count troops at the front.)

What will Arcana do during those months?
Maybe bring up a Big Army of their own? A-dragonback?
Arcana has several times Sharona's population,
so could support that many times bigger an army?

But support them tens of thousands of miles from home?

HTM

brnicholas wrote:But how long do you think it will be before the Sharonans can cover all those hundreds of miles of railroad with a company? If the Arcanans can't attack a dug in Sharonan company then all the Sharonans have to do to protect the railroad is dominate it by fire. At a company being 250 men, if we figure a company can cover 5 miles with its artillery, it only takes 50,000 men to put every inch of 1000 miles of track under the guns of two companies.

Sharona has a population of 10 billion and appears to me to have the per capita industrial capacity of France shortly before World War I. They can support that many troops.

I think they will have enough troops up to let them move forward as fast as they can build railroads within six to nine months.

Nicholas
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Re: Arcana attacking
Post by SCC   » Thu May 21, 2015 11:34 pm

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Actually Howard it probably CAN'T put as big a percentage of it's population under arms. From what we've seen pretty much the entire Arcanian industrial plant, military and every else runs on mage charged accumulators, and the supply of them, and thus mages is the limit on everything they can do. You want to harvest crops using a 'mechanical' harvester? You'll need a charged accumulator to run the harvester.

Note that this is the real threat to Mylthan dominance, people learning they don't need to lean on mages for life to happen
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Re: Arcana attacking
Post by tonyz   » Fri May 22, 2015 12:12 am

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Well, you could build more rail lines along the route, but there are going to be annoying chokepoints (e.g., bridges). The question is: how much time and effort will it take, and what's the proper balance between building up the line capacity and building up the forces near the front?

It's easy to make mistakes here, by the way -- and I don't know how accustomed the TPPA is to operating under time pressure where it has to make critical decisions now and then live with the consequences, rather than having the time to study, anticipate, and plan for it. The US army had some interesting experiences along this line in WW II late in 1944 -- try reading the two volumes in the official history on Logistical Support of the Armies.
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Re: Arcana attacking
Post by SCC   » Fri May 22, 2015 1:37 am

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This isn't actually a problem, the second set of tracks will be supplied by themselves, so it won't eat up any mainline capacity unless you want them down in a real hurry and build it from both ends, and even then it won't use up very much capacity, the problem more likely to do with how laying a second pair of tracks will muck up the ability to ship ship parts with them causing disruptions, and the water gap bottle necks, but I feel that getting extra shipping on the water gaps will be the quicker problem to fix
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Re: Arcana attacking
Post by brnicholas   » Sat May 23, 2015 10:00 am

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Yes, six to nine months, from the end of HHNF. Given they are already moving 3,000 a week and their buildup in transport capacity has barely begun I think that is reasonable. Depending on Arcanan political and command arrangements they might well be a lot slower then that, but we have no information on that at all.

I started this thread because of my conviction that Sharona's firepower advantage is at least as significant, probably more, then Arcana's speed advantage and I don't think it is getting enough attention.

Nicholas

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:Six to nine months?
50,000 soldiers per 1000 line-of-supply miles?
(Which doesn't count troops at the front.)

What will Arcana do during those months?
Maybe bring up a Big Army of their own? A-dragonback?
Arcana has several times Sharona's population,
so could support that many times bigger an army?

But support them tens of thousands of miles from home?

HTM

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Re: Arcana attacking
Post by Bewildered   » Mon May 25, 2015 11:40 am

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That firepower advantage may well prove illusory though. Should Arcana replicate technological weapons then integrate spellware - a hybridisation not available to Sharonian gifts, then it's entirely conceivable that transport dragons will be able to drop fuel air bomb equivalents and other incredibly unpleasant devices at their leisure. Note, that's just non combat transports. What might mages do - create nuke cannons that fire through portals? Hasn't it already been hinted though that Arcanan dragons will lay waste to parts of Sharona, or am I confusing things?

brnicholas wrote:Yes, six to nine months, from the end of HHNF. Given they are already moving 3,000 a week and their buildup in transport capacity has barely begun I think that is reasonable. Depending on Arcanan political and command arrangements they might well be a lot slower then that, but we have no information on that at all.

I started this thread because of my conviction that Sharona's firepower advantage is at least as significant, probably more, then Arcana's speed advantage and I don't think it is getting enough attention.

Nicholas

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:Six to nine months?
50,000 soldiers per 1000 line-of-supply miles?
(Which doesn't count troops at the front.)

What will Arcana do during those months?
Maybe bring up a Big Army of their own? A-dragonback?
Arcana has several times Sharona's population,
so could support that many times bigger an army?

But support them tens of thousands of miles from home?

HTM

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Re: Arcana attacking
Post by Mil-tech bard   » Wed May 27, 2015 11:28 am

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As for this --

Bewildered wrote:That firepower advantage may well prove illusory though. Should Arcana replicate technological weapons then integrate spellware - a hybridisation not available to Sharonian gifts, then it's entirely conceivable that transport dragons will be able to drop fuel air bomb equivalents and other incredibly unpleasant devices at their leisure. Note, that's just non combat transports. What might mages do - create nuke cannons that fire through portals? Hasn't it already been hinted though that Arcanan dragons will lay waste to parts of Sharona, or am I confusing things?


I disagree.

Arcanians view all 'artillery"-- spell accumulator powered powered weapons like Infantry and field "dragons" -- as direct fire energy weapons in the Arcanian military.

Arcanian's can quite literally suppress, with dragons both living Battle Dragon and spell accumulator powered siege weapon, any spell accumulator dragon, crossbow and sword manned wall to get demo-spellware to open a breach.

Trebuchet type, ballistic trajectory, kinetic energy siege weapons are far to vulnerable too spell accumulator weapons, let alone Battle Dragons, that even the concept of a Trebuchet has to be 500 years in the Arcanians past.

Frame of reference problems in militaries are only solved through horrible defeats that kill most of the people holding the "wrong thought" frame of reference.
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