War time logistics, industry and culture

The Sharonan aircraft thread has evolved into a logistics discussion. I suppose it might be best to spin that off into a thread of its own.

The observed Arcana transport systems appear to have a smaller capacity. Arcana also has a far longer distance to cover between the home universe and the front. Arcanan industrial systems require Gifted personnel to operate. The same applies to constructing their transportation systems. We have seen automated systems or systems that can be used by the non-Gifted. I suspect such systems become more difficult to make as the grow in complexity. An automated manufacturing plant making swords is much easier to make than one making personal crystals. It follows then that fewer magisters are capable of making and/or maintaining a PC plant. The same applies to the transport rails.

All this suggests to me that Arcana is much more exposed to the guns or butter dilemma than Sharona is. Arcana has to give up something or some potential in the civilian economy to expand the military production. All their skilled magisters and magistrons are being used for something. Switching their priorities means those prior tasks are left unattended. Their might be lesser magisters and magistrons available, but those are more likely incapable of creating complex automated systems. These people might add to "manual" production but they are likely doing that now and the same costs of switching their priorities apply.

Sharona's production depends on technology. Understanding technology can be taught to anyone with sufficient intelligence. No Gift or talent is required. Sharona is just getting smaller and more mobile engines. That means the less manual labor will be required for more and more task in their economy in the near future. Steam engines already offer huge labor savings in manufacturing. When the IC engines begin taking the laborers off the farms, forests, mines and oceans in greater numbers, those people will be free to expand industrial and transport capacity without a huge cost to the current needs.

Both sides are capable of expanding their industrial capacity and both sides face constraints. However, technology increases the output of a greater number Sharonans than Magic does for Arcanans. There are simply fewer Arcanas per capita that can take full advantage of magic than there are Sharonans to take full advantage of technology. Combine that with the labor savings Sharona is poised to realize and the intermediate future is set to be dominated by the Sharonans.

This will likely change once the longer production cycle Arcanan systems, like dragons, are expanded and adapted to address Sharonan strengths. Until then Arcana faces a war that will shake their world much more than that war will shake Sharona.

To paraphrase from Pages 215 - 216 of:

The Sinews of War: Army Logistics, 1775-1953.
by James A. Huston

available at:

http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/ ... b_30-4.pdf



General Sherman, ACW.

o There is a 100 mile limit to horse drawn wagon teams as it has zero cargo capability from needing to carry forage and water for the horse team.


Count of Paris on US Army Civil War supply:

o Six mule US Army wagon team carried 2,000 lbs on a one-day march = enough for 500 men every other day or 250 men per day

o 2-days march will require four wagons for the same support 500-man requirement.

o 1000 men = eight wagons

o 100,000 men = 800 wagons

o Add 16,000 cavalry and artillery horses to that 100,000 men requires 200 more mule-team wagons at one-days march distance and 800 for 2-days march.

o These 1600 wagons are drawn by 9600 mules that need 25lbs a day each day for the three days out of four they are out of the supply depot. That takes a further 360 mule-teams drawn by 2400 further mules.

o To feed those teams requires another 92 mule team wagons plus another 20 mule-teams needed for "general purposes."

o To sum up, it takes 2,000 wagons drawn by 12,000 mules to support an army of 100,000 men and 16,000 horses two days march from a railhead.

o Add another day's march and the totals are now 3,760 wagons drawn by 22,000 animals.

PeterZ wrote:The Sharonan aircraft thread has evolved into a logistics discussion. I suppose it might be best to spin that off into a thread of its own.

The observed Arcana transport systems appear to have a smaller capacity. Arcana also has a far longer distance to cover between the home universe and the front. Arcanan industrial systems require Gifted personnel to operate. The same applies to constructing their transportation systems. We have seen automated systems or systems that can be used by the non-Gifted. I suspect such systems become more difficult to make as the grow in complexity. An automated manufacturing plant making swords is much easier to make than one making personal crystals. It follows then that fewer magisters are capable of making and/or maintaining a PC plant. The same applies to the transport rails.

All this suggests to me that Arcana is much more exposed to the guns or butter dilemma than Sharona is. Arcana has to give up something or some potential in the civilian economy to expand the military production. All their skilled magisters and magistrons are being used for something. Switching their priorities means those prior tasks are left unattended. Their might be lesser magisters and magistrons available, but those are more likely incapable of creating complex automated systems. These people might add to "manual" production but they are likely doing that now and the same costs of switching their priorities apply.

Sharona's production depends on technology. Understanding technology can be taught to anyone with sufficient intelligence. No Gift or talent is required. Sharona is just getting smaller and more mobile engines. That means the less manual labor will be required for more and more task in their economy in the near future. Steam engines already offer huge labor savings in manufacturing. When the IC engines begin taking the laborers off the farms, forests, mines and oceans in greater numbers, those people will be free to expand industrial and transport capacity without a huge cost to the current needs.

Both sides are capable of expanding their industrial capacity and both sides face constraints. However, technology increases the output of a greater number Sharonans than Magic does for Arcanans. There are simply fewer Arcanas per capita that can take full advantage of magic than there are Sharonans to take full advantage of technology. Combine that with the labor savings Sharona is poised to realize and the intermediate future is set to be dominated by the Sharonans.

This will likely change once the longer production cycle Arcanan systems, like dragons, are expanded and adapted to address Sharonan strengths. Until then Arcana faces a war that will shake their world much more than that war will shake Sharona.

This is also from page 207 of "The Sinews of War: Army Logistics, 1775-1953." by James A. Huston



Support of Sherman's Atlanta Campaign

Probably the greatest achievement in supplying armies in the field by railroad during the war was the support of Shennan's Atlanta campaign in 1864. Recognizing fully his complete dependence on rail transportation, Shennan issued an order that trains on his supply lines would be used only for moving military personnel and supplies. When violent protests by sutlers, merchants, newspaper men, and Tennessee loyalists led President Lincoln to suggest that the order be modified, Sherman stood firm. From Nashville southward trains operated in convoys of four ten-car trains running at speeds of about ten miles an hour. Four such convoys each day provided a capacity of 1,600 tons, enough to allow for frequent accidents
and still meet the army's requirements. General Sherman himself explained :

That single stem of railroad, four hundred
and seventy-three miles long, supplied an
army of one hundred thousand men and
thirty-five thousand animals for the period of
one hundred and ninety-six days, viz., from
May 1 to November 12, 1864. To have delivered
regularly that amount of food and forage
by ordinary wagons would have required
thirty-six thousand eight hundred wagons of
six mules each, allowing each wagon to have
hauled two tons twenty miles each day, a
simple impossibility in roads such as then existed
in that region of country. Therefore, I
reiterate that the Atlanta campaign was an
impossibility without these railroads.1

The following is from page 26 of the 1955 book “CAVES of BIAK – An American Officer’s Experiences in the Southwest Pacific” by Harold Reigelman. Col Reigelman was a reserve US Army Colonel in the Chemical Warfare Service who was a Corps Level staff officer in the US Army I Corps during World War 2. In ths passage he speaks of the human porter logistics used at Buna by MacArthur's Australian and American troops:

Natives were supplied in work groups by headmen. They were paid with rations, plus two twists of tobacco and ten shillings monthly. For this they cleared the jungle, built shacks; corduroyed, graded and ditched the roads; and hand-carried over trails passable only afoot. A three-day carry-load was sixty pounds, of which forty was food for the carrier and twenty, “pay-load.” To supply 3,000 troops six days’ journey from base required forty-one hundred carriers. Of each 7,000 pounds started from base only 350 pounds would reach the troops. The balance was food for the carriers. The pay-load increased as the length of the journey decreased.

That works out to the following --

o Only a 33% useful payload fraction for a 3-days march and,

o Only a 5% useful payload fraction of every pound or kilogram of supply sent forward with porters after a six days march to front-line allied troops.

That three or six days march is only from the start line to where the troops are. For the Porters, those are six-day and 12-day round trips respectively. Round trips where they often took back wounded as well as took forward food.

Seems like war in start would have most fireworks in its start when both sides have access to supernatural abilities. Depending on how fast universe's laws of physics extra rules change from neutral to one side and other way once population of one side is removed (and on hellgate + few neighbors its only just found worlds with small exploration force) sharona will have trouble with comunication since they're weapons give them much better chance for war to be lead war on arcanas homeworld (but with no ideas mentioned on forum like big artilery targeted by precog or calirath), i bet that calirat's vision of sharna's capital burning is chava starting civil war) an so earlier start getting in problems. Arcana had anyway met huge rock in it path an planed to stop. If arcana is using WMD weapons its to likely shoot large sharona force that just got trought portal on they're world close to homeworld.

With mention of WMD how would arcana do it? Easiest is to apply knowledge used to make dragons, unicorns and gryphons to make plague and for literal nuke easiest is to create literary really big fireball like dragons that melt stone and sand into glassy but most magic from some magical field can draw probably dragons already at max instead of usual magicians

(and mythalans seemed strongly against making stronger mages since such research could give it to non magicians, hey since arcana power everything with magic and are likelier to fight on own home world and having too much dead magicians to power even non-war infrastructure maybe research could be started after few years of war?),

its probably better question is possible to have rituals? Like few magicians draw power from field and one shape it in wonted effect, seems like knowledge mythala would keep secret to preserve own superiority but to easy a concept so others know it to but as impractical since its inefficient or there is no need for that much power?

and forum is yet active maybe make list of known supernatural abilities from sharona and arcana in logistics or better as own thread.

so on list for arcana could be added among abilities anti gravity or telekinesis like effect (levitation pods, second mentions effect powers ships), matter creation (dragon uses 1 of 3 attack, two shape magic in heat and electric energy, third makes gas, a matter, temporary or not?, depending on price/tiredness it have effect on economy, likely more expensive/tiring then healing or like it), healing is questionable how it works for sure (as previous ability creates matter/new skin cell on burn victim, or skill to influence cells like to genetic engineering to just make them grow along with accelerated time to throw ideas)... more if this grow

for sharona no mention if unless interest grow except to mention talents that calirats mind healers keep secret (this secret going from new talents unknown in sharona of high military value (ability of possession/mind control if it exist for example, thought arcana already have something of mind control) to ability to awaken talent in someone who had none before?).

and i first thought of maybe genes which give psionics in sharona translate to/express as ability to use magic in arcana and are inactive here (which given to happen, but will there be mention when this world come in multiverse be mention of projects that were supposed to deal with psionic and we meet sharona?, those abilities are to weak here to easily find or not existing?)

but there is question of how will peoples react when some arcanans are show to have Talents in sharona's worlds and sharona's having gifts in arcana worlds

like mention of thalmayrs calling sharona healers "torturers", but seeming to have latent talent so resisted unknowingly so came pain, there is also case when neshok "interrogated" folsar chan tergis to find a Voice and seemed to:

"This Neshok was radiating his emotions so powerfully that even a half-Deaf Voice—and chan Tergis was anything but half-Deaf—couldn't help picking them up, physical contact or no."

Did Neshok just felt strong emotions or he also have voice talent, weak or untrained?

Pessimistically with how thing are going, assault in arcana or sharona worlds will be:

1. develop things like weapons that work in any universe (like your and attacked for attack and defense)

2. find, capture and torture teachers in talents/gifts to use them in new world you are conquering for more firepower, defenses or other abilities like communications (voice, radio if we attacked) and data storage and analasis (among some thing that crystals do with its software like translation: store sound/text, apply translation function, play it)

"The line between disorder and order lies in logistics…"
- Sun Tzu

"There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war."
- Carl von Clausevitz

"Logistics ... as vital to military success as daily food is to daily work."
- Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Armaments and Arbitration, 1912

The biggest logistical hurdle is going to be the dragons. I dont know how long it takes to breed, raise and train a dragon, but it has to be multiple years. The amount of money and supplies to do that is going to be far higher than anything the sharonians are dealing with.

Given their reliance on them for resupply a heavy casualties in their dragon ranks will cripple the arcanans.