Relative size of combatants

PeterZ wrote:Nicholas,

Your are right that arcane technology would be made useable by the non-Gifted. We saw Gadrial set up her PC for Shaylar's use after all. We also know that there are limits to how the Gifted can accommodate their spells for the non-Gifted. Daggerstones come to mind.

The question as applied to the conflict is how many of the non-Gifted can truly leverage magic to both create and use weapons or weapons systems more effective than swords and crossbows? Using the observed forces as a baseline, it appears that magic cannot be leveraged nearly as effectively as Sharonan technology. That is not to say magic cannot be leveraged at all by the non-Gifted, only that technology will free more Sharonans from reliance on muscle power to produce and use weapons of war than magic will free Arcanans. That conclusion is unavoidable. The degree that this is true was why I began this thread.

brnicholas wrote:Regarding the continued use of crossbows by Arcana I think the reason is quite simple. They remain effective military weapons. That is so because Arcana does not have anything man portable that has a longer range then a crossbow. The only thing we know of that certainly has a longer range then a crossbow is a black or red battle dragon.

We can judge the range of infantry and artillery dragons from 100 Thalmayr's defenses at the Swamp portal. He put them inside crossbow range of the portal as is shown by the fact that his men could shoot at Arthag even though he was still on the other side of the portal. Given that infantry and artillery dragons are direct fire weapons and can't shoot through portals the logical distance for them from the portal is their maximum range which gives them the most time to do damage to charging troops, or cavalry, before they close. It is possible terrain or Thalmayr's stupidity led to a suboptimal deployment but there is no evidence for that.

As long as their is nothing better, and we have no evidence for a man portable Arcanan weapon with more range and hitting power, they will continue to be used.

Nicholas

brnicholas wrote:True.

The question though is going to be power. For all the weakness of the weapons we have seen the hover spell used for Dragon pods and slider cars, which Gadrial described as "inefficient" shocks me. It keeps 50-60 tons floating against the force of gravity for hours and hours! They may be cheating somehow rather then using raw power to do that but the power output is really impressive. In light of that power output I am very cautious about assuming limits.

Nicholas

brnicholas wrote:Mil-Tech Bard

Your list of weapons and operators reveals that you are leaning toward the presumption that if the text does not tell us that the non-gifted can use something then they can't. That is backwards. Unless the text explicitly says that a gift is required for something everyone can do it. This is clear from two aspects of the story.

First, this is clear from the details the authors have chosen to give us. Again and again they tell us that a Gift is required to use something. They never directly tell us that something can be used without a gift. We only know for sure something can be used without a gift when we see a known non-gifted using it and the only known non-gifted in the series are identified as Garthan who left Mythal. This is either a very very weird choice of details to provide or a clear sign that everything else can be used by a non-Gifted.

Second, the omnipresence of Arcane technology within Arcana's society makes it inconceivable to me that everyone can't use it. The most revealing quote is from Chapter 38 of Hell's Gate:

The Sharonian civilization isn't built around the laws of magic at all."

Skirvon was sitting bolt upright in his chair now, staring at him. So was mul Gurthak, but there was something besides simple astonishment in the two thousand's eyes.

"But—" the senior diplomat sputtered. "But how in the gods' names does anyone build a civilization without it?"

He glanced around mul Gurthak's office, an austere frontier room which nevertheless boasted more than a dozen magic-powered appliances, from his own PC to the lighting to the insect-repelling spell to the quietly turning blades of the ceiling fan, all in plain view, and doubtless many others in storage in the various cabinets.

"I'm sorry, Sir Jasak, but Uthik is right. It sounds . . . impossible. They'd live under appallingly crude conditions. People in a place like that would be little better than barbarians!"

We don't see Arcanans doing much besides fighting and giving and receiving reports but what we do see repeats this pattern. The boat's ramp hovers, as do the stretchers, field rites involve magic, when Jasek fights vos Hoven he restrains him with a crystal not a rope, standard combat helmets contain several spells, scouts carry recon crystals. We even see a couple of things, the stretchers and the binding spell which are turned on by the push of a button. In sum, either everyone is gifted, which directly contradicts the text, or everything where it doesn't tell us gifts are required can be used by non-gifted.

You are of course correct about Arcana's absolute dependence on the Gifted to provide power for their whole society including their army. I am not, however, convinced that they need a disproportionatly large percentage of gifted at the front to deploy their full combat power.

As regards the Sharona's lack of dependence on their talents, in the very short term maybe but I would not presume that just because we could do something at their tech level without talents they can. How common flickers are is unclear but at times they are all the way down to the squad level. For example when the Arcanan parley rode up after the battle of Fort Salby it was the "Flicker assigned to his squad" that the observers called to send the message. But Arthag's platoon didn't have a Flicker assigned to it in Hell's Gate and their weren't very many Flickers among the 400 men under chan Tesh's command when Arcana attacked so while they are common how common is unclear. Regardless given how frequently we have seen them used in combat I seriously doubt that the Sharonans could coordinate even a small battle without them. And I think it is certain that they couldn't supply an army over any distance without voices. They just don't have the experience with other forms of communication.

In sum, both sides are radically dependent on their special abilities for now. The Arcanans perhaps a bit more then the Sharonans but I doubt that is significant. There relative combat power is what will be decisive not dependence on gifts/talents.

Nicholas

HHNF wrote:The heavy horses’ larger size meant each of them could carry not one rider, but two, and two of Urlan’s hundred-and-twenty-strong companies were configured as standard heavy dragoons. Each horse bore a two-man saddle, with the rear rider armed not with a saber or lance but with a cut-down version of an infantry-dragon. It was much shorter ranged than the infantry weapon, but longer ranged than any arbalest and far more deadly.
Each horse in Commander of One Hundred Orkal Kiliron’s Charlie Company, on the other hand, carried only a standard saddle, instead of the two-man heavy dragoon version. In place of the normal second rider, a smaller version of the standard dragon cargo pod had been harnessed to each horse. Its comparatively diminutive size was small enough for an augmented horse to handle without too much trouble, but still big enough to carry a full twelve-man infantry squad. A quarter of those pods were occupied by Gifted engineering specialists; the others contained over a thousand picked infantry. And one basis for their selection was that at least half of them had at least some Gift.
Enough, at any rate, for them to be armed with daggerstones for the assault.

HHNF wrote:Urlan could hardly believe the ferocity of the defense. The normal range advantage of the Sharonians’ rifles was meaningless here. His troopers’ infantry-dragons and daggerstones were far more lethal than firearms in such narrow confines… or would have been, if there’d been room to use them. But the Sharonians were charging straight into them, too close for them to use even daggerstones without killing themselves, as well as their enemies. Infantry-dragon gunners were being forced to discard their weapons and whip out sabers to defend themselves against lunatics with knives on the ends of their rifles. And unlike his men’s daggerstones, the Sharonians with pistols didn’t have to worry about back blast killing them.

PeterZ wrote:

brnicholas wrote:Regarding the continued use of crossbows by Arcana I think the reason is quite simple. They remain effective military weapons. That is so because Arcana does not have anything man portable that has a longer range then a crossbow. The only thing we know of that certainly has a longer range then a crossbow is a black or red battle dragon.

We can judge the range of infantry and artillery dragons from 100 Thalmayr's defenses at the Swamp portal. He put them inside crossbow range of the portal as is shown by the fact that his men could shoot at Arthag even though he was still on the other side of the portal. Given that infantry and artillery dragons are direct fire weapons and can't shoot through portals the logical distance for them from the portal is their maximum range which gives them the most time to do damage to charging troops, or cavalry, before they close. It is possible terrain or Thalmayr's stupidity led to a suboptimal deployment but there is no evidence for that.

As long as their is nothing better, and we have no evidence for a man portable Arcanan weapon with more range and hitting power, they will continue to be used.

Nicholas

I totally agree. Now, why haven't longer ranged weapons been developed for infantry? Is this some inherent limit on magic or spells? Is this a limit imposed by a mindset reliant on magic?

I seem to recall spells can be carried through a portal and be activated once past the barrier. Why haven't such weapons been produced? Why was that idiot Thalmayr so oblivious to the possibility that something could be hurled through the portal and "detonated/activated" once past the portal?

There are just too many gaps between the observed responses of the Arcanan military and what appears to be possible. That suggests that there are limits to how magic can be applied to both everyday activities and fighting war.

PeterZ wrote:
I concur. Also, if such weapons existed, people beyond the law will find a way to access them. That means the military would face those weapons upon occasion. Keeping those weapons available would be the wise course of action for the inherently conservative military mindset. It appears that Andra's power base is the military, so keeping an effective military to offset Ransar and Mythal's arcane advantage would be in order.

All things point to a lack of ubiquitous powered infantry weapons for the Arcanan military.

brnicholas wrote:Regarding the continued use of crossbows by Arcana I think the reason is quite simple. They remain effective military weapons. That is so because Arcana does not have anything man portable that has a longer range then a crossbow. The only thing we know of that certainly has a longer range then a crossbow is a black or red battle dragon.

We can judge the range of infantry and artillery dragons from 100 Thalmayr's defenses at the Swamp portal. He put them inside crossbow range of the portal as is shown by the fact that his men could shoot at Arthag even though he was still on the other side of the portal. Given that infantry and artillery dragons are direct fire weapons and can't shoot through portals the logical distance for them from the portal is their maximum range which gives them the most time to do damage to charging troops, or cavalry, before they close. It is possible terrain or Thalmayr's stupidity led to a suboptimal deployment but there is no evidence for that.

As long as their is nothing better, and we have no evidence for a man portable Arcanan weapon with more range and hitting power, they will continue to be used.

Nicholas

bkwormlisa wrote:I would disagree with this. The crossbows that were shot at Arthag were from the sentries, not the men at the fortifications. The men near the field-dragons had to leave their fortifications (such as they were) and charge towards the portal in an effort to get close enough to shoot with their arbalests. There is also this quote:

HHNF wrote:The heavy horses’ larger size meant each of them could carry not one rider, but two, and two of Urlan’s hundred-and-twenty-strong companies were configured as standard heavy dragoons. Each horse bore a two-man saddle, with the rear rider armed not with a saber or lance but with a cut-down version of an infantry-dragon. It was much shorter ranged than the infantry weapon, but longer ranged than any arbalest and far more deadly.
Each horse in Commander of One Hundred Orkal Kiliron’s Charlie Company, on the other hand, carried only a standard saddle, instead of the two-man heavy dragoon version. In place of the normal second rider, a smaller version of the standard dragon cargo pod had been harnessed to each horse. Its comparatively diminutive size was small enough for an augmented horse to handle without too much trouble, but still big enough to carry a full twelve-man infantry squad. A quarter of those pods were occupied by Gifted engineering specialists; the others contained over a thousand picked infantry. And one basis for their selection was that at least half of them had at least some Gift.
Enough, at any rate, for them to be armed with daggerstones for the assault.

Arbalests are not as good as the handheld magic-powered weapon, yet they do not issue such weapons to all of their men. And given that daggerstones do require a Gift and that was called out in the text, it's highly unlikely even cut-down infantry-dragons require any Gift to use. Part of it might have been explained here:

HHNF wrote:Urlan could hardly believe the ferocity of the defense. The normal range advantage of the Sharonians’ rifles was meaningless here. His troopers’ infantry-dragons and daggerstones were far more lethal than firearms in such narrow confines… or would have been, if there’d been room to use them. But the Sharonians were charging straight into them, too close for them to use even daggerstones without killing themselves, as well as their enemies. Infantry-dragon gunners were being forced to discard their weapons and whip out sabers to defend themselves against lunatics with knives on the ends of their rifles. And unlike his men’s daggerstones, the Sharonians with pistols didn’t have to worry about back blast killing them.

It appears that the magic-powered weapons cannot be used in close quarters without killing the user as well as the target. And since the Sharonians are using firearms, this might include distances farther than melee (hard to be sure, given the next comment about bayonets and then pistols). But while a few dragoons are issued the cut-down infantry-dragons, none of Jasak's platoon were, not even the most senior noncom. Arbalests might still be used due to cost or difficulty supporting magical weapons at the front, but we don't know. It isn't because better weapons don't exist.

brnicholas wrote:True.

The question though is going to be power. For all the weakness of the weapons we have seen the hover spell used for Dragon pods and slider cars, which Gadrial described as "inefficient" shocks me. It keeps 50-60 tons floating against the force of gravity for hours and hours! They may be cheating somehow rather then using raw power to do that but the power output is really impressive. In light of that power output I am very cautious about assuming limits.

SCC wrote:

brnicholas wrote:True.

The question though is going to be power. For all the weakness of the weapons we have seen the hover spell used for Dragon pods and slider cars, which Gadrial described as "inefficient" shocks me. It keeps 50-60 tons floating against the force of gravity for hours and hours! They may be cheating somehow rather then using raw power to do that but the power output is really impressive. In light of that power output I am very cautious about assuming limits.

Um, what? Slider cars can carry a quarter the weight of TTE transport cars