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Machine Guns by Summer '98?

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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by AirTech   » Fri Jun 26, 2015 5:27 am

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ColonialBoy wrote: the British STEN gun was a cheap, easily made submachine gun that would be perfect for Charisian units needing easily-carried, heavy RoF, but short-range fire. Its construction is simple enough that on Terra (during WW2), French resistance units built these weapons in garden workshops throughout Occupied France.

The greatest difficulty will be producing and distributing enough ammunition to feed the voracious appetites of weapons like these. :(


Or you could try something reliable in field conditions like the Owen.
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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by Larry   » Fri Jun 26, 2015 9:26 am

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Fubar wrote:Right now it's March/April 897 and the Charisian Empire is starting the switch to brass cartridge ammunition. IIRC it's currently still black powder based with plans to switch to smokeless nitrates in the nearish future, while keeping the same cartridge.

Now that they are starting to get cartridge based ammo, when do they develop machine guns? And what type? They can field a Gatling gun of some sort with the existing ammo and tech base. Do they go for a water cooled maxim style and make it light artillery? Something man portable that a support squad has to carry? A .30 Browning is just about doable.

I'm a bit surprised they haven't developed something Gatling like for the upcoming campaign.

The Church will be throwing a lot of bodies at the ICA and letting them run into well prepared machine gun positions would help.

Defending against Harchong serf human waves in ground of their own choosing is how I see the ICA winning and a good machine gun could help a lot.


Well there are some early versions of a machinegun that could be used even without smokeless powder. Puckle guns, Mitrailleuse, Gatling guns, & the Agar gun come to mind. True machine guns, as far as I know, require smokeless powder(Nitrocellulose) to operate properly. Now Charis has it, but not in any quantity or ready for field use. As cartridge ammo becomes commonplace, that will change. Lets get the M96 rifles and smokeless cartridges for them into place and see if someone doesn't twig to that. Just having a high rifle fire rate with a box cartridge and smokeless powder so Charisian infantry are harder to spot by muzzle flash as well as the infantry being able to keep aiming because there not blinded by there own smoke cloud ought to make an enormous difference all by itself. Not sure if a proper machine gun is even needed.

Larry
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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by lyonheart   » Fri Jun 26, 2015 12:09 pm

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Hi Don,

I think that's the general forum consensus.

Magazine rifles and mortars, along with their growing yet already overwhelming artillery superiority on so many levels, will be quite sufficient to demolish the IHA or tMHoGatA and any other army the Go4 manages to form for this war without machine guns.

From all his artillery and scout snipers, DE had at least 15,000 if not more men, and his artillery and mortars easily swamped Cahnyr's so the simple numbers aren't directly equivalent.

I'm not sure the tMHoGatA numbers 1.7 million men, it was over 1.5 million according to Duchairn from the rations they consume, but we have no harder figures than that.

Duchairn's figures to Magwair were for 640,000 total rifles for the IHA of which 91,000 are supposed to be the new breech loaders, with the horse-bows, arbalests[cross bows], and the slingers with still pike men rounding out the weapons mix.

Your point that the manpower or weapons ratio is down to 2-1 odds, which is very bad for the attacker is quite correct; especially when the the defender has such vastly superior artillery.

The allies have or will in country in the various theaters by this spring some 800,000 mostly rifle armed men with firearms [so yes the allies' riflemen will outnumber the Go4's]; including some 30 divisions of the RSA [13,500 men @] for ~405,000 men not counting their supporting artillery and cavalry units; while the ICA has something close to 400,000 given all the support troops of the textev IIRC, and the 50,000 more combat troops that were on their way back at the end of September in LaMA [chapter ten] but haven't been mentioned arriving anywhere yet.

As you know, I've suggested Silkiah and the canal as their probable target.

Kaitswyrth and Wyrshym had about half of the AoG, so the rest of the AoG's 500,000 men are busy with occupation duties which for 2-3 million square miles isn't a surprise, since it could arguably require many more.

Given all the clever tricks RFC may use to slaughter or decapitate the MHoGatA's leadership to save the poor grunts, from ambushes to 'battle cauldrons', the main question is how many will survive?

Will they then go back to Harchong or wait for the next war?

Which won't be all that long in coming.

L


n7axw wrote:I would not deny the value of machine guns. However the allies already have what is probably a more efficient way of dealing with massed human wave attacks; the long range and shorter range angle guns which we saw used by DE against Kaitswyth on the Daivyn River. With those they can already create a fire zone that would be almost impossible to cross.

My second comment here has to do with the numerical odds the allies face. I realize that 1.7 million men sounds formidable. And it is. But consider. On the Daivyn, DE with 13 thousand men not only defeated Kaitwryth with his approx 140,000 men but forced him to retreat almost 100 miles. Better than 10 to 1 odds. Then at Ft. Tairys, Along with Sympkyn, EHM and the Siddarmarkans, DE not merely defeated but utterly destroyed an army of about 250,000 men with, so far as I can determine, about 125,000 men. Alverez's escapees are really all that's left. The odds have dropped to about 2 to 1.

Now it is basicly up to the Harchongese. My own guess by this time is that the alliance will field approx 800,000 men against the Harchongians, with every man being armed with at minimum of a rifle. I would expect the ammo production issues to be resolved by then without even discussing the steadily increasing allied superiority in all manner of artillery.

The Harchongese, on the other hand, will field a bit less than 600,000 rifles, somewhere under 15% of which are the breech loading St Klymans along with respectable numbers of out ranged muzzle loading cannon. After that, the rest of their 1.7 million men are armed with arbelests, horse bows and of all things...rock throwers! To borrow a delightful phrase from the Empire of Man universe, "basik to the atul!" They just as well slaughter almost half their army themselves. The actual numerical odds here will be about 2 to 1 in favor of the Harchongese, but that doesn't really mean much. In fact, the allies will actually bring more firearms to the party than the Harchongese.

There are other issues that the Harchongese face such as lack of experienced, competent leadership, increasingly stretched out and vulnerable logistics and the list can go on.

The point being I'm not overly worried about human wave attacks. If they try that tactic, they will merely be lining their men up for the allies to kill them faster and more efficiently.

Don
Any snippet or post from RFC is good if not great!
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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by doug941   » Fri Jun 26, 2015 9:26 pm

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lyonheart wrote:Hi Saber964,

It was the Chinese empire that said it couldn't afford the Maxim, which by the standards of the 1880's was very reliable, modified only slightly by the Brits into the Vickers, which wasn't all that reliable by American or German standards even if the British Army kept it until 1967, but the RAF had to adopt the far more reliable Browning .30 as the .303 for the wing guns in the Hurricane and Spitfire [where the pilot couldn't bash them to get them working again-the British idea of 'reliable'], although they should have gone to the .50 M2/3 or the 20mm or some other far better weapon if they were as smart as they thought they were, rather than simply taking the bureaucratic easy road by sticking with the same caliber, but that's Whitehall narrow mindedness for you.

Howsmyn and Lywys expect to switch to cordite by summer, M96 magazine rifles, the vast artillery advantage NTM mortars can overwhelm the Harchong in so many ways, machine guns aren't really needed in this war.

October can't come soon enough!

L


saber964 wrote::idea: *quote="da bear"* quote="Randomiser"]*quote="ColonialBoy"*
The greatest difficulty will be producing and distributing enough ammunition to feed the voracious appetites of weapons like these. :(


I think you have hit the nail right on the head. Last time it was discussed the Forum was very dubious about the EoC's ability to even produce enough cartridge ammo to keep the M96s firing. For that reason alone a machine gun this year is very hard to credit.


I understand that the Maxim was not adopted by some country's pre ww1 due to their "wasteful" rate of fire. The same was said by some for the clip fed and semi auto rifles.[/quote]


Politco's have been saying that crap since the invention of firearms. They said it during the ACW about the Sharps, Spencer and Henry rifles. They said it during the Indian Wars in the 1870-80's when they refused to issue Winchester's and Remington's to the U.S. Army. Remember at Little Big Horn the Indians were better equipped than Custer's troops were.


Personally I would like to see the Hotckiss 37mm gatling cannon.[/quote][/quote]


The Maxim/Vickers wasn't really as bad as some portrait it to be. In August 1916 the 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten weapons for twelve hours, used one hundred barrels and one million rounds with ZERO stoppages. One thing that very much in its favor is its ability to be sized up into an autocannon. The QF 1pdr pom-pom is nothing more than a Maxim on steroids, and as such would be a great replacement for Wolves on ships/boats.
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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by Rakhmamort   » Mon Jun 29, 2015 3:59 am

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Or the Splat gun from the General series by Drake...
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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by MWadwell   » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:26 am

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Rakhmamort wrote:Or the Splat gun from the General series by Drake...


a.k.a. the Mitrailleuse - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrailleuse
.

Later,
Matt
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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by MWadwell   » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:32 am

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n7axw wrote:I would not deny the value of machine guns. However the allies already have what is probably a more efficient way of dealing with massed human wave attacks; the long range and shorter range angle guns which we saw used by DE against Kaitswyth on the Daivyn River. With those they can already create a fire zone that would be almost impossible to cross.

My second comment here has to do with the numerical odds the allies face. I realize that 1.7 million men sounds formidable. And it is. But consider. On the Daivyn, DE with 13 thousand men not only defeated Kaitwryth with his approx 140,000 men but forced him to retreat almost 100 miles. Better than 10 to 1 odds. Then at Ft. Tairys, Along with Sympkyn, EHM and the Siddarmarkans, DE not merely defeated but utterly destroyed an army of about 250,000 men with, so far as I can determine, about 125,000 men. Alverez's escapees are really all that's left. The odds have dropped to about 2 to 1.

Now it is basicly up to the Harchongese. My own guess by this time is that the alliance will field approx 800,000 men against the Harchongians, with every man being armed with at minimum of a rifle. I would expect the ammo production issues to be resolved by then without even discussing the steadily increasing allied superiority in all manner of artillery.

The Harchongese, on the other hand, will field a bit less than 600,000 rifles, somewhere under 15% of which are the breech loading St Klymans along with respectable numbers of out ranged muzzle loading cannon. After that, the rest of their 1.7 million men are armed with arbelests, horse bows and of all things...rock throwers! To borrow a delightful phrase from the Empire of Man universe, "basik to the atul!" They just as well slaughter almost half their army themselves. The actual numerical odds here will be about 2 to 1 in favor of the Harchongese, but that doesn't really mean much. In fact, the allies will actually bring more firearms to the party than the Harchongese.

There are other issues that the Harchongese face such as lack of experienced, competent leadership, increasingly stretched out and vulnerable logistics and the list can go on.

The point being I'm not overly worried about human wave attacks. If they try that tactic, they will merely be lining their men up for the allies to kill them faster and more efficiently.

Don


I agree - in a straight fire, the AoG is going to be slaughtered.

However, after seeing what has previously happened to AoG armies, if I was a AoG army commander, I would use my numbers advantage in a different way.....

Such as leaving behind a blocking force to pin the ICA in place, and then strike around their flanks.

I know that in a war of movement the ICA is going to have an advantage - but at least try and get the situation where neither side is entrenched, and you can attrit them on a 1-to-1 basis, rather then the 10-to-1 basis it has historically been.....


I now this is common sense, but I doubt that it is what the AoG commanders are going to do. (What is it with MWW writing dumb opponents???)
.

Later,
Matt
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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by n7axw   » Tue Jun 30, 2015 6:18 am

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MWadwell wrote:
n7axw wrote:I would not deny the value of machine guns. However the allies already have what is probably a more efficient way of dealing with massed human wave attacks; the long range and shorter range angle guns which we saw used by DE against Kaitswyth on the Daivyn River. With those they can already create a fire zone that would be almost impossible to cross.

My second comment here has to do with the numerical odds the allies face. I realize that 1.7 million men sounds formidable. And it is. But consider. On the Daivyn, DE with 13 thousand men not only defeated Kaitwryth with his approx 140,000 men but forced him to retreat almost 100 miles. Better than 10 to 1 odds. Then at Ft. Tairys, Along with Sympkyn, EHM and the Siddarmarkans, DE not merely defeated but utterly destroyed an army of about 250,000 men with, so far as I can determine, about 125,000 men. Alverez's escapees are really all that's left. The odds have dropped to about 2 to 1.

Now it is basicly up to the Harchongese. My own guess by this time is that the alliance will field approx 800,000 men against the Harchongians, with every man being armed with at minimum of a rifle. I would expect the ammo production issues to be resolved by then without even discussing the steadily increasing allied superiority in all manner of artillery.

The Harchongese, on the other hand, will field a bit less than 600,000 rifles, somewhere under 15% of which are the breech loading St Klymans along with respectable numbers of out ranged muzzle loading cannon. After that, the rest of their 1.7 million men are armed with arbelests, horse bows and of all things...rock throwers! To borrow a delightful phrase from the Empire of Man universe, "basik to the atul!" They just as well slaughter almost half their army themselves. The actual numerical odds here will be about 2 to 1 in favor of the Harchongese, but that doesn't really mean much. In fact, the allies will actually bring more firearms to the party than the Harchongese.

There are other issues that the Harchongese face such as lack of experienced, competent leadership, increasingly stretched out and vulnerable logistics and the list can go on.

The point being I'm not overly worried about human wave attacks. If they try that tactic, they will merely be lining their men up for the allies to kill them faster and more efficiently.

Don


I agree - in a straight fire, the AoG is going to be slaughtered.

However, after seeing what has previously happened to AoG armies, if I was a AoG army commander, I would use my numbers advantage in a different way.....

Such as leaving behind a blocking force to pin the ICA in place, and then strike around their flanks.

I know that in a war of movement the ICA is going to have an advantage - but at least try and get the situation where neither side is entrenched, and you can attrit them on a 1-to-1 basis, rather then the 10-to-1 basis it has historically been.....


I now this is common sense, but I doubt that it is what the AoG commanders are going to do. (What is it with MWW writing dumb opponents???)


I don't think they can do that. In a war of movement, all they have are the horse archers who would be slaughtered caught out in the open against infantry armed with rifles. Otherwise they don't have the unit structure with the flexibility needed to take advantage of the reality that infantry armed with rifles and bayonets can fight without supports. In addition to that, they don't have the corp structure that would permit massed flanking movements. The end result is that the sheer numbers of people the Harchongians have brought to the party will be as much handicap as advantage because they cannot be deployed effectively in a timely way.

Also should the Harchongians be caught out in the open, they become red meat for artillery, especially the long range angle guns.

Don
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by lyonheart   » Thu Jul 02, 2015 7:12 pm

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Hi MWadell,

The 'Splat gun' term was first used by Christopher Anvil [pseudonym for Harry Christopher Crosby] in his Pandora's Planet[1956] series, for whom RFC did the introduction to the Interstellar Patrol collected anthology, a many barreled weapon inferior to 1950's earth MG's used by the Centrans.

He's still one of my favorite authors and it's one of my favorite series.

L


MWadwell wrote:
Rakhmamort wrote:Or the Splat gun from the General series by Drake...


a.k.a. the Mitrailleuse - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrailleuse
Any snippet or post from RFC is good if not great!
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Re: Machine Guns by Summer '98?
Post by lyonheart   » Fri Jul 03, 2015 1:06 am

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Hi MWadell,

Because RFC doesn't fill his very popular books with stupid enemy generals.

Damning generals as stupid when they don't know all what you the reader do is kind of silly, I expect better from you, especially as a discerning fan of RFC.

It's awful easy to criticize someone especially from hindsight when you're not making the decisions; but when you're on the hot seat, and discover you don't know everything that you thought you did, suddenly you take a lot more time considering every decision from all sorts of angles, trying to learn more before you have to make life changing decisions for other people, and the odds are that you 'll be at least partly wrong no matter what you do.

Too often its common for history's losers to be branded stupid for losing by armchair generals with Field Marshall Hindsight on their side when the generals didn't know critical factors their critics take for granted.

Besides Shattered Sword by John Parshall and Antony Tully [2005] might teach you many things about the Battle of Midway that you may think you know which are actually wrong if not based on deliberate misrepresentations of what happened.

Then take David Howarth's The Voyage of the Armada, the Spanish story [1981]; who used Spanish court records to affix the real blame for its failure to King Philip its creator, not the Duke of Medina Sidonia [only 37 at the time] who's often derided as stupid by the ignorant in the English speaking world, who begged the king not to pick him because of his ignorance of all things naval and military, who predicted what would happen, but the king wanted someone who would follow his stupid orders without being able to argue from personal experience that was superior to the king's, which is why some 20,000 men died, of whom less than 5% were caused by the British navy.

So Medina-Sidonia listened carefully to his captain's council [including all the admirals] used his common sense to sort out the best options which everyone agreed to [including trying to again persuade Philip to call the whole thing off at Corunna after they discovered their food was rotten and they couldn't sail to windward[!] so they saw it could easily and most likely would end in disaster, but the king refused to even acknowledge their letters], and they didn't make any mistakes based on what they knew.

King Philip was a megalomaniac who saw himself as the champion of God, caste in his image; bigoted, dogmatic, sincerely self righteous and ruthless, illogical and hopelessly confused.

Sound like a familiar Safehold character? ;)

Even if his fleet had won, impossible as that was, he couldn't occupy and control England militarily and financially, given how much trouble the far smaller people and territory of the Netherlands continued to frustrate his will for almost 30 years; it would take another 30 years before Spain would accept the obvious and recognise Dutch independence.

If you've been paying attention to the textev, the Go4 generals aren't stupid, but their choices have been reduced by a combination of their orders from above, their own desires and decisions coupled with the limitations of their men's equipment and training to a short list of often double plus ungood choices, but they've mainly been bested by weapons they knew nothing or very little about before the battles.

Regarding your post, quite aside from the size problem [ie no corps sub division system etc so far], the MHoGatA is currently to awkward to maneuver as you desire, nor will the ICA/RSA be so dumb as to be trapped so simply when they can easily break contact any number of ways.

The MHoG doesn't know about the M96 magazine rifle, though their highest officers might, if the Go4 decides to inform them, but the shock of finding out on the battlefield could easily lose a battle or two; then there's discovering your officers and religious leaders knew but withheld informing you of what you faced, in the hope you would somehow overcome despite them while knowing more than you not seeing anyway you could succeed without God's help, though he hasn't been helping anyone on your side for quite a while...

Then there are the ICA's incredible advantages in indirect fire, yet to be demonstrated for a far worse battlefield shock -easily worth a few more panic abandoned battlefields at least, NTM far longer ranged artillery which no one in the MHoG etc has yet experienced, particularly with the newer breech loading weapons with their much higher rates of fire and more powerful explosive fillings.

If you managed to survive the first battlefield surprise, then discover your trusted religious leaders had effectively lied to you, and then experienced the second and third battlefield surprises, wouldn't you begin to suspect they had held out on you again?

How long before your faith in them is destroyed?

Fighting it out in the open with large numbers as you suggested would among other things would make an excellent target for the Katusha type rockets posters have been suggesting for years; will you condemn the MHoG generals for having no clue about that potential threat the first time they're used?

How do you expect the MHoG to attrite the ICA at a 1-1 ratio when the M96 fires twice as fast as the St. Kylman, besides all the mortars and longer range indirect fire artillery with far higher rates of fire?

Waiting for you to suggest a much smarter solution.

L


MWadwell wrote:
n7axw wrote:I would not deny the value of machine guns. However the allies already have what is probably a more efficient way of dealing with massed human wave attacks; the long range and shorter range angle guns which we saw used by DE against Kaitswyth on the Daivyn River. With those they can already create a fire zone that would be almost impossible to cross.

My second comment here has to do with the numerical odds the allies face. I realize that 1.7 million men sounds formidable. And it is. But consider. On the Daivyn, DE with 13 thousand men not only defeated Kaitwryth with his approx 140,000 men but forced him to retreat almost 100 miles. Better than 10 to 1 odds. Then at Ft. Tairys, Along with Sympkyn, EHM and the Siddarmarkans, DE not merely defeated but utterly destroyed an army of about 250,000 men with, so far as I can determine, about 125,000 men. Alverez's escapees are really all that's left. The odds have dropped to about 2 to 1.

Now it is basicly up to the Harchongese. My own guess by this time is that the alliance will field approx 800,000 men against the Harchongians, with every man being armed with at minimum of a rifle. I would expect the ammo production issues to be resolved by then without even discussing the steadily increasing allied superiority in all manner of artillery.

The Harchongese, on the other hand, will field a bit less than 600,000 rifles, somewhere under 15% of which are the breech loading St Klymans along with respectable numbers of out ranged muzzle loading cannon. After that, the rest of their 1.7 million men are armed with arbelests, horse bows and of all things...rock throwers! To borrow a delightful phrase from the Empire of Man universe, "basik to the atul!" They just as well slaughter almost half their army themselves. The actual numerical odds here will be about 2 to 1 in favor of the Harchongese, but that doesn't really mean much. In fact, the allies will actually bring more firearms to the party than the Harchongese.

There are other issues that the Harchongese face such as lack of experienced, competent leadership, increasingly stretched out and vulnerable logistics and the list can go on.

The point being I'm not overly worried about human wave attacks. If they try that tactic, they will merely be lining their men up for the allies to kill them faster and more efficiently.

Don


I agree - in a straight fire, the AoG is going to be slaughtered.

However, after seeing what has previously happened to AoG armies, if I was a AoG army commander, I would use my numbers advantage in a different way.....

Such as leaving behind a blocking force to pin the ICA in place, and then strike around their flanks.

I know that in a war of movement the ICA is going to have an advantage - but at least try and get the situation where neither side is entrenched, and you can attrit them on a 1-to-1 basis, rather then the 10-to-1 basis it has historically been.....


I now this is common sense, but I doubt that it is what the AoG commanders are going to do. (What is it with MWW writing dumb opponents???)
Last edited by lyonheart on Fri Jul 03, 2015 11:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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