Relative size of combatants

First, this --

Astelon wrote:I doubt that the tunnel idea is workable. The sharonians would have to dig down more than three thousand feet as well as out through the portal, remaining underground the entire way. They won't be able to start the digging at the portal itself, so how many miles of tunnel are we talking about here? That is a rather large undertaking.

...is utterly confused.

The reason there is a 3000 foot knife sharp cliff is that the portal cut it, AKA any tunnel into the "knife edge" of the cliff is on the other side of the portal. QED

Any part of the cliff on the Sharonan side of the portal is the debris at the bottom of the cliff formation from a combination of the structural weakness related collapse from the top of the cliff plus post portal formation extended hurricane (+++) winds.

Most of the Sharonan rail road ramp into the cut is from material brought down from the "waterfall of air" weathering the weakest rock of the portal, depositing it at the base of the cliff.

Astelon wrote:If mortars can reach the bottom of the cliff sufficiently, then you don't even need any makeshift bombs. That also means properly aimed and timed attacks will be easier. I still suspect that any large arcanan force at the base of the cliff is a very bad idea. They would be much better off with picket forces at the Cut and its approaches, and rapid response forces based at a camp further away (outside of artillery range).

The most important part of the mountain cliff for the Sharonans is not on the back side of the mountain.

It is the -top of the front side-, AKA the side facing them.

All the Sharonans have to do is drive the Arcanians away from that lip to get their talent beach head at the cliff's base or inside the cut.

The dead zone favors the Sharonans here because of the lack of indirect fire Arcanian weapons and the low force density across the top of the cliff.

Once the Sharonan distance viewers and flicker talents are on the Arcanian side of the cut, with multiple "just over the portal" flicker tunnels. They can see all the Arcanian positions to call artillery on them, save for the dead zone at the back side.

Once the Sharonans drive the Arcanians out of direct energy weapon range of the top cliffs -- and they will know this for certain from their distance viewers and life-form sniffer talents -- they can lay cableways from the ground to the top of the cut and place heavy mortars on top of the cut to compress the dead zone on the back side.


[/quote]When a shrapnel loaded explosive device detonates the bursting charge gives velocity to the shrapnel itself. The Boston marathon bombing was essentially an improvised shrapnel bomb. Grenades are essentially small shrapnel explosives; pipe bombs and most improvised explosives devices work in the same way. [/quote]


The Boston Marathon bomber's IED didn't have a 1,300 to 2.000 feet per second initial velocity when it went off.

And orders of magnitude mean things with explosives.

A 240mm Howitzer shell from WW2 threw 1,050 0.93 oz fragments, at 253 meters per second, to a distance of 1,000 feet. The shell weighed ~383 lbs.

As the Big Bertha 42cm M-Gerät Railway Howitzer threw a 1,800 lb shell -- albeit with a less powerful explosive with a lower explosive fraction due to less advanced metallurgy -- I am going to call the Big Bertha as still -significantly better- in terms of total fragments in that distance/energy range.

A Big Bertha shell is after all five(+) times the mass and many times that in total interior volume.

Mil-tech bard wrote:The most important part of the mountain cliff for the Sharonans is not on the back side of the mountain.

It is the -top of the front side-, AKA the side facing them.

All the Sharonans have to do is drive the Arcanians away from that lip to get their talent beach head at the cliff's base or inside the cut.

The dead zone favors the Sharonans here because of the lack of indirect fire Arcanian weapons and the low force density across the top of the cliff.

Once the Sharonan distance viewers and flicker talents are on the Arcanian side of the cut, with multiple "just over the portal" flicker tunnels. They can see all the Arcanian positions to call artillery on them, save for the dead zone at the back side.

Once the Sharonans drive the Arcanians out of direct energy weapon range of the top cliffs -- and they will know this for certain from their distance viewers and life-form sniffer talents -- they can lay cableways from the ground to the top of the cut and place heavy mortars on top of the cut to compress the dead zone on the back side.

I'm confused. The Sharonan side is a steep mountains (and, on the side facing Fort Salby, a very deep railway cut)

The Arcanan side is flat plains, looking through a portal with thousands of feet of rock (moutain heart) visible. In one spot, from one side of the portal, there's a deep cut visible in that rock.

I agree that even if the Arcanana left anybody to defend the ridgeline (which would have to be on the Sharonana universe side of the portal) Sharonan forces should be able to clear them out. At that point they have control of at least the majority of the ridgeline.

But for distance viewers to work they have to at least stick their heads through the portal. At that point they've got a view several thousand feet straight down to the plain of the Arcanan controlled universe. But while they partially through the portal they're also totally exposed to any direct fire, from Arcanan weapons. And tunneling makes little sense. All the mountain in in the Sharonan-held universe. All you'd get from arduous tunneling is another (lower elevation) spot you could stick your head out on the Arcanan universe side.
Why bother when you can pick any section of ridgeline to do that from?

So the Sharonan observes don't seem to benefit from any dead zone. When they're on the Arcanan-held side (where their talents can come into play) they're exposed to direct fire weapons. When they're on the Sharonan-held side the magic Arcanan weapons can't shoot through the portal anyway.

But conversely if you've got Sharonans on the ridgeline they can (painfully) haul mortars and grenades up there and drop fire almost directly down the shear vertical cliff formed by the portal and hit people huddling in the rocks at the base of the portal-created cliff. At best you might get a gap between the max range a ridgeline mounted mortar can reach and the minimum range the deadzone will let heavy guns fire. But if they bring up howitzers then there shouldn't be any gap in coverage.

Mil-tech bard wrote:>>Where do you expect the Sharonans to get Big Bertha class railway guns? That they have them I don't doubt.

By Rail from Sharona.


>>That they are part of the artillery present at Fort Salby or coming up with the mechanized corps seems very unlikely.


Once the battle of Ft Salby was underway, deployment orders would have followed shortly for heavy railway guns/mortars without special requests.

The Termanthian Army General Staff can read elevation lines on maps, after all.

If you are talking about what Sharona can do eventually I have no argument. In fact we agree, Sharona can take the cliff six months from now when they have two infantry divisions and railroad guns at the front. Neither are available now which is where this discussion started.

Mil-tech bard wrote:>>How wide of a dead zone is a 3000 foot cliff going to create even for mortars?

Mortar/howitzer dead zones for hitting the top of the cliff don't exist.

I agree. My question was, is the dead zone at the base of the cliff wide enough that the Arcanans can stay for enough back from the cliff to avoid exposure to falling rocks (or explosives tossed off the top) without coming under fire from guns on the Sharonan side.

Mil-tech bard wrote:
And you are forgetting that distance viewers and flickers work through rock as well as air.

All the Sharonans have to do is get a foot hold on the other side of the portal. They can burrow into a cliff wall and use semaphore thru the cut visually to begin with.

Later they can cut a tunnel.

Hell, they can cut a series of tunnels anywhere along the entire portal face from both perspectives to get the distance viewer on the other side of the portal wall.

Then the distance viewer can do his thing.

All the Sharonans have to be is _just on the other side_, inside the side of the cut AKA in the part under the direct fire range of Sharonan automatic and artillery weapons.

In fact, The Sharonans would dig -a lot- of tunnels along the base of the cliff to just on the other side of the portal.

All a distance viewer or flicker has to be is just on the other side.

Then the Arcanian side flicker sends a distance viewer impression message to any of the tunnels cut in the base of the cliff -- remember you make lots of them just past the portal to the Arcanian side -- with physical messengers to take the message out from the cave to the nearest Sharonan side flicker.

The dead zone on the other side of the cut is irrelevant from the perspective of the Sharonan artillery directing talent beach head.

This sounds like something that will work for Arcanans, if they have spells that don't require line of sight. A scyring spell was mentioned in Hell's Gate chapter 49 for example. But I don't see how it would work for Sharona given that the mountain is on their side of the portal.

Nicholas

Mil-tech bard you appear to be saying that the arcanans are at the top of the cliff, and the sharonians are at the bottom. The opposite is the case. If you don't believe me then re-read the prologue to HHNF, which describes Darcel traveling from Hell's Gate, back to Sharona. His passenger car has to climb the grade, not descend it.

Your point about shrapnel shells and bombs exploding while sitting on the ground (or falling after being dropped off a cliff), versus having been fired are correct, they will be less deadly. However they will still throw shrapnel well enough to kill people and injure dragons. This was actually why I had the makeshift bomb idea, using a bigger bursting charge you could regain a lot of that lethality, while hitting what was a dead zone.

New question, how well can a mortar fire from the top of a cliff to the bottom, would there be a dead zone?

Astelon wrote:New question, how well can a mortar fire from the top of a cliff to the bottom, would there be a dead zone?

It's a bitch to haul the mortar and sufficient ammo up there, but once emplaced there shouldn't be much of a dead zone. I assume there'd still be some because the gunners would want a certain amount of deflection (from straight up) so they don't risk wind or something causing the round to land on their heads. But assuming you're on the ridge line the size of the dead zone it mostly a matter of how much risk the gunners are willing to take.

but what dead zone there is can probably be raked by machine gun fire; or maybe 1" auto-cannon fire. (You'd have to rig something so you can super-depress the muzzle, but that shouldn't be too hard. And the recoil on a machine gun is low enough you should be able to get away with firing more or less straight down)

JS sez --

I'm confused. The Sharonan side is a steep mountains (and, on the side facing Fort Salby, a very deep railway cut)

The Arcanan side is flat plains, looking through a portal with thousands of feet of rock (mountain heart) visible. In one spot, from one side of the portal, there's a deep cut visible in that rock.

I agree that even if the Arcanana left anybody to defend the ridgeline (which would have to be on the Sharonana universe side of the portal) Sharonan forces should be able to clear them out. At that point they have control of at least the majority of the ridgeline.
But for distance viewers to work they have to at least stick their heads through the portal. At that point they've got a view several thousand feet straight down to the plain of the Arcanan controlled universe. But while they partially through the portal they're also totally exposed to any direct fire, from Arcanan weapons. And tunneling makes little sense. All the mountain in in the Sharonan-held universe. All you'd get from arduous tunneling is another (lower elevation) spot you could stick your head out on the Arcanan universe side.

Why bother when you can pick any section of ridgeline to do that from?

Yes, you are confused.

Go back and read this snippet passage and pay particularly close attention to the PAAF picketing a portal line.

----

“I’ll grant you they may have all sorts of ‘magic powers,’ Merkan,” chan Geraith said. “And given the way they’ve managed to shut down the Voice network as they advanced, they must’ve gotten at least some knowledge of our Talents. But we’re the Third Dragoons. If there’s anyone this side of Arpathia who’s as good as we are at scouting an enemy position without being spotted, I’ve never met them. We send a battalion or so down the chain on horseback with enough Voices to maintain constant communication with us. We’ll need to get them off as quickly as we can, because it’ll take them so much longer to cross the unimproved universes, but there’s not a portal in the chain that isn’t at least twenty-five miles across. Ask the PAAF how easy it is to ‘picket’ a portal that size even with a fort right in the middle of it! We send along a full recon section, complete with a Mapper, a half-dozen Plotters to keep an eye on the sky for dragons, and a good Distance Viewer or two to make it harder than hell for the Arcanans to see them coming even if they’re mounting standing patrols of dragons around the portals. And we make sure they’ve got an extra weapons company with mortars and heavy machine guns. They’ll have a hell of a lot better chance of spotting a picket on one of those portals than the picket will of spotting them when no one on the other side’s going to believe there could possibly be Ternathian dragoons anywhere near them.”

“And if they do spot a picket, Sir?” chan Isail asked quietly.

“That’s why we’ll be sending the mortars and the machine guns, Merkan, because if there are any pickets out there, it’ll be our turn to shut down their warning network the same way they shut down the Voice network.” No one could possibly have mistaken Arlos chan Geraith’s expression for a smile this time.

“Exactly the way they shut down our Voices,” he said very, very softly.

---

The Sharonans can out-scout any Arcanian picket with their talents.

And note, while talents cannot project through a portal. Light most certainly can.

This means Distance viewing talents can get a “press their face on the glass” perspective at the portal to look down on the cut by the portal ridge line overlooking Ft. Salby.

This is a stealth UAV for Sharonan Artillery that is silent, invisible, insubstantial, and has hours of endurance, and for which the Arcanians have no evidence of its existence.

UAV's with trained Sharonan observers bent upon detecting the trails that Arcanian pickets take too and from the best observation spots on these cliffs ridges, over and over, to watch the Sharonans, for weeks on end.

Trails who these Arcanian pickets would not think of covering back from the edge of the cliffs because the Sharonans lack dragons or recon gryphons to see them.

NB: No Arcanian ridgeline picket survives on that ridgeline for much longer than it takes the Sharonans to fire artillery and have it land.

This means that Sharonans can systematically punch out Arcanian pickets at night fall and infiltrate the miles long portal, for recce, courier tunneling and for assaults.

As for how, go read the following --

Battle for Monte la Difensa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_fo ... la_Difensa

The US-Canadian 1st Special Service Force, AKA Devil's Brigade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Brigade
http://www.historynet.com/us-canadian-1 ... war-ii.htm

Any Sharonan Portal assault would be less to take the whole portal than to provide a distance viewer and flicker talent manned forward observation post with multiple flicker to covered physical courier routes to a flicker on the Sharonan aspect/other side to dominate the Arcanian portal aspect by talent directed indirect artillery fire.

When the Sharonans fire artillery parachute star shells through the portal at night for their “press their face on the glass” perspective distance viewers to direct interdictory fire on the Arcanian trails up to the cliffs, their "Hummer handler" roosts and "out of sight" dragon landing zones, it will be a huge psychological shock, as well as a military surprise, for the Arcanians.

And the Sharonans can do this star shell trick already, without the talent forward observation posts.

Sharonan weapons technology demonstrated in text to date is in advance of British 1879 weapons technology.

Parachute Star Shells were fired from British 6.3 inch and 8-inch howitzers as well as 7-pounder guns in 1879, according to the UK Army Weapons manual I found in Google books.

Mil-tech bard wrote:Yes, you are confused.

Go back and read this snippet passage and pay particularly close attention to the PAAF picketing a portal line.

----

“I’ll grant you they may have all sorts of ‘magic powers,’ Merkan,” chan Geraith said. “And given the way they’ve managed to shut down the Voice network as they advanced, they must’ve gotten at least some knowledge of our Talents. But we’re the Third Dragoons. If there’s anyone this side of Arpathia who’s as good as we are at scouting an enemy position without being spotted, I’ve never met them. We send a battalion or so down the chain on horseback with enough Voices to maintain constant communication with us. We’ll need to get them off as quickly as we can, because it’ll take them so much longer to cross the unimproved universes, but there’s not a portal in the chain that isn’t at least twenty-five miles across. Ask the PAAF how easy it is to ‘picket’ a portal that size even with a fort right in the middle of it! We send along a full recon section, complete with a Mapper, a half-dozen Plotters to keep an eye on the sky for dragons, and a good Distance Viewer or two to make it harder than hell for the Arcanans to see them coming even if they’re mounting standing patrols of dragons around the portals. And we make sure they’ve got an extra weapons company with mortars and heavy machine guns. They’ll have a hell of a lot better chance of spotting a picket on one of those portals than the picket will of spotting them when no one on the other side’s going to believe there could possibly be Ternathian dragoons anywhere near them.”

“And if they do spot a picket, Sir?” chan Isail asked quietly.

“That’s why we’ll be sending the mortars and the machine guns, Merkan, because if there are any pickets out there, it’ll be our turn to shut down their warning network the same way they shut down the Voice network.” No one could possibly have mistaken Arlos chan Geraith’s expression for a smile this time.

“Exactly the way they shut down our Voices,” he said very, very softly.

---

The Sharonans can out-scout any Arcanian picket with their talents.

And note, while talents cannot project through a portal. Light most certainly can.

This means Distance viewing talents can get a “press their face on the glass” perspective at the portal to look down on the cut by the portal ridge line overlooking Ft. Salby.

This is a stealth UAV for Sharonan Artillery that is silent, invisible, insubstantial, and has hours of endurance, and for which the Arcanians have no evidence of its existence.

UAV's with trained Sharonan observers bent upon detecting the trails that Arcanian pickets take too and from the best observation spots on these cliffs ridges, over and over, to watch the Sharonans, for weeks on end.

Trails who these Arcanian pickets would not think of covering back from the edge of the cliffs because the Sharonans lack dragons or recon gryphons to see them.

NB: No Arcanian ridgeline picket survives on that ridgeline for much longer than it takes the Sharonans to fire artillery and have it land.

This means that Sharonans can systematically punch out Arcanian pickets at night fall and infiltrate the miles long portal, for recce, courier tunneling and for assaults.

As for how, go read the following --

Battle for Monte la Difensa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_fo ... la_Difensa

The US-Canadian 1st Special Service Force, AKA Devil's Brigade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Brigade
http://www.historynet.com/us-canadian-1 ... war-ii.htm

Any Sharonan Portal assault would be less to take the whole portal than to provide a distance viewer and flicker talent manned forward observation post with multiple flicker to covered physical courier routes to a flicker on the Sharonan aspect/other side to dominate the Arcanian portal aspect by talent directed indirect artillery fire.

When the Sharonans fire artillery parachute star shells through the portal at night for their “press their face on the glass” perspective distance viewers to direct interdictory fire on the Arcanian trails up to the cliffs, their "Hummer handler" roosts and "out of sight" dragon landing zones, it will be a huge psychological shock, as well as a military surprise, for the Arcanians.

And the Sharonans can do this star shell trick already, without the talent forward observation posts.

Sharonan weapons technology demonstrated in text to date is in advance of British 1879 weapons technology.

Parachute Star Shells were fired from British 6.3 inch and 8-inch howitzers as well as 7-pounder guns in 1879, according to the UK Army Weapons manual I found in Google books.

My confusion wasn't about whether the Sharonans could sieze the ridgeline (which is on the Sharonan-held side of the portal) -- I said they could.

My confusion what what advantage you thought tunneling gave them, given that all the mountain is also on the Sharonan side and they'd have to tunnel down several thousand feet (taking months) to even reach the Aracanan-held side's ground level. But if you don't reach ground level then sticking your head through the portal from a tunnel doesn't seem any more advantagious than sticking your head through from the ridgeline. One's lower altitude, but both are sticking out of a perfectly flat plane (the portal face) and both are equally vulnerable to direct weapons fire (while your head is stuck through)

But at least on the ridgeline you've got miles of lateral space you can use to look and relocate. With a tunnel you've got a visible opening in the rock that the Arcanans can leave a field dragon pointed directly at until someone sticks their head out. It turns into Whack-a-Mole.

But if you don't stick at least your head through the Talents can't be used to observe the Arcanan-held side (Talents don't work through portals any more than Magic weapons do). But being in a tunnel looking visually though the portal isn't any safer than being on the ridgeline looking through (though admittedly you're closer).
So why waste months in a standoff to build hard rock tunnels that seem to be of minimal use?

>Face Palm<

If the cliff is on the _Sharonan side_ of the portal.

It's top is unengagable by Arcanian direct fire weapons.

Magic does not work through a portal.

Projectile weapons do.

The cliff dead zone people are speaking of is more of an abattoir for gravity delivered Sharonan high explosives or the rock slide those high explosives can deliver to positions underneath the tops of the cliffs.

Worse, predictive distance viewer talents can get close ups of Arcanians at the bottom of the cliffs on the Sharonan side for diagonal howitzer & mortar shoots across the face of the portal with properly timed shrapnel bursts.

NB: Look up "abattoir" again.

The 4.5 (?) inch Sharonan mortars are more than sufficient to clear the base of the cliffs on the Sharonan side of the portal of any infantry or field dragon equipped Arcanian infantry force trying to shoot at Sharonan artillery observers on top of the cliffs.

And any Arcanian infantry on the cliffs on the Sharonan side are dead meat for talent directed indirect artillery fire.

Once the Sharonans have secured the cliff tops and cleared the bottom of the cliffs of field and infantry dragons. They can repel down the cliffs, immune to Sharonan dragon fire from the other side of the portal.

Mil-tech bard wrote:
The Sharonans can out-scout any Arcanian picket with their talents.

That is an assumption we ought to question. We know nothing about what Arcane technology Arcana might use to picket a portal so we really have no basis for comparison. One point from chan Geraith proposal that I think is probably false is the idea that plotters can detect dragons before the dragons detect a Sharonan column. Hell's Gate chapter 17 tells us "it was the rare Plotter who could reach beyond four or five miles." Even if chan Geraith has one with a 10 mile range a recon crystal mounted on a dragon or gryphon will detect the column well before that and image analysis spellware ought to pick mounted men out.

Mil-tech bard wrote:And note, while talents cannot project through a portal. Light most certainly can.

This means Distance viewing talents can get a “press their face on the glass” perspective at the portal to look down on the cut by the portal ridge line overlooking Ft. Salby.

That Distance viewers can see through a portal, even in a "press their face on the glass" manner is an assumption for which we have no evidence. I think it more likely, although their is no more evidence for this then for your assumption, that they work the same way as plotters and mappers and thus portals are blank walls to their talent.

Mil-tech bard wrote:This is a stealth UAV for Sharonan Artillery that is silent, invisible, insubstantial, and has hours of endurance, and for which the Arcanians have no evidence of its existence.

UAV's with trained Sharonan observers bent upon detecting the trails that Arcanian pickets take too and from the best observation spots on these cliffs ridges, over and over, to watch the Sharonans, for weeks on end.

Trails who these Arcanian pickets would not think of covering back from the edge of the cliffs because the Sharonans lack dragons or recon gryphons to see them.

I don't see why you would assume that the Arcanans don't know about distance views. 500 Neshok is an incompetent and a psychopath but it seems very likely he managed to get the strengths and weakness of the major Sharonan talents out of his prisoners. Even if he missed the recon applications of distance views surely the whole AEF didn't.

Mil-tech bard wrote:NB: No Arcanian ridgeline picket survives on that ridgeline for much longer than it takes the Sharonans to fire artillery and have it land.

This means that Sharonans can systematically punch out Arcanian pickets at night fall and infiltrate the miles long portal, for recce, courier tunneling and for assaults.

It seems to me that the evidence points to the Sharonans not having the accuracy to do this. I see two pieces of canon indicating that they don't. First, the fact that Five Hundred Urlan survived an artillery volley aimed at his command standard. Second that chan Forcel was protected by being put in a bunker, which implies that in an artillery duel putting your distance viewer in a bunker is enough to keep the enemy from firing at him. From that it followers that it takes quite a while for Sharonan artillery to break a bunker even when they know exactly where it is.

Nicholas

Yes, the recon crystal might record them.

And then the beast carrying it must (eventually)
return to base, where a handler must take it and
download the contents, which must then be analyzed.

But the dragon's pilot can look through its eyes,
see whatever it sees, and then need only notice
what his beast sees, and decide what to do about it.

The Distance Viewer and Plotter have better
communications than that, standing next to them.

Still, there is plenty of room for W&P to tell the
story as the plot requires.

HTM

brnicholas wrote:{snip - htm}
Hell's Gate chapter 17 tells us "it was the rare Plotter who could reach beyond four or five miles." Even if chan Geraith has one with a 10 mile range a recon crystal mounted on a dragon or gryphon will detect the column well before that and image analysis spellware ought to pick mounted men out.

Nicholas