utilizing natural flight in warfare

Lets say you were a general in a fantasy world where intelligent races with the natural capability of flight existed and you could levy troops/hire mercenaries from these races. How would you use them?

(Tech level can be pre gunpowder, gunpowder, or modern, whichever you choose.)

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    more information is needed. do my enemies have flying troops? If so, how are they currently being deployed? What do these flying troops cost? What is my budget? What are their capabilities specifically (endurance, weight carrying capability, speed, toughness, etc).

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      ok, lets say there's a race of them that work as mercenaries. They'll work for anyone who pays including them and your enemies. They're smaller than humans, but larger than any known birds (by mass) in the real world. They can fly unladened for about an hour. Can carry up to 60 lbs, but they're flight time will cut to around 10 minutes like that. They can cruise comfortably at 50-60 mph, but can get above 80 mph in a dive. They're smaller than people, and have light frames so they're a lot less tough than humans.
      Although feel free to explain how changing the stats might affect their usefulness to you.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Get a mob of them, give them crossbows, 10 minutes is plenty to fly over an enemy formation (or close enough with the height advantage) and let fly. You could even go for weird directions to try and get them from behind or force them to turn around and present shields.

        You might also try something like bombing; drop metal darts/balls/weights on the enemy.

        Absolutely not. Presumably, they have hollow bones to allow for flight in the first place. This is inherently going to limit the draw strength of their weapons. And I'm not sure how the skeletal structure of something with both wings and arms would work, but presumably there's going to be some level of compromise in terms of the functional strength and muscle mass of the arms, to allow for powerful wing muscles.

        This can be mitigated if they have crossbows, but again- crossbows are almost always used by units wearing decent helmets, with pavise shields. They'd never last in an actual shooting fight with any equivalent ground based enemy unit.

        Just get a crossbow with a nice mechanism for converting the draw into a longer, less-intensive motion. Ratchet device or something.
        You don't need armor when your enemy can't reach out and touch you because you're a three hundred feet straight up (in addition to being a little over half their bowshot range.

        Might not be able to reload in the air, admittedly, but ten minutes ought to be plenty for say, moving to position, one shot a minute for five, and then returning to your lines.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Attacking from top down is probably the least efficient way to get at enemy troops. Shots are going to glance straight off the helmet, and if you manage to do any damage with hits to the shoulders, that'll just result in either wide brim helmets, or reinforced armor to the shoulders. That is assuming of course they don't just put their shields over their heads.

          Also, how are they firing? Are they doing it while hovering? Because hovering vs flying is going to cut down your flight time by half, and you're going to need to by hovering to get any sort of accuracy at range- and even then, the constant flapping motion will frick up your shot massively, making your shooting even more inaccurate than it'd already be. Shooting straight down is easy, but again- you're just going to bounce off helmets.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            "above" doesn't have to mean from perfectly straight up. Anon even specifically suggested shooting from different directions at once. But if they did, they don't necessarily have to use arrows or darts. If gunpowder exists they can drop grenades. They can drop incendiaries as well.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >If gunpowder exists they can drop grenades

              Fuse grenades were super clumsy and unreliable. Not to mention heavy. I'm not sure if you'd even be able to light the fuse while flying, it would depend on the wind speed and what you're using. On top of that, what are the chances the fuse goes out before hitting the ground?

              Additionally if your enemy has gunpowder weapons, it's going to be super easy to shoot these guys out of the sky with massed musket fire.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Glass vial style contact fuse for a two part explosive is a pretty easy to do if you're dropping them from any appreciable height since there wouldn't be any rapid acceleration at launch you'd need to overcome.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Any setting with that kind of fuse is going to have advanced firearms enough to blow your birdies out of the sky

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Blown glass is hardly a modern invention and finding two liquids which when mixed together cause bad things isn't exactly rocket science either. All it has to do is shatter on impact, which is pretty trivial. You're also overestimating the ease with which you can hit a target moving 60 to 70 mph at an unknown distance with no ability to range things. While you would be getting minute of formation level accuracy from dropping your explosives from 500 feet if you don't come to a stop, Ukraine and ISIS have shown pretty well with all their drone videos that it's still plenty effective.

                The bigger threat would be the other guy hiring birdmen of his own to fly CAP and keep you from bombing his guys to shit. If you have uncontested air control, though, you either force the enemy to avoid bunching up which means that your infantry formations and cavalry can tear through them, or form ranks and deal with the casualties as best they can.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Blown glass is hardly a modern invention and finding two liquids which when mixed together cause bad things isn't exactly rocket science either

                You're missing the point. All the enemy needs to do to hard counter your birds is invent a fricking punt gun.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >don't fly in formation
                >punt gun maybe manages to kill 1 guy at a time while massively slowing enemy and is unable to be fired on the move

                I also cannot find any literature about the effective range of a punt gun, but given that it was intended to be used as the birds are resting on the water's surface or just beginning to take off, I doubt it would be hard to fly above it's effective range.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Grapeshot out of a cannon can easily reach out to 700 m or further. A punt gun is just a smaller version of that. If you want to drop bombs on people just use mortars or canons. Flying bird people is dumb and would just result in massive casualties.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >700m ballistic arc is just as easy as 500m straight vertical
                >please ignore how inept flak AA was against planes until the invention of proximity fusing

                Every cannon your opponent has to spend on building your meme medieval AA network that still largely isn't going to work against any opponent that doesn't fly in a tight formation is a cannon not firing at your ground troops, and I'm not even going to point out how somehow the invention of grapeshot didn't put an end to infantry formations either despite it being far more effective against them then a highly mobile target that's dancing at the edge of it's range.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >please ignore how inept flak AA was against planes until the invention of proximity fusing

                Are you genuinely moronic? Why the frick are we comparing planes to birds that are going to be hovering in place to drop their stupid fricking grenades?
                >Every cannon your opponent has to spend on building your meme medieval AA network that still largely isn't going to work against any opponent that doesn't fly in a tight formation is a cannon not firing at your ground troops

                And every moronic bird soldier you pay to fly around in the air getting shot up and throwing bombs that will miss by a country mile is one less normal, actually useful soldier you can have in your army.
                >grapeshot didn't put an end to infantry formations either despite it being far more effective against them then a highly mobile target that's dancing at the edge of it's range

                Ground formations are not the same as aerial formations. good luck getting your bird soldiers to actually pull off the formations necessary to minimize their chances of getting hit by birdshot or massed musketfire.

                >a highly mobile target that's dancing at the edge of it's range.

                Good luck throwing your grenades and hitting anything from 600 meters, especially when you're limited to carrying MAYBE two each due to weight restrictions

                >b-but you can't miss from straight down

                Good luck on your birds being even capable of hovering like that. And I sure hope there's absolutely zero wind, because if there's any at all it's going to take that grenade and blow it massively offcourse.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >hovering in place
                NTA, but if you think you need to stand still to throw an object accurately you need to watch some football. Not even college ball- come the fall your local Friday night lights will do. It's pretty clear that black powder weaponry makes things more difficult for our harpies, but if it wasn't a hard counter to marching in sense lines it's not a hard counter to quickly-moving, dispersed, aerial targets.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Dense. Dense lines.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >NTA, but if you think you need to stand still to throw an object accurately you need to watch some football

                Grenades from that era were not footballs. They were much larger, heavier and clumsier than modern grenades. If you're close enough to throw one accurately, you're close enough to get shredded by grapeshot, punt guns or blunderbusses.

                > but if it wasn't a hard counter to marching in sense lines

                Ground formations are not the same as aerial formations. If you can't wrap your head around how three dimensional space works, you're fricking hopeless.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >dropping something is as hard as throwing it
                >hypergolic clay jars are the same as grenades
                >bunched formations that have to get within mutual range are viable in the face of massed fire but incredibly dispersed ones aren't
                Oh, you're just moronic.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Good luck throwing your grenades and hitting anything from 600 meters, especially when you're limited to carrying MAYBE two each due to weight restrictions

                Good thing we don't have endless footage demonstrating just how accurate a dropped projectile with simple fins can be coming from a couple hundred feet. Oh, wait, what was that? Ukraine's UAV footage has been demonstrating quite clearly that it's easy to get them to be well within lethal range even on a single person, much less a formation? Well, golly, I'd sure look stupid if I ignored the massive mountain of evidence that demonstrates just how accurate you can be doing low level bombing.

                Meanwhile, you're also completely hung up on the idea that the birdmen have to fight in formations and not act as skirmishers, since unlike ground infantry, they don't have to worry about surviving a cavalry charge nor a pitched battle and so can spread out which further minimizes the risk of your meme AA network to taking potshots at individual soldiers which is far preferable to them instead of deleting chunks of my infantry line.

                >but just use mortars and cannons yourself...

                Soldiers were far cheaper and maneuverable then heavy siege weapons, and the ability to make some clay spheres, glass vials, and binary explosives to deliver the same threat as a hefty amount of expensive and heavy metalworked cannons is a fricking steal.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Good thing we don't have endless footage demonstrating just how accurate a dropped projectile with simple fins can be coming from a couple hundred feet.

                No. No we haven't. You are clearly a blind frickwit moron if you believe that. Nobody is using drones to hit grenade trickshots from 600m in the air. I don't think you're even familiar enough with the concept of space to know just how far 600m is.

                What we've seen from ukraine is drones dropping grenades from around 50-100m, and only getting away with it because the drone itself is very small and hard to spot. Even then, it's very common to see grenades blown off target (and we're not seeing footage from all the drones that get destroyed, or from the grenades that miss)

                >Meanwhile, you're also completely hung up on the idea that the birdmen have to fight in formations and not act as skirmishers

                Wow, an even more moronic idea. At least ground based skirmishers can take cover behind trees and terrain. Aerial skirmishes would again, get torn to shreds the instant grapeshot, blunderbusses or punt guns got invented.

                >Soldiers were far cheaper and maneuverable then heavy siege weapons

                You don't need a heavy siege weapon to kill a fricking bird. You're legitimately the dumbest moron on this entire board. Guns make your stupid, moronic bird people worthless. There's a reason soldiers aren't flying around on jetpacks even though we have them.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >What we've seen from ukraine is drones dropping grenades from around 50-100m

                Having a CEP of the lethal range of a man at 100 meters puts you still well within the CEP of an infantry square at 300m, and those drones are dropping very light projectiles which are carried more heavily by the wind then a heavier weapon which our birdmen can according to the specs OP gave.

                >Aerial skirmishes would again, get torn to shreds the instant grapeshot, blunderbusses or punt guns got invented.

                RoF of a cannon is in the single shot per minute at the best of times, and the effective range of modern birdshot loads against a human is sub 100 yards which would be trivial to fly above and hey, whatta know, it's also around the same range that the accuracy of bombing was demonstrated in 4k video on the daily basis. Blunderbusses would be of minimal threat, and punt guns, which you have provided no evidence toward having any sort of range instead deflecting off towards 'muh grapeshot', are still large and awkward weapons which would require a weapons team and can't be fired on the move.

                >If you want to drop bombs on people just use mortars or canons
                >Soldiers were far cheaper and maneuverable then heavy siege weapons

                I know seeing the connection between two things is hard for you, so let me explain it for you in small words. If I can get to drop explosives on my opponent's army without having to spend massive amounts of cash on slow and expensive warmachines, that is a GOOD thing. The reason we don't have soldiers flying around on jetpacks is because we have handheld automatic weapons which are an actual threat, we have proper airplanes which fulfill that role instead, and the value of a soldier's life is substantially higher then his gear in the first world which wasn't the case during historical times.

                In short, you're the dumbest fricking gorilla Black person who can't even muster a coherent argument nor understand historical battlefields and logistics.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Those drones are also able to hover perfectly still, with cameras that are computer stabilized to be pointed perfectly downward at all times, and are small enough to make it difficult to spot and shoot them. Wind can significantly affect the trajectory of any projectile. If you think otherwise you are delusional.

                > and the effective range of modern birdshot loads against a human is sub 100 yards

                Good thing they're not going to be using moder birdshot you fricking moron, they're going to be using grapeshot out of punt guns on swivel mounts that will be able to kill 10 of your bird people in a single shot out to at least 400m

                >Blunderbusses would be of minimal threat

                If you are in range to accurately drop your bomb, you are in range to get shot, either by blundrbuss, punt gun, grapeshot, or simply massed musket fire.

                > If I can get to drop explosives on my opponent's army without having to spend massive amounts of cash on slow and expensive warmachines, that is a GOOD thing.

                Except you don't. Because you are going to suffering minimum of 50% casualty rates in your bird units every single engagemen

                >The reason we don't have soldiers flying around on jetpacks is because we have handheld automatic weapons which are an actual threat

                Breaking news: black powder firearms don't work

                >In short, you're the dumbest fricking gorilla Black person who can't even muster a coherent argument nor understand historical battlefields and logistics.

                I've already said earlier how useful the birds would be in a pre gunpowder world for attacks on logistics. However, because guns have extremely long range, and can fire both solid shot and grapeshot type shrapnel as projectiles, we quickly reach a point where flying is a disadvantage due to it basically just making you an easier, more visible target.

                I'm sorry that your magic little fantasy scenario with big booba harpies throwing bombs on people was ruined

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Those drones are also able to hover perfectly still, with cameras that are computer stabilized to be pointed perfectly downward at all times
                >birds are incapable of looking straight down
                >please ignore every example of a predatory bird

                >punt guns on swivel mounts that will be able to kill 10 of your bird people in a single shot out to at least 400m
                They weren't man portable, but instead mounted centerline to a fricking boat because the weight and length made them awkward as frick. Meanwhile you're going to be providing integrated air defense, because their shit range means that you can't just park it at the back like a cannon.

                >If you are in range to accurately drop your bomb, you are in range to get shot
                You still haven't shown any information on the effective range of a punt gun, whereas there is plenty on the range of birdshot and how quickly it loses lethality at even fairly short ranges, and you also are somehow still stuck on the concept that your puntguns are going to somehow erase multiple birdmens from the sky in a single shot despite there being zero reason for them to fly in any sort of formation.

                >Breaking news: black powder firearms don't work
                Good luck hitting a flying bird with a single fricking musketball. I'll be sure to call all the local Department of Wildlife and have them tell every hunter who can't do it that they're suffering from a skill issue. And before you go 'muh volleyfire', that's a volley of fire that is being directed at a harassment unit and not at my infantry square that is currently blowing holes in yours which I also count as a win.

                >However, because guns have extremely long range, and can fire both solid shot and grapeshot type shrapnel as projectiles

                Shot type projectilves have garbage range, and the low RoF of single shot weapons means that you can't fill the air with lead without dedicating massive number of troops and weapons, which is still a win for me.

                Screaming about muh shot doesn't win an argument, moron

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >birds are incapable of looking straight down

                Hovering perfectly still in place like a drone is not possible for most birds, correct.

                >They weren't man portable

                Wow, almost like I specified they'd be put on swivel mounts. Are you mentally challenged?

                >You still haven't shown any information on the effective range of a punt gun, whereas there is plenty on the range of birdshot and how quickly it loses lethality at even fairly short ranges

                I can't help you if you're incapable of grasping the most basic aspects of how firearms work. If the punt guns are lacking range, they can lengthen the barrel, and increase the powder charge and projectile size. I'm sorry that you are incapable of grasping even the most basic aspects of how firearms function, but it's not my fault you're this dumb.

                >Good luck hitting a flying bird with a single fricking musketball

                I think you mean a man sized flying object with massed musket fire, but nice try. You're literally just lying and making shit up now, kek. Pathetic.

                >Shot type projectilves have garbage range

                Grapeshot is lethal to out far past 600m. You literally do not understand how guns work.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Wow, almost like I specified they'd be put on swivel mounts
                So you're gonna roll wooden mounts alongside every infantry square? That sounds brilliant, I can't imagine why no one thought to just bring their artillery to the front so it would be as effective as possible. Maybe it's something to do with how slow and it limiting maneuverability? Nah.

                >If the punt guns are lacking range, they can lengthen the barrel, and increase the powder charge and projectile size.
                If my punt guns, which are already being awkwardly shuffled around and lost on the front aren't capable of reaching, I'll just make them into cannons! After all, cannons were free and even easier to move around, so this sounds like a brilliant plan. It's not like aerodynamics has something to say about the difficulties of shooting smaller projectiles further due to the smaller KE vs loss due to drag.

                >I think you mean a man sized flying object with massed musket fire
                I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you would understand the complexity doesn't come from the size but the speed and freedom of maneuver at range, but I apologize for that and will do my best to keep your singular brain cell in mind in the future.

                >Grapeshot is lethal to out far past 600m
                Grapeshot fired at one round per minute at best according to historical documents, from heavy and expensive cannons, and eats up their firing time so they're not lobbing cannonballs at my actual army. Meanwhile, birdshot falls off at under 100 yards even with modern manufacturing ensuring uniform size and shape.

                At this point, you're just repeating yourself so I'm gonna just post smug anime girls until you present a new argument that indicates you are able to walk and chew bubblegum at the same time without choking to death.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >So you're gonna roll wooden mounts alongside every infantry square?

                No, there will be gun carriages with swivel mounts on them. They can be placed wherever it's most convenient to protect the infantry from aerial attacks. This isn't a hard concept. I know it's hard for you, but that speaks more to your own capacity than the concept itself.

                >If my punt guns, which are already being awkwardly shuffled around and lost on the front aren't capable of reaching, I'll just make them into cannons

                A punt gun is already a small canon. It's not hard to set up your guns to the rear of your infantry. I'm sorry that you have zero understanding of battle tactics from these time periods, but it's not my problem that you're too stupid to have this conversation.

                >the complexity doesn't come from the size but the speed and freedom of maneuver at range

                Speed and maneuver at range doesn't matter when you're a man sized target under volley fire from muskets. You are not faster than bullets, you cannot maneuver faster than bullets, and you will need to stay still in order to drop your payload accurately in any case.

                >nogunz Weeb

                Why am I not surprised that a fricking weeb here doesn't know how guns work?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >No, there will be gun carriages with swivel mounts on them.

                >I am only capable of fighting a defensive battle without outrunning my air cover
                >my punt cannons are still free and not taking away from production of actual cannons
                >I still haven't addressed the physics behind my longer barrel = more range and the problem it runs into with small shot bleeding velocity
                >people aren't able to deliver reasonably accurate level bombing at plane speed and height, much less the lower speeds being dealt with in this thread

                >complains about anime on anime website
                >while unironically and actually Redditspacing with the double line breaks instead of a singular

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >What is a gun carriage
                >What is a horse

                >>I still haven't addressed the physics behind my longer barrel = more range and the problem it runs into with small shot bleeding velocity

                Go spend some time on this board learning how guns work.

                >muh redditspacing

                you should go back there nogunz

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I'm going to run horse drawn carriages along side every infantry squad so big they're capable of mounting multiple cannons
                >I am a genuis

                PS, here's some information on why you're moronic and actually know nothing about guns. Barrel length doesn't scale velocity nor range infinitely, it's limited by the projectile and given that you want shoot shot in your magical air defense system, this becomes a very big problem very quickly.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_carriage

                >Barrel length doesn't scale velocity nor range infinitely

                Good thing it's super easy to adjust the size of projectile and powder charge for muzzle loaded guns.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You know what we term a heavy gun that requires a large charge and good metallurgy to keep from exploding? A cannon, not a punt gun, so we're back to

                >cannons are free if they're for air defense
                >RoF isn't a limiting factor
                >having to roll them along side my troops doesn't massively limit their maneuverability

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >A punt gun is already a small canon. It's not hard to set up your guns to the rear of your infantry. I'm sorry that you have zero understanding of battle tactics from these time periods, but it's not my problem that you're too stupid to have this conversation.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Napoleon had only 2 artillery pieces per 1k troops in 1800
                >but that's because he didn't think they were cool enough to order more
                >I just need to snap my fingers and more will appear that I can dedicate to air defense without crippling my army

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I'm not going to discuss military tactics or logistics from the Napoleonic period with someone who thought a gun carriage was a literal carriage that had guns mounted on it.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I'm going not going to explain how I'm rolling gun carriages along side my infantry squares while being able to fire on the move to protect my advances

                Once again, I apologize for trying to make your moronic ideas at least somewhat coherent and assuming that you weren't so moronic as to think an emplaced weapon with a range of maybe 100 yards, in a sphere no less, was going to be able to provide meaningful air cover because you were still hung up on your punt guns, but I'll gladly accept your concession that you know nothing and your ideas are completely unworkable.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I don't know anything about how guns work and I thought a gun carriage was a literal horse carriage with guns mounted on it
                >but you're the moron here

                Literal Ztard vatnik tier cope on display. The anime pictures just make it worse

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Explain your brilliant idea then. How are you going to cover your advances with your horse drawn guns then? After all, I'm sure there's plenty of examples of commanders dragging artillery to the literal front lines and making it work well for them you can point to? At least an actual carriage with the punt guns mounted on swivel mounts would be able to fire on the move, whereas your idea of bringing the guns up, digging them in, and then trying to shoot down the birdmen was so fricking stupid that I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't that dumb and instead trying to create a flak truck.

                I deeply apologize for trying to make your completely nonsensical ideas work out and will instead stick to pointing how much of a fricking monkey you are who's incapable of thinking things through.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Again, I'm not going to have a military tactics conversation with someone who literally does not know how guns work and thought a gun carriage was an actual carriage with guns on it.

                If you want to find out how canons can be used to cover an advancing infantry course, I'd suggest you go do some historical research and get back to me.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                But you specified punt guns on your moron carriages? As in, not a cannon, because you're a moron who didn't understand the range limitation that small shot imposes, and insisted they'd be able to cover your air defense needs.

                But somehow when you had this problem pointed out to you, you wanted to change them over to expensive as frick cannons that you're not going to spend lobbing normal artillery shells and instead try to roll them along behind your infantry squares to provide an air defense network? And when it was pointed out that cannons were an incredibly rare resource that couldn't be dragged along behind every block of men, you just stopped even trying to defend your ideas and went straight for the ad hominems without being able to answer a simple question.

                It's okay, anon. This is an anonymous website, and no one will know you're a literal monkey dragging your knuckles along the keyboard in the hopes of forming a coherent throught next time you post, unless you deign to have such a moronic post yet again. Of course, you are such a gorilla Black person, that does seem like a very high risk so I can understand your concern.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_carriage

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapeshot

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cannon

                Like I said, you're literally too dumb to be having this conversation. Get a basic understanding of the concepts we're talking about and come back later.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I'm going to dedicate my two cannons that I have for my thousand men to taking grapeshot potshots at birdmen hundreds of yards away in the air moving at 50 MPH
                >this surely isn't a waste

                Shouting about muh shot still doesn't win you the argument, moron, and I've already told you this. You still haven't explained how you're going to deploy your punt gun carriages on the advance, by the way, or pointed to a single example of a military commander dragging his artillery to the front like you want to.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Again, I really have to stress that you literally just have no idea what you're talking about. As artillery got lighter and easier to maneuver, armies began to use them more on the field. Some armies (swedes in particular) would move their light field pieces up with their infantry to provide extra firepower. One reason for Napoleon's success was specifically his innovations in both the design and use of artillery.

                Again, you literally just have no clue what you're talking about. You didn't know what a gun carriage was, you thought grapeshot was the same as 12 ga birdshot, and you seemed to think that moving your canons up along with your infantry is impossible to accomplish despite it literally being done in many instance historically.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >you thought grapeshot was the same as 12 ga birdshot

                You're the one who thought they were the same given you were planning to use punt guns until I pointed out that physics will b***hslap that attempt and then you tried to deflect with conflating it with muh grapeshots and cannons despite you repeatedly making the distinction earlier, which is why I pressed you about how you're gonna make them work on the offense because a puntgun doesn't fire grapeshot and doesn't have the range that you seem to think did.

                You also somehow thought that you could magically increase the range just by making barrels longer and increasing the size of the charge without realizing you were just making a 3lb cannon which was an expensive piece of field artillery and that forcing it be dedicated to air defense isn't a massive win even if it worked, which it almost certainly wouldn't because of the low RoF, unless you're fielding them in such high numbers that is completely unrealistic and never seen by any army because field artillery was fricking expensive and a heavy logistical burden even into the Napoleonic era, much less earlier ones.

                There's no shame in admitting that historical armies would have had no real answer for airpower dropping primitive explosives on them other then getting their own airpower to deny the airspace to hostile elements. This was true even well into WWI with substantially improved weapon technology, though the movement away from infantry formations and toward trenches meant that bombing was less useful then recon. However, there is a whole lot of shame in your insistence that this is not the case and your repeated attempts to deny this fact by making disingenuous or outright false statements.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Idk what to tell you my dude, you're just too dumb to be having this conversation. Obviously punt guns are basically small canons. They're literally called that because they have to be mounted on a punt to be fired. That's not an own. Puntguns can literally fire anything you put in them. This is super easy stuff that a fifth grader should understand intuitively.

                Your mindset is incredibly confusing. Do you think canons can only be used for one thing? You can load grapeshot in a canon, and you can also load round shot into it. If you have canons and you're facing a foe with flying skirmishers, obviously you'd position some and load them with grapeshot to keep them off your guys. These aren't hard concepts.

                You're conflating actual airplanes to birds carrying primitive grenades. Obviously canons loaded with grapeshot would not work as defense against airplanes, but they're fine against oversized birds. Anti air guns weren't very well developed throughout WWI because aircraft weren't used in a ground attack until the very end of the war.

                Your entire premise requires these bird soldiers to simultaneously be super effective, and then also for people to not develop tactics and weapons specifically to counter them. That kind of mindset can only exist in someone with absolutely zero understanding of tactical and technological development throughout history. You are again- literally far too stupid to be having this conversation. This will be my last reply.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Punt guns were cheap enough to be economical for commercial hunters to use because they didn't require particularly impressive metallurgy for the time because of the low pressure like every other shotgun. A small cannon or other piece of field artillery was not, as you can see from the thickness of the barrel, and you can compare historical examples of them to see just how much easier a punt gun would be to make vs an actual cannon, and yet somehow you're mass issuing said punt cannons to your army despite there never being historical examples of that level of adoption of field artillery because of the cost and complexity of manufacturing it.

                You also are hung up on there being separate stages of battle where you can dedicate your cannons to air defense and then once they're all done, then the land battle starts instead of any basic commander using them in a combined force just as they did calvary, while also magically being able to accurately and consistently hit a singular small target, moving quickly at distances of hundreds of yards, without any good frame of reference for ranging it. Cannons weren't capable of sniping horse messengers at those distances who are moving slower and more predictably, and yet you act as though the cannons will have radar fire control and an autoloader to mow down hordes of birdmen who will hold hands and fly straight at the cannons. All the while, you're also discounting the simple fact that having to dedicate an inordinate amount of cannons to air defense vs the cost having some flying skirmishers is already a massive win for the army with the fliers even if they all got gunned down before dropping their payload.

                cont'd

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                They would have been very effective to the point that warfare would likely have not developed through the same path it did, since their presence makes infantry formations substantially more suicidal at a very low price point because there was no technology which could reasonably answer them until somewhere around the Civil War to WWI. Maybe there would have been some crazy tech developed that is impossible to conceive, but your insistence that they wouldn't be insanely disruptive on the battlefield as history played out is straight up indefensible, and I am going to continue to ridicule you for said opinion because it is not based in reality.

                In short, even primitive airpower would have been a major player on the battlefield because the ability to effectively reach from the ground to hundreds of yards in the air in an accurate manner was never developed and would face substantial challenges that require somewhat modern tech to overcome. The only solution would have been CAP of your own birdmen, which is exactly the behavior we saw in WWI where airpower started to come to prominence.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://i.imgur.com/Qv1bvrP.gif

                They would have been very effective to the point that warfare would likely have not developed through the same path it did, since their presence makes infantry formations substantially more suicidal at a very low price point because there was no technology which could reasonably answer them until somewhere around the Civil War to WWI. Maybe there would have been some crazy tech developed that is impossible to conceive, but your insistence that they wouldn't be insanely disruptive on the battlefield as history played out is straight up indefensible, and I am going to continue to ridicule you for said opinion because it is not based in reality.

                In short, even primitive airpower would have been a major player on the battlefield because the ability to effectively reach from the ground to hundreds of yards in the air in an accurate manner was never developed and would face substantial challenges that require somewhat modern tech to overcome. The only solution would have been CAP of your own birdmen, which is exactly the behavior we saw in WWI where airpower started to come to prominence.

                Stuck around to read your reply out of curiousity. Nothing you said in either of these posts is correct.

                Canons can be loaded with more than one kind of shot, and can switch tasks as needed. Hitting even large targets from the air is quite difficult, and you are not hitting even large stationary formations with bombs from the air without getting into canon range. If you want to have any significant effect with your birdmen on infantry formations, you will need to get close to them, which means coming in low and close towards the canons, making you easy pickings. Using fused bombs midair is highly impractical, and by the time impact fuses would be invented, cannister shot would come along making canons even more effective in the anti air role.

                I've been saying these things the entire time, but you either haven't been understanding or you haven't been listening. There is an actual discussion to be had on how flying units could be used post gunpowder, both to harry enemy logistics, as fast maneuver/positional forces like dragoons, and to cut off retreats/chase down routing armies, blow bridges, etc. However, you are clearly not a person capable of having that conversation, as you have be perma-stuck on the incredibly stupid and childish idea of birds divebombing with primitive grenades straight into the teeth of enemy grapeshot. Leave the talking to the grownups.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Canons can be loaded with more than one kind of shot, and can switch tasks as needed
                Even setting aside that the correct positioning to deliver fire onto infantry would be completely different from where you'd need to station them as AA, you are still forcing them to pick between the two fire missions which leads to a substantial benefit for the side fielding airpower who doesn't have to split the attention of their insanely limited field pieces.

                >Hitting even large targets from the air is quite difficult, and you are not hitting even large stationary formations with bombs from the air without getting into canon range
                >by the time impact fuses would be invented
                Glad to see you don't even read threads before spewing your bullshit to see how that was addressed earlier, but here's where you can start

                Blown glass is hardly a modern invention and finding two liquids which when mixed together cause bad things isn't exactly rocket science either. All it has to do is shatter on impact, which is pretty trivial. You're also overestimating the ease with which you can hit a target moving 60 to 70 mph at an unknown distance with no ability to range things. While you would be getting minute of formation level accuracy from dropping your explosives from 500 feet if you don't come to a stop, Ukraine and ISIS have shown pretty well with all their drone videos that it's still plenty effective.

                The bigger threat would be the other guy hiring birdmen of his own to fly CAP and keep you from bombing his guys to shit. If you have uncontested air control, though, you either force the enemy to avoid bunching up which means that your infantry formations and cavalry can tear through them, or form ranks and deal with the casualties as best they can.

                . Not having to have your impact fuse survive the initial launch and only requiring it to detonate in response to a physical shock makes it a trivial engineering problem and would have been easily achievable even in a pre-gunpowder era, much less one with a strong understanding of basic chemistry.

                >you have be perma-stuck on the incredibly stupid and childish idea of birds divebombing with primitive grenades straight into the teeth of enemy grapeshot.
                Quite incredible how you've managed to construct a strawman that says the exact opposite of what already was my established position earlier in the thread, but I guess the brain damage has spread to your short term memory as well as your cognitive sections. I wish you the best of luck at continuing to tilt at windmills, but maybe you should keep your attempts to gaslight the opponent into thinking they've changed positions to spoken communication instead of written where it's blatantly obvious.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You can set up cannons in a position that gives you a wide command of the battlefield, and move them up as necessary. Having to dedicate ten guns out of a hundred to deal with an aerial threat is not going to have a significant impact on any battlefield.

                Also, Impact fuses were not invented until the 1900s. I don't particularly care about why you think they should have been invented sooner. They weren't.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >losing 10% of my artillery at the start of the battle doesn't have an effect
                >people didn't manufacture a useless fuse until they had a method to deliver it, this means it's impossible

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                If the net effect of your bird people is literally just distracting a portion of the enemy artillery for a moment, they are no different from any other light skirmisher troops meant to harass and draw enemy attention.

                If people are going around developing impact fuses for the bombs dropped by bird people, then there would also be similar advancement development in anti air weapons. Puckle guns were invented in the 1700s, and you would probably see a proliferation of similar small, portable repeating guns loaded with cannister shot if birdmen ever became a significant force in field battles.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >let regular skimishers do their thing
                >couple men/officers picked off by rifle fire
                >let birdmen do their thing
                >whoops, there goes a big chunk of my main line

                >puckle gun + canister shot
                >having more then a hundred yard range at most
                >capable of firing on the move to protect your advance

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Good luck hitting anything manually throwing bombs from an unstable platform into the wind from less than 100m
                Considering buckshot is easily lethal out to a hundred yards and cannister shot is pretty much a larger, more powerful delayed release version of buckshot, it would easily be lethal out to 500 yards.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Good luck adjusting the timing on your canister to detonate anywhere near the correct height when you have to manually rangefind someone moving at 50mph without any frame of reference from the surroundings as well as leading them the appropriate amount with a weapon that is inherently inaccurate to the point that massed volley fire was still the only reliable way to hit something man sized.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The extra weight and drag from humanoid arms/legs on a bird in addition to any bombs would slow them down significantly. Cannister doesn't need a particular fuse, it'll kill anything in a large cone for about 400 yards. Can go further out if you put a delay fuze on it. And again- the whole point of using a bigger gun with a wide spread of projectiles is that you don't have to be particularly accurate, and with a puckle gun you can basically have hundreds of pre-loaded cylinders similar to revolver speedloaders, giving you a ludicrous speed of fire that would utterly mow down anything attacking from the sky.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >it'll kill anything in a large cone for about 400 yards.
                It *might* kill anything in that cone. The further away you get the lower hit probability becomes. Generally, the maximum effective range if cannister in the 19th century was around 300 yards, but was against tight infantry formations. Against a loose formation of flyers it would be less effective. Combine that with the slow loading speed of said artillery and the high movement speed of flyers, and you're only getting one shot per attack. If you wanted to use smaller quick firing guns then you could get follow up shots, but then you're reducing your effective range
                None of this is to say it couldn't be effective. Just that it doesn't invalidate the use of aerial attacks as a concept.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Human size birds would have massive wingspans. You're going to lose over half your formation per shot.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And that "cone of fire" is going to be even bigger.
                Even if I do lose 6 out of 12 of my first formation. I'll have two, three or four more coming up behind it. They won't be able to reload fast enough to stop them. This is napoleonic warfare, a few dead soldiers is an acceptable loss.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >have a battery of ten guns out of your hundred guns dedicated to blowing birds out of the sky
                >once the birds are put to flight, refocus them on the rest of the battlefield

                I feel like everyone in this thread arguing in favor of the birds has literally never read a single history book or even skimmed a wikipedia page about napoleonic era battles

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You can simply load your air defense cannons with solid shot and turn them on the enemy once the bird people inevitably get exhausted after like 3 attacks

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >position my air defense cannons
                >enemy doesn't fly into their supposed death
                >reposition them to have useful lanes of fire on the ground forces
                >get bombed

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                That's why the guns have swivel mounts and are set in a position with command over the entire battlefield. Also, my cavalry flanked, charged your rear and destroyed the bomb caches you were using to ressuply your birds.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                There's a reason level bombing was only ever used to hit factories and large troop concentrations with massive planes that could carry dozens of bombs before the invention of PGMs. That being that unguided bombs dropped in this manner are extremely inaccurate. You're not going to be hitting man size targets with your 30 lbs bomb from 600m up with your Mk. 1 Bird Eyeball, especially when you're also flying evasive maneuvers. You're essentially trying to do WW1 style bombing attacks with napoleonic era tech

                >So you're gonna roll wooden mounts alongside every infantry square?

                No, there will be gun carriages with swivel mounts on them. They can be placed wherever it's most convenient to protect the infantry from aerial attacks. This isn't a hard concept. I know it's hard for you, but that speaks more to your own capacity than the concept itself.

                >If my punt guns, which are already being awkwardly shuffled around and lost on the front aren't capable of reaching, I'll just make them into cannons

                A punt gun is already a small canon. It's not hard to set up your guns to the rear of your infantry. I'm sorry that you have zero understanding of battle tactics from these time periods, but it's not my problem that you're too stupid to have this conversation.

                >the complexity doesn't come from the size but the speed and freedom of maneuver at range

                Speed and maneuver at range doesn't matter when you're a man sized target under volley fire from muskets. You are not faster than bullets, you cannot maneuver faster than bullets, and you will need to stay still in order to drop your payload accurately in any case.

                >nogunz Weeb

                Why am I not surprised that a fricking weeb here doesn't know how guns work?

                It's not a "man size target" anything weighing close to a human is going to have a several meter wingspan. It's a target profile equivalent to roughly two or three cars next to each other

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >planes flying at 5,000 feet
                >comparable to 300 to 600 feet in aerial drift

                We see how little deviation the exceptionally light payloads that a drone drop has on the regular basis, and you somehow think that achieving minute of infantry square is a herculean task. You don't have to fly 600m up, even 200m would put you safely out of the range of anything but the heaviest artillery pieces firing shot ammo and smaller arms firing single bullets.

                The extra weight and drag from humanoid arms/legs on a bird in addition to any bombs would slow them down significantly. Cannister doesn't need a particular fuse, it'll kill anything in a large cone for about 400 yards. Can go further out if you put a delay fuze on it. And again- the whole point of using a bigger gun with a wide spread of projectiles is that you don't have to be particularly accurate, and with a puckle gun you can basically have hundreds of pre-loaded cylinders similar to revolver speedloaders, giving you a ludicrous speed of fire that would utterly mow down anything attacking from the sky.

                >pucklegun
                >largebore shot

                Please stop conflating cannons and small arms whenever it suits your fancy. Large field artillery pieces are massively expensive and this limited their adoption in anything more then relatively limited numbers which would be dramatically below those required to establish an effective AA network, whereas the pucklegun is little more then an musket gattling gun and would be forced to either use buckshot/birdshot sized projectiles with the accompanying range/hit probability those bring or it would be shooting a hail mary couple of singular projectiles.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Drones are advanced perfectly stabilized dropping platforms and most videos of drops are around 50m or less in altitude.

                Puckle guns are significantly larger bore than a musket and if you want more range you can add more powder. You don't understand how guns work.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >50m
                >CEP of a couple of feet
                >error propagates as a square of distance
                >200m CEP of a couple yards
                Still more then good enough to hit an infantry square, my mathematically challenged friend.

                >just add more powder
                >this doesn't have diminishing effects, especially with smaller shot projectiles
                >nor does this increase the pressure the gun suffers and require a thicker, more expensive barrel
                You're so smart. I can't believe that they made cannons back then to shoot far distances instead of just making 10 meter long musket. You're truly a revolutionary of our times, it's only a shame that those pesky physics keeps getting in your way.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Birds are not a perfectly stabilized dropping platform, and if you're sitting still 200m over an enemy formation that's just asking to get riddled with cannister shot from a canon. Dived bombing is more realistic, but again you'll have to get quite close and risk getting shot by puckleguns or blunderbuss

                Yes, you can make guns have longer ranges by changing their design. That's how guns work.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Drones also can't read the wind conditions nearly as easily nor are the people dropping the bombs trained and practiced mercenaries. You also are suggesting that cannons with RPM counts that are above 1 on a good day are enough to dissuade a fairly hard to hit target when they weren't enough of a threat to stop people from lining up and shooting each other. I think you could ask most generals from that time period if they'd accept losing 1 (uno) singular guy to a cannon shot everytime, and they'd be quite happy with the prospect.

                And all that improved metallurgy comes free? Golly. Why didn't they make repeating cannons back then? Could it be that making a musket was cheap because it was fairly low pressure, whereas adding more powder to the charge that you suggest would require a higher quality product and substantially more expense?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Drones literally do have built in sensors to read windspeed. They need to be able to read it in order to remain stable and in place. Most birds cannot hover in place, and wind tends to differ depending on altitude making even an instrument measurement inadequate.

                If you're sending only one bird at a time to avoid mass casualties, not only will you fail to have any impact on the battlefield, you are literally doing Napoleonic era warfare wrong.

                Contact fuses were not developed until the 1900s. Technology in weaponry develops based on the need. If your birdmen end up somehow effective, then anti air tech evolves to counter them.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The point isn't the tech being there or not, it's the cost. A glass vial contact fuse in a clay pot, much less a metalworked shell, is inexpensive and easy to mass produce. Making heavy artillery pieces is not, and you can see this from how precious the products were and their relatively low numbers compared to infantry and other things during the time period.

                Also, drones use an gyro-based system to do station keeping, not windspeed measurements. Please shut the frick up, or at least Google basic things if you don't know them.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Clay grenades will not create good shrapnel.

                If the tech doesn't matter then everyone gets rifles. Rifling is easy to add to guns and turns everyone into a bird sniper. You don't need heavy siege guns to shoot grapeshot, light field pieces were usually used for that

                I literally use a drone all the time for my work, they absolutely can and do measure wind speeds. It even warns you if the wind speed is unsafe. Incredibly, you have managed to once again be wrong in literally every aspect of your post.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Please Google six axis gyro or IMU and learn how the tech you use actually functions. The windspeed isn't how it does station keeping, and has no bearing except to warn morons like yourself not to fly it in the middle of a hurricane.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                My drone can and does measure wind speed, which you were claiming a bird man could do better, which it can't because computers are more precise than birds.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Drones literally do have built in sensors to read windspeed. They need to be able to read it in order to remain stable and in place.
                >need to be able to read it
                >remain stable and in place

                You are the one who's claiming that they require it to stationkeep, which is objectively not how they function. There's nothing stopping you from slapping a meteorological package on a drone, but the drones that Ukraine has been dropping bombs with are unlikely to have wasted money on that, nor are the operators trained enough to be able to guess drift from the reading even if they had it fitted.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You've literally never used a drone my dude but you're trying to explain how they totally can't tell you windspeed to someone who has. Lmao.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                homie, I've flown far more expensive toys then you will ever dream of, and you don't even understand how a drone does station keeping using an inertial system rather then trying to somehow correlate a windspeed and direction to an amount of corrective thrust. You can slap anything onto drone, but 99% don't bother with a windspeed system since it's irrelevant to their function, despite your claim that it's an essential function, and you can quite easily see the DJI drones that Ukraine prizes for bomb dropping don't come with a windspeed sensor.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You don't need a windspeed sensor you moron, you can literally just check the tilt/if the drone is moving on it's own. Incredible that you've never figured out a simple feature like that (which can easily be used to calculate wind speed if you care to write a bit of code)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Rifling is easy to add to guns and turns everyone into a bird sniper
                Depends on the tech level. In 1850? Yeah. In 1720? Hell no.
                There's a reason it took until the mid 19th century for rifles to become standard issue.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Fantastic, considering then that birds dropping rocks on people is a moronic strategy that would never work, meaning birds dropping objects would never be a viable war strategy, meaning there would be no development along those lines: therefore since impact fuzes were not invented until the year 1900, our birds are militarily useless in a field battle. Thank you for participating.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                A drone hovering at 50-100m is not the same as a bird flying fast and evasively at 200m. And flying at 200m would sure as hell not get your barn door sized bird men out of danger from lower caliber shot or massed musket fire. You're also facing something of a catch 22, because sending individual attackers would allow ground troops to focus fire and be inconsequential at best, while formations would offer a massive target eventhough you might actually hit something. Your bird people are also extremely vulnerable, because even catching a shot in the wrong place will send them faceplanting into the dirt. You don't have the luxury of laying down or leaning on something when you're hurt 200m in the air. Also, it's very handy that the defenders always stay in a neat tight square while you're bombing them instead of scattering or loosening formation when they see frickhuge birds coming at them with bombs. Also also, I think you're underestimating the physical strain required to keep something more than thrice the size of the largest birds alive today. There's a reason why most large birds on earth either spend most of their time on the ground, or in very slow gliding flight. Your bird people get at best 1 or 2 attacks before they start dropping out of the sky from exhaustion

                >position my air defense cannons
                >enemy doesn't fly into their supposed death
                >reposition them to have useful lanes of fire on the ground forces
                >get bombed

                See above point concerning exhaustion

                >50m
                >CEP of a couple of feet
                >error propagates as a square of distance
                >200m CEP of a couple yards
                Still more then good enough to hit an infantry square, my mathematically challenged friend.

                >just add more powder
                >this doesn't have diminishing effects, especially with smaller shot projectiles
                >nor does this increase the pressure the gun suffers and require a thicker, more expensive barrel
                You're so smart. I can't believe that they made cannons back then to shoot far distances instead of just making 10 meter long musket. You're truly a revolutionary of our times, it's only a shame that those pesky physics keeps getting in your way.

                At 50m the CEP of drone drops is more like a few yards, and again that's from a perfectly still platform dropping straight down. Level bombing from much higher with considerable speed is going to worsen that massively

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The enemy has to come at me in waves! They're not allowed to force my soldiers to choose between a defensive formation against a cavalry charge and a disperse formation that protects against explosives by employing two forces at once! That's cheating, and I will not be party to this discussion. In all seriousness, the ability to control the opponent's formations to that degree would be incredibly powerful, especially given that they would have the viewpoint be able to target select and engage the forces with a granularity that field artillery simply wouldn't have, and you're also underestimating the amount of damage that a even a singular birdman can do with OP's specifications. If 60lbs = 10 minutes of flight and unladen = 60, 2x10 lb would still give you a solid 30 minute flight time which is a whole lot of explosives, considering how devastating a 12lb cannon shell was.

                As to casualties, there will be some but flying even above 100m would preclude the use of bird shot and even #00 buck loaded to modern standards, which would have a very low pK given how few projectiles there are, would have a ~.3 travel time which would make leading targets extremely difficult given that you have no frame of reference for their speed, height, and direction, as well as losing 2/3s of it's energy. You also act as though being touched will send them straight down, whereas it's equally as likely that adrenaline would keep them awake enough to make a controlled landing back home unless you do major damage to one of their wings. Exhaustion is an actually good point, but OP didn't specify one way or another and those birds don't have the guaranteed calorie intake and time to train their flight muscles for heavy abuse. However, once they're up in the air, they can just catch thermals and maintain their altitude by and large while waiting to be deployed.
                http://www.ctmuzzleloaders.com/ctml_experiments/shot-ballistics/shotgunning.html

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Why does every moron in this thread think people would be used birdshot to shoot at humanoid sized bird people? They would use small field canon with grape/cannister shot.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I am going to dedicate my limited field artillery to trying to shoot grape/cannister shot at a singular person capable of moving in all 3 dimension without any ability to range them

                Because people smarter then you understand that using bigger shot means less projectiles which means a lower pK, and even people stupider then you understand that being forced to dedicate a limited resource to shooting birdmen instead of shooting the enemy's infantry is massive win for the birdmen's side since birdmen are cheaper then cannons.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Napoleonic armies fielded hundreds of pieces. I don't know where your fetish for the idea they were incredibly limite came from, especially considering your entire premise involves your bird people using WW1 era artillery fuses on their bombs.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                They also fielded hundred of thousands of men who all require protection from your ADN. It's not the absolute amount of them that mattered, it's to the amount of troops that they're required to protect.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Your entire premise relies on the idea that armies will just allow themselves to be bombed to oblivion instead of developing countermeasures, like rifling, and mass produced cheap field guns. That's not how warfare has ever worked.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                No, my premise is that the sole effective counter to airpower is airpower of your own with the limits of technology of the day meaning that ground forces are largely at their mercy. If they could have afforded rifling and mass produced field guns back then, they would have but you're ignoring the simple fact that those things were expensive, and introducing them would have required completely rewriting the doctrine and army composition of the era.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Ohhhh, I get it. You're OP and are trying to justify your moronic fantasy story you're writing about some clan of bird mercenaries going around being super awesome and winning battles all on their own fighting against other bird mercenaries. There's really no point arguing with you on this because it's clearly part of whatever wierd furry fetish fantasy you're writing.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I would kill myself if my spelling and grammar were as bad as OP.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Post pics when you do.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Ohhhh, I get it. You're OP and are trying to justify your moronic fantasy story you're writing
                Op here, that's not me. I actually am writing a fantasy story, but I'm trying to make them part of a combined arms force that's reliant on more conventional cavalry, infantry, and artillery to function properly.

                Also, I really appreciated your points about anti-air defense. I had been racking my brain on how to keep them from being overpowered and that really helped.

                I'll probably end up settling on a compromise between your position and the other guy's. That way, I can keep things realistic while also having an interesting conflict.

                I would kill myself if my spelling and grammar were as bad as OP.

                What's wrong with my spelling?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Just remember to not skimp on using them for stuff like harrying enemy logistics, and to rely more on their ability to reposition quickly in battlefield situations rather than trying to u se them as bombers. Those things will always be king on any battlefield.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                That's my intention. I'd still like to try and use their flight in interesting ways when I can, but they're basically flying light infantry.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Probably the best time to use them in a shock trooper like role would be at night, and/or during a critical point in the battle where the entire enemy force is engaged, you could also use them to capture enemy artillery and turn them on their own troops (provided they've already committed their cavalry)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Probably the best time to use them in a shock trooper like role would be at night,

                Funny you should say that. The ones I was intending to write the story about were actually bats, and a large portion of their workd building is centered around them being nocturnal. So that would fit in really well with the rest of the lore.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And yet rifles were in significant adoption early into the 1800s. Meanwhile, you are relying in 1900s tech in order to make your bombs work.

                I'm sorry, but you cannot just magically advance the technology of the setting by centuries, then go "lolll ooopsie nobody could figure out a gun that can shoot down giant birds, so now we need le epic air battles"

                Your birds are big and slow with low carrying capacity, low accuracy, low endurance and low range. They are not an airforce.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >glass vial with a binary compound is 1900s tech

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >a small piece of metal is 2000s tech

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Good thing mine was actually real.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                whoah...

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >thing owned by common man vs expensive novelty for the richest

                You're doing a great job demonstrating why one is easy to mass adopt and the other would require completely changing history.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Finding a compound that works for this purpose actually isn't as simple as you make it out to be. And manufacturing these fuzes with tech of the era would have a less than stellar safety record. Also better hope your bomb is never dropped by someone being dumb or experiences any kind of sudden shock

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Not to mention, this requires a development/history of giant bird people dropping things on people in battle. And considering just how dumb/ill thought out the concept of "giant bird to battle by drop thing on man" is... this method of bird based warfare would never even take off enough for anyone to bother specifically developing bomb fuzes for them. Why would they? It's not like it would ever be a good idea for them to use earlier bombs/fuses. And what would they be throwing otherwise, rocks? Helmets hard counter that.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Also the only saving grace of the bombing strat is that they could do at least some damage if you got exceptionally lucky and landed your tiny bomb in the middle of a formation. Good luck scoring a direct hit with a rock on man size target from 100-200m up lmao

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Op here, (not bomb guy) I actually did think out the development of warfare for one of the flying races. It starting back in their primordial era when they would pelt large predators with stones to drive them away. Then it developed into dive bombing with javelins. Then later on they started dropping fletchettes en masse as a substitute for massed archery. So their military was historically composed of low flying skirmishers armed with javelins (similar in role to the horse bound archers), high flying fletchette droppers who would fill the role normally filled by massed archery, and infantry who would be used to defend important positions on the ground. They could also drop large stones to fill the role artillery (in a role similar to ballistae and trebuchets).
                Eventually, they would incorporate gunpowder into their tactics after it became avaiable. I hadn't given much thought to them using gunpowder aside from wanting it to involve rocketry. There are other races, but they would likely have similar early development, likely only diverging around late antiquity or the medieval era.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Dropping large stones is probably not the best idea, unless they can rig up a device that multiple birds can lift at once.

                Dive bombing with darts/javelins is a good idea, just keep in mind that enemy armies will develop archery methods/tactics to try and counter this. Tandem ballistas with a weighted net stretched between them would be the first method organized armies would use to counter this, and it would just develop further from there. Decent slingers could also simulate grapeshot at close range.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Dropping large stones is probably not the best idea, unless they can rig up a device that multiple birds can lift at once

                Some of the flying species, such as the ones I gave as example earlier, are actually very large. So they can carry 30-40lb stones just fine.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                How large? Carrying a 40 pound payload is going to be a pretty tall order even for a large bird

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                NTA but Bald Eagles can fly with a significant portion of their body weight. A humanoid flier would have to have an even greater proportional strength to fly like a bird long distance due to it's sub-optimal shape.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Argentavis Magnificus size, although they have different proportions and aren't as heavy (Closer to 100 lbs rather than the 150 lbs of the Argentavis).
                The atmosphere is thicker than on earth in this fantasy world, so generating lift is a bit easier too.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Ah yes, supply wagons with gunpowder were notorious for blowing themselves up since they were all suicidal morons. It's not like you could seal in compound A during manufacturing and keep compound B in a separate barrel to be added only before use and then sealed. Only glorious modern thinkers could come up with something like that. After all, it's not like chemistry was a well understood field at that point.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Powder magazines blew up all the time.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And yet they kept using gunpowder and were able to safely enough mass produce it.

                The point isn't that they can't get into the battle, the point is that they don't have the time on station to meaningfully make use of bombs. They don't have the time to wait for a good opportunity to drop their load, so they essentially have to attack whatever they can get a bearing on first. Their military utility on the battlefield is infinitely smaller than it would be burning down the enemies hinterland. And since OPs specs are essentially magic, were dealing with a completely different setting. Unless the point is that magical beings are better than humans I guess. Also, mercenaries aren't known for their enthusiasm in taking on high casualty roles on the battlefield. And if these bird people existed in numbers large enough to reliably field large formations that can absorb significant losses, you can bet your ass that everybody else would be doing everything in their power to develop counters as quickly as possible. The reason there weren't Napoleonic era anti air weapons in our timeline is because there were no flying enemies, and there wouldn't be for another hundred years or so.
                [...]
                They kinda were pretty accident prone. And your glass fuzes will be too, as they contain chemicals that are either toxic, flammable, irritating or any combination of those. You will also find that most chemicals you could use for this postdate the rifle. And even if you figured that out ahead of schedule, you're still dealing with glass. Your military tactics shouldn't rely on your supply wagons not hitting potholes

                Elemental sodium was produced in the early 1800s and is strongly exothermic when mixed with water, and that's literally off the top of my head while not involving two toxic chemicals. Of course, accidental exposure to water would be a problem, but this is just an example of a binary compound that doesn't require handling two dangerous materials.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And will your sodium fuze reliably ignite your gunpowder when it makes just minimal contact with your water before the whole things shatters apart? Is a substance that violently burns on contact with water not a safety hazard? Also, this is in the 1800s, so your bombing tactic is a completely novel invention when gunpowder has been in use for hundreds of years. In case anyone gets the idea, you will then get maybe a few decades of use out of it before someone invents the gatling gun the swat your slow moving tank size bird men out of the sky.

                Cool, I'd love to hear ideas for a Napoleonic weapon capable of handling flying enemies, but so far everyone has just said 'muh grapeshot' without understanding how production of said cannons isn't trivial despite them being in massive demand during the era, which means that cannons alone wouldn't be a good answer without dramatically changing the way battles were fought and yet no one wants to explore even that concept. Would it mean a dramatic decrease in infantry size to reduce the amount of men you'd need to provide cover for, which would also free up more men to be put to work in the iron mines and metallurgy field to feed the demand for cannons? Would we see a transition back to more nimble militaries based around cavalry who would be hard to pin down with a bombing? Would battle lines exist at all, or would it quickly evolve to a more WWI style warfare where trenches were the name of the day to protect against the explosives spam?

                A Puckle Gun would be more than capable of hitting these bird people at 200m if we want the bird people to have even vaguely non-magic biology. You vastly underestimate the size of these bird people and the accuracy one can achieve on them. Hell, use a Puckle Gun with chain shot or some shit if you genuinely believe that anything short of a modern SPAAG is utterly incapable of hitting a tank size target moving 30 km/h at 200m. Or a volley gun of some description.

                The most important impact these birds would have is necessitating massive garrisons in the hinterland to prevent raids, because that is something they are actually good at.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The point isn't that they can't get into the battle, the point is that they don't have the time on station to meaningfully make use of bombs. They don't have the time to wait for a good opportunity to drop their load, so they essentially have to attack whatever they can get a bearing on first. Their military utility on the battlefield is infinitely smaller than it would be burning down the enemies hinterland. And since OPs specs are essentially magic, were dealing with a completely different setting. Unless the point is that magical beings are better than humans I guess. Also, mercenaries aren't known for their enthusiasm in taking on high casualty roles on the battlefield. And if these bird people existed in numbers large enough to reliably field large formations that can absorb significant losses, you can bet your ass that everybody else would be doing everything in their power to develop counters as quickly as possible. The reason there weren't Napoleonic era anti air weapons in our timeline is because there were no flying enemies, and there wouldn't be for another hundred years or so.
                [...]
                They kinda were pretty accident prone. And your glass fuzes will be too, as they contain chemicals that are either toxic, flammable, irritating or any combination of those. You will also find that most chemicals you could use for this postdate the rifle. And even if you figured that out ahead of schedule, you're still dealing with glass. Your military tactics shouldn't rely on your supply wagons not hitting potholes

                Just dumping buckets of rocks over the enemy from a thousand feet up would make assembling in anything resembling a functional formation impossible. It would slow a troops movement to a crawl, damage morale precipitously, and just wait until they start doing it to your camp at night.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >use the extreme tactical mobility of your rare mercenaries to accomplish exactly the same thing as a unit of inbred slingers
                Brilliant use of resources anon

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Slingers that could attack with complete impunity, any time day or night, would cripple any army they engaged until the fricking 20th century.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >wear a helmet

                wow, so crippling

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Feel free to demonstrate someone taking a hard blow to the head from a rock weighing three or more pounds and moving at 120MPH wearing any helmet you like and being combat capable afterwards.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                first of all, a fist sized rock is going to weigh less than 3 pounds, around 2 and a half or less.

                Second, so what you're saying is that you STILL don't understand how sloped armor works? All you're going to achieve is forcing widespread adoption of Pylos style helmet variations with a lot of padding.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >first of all, a fist sized rock is going to weigh less than 3 pounds, around 2 and a half or less.
                Lol how small are your fists

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You've never picked up a rock in your life, have you?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Complete impunity only if you fly so high that you have no realistic chance of hitting anything. If you want to hit things, you're within range of gunpowder weapons and will get fricked. Also flying is exhausting as frick and your bird men will not be available to carry out these tasks day and night, at least if you don't want them to die of heart failure on day 3. I still don't get why people in this thread insist on trying to use these very unique assets in a way that emulates what ground based units do, instead of doing the obvious thing and sending these extremely slippery units marauding around the enemy countryside, which no ground based unit can do even remotely as effectively. Any actual military commander would have sucked satans dick for a strategic scale "I win" button like that.

                Yeah, but you have loads of fliers. Its not like you have to train pilots and build planes. You literally just consprict more. You could have them work in shifts, dropping rocks from outside gunnery range all day. Then they keep doing this for weeks. Even if it only kills one or two guys, its still killing them and they can't do anything about it. The effect on morale alone would be devastating.

                That sounds like a very quick way to get your kingdom genocided by everyone else. And from the OP, they're mercenaries by nature so I wasn't working with large conscription armies here. If you're fielding them in those quantities then you're probably never fighting a non entrenched enemy again

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Complete impunity only if you fly so high that you have no realistic chance of hitting anything.
                Not really. Your ammunition might as well be free and you could dump bags of it or buckets of it, on large bodies of troops and camps. Hitting every time is completely unnecessary.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Sure, it would be a pretty bad day for that infantry formation you're targeting with two precious and relatively rare units. I'm not too sure the cavalry would be happy about charging into a formation that's currently being inaccurately bombed though. Also good luck coordinating those two attacking formations so their timing lines up enough to make this even remotely feasible.
                The damage a 12 pound shell can do comes down in large part to how good the gunners can fuse it for airburst. Field artillery of this era is also much, much more accurate than your level bombing birds could ever hope to be. The tactic you're proposing would also require the use of formations, because the birds aren't accurate enough to guarantee hits with two small bombs.
                Concerning flight time, 30 min really isn't a lot considering you need to fly from your supply depot to your station, then pick a target and attack, then fly back. Combined with the lack of fast communications, this also pretty much rules out that tactic you're proposing. We also run into the issue that OP gave stats that really aren't compatible with each other on a biomechanical level. To even fly in the first place, these things would need a wingspan in excess of 6m, at which point the dudes on the ground are firing at a tank size target at 100-200 m. They also couldn't really soar with loads, because it strains the already precarious aerodynamics of their bodies way past it's limits, and they would fly way slower than 50 mph as well. They are birds, not airplanes.
                And a giant bird flapping around like that would very quickly get exhausted from doing so. The largest birds are typically soaring birds for a reason. Unless they have some kind of magic biology, their bodies simply couldn't store and recharge the energy required in the timeframes necessary.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                [...]
                And sure, they wouldn't drop from the sky instantly when hit. But there's a very good chance that even relatively light wounds take them out of the fight. And if it catches a musket ball in the wing its curtains anyway. Not a particularly appealing proposition for mercenaries. There's also the opportunity cost associated with sending them on kamikaze runs against enemy formations, because they could be doing much more helpful things that don't have them flying into walls of lead instead

                I'm just working with what OP gave me as the conditions. However, 30 minutes at the speed listed would be more then enough to do circles around the entire battlefield, and they would be unladen on the return trip if the bombs are dropped which would make it even less taxing. There's also a balance between single guy and massive V formation that's vulnerable to grapeshot.

                You are overestimating the amount of coordination that would be required, though. The mobility of the birdforce means that it's not like only a small section would be under threat of bombing and they'd know where the birds are going. Once the birds are in the air and the general area, either enemy formations would remain clustered which would make them vulnerable to bombing or they would disperse which would be the signal for a cavalry charge. Sure, they can attempt to scramble back into a more suitable formation once the charge starts, but that's a pretty hefty amount of disruption.

                >Field artillery of this era is also much, much more accurate than your level bombing birds could ever hope to be
                Sure, but field artillery is expensive and limited, whereas the birdman, like any soldier of the era, is much more expendable and replaceable, while the relatively unique ability to deliver explosives at relatively low risk without needing anything more then the explosives themselves makes them very cost effective then a normal soldier, assuming that they're relatively populous as a race which would mean a large number of recruits to draw from and not some super unique thing which OP doesn't specify. It's not like mercenary work wasn't deadly for regular soldiers as well, and yet they continued to sign up as well.

                Yeah imagine unironically wasting these guys on frontal attacks instead of using them to blow bridges, assassinate leaders, infiltrate cities, etc. And that's even a scenario where you'd need other bird people to watch/counter that type of highly mobile action.

                But hey, moronic furry OP wants his epic fantasy battles.

                Battlefield prep is a good idea, but why the frick would you send some scrawny alien to infiltrate/assassinate instead of a human? The amount required for a messenger system is pretty low and wouldn't impede the formation of a military air force.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The point isn't that they can't get into the battle, the point is that they don't have the time on station to meaningfully make use of bombs. They don't have the time to wait for a good opportunity to drop their load, so they essentially have to attack whatever they can get a bearing on first. Their military utility on the battlefield is infinitely smaller than it would be burning down the enemies hinterland. And since OPs specs are essentially magic, were dealing with a completely different setting. Unless the point is that magical beings are better than humans I guess. Also, mercenaries aren't known for their enthusiasm in taking on high casualty roles on the battlefield. And if these bird people existed in numbers large enough to reliably field large formations that can absorb significant losses, you can bet your ass that everybody else would be doing everything in their power to develop counters as quickly as possible. The reason there weren't Napoleonic era anti air weapons in our timeline is because there were no flying enemies, and there wouldn't be for another hundred years or so.

                Ah yes, supply wagons with gunpowder were notorious for blowing themselves up since they were all suicidal morons. It's not like you could seal in compound A during manufacturing and keep compound B in a separate barrel to be added only before use and then sealed. Only glorious modern thinkers could come up with something like that. After all, it's not like chemistry was a well understood field at that point.

                They kinda were pretty accident prone. And your glass fuzes will be too, as they contain chemicals that are either toxic, flammable, irritating or any combination of those. You will also find that most chemicals you could use for this postdate the rifle. And even if you figured that out ahead of schedule, you're still dealing with glass. Your military tactics shouldn't rely on your supply wagons not hitting potholes

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Cool, I'd love to hear ideas for a Napoleonic weapon capable of handling flying enemies, but so far everyone has just said 'muh grapeshot' without understanding how production of said cannons isn't trivial despite them being in massive demand during the era, which means that cannons alone wouldn't be a good answer without dramatically changing the way battles were fought and yet no one wants to explore even that concept. Would it mean a dramatic decrease in infantry size to reduce the amount of men you'd need to provide cover for, which would also free up more men to be put to work in the iron mines and metallurgy field to feed the demand for cannons? Would we see a transition back to more nimble militaries based around cavalry who would be hard to pin down with a bombing? Would battle lines exist at all, or would it quickly evolve to a more WWI style warfare where trenches were the name of the day to protect against the explosives spam?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Also good luck coordinating those two attacking formations so their timing lines up enough to make this even remotely feasible.
                Actually that sounds pretty easy since I have units that can fly. Just have one of them sit back and watch the attack from a distance. If the enemy scatters, then he flies up into the air carrying a colored flag, signalling my cavalry to charge. If it fails, he can signal a different color which says so.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So... what any officer sitting on a hill with a spyglass and a bugeler can do?

                Wow.... le revolutionarization of warfare

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You can see a flying signaller easier than an enemy over the horizon or behind a hill.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And yet still, having an observer on a hill with a bugler is still going to be faster and more efficient

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Why not guve flyer a bugle and have him be the observer. He could move faster and more freely than anyone on horseback and would have a much better view.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Which requires your cavalry to stand by for the charge unimpeded in the very short operational window of your flyers. It also requires your cavalry to reach the enemy before he can reform ranks. The problem isn't the flyers, it's the cavalry

                >you couldn't possibly invent a contact fuse
                Just do fins and a metal rod that sparks flint up when the ground pushes on it. Reliability isn't even a big deal if it works the majority of the time. You're still dropping grenades into massed enemy formations or onto their powder magazines. Even with ancient tech you have clay pots with pitch and oil and a smouldering rope to ignite the splashed oil.

                If you're at the point where you're dropping explosives, your bird people will probably take massive casualties while attacking if they want to actually hit anything. And if you're already that inaccurate you probably want your fuses to work or else you're just wasting time and lives

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                They'd be standing by before the fliers set out. The fliers could literally sitting right next to the cavaly before the battle starts, its not like they need airfields. 30 minutes is more than enough time for a charge.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                In that case, you're essentially using two valuable units to savage one infantry formation. Not a great day for those dudes, but probably a fine trade all else being equal since those units are then missing elsewhere. In an era where entire formations are scythed down with field artillery on a regular basis, also not shockingly devastating tbh

                >Complete impunity only if you fly so high that you have no realistic chance of hitting anything.
                Not really. Your ammunition might as well be free and you could dump bags of it or buckets of it, on large bodies of troops and camps. Hitting every time is completely unnecessary.

                Ok. Build a roof you can move via carriage. And now?

                I can only say that the idea that blackpowder cannons would be able to reliably hit a bunch of fantasy creatures in flight to be unlikely. Modern small arms would force flyers to fly higher, but not high enough to make them unable to hit the ground-bound. So you'll need high caliber automatic weaponry forcing flight ceilings high enough to the point that casualties taken are no longer worth the casualties inflicted. However, it's hard to hit something in the air, even a giant formation, so you'll need to cart around a crippling amount of artillery (in such a world all artillery would be dual-purpose). And that's for a field battle. Any supply depots or supply lines would remain vulnerable unless you have an extraordinarily large amount of artillery. Indeed, a nation of flyers at any time era would be most effective behaving like interbellum theories of a strategic air force, hitting any of a wide array of vulnerable strategic points without a counter beyond marching speedily to the homeland to force a battlefield confrontation. At some technological point the introduction of flying machines and dispersed infantry would had made the entire idea of dropping bombs manually obsolete.
                1/2

                Athough biplanes would likely be vastly outnumbered in the skies, their speed would make them a terror in the skies. Operational movement would remain an option however, birdmen have no need for dragoons or paratroopers, they will have incredible tempo on a campaign. Then again, this would be a fantasy world, so you can imagine a race of surface-dwelling dwarves with an artillery piece on the roof of every home to counter any attack by flyers. All in all, I would say parity in battlefield prowess would come around an equivalent of early 19th century, certainly no later than early 20th century. It has to be remmebered that technological development would not be the same as in the real world, they would develop specifically countermeasures against flying troops. Forexample, I said that a crippling amount of artillery would be required, but that's just by our standards, for a man living in such a world it would just be a normal requirement. However, I'm not particularly impressed by the current suggested ideas about how humans would deal with intellignet fantasy flying creatures beyond simply getting their own, either as mounts or as allies/auxiliaries. And in the context of a combined arms, they would be absolutely devastating. Having to deal with a ground army and an air force requires non-synergistic and contradictory measures.

                Employment and battlefield utility comes down largely to how "fantasy" you want to make that setting. Realistically, those birds will fly rather slow, low and short especially with loads. But if you want to make it all a little more magical, there could be some fairly interesting dynamics one could come up with. Honestly a more high fantasy setting might be better suited to the premise overall, as it allows more counters to the birds than just railroading every ground based army into gearing up specifically to fight them

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Ok. Build a roof you can move via carriage. And now?
                >There's no significant advantage in forcing the enemy to build an endless series of thick mobile roofs increasing their expenses and decreasing their overland speed by at least an order of magnitude

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You already have a significant advantage from bird people, and it doesn't come from replicating common ranged units. Any flying units can frick up the enemy hinterland with little opposition, so why would you fly that asset into literally the only place where it can conceivably get hurt? But sure, you sped up the development of trench warfare I guess. And it's not like you couldn't just draw them by horse or whatever load bearing fantasy animal you come up with. Hell, you could probably do some LEGO style interlocking shields so units can quickly build and break up these roofs as required. Since you're opponents are flying, you'll spot from very far away

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >And it's not like you couldn't just draw them by horse or whatever load bearing fantasy animal you come up with. Hell, you could probably do some LEGO style interlocking shields so units can quickly build and break up these roofs as required. Since you're opponents are flying, you'll spot from very far away
                This would slow down your army by a tremendous margin, the assembly and movement of these barriers would be a massive strain. All those horses would be ones you'd otherwise be using for other purposes. More weight, more supplies, more animals, more food for the animals. You'd have to camp under them too, of course.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Literally just have guys carry shields with them. It was done for thousands of years. You can even have them build with sticks the soldier can set up so it covers him individually while kneeling

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Yeah bro just walk with your shield raised above your head at all times for the whole campaign that shouldn't slow us down at all

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Yes and to have you bird people with their massive wings and shoulder muscles not starve they will need roughly 5x the caloric intake of a regular person + whatever special kind of grooming supplies you need to keep your feathers in flying condition in the grime of a battlefield. They also can't carry as much on the march as an average soldier, so all that extra weight is also a strain on your logistics. And still, the military utility of making your enemy bring shelters is infinitely lower than attacking the hinterland and making any war against bird people a race against the strategic clock. Their strategic utility is much higher than their tactical utility, and fighting strategic objectives is much less risky. You're wasting lives and time by dive bombing with rocks

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Yes and to have you bird people with their massive wings and shoulder muscles not starve they will need roughly 5x the caloric intake of a regular person + whatever special kind of grooming supplies you need to keep your feathers in flying condition in the grime of a battlefield. They also can't carry as much on the march as an average soldier, so all that extra weight is also a strain on your logistics
                Where in the OP did it say that? This is a magical creature.
                Nevermind that the expenditure I described for the enemy would still be astronomically higher.

                >you're wasting lives and time by dive bombing with rocks
                I never suggested dive bombing I suggested remaining perfectly safe outside of range. The risk is functionally Zero.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Your enemy will probably wise up to the fact that these things have to land at some point, and come up with infiltration tactics to murder them brutally when they do. If you remain perfectly safe out of range your accuracy will be dismal, especially against an enemy that is even moderately dispersed. Long layover times between strikes will also limit battlefield utility. A bird man throwing rocks at infantry is one not torch wheat fields and industry, so it's wasted effort anyway.
                >Where in the OP did it say that?
                The fact that they have limited flight time suggests biological functions, unless you're proposing that these creatures work off a cooldown system like in a video game. The "magical creature" point also opens up more possibilities than trying to run AA fire with Napoleonic era weapons, as they will presumably not be the only magical creatures with special powers. And if they were, "magical creatures with superpowers that have no drawbacks whatsoever btfo humans" is not really a discussion worth having, or a story worth writing.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Your enemy will probably wise up to the fact that these things have to land at some point, and come up with infiltration tactics to murder them brutally when they do.
                >Your engagement tactics wont work because the enemy will teleport to your camp and win instantly
                Pretty childish idea.

                >If you remain perfectly safe out of range your accuracy will be dismal,
                Bad accuracy doesn't matter when each man is dumping buckets full of rocks on a camp.

                >especially against an enemy that is even moderately dispersed.
                >Taking away the enemy's ability to march camp or fight in anything but an extreme yet slow moving skirmish formation has no effect on their ability to make war

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >nobody has ever found and infiltrated an enemy camp, especially when its the only feasible way to touch these high values units under this doctrine

                >Bad accuracy doesn't matter when each man is dumping buckets full of rocks on a camp.
                Your birdmen will be least effective attacking military camps because you can fashion temporary roofs pretty easily. Camp entrenchment is not a novel concept

                >Taking away the enemy's ability to march camp or fight in anything but an extreme yet slow moving skirmish formation has no effect on their ability to make war
                >My birdmen will be in the air 24/7 and never break contact

                >magical creatures with superpowers that have no drawbacks whatsoever btfo humans
                This is just complaining about a tremendously broken ability with no real counter not coming pre-packaged with weaknesses to make you feel better. This is like saying "How would you use magical infantry with skin stronger than steel" and you complaining that they "have to" be really heavy and slow or else you're not having any fun talking about it.

                If you treat them like actual creatures instead of balls of magic in bird form, they do have quite significant drawbacks. You know that "human sized intelligent avian" is a perfectly achievable goal under conventional biology right? Where in the OP did it say these were magical creatures? It's a "natural" ability to fly, not a "supernatural" one. Also, this is supposed to be a fantasy story (

                >Ohhhh, I get it. You're OP and are trying to justify your moronic fantasy story you're writing
                Op here, that's not me. I actually am writing a fantasy story, but I'm trying to make them part of a combined arms force that's reliant on more conventional cavalry, infantry, and artillery to function properly.

                Also, I really appreciated your points about anti-air defense. I had been racking my brain on how to keep them from being overpowered and that really helped.

                I'll probably end up settling on a compromise between your position and the other guy's. That way, I can keep things realistic while also having an interesting conflict.

                [...]
                What's wrong with my spelling?

                ), and "my invincible bird people kill everyone, the end" isn't a very compelling story now is it?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Also, this is supposed to be a fantasy story and "my invincible bird people kill everyone, the end" isn't a very compelling story now is it?
                Not being the OP I dont actually give a shit if his story is good or not, this thread is talking about the advantage of Bird-men, which is insurmountable before the proliferation of rifles at *minimum* unless their numbers are pitifully low or you have magic of your own. If you want writing advice that's easy: Don't give any faction parity numbers of 200 pound bird men capable of flying long distances unless you want them to dominate or the other factions have magical countermeasures or Witworth Rifles.

                >nobody has ever found and infiltrated an enemy camp, especially when its the only feasible way to touch these high values units under this doctrine
                See here's the problem, I don't have to believe it's impossible to deny your bold and foolish assertion that it's some kind of probable, reliable, and effective counter. It's absolutely childish to say that "Long range flight wouldn't work because, like, the humans would just find them all and stab them when they land".

                >Your birdmen will be least effective attacking military camps because you can fashion temporary roofs pretty easily. Camp entrenchment is not a novel concept
                >Now my men have to assemble huge roofs every single night, meaning they have to spend more time at camp, less time marching, and require more resources to move over the same amount of territory.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So the birdmen in your head are magical and suffer no drawbacks whatsoever? Cool, but nobody is discussing that because there's no point to it. Why not give them magical homing fireballs and a forcefield while you're at it?
                >Long range flight wouldn't work because, like, the humans would just find them all and stab them when they land
                these mercenary birds fighting alongside non-flying species will probably not have encampments dozens of kilometers behind the front, because that would be quite the long march after a battle.
                >Now my men have to assemble huge roofs every single night
                Newsflash, Romans built much bigger fortifications every day and there weren't even any bird people.

                And while we're on the topic, this incarnation of bird people would immediately be genocided by a coalition of most other races, because their continued existence would pose an elementary threat to everybody that doesn't live in caves.

                >If you're at the point where you're dropping explosives, your bird people will probably take massive casualties while attacking if they want to actually hit anything
                The explosives and incendiary devices mean the birdmen don't need a direct hit which means they can safely bomb from further up. Plus when attacking an enemy camp/fortification/battery you can do much more damage and much more precisely than a primitive siege engine or unspotted artillery.

                Also if we give these birdmen semaphore training we can have them walk indirect artillery onto a target.

                But your ammo is no longer free, so you will eventually run out of tiny bird droppable bombs, and the birds are probably memories at that point for the above mentioned reason.

                >"my invincible bird people kill everyone, the end"
                Birdmen can only be harmed when flying low or resting. Nobody can really do anything when they're aloft since they're simply out of range of most projectiles and difficult to hit by any projectile that is in range. It really is WW1 and Spanish Civil war of "The bomber always gets through" and ground personnel really can't do much.

                Even in WW2, flak was mostly ineffective and massed bomber formations could avoid flak just by changing their direction and altitude so the computed flak would detonate on their previous course and not where they turned to.

                They have a maximum flight time of like one hour (unless we're talking about your invincibles of course) with no load, after which they will presumably need rest. So it's not like they are safe from fire even most of the time, and they probably won't fly very high under load. And if we take this to WW1 tech, their ability to fly is basically obsolete because they will run out of juice before climbing to an altitude above the ceiling of a large caliber AA gun. Your birds are also a lot more vulnerable to shell fragments than planes, and they have only a fraction of the speed. Also, the allies lost an awful lot of bombers to that "ineffective" Flak fire

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >But your ammo is no longer free,
                Nothing in warfare is free. Bird dropped bombs are worth the expense. The tech required to reliably wound a birdman doing a bombing run at only 1000ft altitude is near-modern. 1800s musket and cannon tech simply isn't going to cut it even if it could get lucky.

                >muh AA is super-effective denial zone
                AA has never had an advantage against aircraft. At best AA was relatively safe against direct attack against aircraft on account of being hard to spot camouflaged in the ground, being of limited strategic value, and limited accuracy of pre-coldwar strafing and bombing.

                The birds hold the advantage even gimped with a one hour flight time.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You're not going to be hitting anything dropping tiny bombs from 1000ft, due to wind drift alone, not to mention the inherent inaccuracy of trying to eyeball your dropzone at that altitude. Also, there are no impact fuzes in the 1800s, so your bombs will have to wait a little longer.

                >muh AA is super-effective denial zone
                Where did I say that? And planes can actually take a few shell fragments if push comes to shove. Birds can't. I don't know about you, but if the matchup is a battery of 88s vs a flock of birds, my money is on the 88s. Your birds also don't have 2.5 ton bomb loads and 8 hours of flight time. If you genuinely believe that bird dropping mortar shells from extreme altitude are a genuine threat to WW2 tech you have no idea what you're talking about. Although discussing this with you is kinda pointless, since your invincible magical birds aren't the point of the thread and aren't worth arguing about. Yeah, if you give them unlimited exclusive superpowers they're gonna be OP. You can sleep easier now I guess

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                1000ft is only 304 meters. That's a high hit rate with iron signs against a static target using a WW1 rifle. Dropping a grenade with a 3-meter diameter radius onto a dense area target is always worth it.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Dense area targets in WW1? How will your birds deal with machine guns at 300m altitude? Because the machine gun predates the contact fuse, and thereby the aerial bomb, by several decades

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Impact fuses date back to the civil war.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And the first machinegun dates back to the 1700s

                Your point?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I really wouldn't count a puckle gun as a machine gun. Maybe those volley guns, but the ones with true automatic fire capability were too impractical for widespread use.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                My point is that early versions of them existed wayy before early versions of contact fuses. Gatling guns themselves were used in the american civil war, so at a bare minimum any birds with contact fuze bombs are getting shot up by gatling guns.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Oh yeah I agree with that, I'm just saying machine guns and contact fuses are contemporary. Once you back to "machine guns" that existed before percussion firearms they really lose both the form and function of machine guns.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                homie, are you seriously comparing aiming a rifle with iron sights to freehand dropping a bomb while flying to get thrown around by the wind in whatever direction?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Dropping a bomb while moving into wind is not even remotely comparable to shooting with a rifle. For comparison, Stukas generally released their bombs at around 1,500 feet, after a steep dive of roughly 11,000 feet. Your birds might have some success if they replicated that. The faster you can get your bomb moving, the less chance of it getting fricked around by wind currents.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Newsflash, Romans built much bigger fortifications every day and there weren't even any bird people.
                And they would have covered ground much faster had they not, God you're thick.

                >So the birdmen in your head are magical and suffer no drawbacks whatsoever?
                Birdmen have bonuses by virtue of existing and functioning, drawbacks have to be added to the premise, they're not assumed. This is literally exactly my "skin as strong as steel" example, where someone proposes a hypothetical completely arbitrary advantage and you insist it has to be balanced out by something "because... just because okay".

                >these mercenary birds fighting alongside non-flying species will probably not have encampments dozens of kilometers behind the front, because that would be quite the long march after a battle.
                >My army will just scatter in any direction that any individual birdman flies in, bitterly sprinting after him regardless of terrain or enemy ground troop movements, in the hopes of catching him when he lands

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >And they would have covered ground much faster had they not
                It was sufficient to conquer most of the civilized world so I don't know what you're complaining about
                >Birdmen have bonuses by virtue of existing and functioning
                The birdmen you are describing are magical and aren't bound to fundamental biological limitations such a creature would have. That's why your "skin as strong as steel" example is moronic, because it's not biologically possible to achieve while retaining any sort of other functions. Being a large bird isn't an arbitrary hypothetical, it's literally a known and well studied expression of biology. I know you don't understand how things work beyond you imagining they do, but this isn't something we have to imagine.
                >My army will just scatter in any direction that any individual birdman flies in, bitterly sprinting after him regardless of terrain or enemy ground troop movements, in the hopes of catching him when he lands
                Are you mentally challenged? Do you understand the concept of scouting an enemy camp? Can you conceive of an army that does different things at the same time with independent units? Because your birdmen can scatter, but they sure as hell won't be resupplying from their camp if they fly off in a random direction trying to confuse pursuers that aren't there.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >"my invincible bird people kill everyone, the end"
                Birdmen can only be harmed when flying low or resting. Nobody can really do anything when they're aloft since they're simply out of range of most projectiles and difficult to hit by any projectile that is in range. It really is WW1 and Spanish Civil war of "The bomber always gets through" and ground personnel really can't do much.

                Even in WW2, flak was mostly ineffective and massed bomber formations could avoid flak just by changing their direction and altitude so the computed flak would detonate on their previous course and not where they turned to.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >magical creatures with superpowers that have no drawbacks whatsoever btfo humans
                This is just complaining about a tremendously broken ability with no real counter not coming pre-packaged with weaknesses to make you feel better. This is like saying "How would you use magical infantry with skin stronger than steel" and you complaining that they "have to" be really heavy and slow or else you're not having any fun talking about it.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >nobody has ever found and infiltrated an enemy camp, especially when its the only feasible way to touch these high values units under this doctrine

                >Bad accuracy doesn't matter when each man is dumping buckets full of rocks on a camp.
                Your birdmen will be least effective attacking military camps because you can fashion temporary roofs pretty easily. Camp entrenchment is not a novel concept

                >Taking away the enemy's ability to march camp or fight in anything but an extreme yet slow moving skirmish formation has no effect on their ability to make war
                >My birdmen will be in the air 24/7 and never break contact

                [...]
                If you treat them like actual creatures instead of balls of magic in bird form, they do have quite significant drawbacks. You know that "human sized intelligent avian" is a perfectly achievable goal under conventional biology right? Where in the OP did it say these were magical creatures? It's a "natural" ability to fly, not a "supernatural" one. Also, this is supposed to be a fantasy story ([...]), and "my invincible bird people kill everyone, the end" isn't a very compelling story now is it?

                Op here, the birds and most flying races in general are not magic. They use regular biology to achieve flight. I might play a little fast and loose with the physics, but I try to keep things for the most part realistic. This means anything that flies has to make concessions to do so.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Fair enough but then why did you use a humanoid flier in your image when you meant a really big bird? How big did you even want them to be?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Fair enough but then why did you use a humanoid flier in your image when you meant a really big bird?
                Well I didn't specifically mean a oversized bird. There are multiple different races of fliers, only one of which are a race of giant birds. Even then, they're a little anthropomorphized, with longer legs and a little more upright posture. The image was just the most relevant thing I could find on google.

                > How big did you even want them to be?
                The birds are around 22ft wingspan, 140-150lbs, 7ft tall. These guys are big bastards by flier standards. There are other races which would be closer to 100 pounds and 5ft tall with shorter wingspans.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Those are some heavy birdmen. I would attempt to keep their combat loads as light as possible, as carrying 1-2 grenades can make a big difference.

                Also the 1hour unladen restriction is probably underpowering the birdmen. Though even with this they could climb to several thousand feet and provide lots of useful spotting, recon, communication, and make attacks.

                Also even relatively slow 40mph birdmen are ten time faster than a walking person and four times faster than a sprinter. They're moving as fast as a horse messenger on perfect road.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Also the 1hour unladen restriction is probably underpowering the birdmen

                Well the birdmen can glide for a long time, but they generally don't work for other races. It'd be the smaller, weaker fliers that do mercenary work, or find themselves conscripted by other races. The birdmen could likely go for twice, maybe three times as long.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >If you're at the point where you're dropping explosives, your bird people will probably take massive casualties while attacking if they want to actually hit anything
                The explosives and incendiary devices mean the birdmen don't need a direct hit which means they can safely bomb from further up. Plus when attacking an enemy camp/fortification/battery you can do much more damage and much more precisely than a primitive siege engine or unspotted artillery.

                Also if we give these birdmen semaphore training we can have them walk indirect artillery onto a target.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Sure, it would be a pretty bad day for that infantry formation you're targeting with two precious and relatively rare units. I'm not too sure the cavalry would be happy about charging into a formation that's currently being inaccurately bombed though. Also good luck coordinating those two attacking formations so their timing lines up enough to make this even remotely feasible.
                The damage a 12 pound shell can do comes down in large part to how good the gunners can fuse it for airburst. Field artillery of this era is also much, much more accurate than your level bombing birds could ever hope to be. The tactic you're proposing would also require the use of formations, because the birds aren't accurate enough to guarantee hits with two small bombs.
                Concerning flight time, 30 min really isn't a lot considering you need to fly from your supply depot to your station, then pick a target and attack, then fly back. Combined with the lack of fast communications, this also pretty much rules out that tactic you're proposing. We also run into the issue that OP gave stats that really aren't compatible with each other on a biomechanical level. To even fly in the first place, these things would need a wingspan in excess of 6m, at which point the dudes on the ground are firing at a tank size target at 100-200 m. They also couldn't really soar with loads, because it strains the already precarious aerodynamics of their bodies way past it's limits, and they would fly way slower than 50 mph as well. They are birds, not airplanes.
                And a giant bird flapping around like that would very quickly get exhausted from doing so. The largest birds are typically soaring birds for a reason. Unless they have some kind of magic biology, their bodies simply couldn't store and recharge the energy required in the timeframes necessary.

                And sure, they wouldn't drop from the sky instantly when hit. But there's a very good chance that even relatively light wounds take them out of the fight. And if it catches a musket ball in the wing its curtains anyway. Not a particularly appealing proposition for mercenaries. There's also the opportunity cost associated with sending them on kamikaze runs against enemy formations, because they could be doing much more helpful things that don't have them flying into walls of lead instead

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Yeah imagine unironically wasting these guys on frontal attacks instead of using them to blow bridges, assassinate leaders, infiltrate cities, etc. And that's even a scenario where you'd need other bird people to watch/counter that type of highly mobile action.

                But hey, moronic furry OP wants his epic fantasy battles.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Planes are significantly more resistant to ground fire than unarmored bird people. The reason prox fuses were necessary is because you needed a lot of shrapnel to actually hit the target if you wanted to have any hope of killing it. If your birdie takes even one or two shell fragments, chances are they're going down

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Stop flapping wings for a split second. Loose your arrow.
            Man, that was hard. You live in a world where men had no problems shooing arrows from a galloping horse, and they didn't even have the advantage of being one beast.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >You might also try something like bombing; drop metal darts/balls/weights on the enemy.
          Based aerial flechette enthusiast

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    great for reconnaissance purposes and patrols

    also great for inducing psychotic rage in an enemy like the drone swarms in Halo 2/3

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The advantages would mostly be in their ability to rapidly reposition, so you could use them in a number of roles.

    Now, considering bows and massed archers will exist in pretty much any setting, I don't think they're going to be useful for straight up shooting it out with any enemy army.

    I'd imagine in a field battle they'd be useful in a manner similar to dragoons- a mobile unit that can quickly arrive, open fire, then retreat. Basically skirmishers meant to harass enemy flanks and threaten their positions, and then maybe engage in flanking atacks once the enemy forces are engaged.

    They could be very useful in this role- though the fact that they can fly would inherently make them vulnerable due to a lack of good armor compared to ground forces.

    So they are a useful, but not game changing tool on the battlefield, as the enemy will quickly develop weapons/tactics to help them deal with the threat, like their own light cavalry skirmishers, or projectile weapons that outrange what your flying troops can carry.

    The real way to take advantage of these guys is for disrupting logistics. Depending on how high and far they can fly, these guys can pretty much attack your enemy's supply chain and foraging parties whenever and wherever they want. You can use this to your advantage to force enemy armies to engage with you on your terms, to accept whatever battlefield you choose- because they will be incapable of countering the logistical harassment that your airforce can bring to the field.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      they'd probably be pretty fantastic archers, if not accurate, then very good vs massed troops, thanks to just the range advantage of being able to always have considerable high ground.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Absolutely not. Presumably, they have hollow bones to allow for flight in the first place. This is inherently going to limit the draw strength of their weapons. And I'm not sure how the skeletal structure of something with both wings and arms would work, but presumably there's going to be some level of compromise in terms of the functional strength and muscle mass of the arms, to allow for powerful wing muscles.

        This can be mitigated if they have crossbows, but again- crossbows are almost always used by units wearing decent helmets, with pavise shields. They'd never last in an actual shooting fight with any equivalent ground based enemy unit.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      If they're like birds and can travel hundreds of km in a day, then flying troops would have a massive logistical advantage for your own side.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I don't think it's ever going to be a realistic proposition to have them used as a substitute for supply chains. The flying units themselves will have an easier time foraging, but you'll totally kill them if you try and use them to carry food and supplies for any significant army.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          They wouldn't be use them as a supply chain substitute, they'd just be able to reposition much more easily since you don't need large numbers of vehicles and well maintained roads.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Sure, but they're only ever going to be useful as a harassing force. They'd get crushed in any engagement with enemy ground forces.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They'd have certain advantages in strategic mobility, but any march longer than a day or two would be massive pain in the ass. Supply carts don't fly, so they can only travel with what they can carry. And between armor, weapons and ammo, there's not going to be a lot of space for other supplies

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Similar way to real life dragoons - use superior mobility to reach advantageous position but fight on foot.

      Fighting from above would probably be useful only in a niche similar to light cavalry - screening, harassing and chasing but diving straight into prepared enemy formations would be suicidal.

      they'd probably be pretty fantastic archers, if not accurate, then very good vs massed troops, thanks to just the range advantage of being able to always have considerable high ground.

      Absolutely not. Presumably, they have hollow bones to allow for flight in the first place. This is inherently going to limit the draw strength of their weapons. And I'm not sure how the skeletal structure of something with both wings and arms would work, but presumably there's going to be some level of compromise in terms of the functional strength and muscle mass of the arms, to allow for powerful wing muscles.

      This can be mitigated if they have crossbows, but again- crossbows are almost always used by units wearing decent helmets, with pavise shields. They'd never last in an actual shooting fight with any equivalent ground based enemy unit.

      Spec Ops I suppose? Have them move fast, hit fast, and then GTFO before the enemy can react. They don't seem to be built for head on engagements so surprise factor is probably what they're best suited for.

      Get a mob of them, give them crossbows, 10 minutes is plenty to fly over an enemy formation (or close enough with the height advantage) and let fly. You could even go for weird directions to try and get them from behind or force them to turn around and present shields.

      You might also try something like bombing; drop metal darts/balls/weights on the enemy.

      [...]
      Just get a crossbow with a nice mechanism for converting the draw into a longer, less-intensive motion. Ratchet device or something.
      You don't need armor when your enemy can't reach out and touch you because you're a three hundred feet straight up (in addition to being a little over half their bowshot range.

      Might not be able to reload in the air, admittedly, but ten minutes ought to be plenty for say, moving to position, one shot a minute for five, and then returning to your lines.

      >Now, considering bows and massed archers will exist in pretty much any setting, I don't think they're going to be useful for straight up shooting it out with any enemy army.
      A medieval army would be completely fricked against flying humanoids lol. Bows and crossbows do not have the range to be meaningfully anti air, you can just go higher than the archer's range and drop rocks on the enemy at terminal velocity.

      Do you have any idea what a fist sized rock can do to a man at terminal velocity?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Are you familiar with the concept of shields and helmets?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Bro you really have no fricking idea what you're talking about.
          A fist sized rock at terminal velocity is going to hit like a fricking sledgehammer.
          Go put on any helmet you like and let a friend hit you as hard as he can with a sledgehammer.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >what are angled helmets
            >what is padding

            Do you think people just wore helmets for no reason of something? Also, shields. Idk why you people think dropped objects are some sort of wunderwaffen but they're really not.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              HAHAHAHAHAHA muh angled helmet makes me invincible to sledgehammers
              Go on test it out dipshit. People brained each other for thousands of years using single handed bludgeons a fraction of the size helmets be dammed, but no I'm sure you'll be fine lol.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The point of the slope is that the rock glances off rather than hitting directly. Because a rock is not a sledgehammer, it cannot be adjusted to hit flat with the helmet like a manually wielded hammer would be. Most later plate armor is also angled in similar ways to deflect projectiles.

                I don't know why this board has so many people stuck in the tard Wunderwaffen mindset, but all of human history was an arms race. If your flying bird people get made irrelevant by some sloped helmets and shields then they were never useful to begin with.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >About to be hit by a truck
                >Luckily my sloped helmet will protect me

                Dumb Black person, every countermeasure is effective *to a point* and not effective past that point, you're the one with the wonderwaffle mentality that the scale of the impact doesn't matter because "muh slope and padding".

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Do you just not understand how sloped armor works? Again... My construction hardhat is rated to protect me from heavier stuff falling at the same speed. I'm sure with a nice thick coif and a thin pointy top there would be no issue.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Go ahead, put on your hardhat or any helmet you like, and have someone hit you as hard as they can with a sledgehammer.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you don't understand how sloped armor works?

                I would suggest googling "how does sloped armor work???"

                You can thank me later

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                This is kind of like saying your oven gloves will protect you while you stick your hands into molten steel because "Dont you know how insulation works???"
                Just describing an effect that mitigates a certain degree of damage doesn't actually suggest that effect will be sufficient in a specific circumstance. Scale matters, but you've completely disregarded it in your argument.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you still don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >You think you cant handle molten steel with Oven Gloves? Do you not know how insulation works???
                Scale matters moron.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you still don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Hurr dee hurr if I repeat my dumbfrick statement it becomes right
                Autists really don't understand scale very well, do they? A blow of sufficient force will kill you no matter how sloped your fricking helmet is, dipshit.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you still don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I would encourage you to research the speed of cannon projectiles and then compare it to the speed of terminal velocity.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          A 10lb rock falling at terminal velocity is going to hit like a cannon ball.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I would encourage you to research the speed of cannon projectiles and then compare it to the speed of terminal velocity.

            Terminal velocity is 180 ft/s

            Cannonballs went around 820 ft/s

            This thread really is collecting all the nugunz morons, huh

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              So in other words, you still don't understand how sloped armor works?

              The only noguns is the gay who thinks a sloped helmet is going to save him from a fist sized rock moving at over a hundred twenty miles an hour lol.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you STILL don't understand how sloped armor works?

                If your uber fast rock hits the top of the helmet, it's only going to transfer a tiny fraction of it's force into the helmet, as it will simply glance off due to the steep angle. This same design principle was used for plate armor, which made it far more effective at shrugging off arrows and fire from early guns than the actual thickness of the armor would perform if flat.

                You, simply put- have a subzero IQ and have never shot a gun, dropped a rock, or touched a real helmet in your life.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://i.imgur.com/eBlMlxF.png

                How exactly do you imagine your rock killing someone wearing this helmet while falling in a straight down trajectory? There's no solid, flat surface to punch through, it's just going to bounce off. You'd crush more toes than skulls.

                >Angled armor is better at stopping bullets than flat armor thus if an anvil fell out of an airplane and hit you you'd be safe because you have your sloped helmet on
                Scale matters moron, that is in fact why bullets became able to penetrate body armor.
                Lets make this easier, what weight *do* you think would be required for a stone to kill a man wearing whatever fricking helmet you like at terminal velocity? I'd absolutely love to hear what number you think it is.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >compared a rock, that at most weighs 2.5 pounds to an anvil that weighs 120 pounds

                Based moron

                Scale isn't what allowed guns to penetrate armor. Speed was. Your rock has a fixed velocity it cannot surpass, and the bird carrying it also has a very limited capacity to carry weight.

                To put things into perspective- I'm don't think a musket would be able to penetrate a properly made conical helmet from the top at point blank range.

                Muskets have a muzzle energy of roughly 3,500 to 4,000 joules of force

                Your rock is going to have just over 750 joules if you're lucky. That rock is going to need to be about ten pounds to get even close to the muzzle energy of a musket, (which wouldn't penetrate the slope of a properly made helmet from the top)

                My guess is you're going to need at least a 20 pound rock to start doing any real damage through sheer kinetic force, which is far outside of the lift capacity of any bird.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Muskets have a muzzle energy of roughly 3,500 to 4,000 joules of force
                >Your rock is going to have just over 750 joules if you're lucky.
                HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

                THIS STUPID NOGUNS IS USING ENERGY TO COMPARE IMPACTS!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you STILL don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Lol this stupid homosexual thinks that you just add up energy like hit points and that's how you figure out damage!
                HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words you still don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                HAHAHAHA HE LITERALLY JUST TRIED TO ADD UP "MUH israeliteLS" LIKE VIDEO GAME HIT POINTS HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

                You have NO gun, NO idea what you're talking about, NO balls, and NO fully developed frontal lobe.
                Post your gun homosexual.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So, in other words you still don't know how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                LOL this Black person thinks terminal effects work by adding up energy values like video game hitpoints LOLOLO

                Where's your timestamp BTW?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You still don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You can keep shitting yourself until bump limit but it's not going to make "muh sloped helmet can stop infinity sledgehammers" not moronic lol.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you're a nogunz who STILL doesn't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Only homosexuals use metric lol, but regardless comparing energy between the impact of a bullet and a big rock hitting you and thinking that's representative of the actual effect is massively moronic, everyone knows that. A four inch wide rock with the energy of a musketball would do something significantly different to you than a musketball with that amount of energy, particularly if both were hitting a piece of armor first.

                >Bro you don't understand, it's impossible to design armor that can defend against 2 pound rocks dropped from up high by birds

                Lol. Lmao, even.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you're a nogunz who STILL doesn't understand how sloped armor works?

                Feel free to demonstrate anyone taking a fist sized rock to the head at 120 miles an hour wearing any helmet you like and remaining in combat ready condition.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >feel free to demonstrate this extremely specific fantasy scenario that I just made up

                So in other words, you STILL don't understand how sloped armor works? Would you like me to explain it to you?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Makes ludicrous claim about specific scenario
                >Demonstrates he doesnt even know how blunt force trauma works
                >"What you want me to prove my made up claims??? Don't you understand the principle devoid of all scale???"
                Feel free to demonstrate any comparable impact.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You do understand that when an object strikes an angled surface, it only transfers a tiny fraction of it's force to that object, right?

                Your bird rocks are inherently limited in weight, and could not reach the size of something that couldn't be mitigated by pointy helmets with lots of padding.

                >Yeah bro just walk with your shield raised above your head at all times for the whole campaign that shouldn't slow us down at all

                Or just watch for the clearly visible giant birds

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >could not reach the size of something that couldn't be mitigated by pointy helmets with lots of padding.
                What test are you basing this off of, care to share?

                >Or just watch for the clearly visible giant birds
                >Yeah bro a tiny number of enemies can bring our army to a screeching halt as we all frantically hide but this wont effect our speed or morale at all lol.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                As I said, muskets point blank won't penetrate an extremely sloped helmet from the top and their energy far exceeds that of the type of rock. What kind of damage are you imagining your rock will do? Do you think it will cave the helmet in, or will it simply cause enough blunt force trauma to the head despite not denting the helmet itself?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >As I said, muskets point blank won't penetrate an extremely sloped helmet from the top and their energy far exceeds that of the type of rock.
                If only energy was the sole determining factor of damage here. For someone dropped on their head so many times as a child you'd think you'd have a better understanding of blunt force impacts.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You do understand that energy does in fact determine the severity of a blunt force impact, right? And that having it spread out over a wider area (IE the size of a rock vs the size of musketball) is actually going to make it LESS effective at transferring that force?

                A 2 pound rock going at terminal velocity hitting an angled helmet with padding is going to transfer less than 1% of it's energy as blunt force trauma to a soldier wearing a slanted helmet with proper padding. And you could lower that even further by adding padding like animal skins on top of the helmet itself.

                Your entire premise rests on people being too stupid to develop a helmet that could withstand a small rock dropped from really high, lmao

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >A bullet delivers more blunt force trauma than a fist sized rock moving at 120mph because it has more energy
                LOL what a fricking moron. The fact that this ISNT true is why only like, ONE person in modern history has been killed by Backface Deformation whereas you can kill someone wearing armor if you beat on them with a sledgehammer. Did you know that? Out of everyone shot with slugs and magnums and everything else while wearing armor it virtually never results in a serious injury when it doesn't penetrate? Do you think it would go the same way with a fricking brick?

                >going to transfer less than 1% of it's energy as blunt force trauma to a soldier wearing a slanted helmet with proper padding
                You got a source for that extremely specific figure you pulled out of your butthole?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Good luck getting backplate deformation on ar500 plate with a sledgehammer

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Thats for Kevlar dipshit. I've only ever seen one case of someone dying of BFD through Kevlar.
                Are you suggesting it would hold up better to the sledgehammer than shotgun slugs?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                12 Ga Slugs have about 3x the energy/force behind them that a .44 magnum has, which is what IIIA is rated for. I really don't think you have any clue what you're talking about whatsoever.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                If you knew anything about Body armor you'd know that IIIA almost always stops shotgun slugs you stupid Black person.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I'm just going to assume you actually don't even know what a shotgun slug or IIIA body armor are

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qSVOZfp3R4

                I'm just going to assume you actually don't even know what a shotgun slug or IIIA body armor are

                There have been many historical cases of kevlar vests catching shotgun slugs and other things that exceed their rating, but virtually no cases of people being killed by projectiles caught by vests. There have been recorded cases of IIa vests stopping slugs, and the wearers surviving with little damage. There was even a well documented case of a 3a rated panel stopping a 7.62 round, though this is considered an extreme outlier.
                The only case I am aware of, of a death via BFD was a 45-70 slug that was somehow caught in a soft vest and pushed more than three times the NIJ standard maximum into the victim's body.

                For all the insistence of internet personalities, fifty years of records have shown that BFD of armor is not a reliable way to injure, incapacitate, or kill.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And yet upon actual tests, we see massive deformation (enough to break a cinderblock) and an actual penetration of the vest as well.

                considering sledgehammers are used to break cinder blocks, we can safely say the force transferred through a vest is aproximately the same.

                But let's not let that takes us away from the fact that you STILL don't know how sloped armor works and are coping by talking about soft body armor (Which is not sloped)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Cmon anon, who are you going to trust, objects incomparable to human bodies being damaged by internet personalities, or those lying lying statistics!
                >Also everything that breaks a cinderblock is basically the same!
                God you're frickin moronic

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you still don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Stupid homosexual, the Kevlar example shows perfectly well the principle you fail to grasp about blunt force trauma. By isolating your view to Energy only, you're ignoring basic phenomena of impacts and this illustrates it. You were the one who insisted that energy alone was the overriding factor in blunt force trauma, so I showed you a case where that was patently not true, and you waffled on about Guntuber tests with no basis in the actual real world data.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Oh wow, so the laws of physics don't apply to blunt force trauma?

                So in other words... You still don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Lol the laws of physics are what you've ignored you dumb Black person and thats why your conclusions dont match reality.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is the blunt force trauma inflicted by a glancing blow the same as the trauma inflicted by a direct hit?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Answer the question

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Answer the question.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you don't know how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I never said that glancing didn't occur, or that it made no significant difference in all possible cases, I challenged the notion it would make a significant difference in this specific case based on these specific parameters. You hid behind an abstract and shit yourself for a hundred posts in response rather than deal with the specifics of the situation. You thought that you could equate bullet and large stone impacts by measuring impact energy like a moron, and insisted that BFD was regularly injurious even though the historical record proves you wrong.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, sloped helmets with padding would be more than adequate to prevent head trauma from the small fist sized rocks dropped at terminal velocity, and you didn't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You're a stupid homosexual who has been constantly shown to have no idea what the frick he's talking about.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Does a rock glancing off a conical helmet transfer the same blunt force into the helmet as it would into a flat strike on the top of a non conical helmet?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Kek so you think answering a question with a question is clever? It just shows that you know you're wrong.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Unfortunately you don't understand how blunt force trauma works.
                Feel free to have a friend drop bricks on you from a tall building while you wear whatever type of helmet you like.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Does a rock glancing off a conical helmet transfer the same blunt force into the helmet as it would into a flat strike on the top of a non conical helmet?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?

                Aww, poor homosexual is confused how this works. I've answered your question and shown it was a stupid question, but you've been unable to answer mine.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Do you think lying about something makes it true?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Unfortunately the record of me showing your very basic failures will be set in stone till the thread is deleted, you can seethe about it till then lol.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Kek, you can't even answer a simple question. Keep coping tho

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Waaah- waaaaah I should get to ask infinity questions you cant ask any
                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?
                It really is funny to see you flounder.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Waaah- waaaaah I should get to ask infinity questions you cant ask any
                Lol, I knew you wouldnt answer I just wanted to make you look like a tool.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >sloped helmets with padding would be more than adequate to prevent head trauma from the small fist sized rocks dropped at terminal velocity
                Remember when you threw a hissy fit because I said "prove it" and you insisted it was impossible for anyone to prove this and we all just had to take your word for it? It was right before you started comparing energy values between bullets and falling rocks to try to measure blunt force trauma.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Kek, no what you did is ask for an example of a very specific size rock hitting a type of helmet that hasn't been in use for thousands of years at terminal velocity.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I offered to accept any similar impact, but then you embarrassed yourself by insisting that all you had to do was add up the energy numbers like video game hit points and bullets were interchangeable with large bludgeons.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words you STILL don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma? How come you cant answer? How come you tried to use energy alone to calculate impact forces? How come you didn't know 3a armor generally stops shotgun slugs?
                Lol, you don't know a god damned thing you cant frantically google.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Does a rock glancing off a conical helmet transfer the same blunt force into the helmet as it would into a flat strike on the top of a non conical helmet?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?
                You dont seem to know a thing about terminal Ballistics, how embarrassing.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Does a rock glancing off a conical helmet transfer the same blunt force into the helmet as it would into a flat strike on the top of a non conical helmet?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You stopped trying to give any specific information around the time you realized frantic googling wasn't winning you any points lol.
                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Does a rock glancing off a conical helmet transfer the same blunt force into the helmet as it would into a flat strike on the top of a non conical helmet?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?
                It's not a hard question, I'll accept
                >Yes (I know nothing about impact mechanics and am sticking to my original wrong answer)
                >No (The correct answer, an admission you were wrong before)
                >I don't know (The honest truth, but not that useful lol)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Does a rock glancing off a conical helmet transfer the same blunt force into the helmet as it would into a flat strike on the top of a non conical helmet?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Does a rock glancing off a conical helmet transfer the same blunt force into the helmet as it would into a flat strike on the top of a non conical helmet?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?
                You dont seem to know a thing about terminal Ballistics, how embarrassing.

                So do you two just intend to continue thir circular argument until you hit the reply limit?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I plan to keep embarrassing him by his refusal to answer my basic question about how glancing blows work

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Answer question
                >Ask a question
                >"No you cant do that I better ask again"
                Lol what a stupid gay
                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Kek you've literally never answered it, lying just makes you look worse. If you did answer it should be easy to do again.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I answered you once (but you know that already lol) but you cant answer mine. Unfortunately every time you get two replies into an exchange you end up out of your depth, so you better just keep up the smoke screening lol.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                If you answered the question then you can just copy paste it in.

                So...

                Does a rock glancing off a conical helmet transfer the same blunt force into the helmet as it would into a flat strike on the top of a non conical helmet?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                My answer was I never said glancing wasn't a significant factor in impact mechanics, but you have no evidence it's significant enough to save a man's life in this instance given these parameters. Don't be such a homosexual (Challenge: Impossible)
                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So, does a rock glancing off a conical helmet transfer the same blunt force into the helmet as it would into a flat strike on the top of a non conical helmet?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma?
                Also, how many wieners do you suck on an average week, Ballistically speaking?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Not an answer. I'll do it for you. When you hit something straight on, all of the projectile's energy goes straight into target. This results in a large reduction of either blunt force trauma or penetration depending on the type of projectile you're using

                When you hit something at a steep angle, the vast majority of your energy is not transferred into the target. This can clearly be proven by simply observing how much speed the projectile has left after deflection. It would not have that energy if it had been transferred into target. That is why sloped armor is effective. So, do you understand how sloped armor works now?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You dont seem to know a thing about terminal Ballistics, how embarrassing. Cant even answer a simple question about the role energy plays. It seems you haven't progressed at all since you said that a brick and a bullet with equal energy would only be distinguished by the stone's larger surface area.
                How embarrassing.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you still don't understand how sloped armor works?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So in other words, you still don't understand how sloped armor works?

                If only you had a single shred of evidence to show that the glancing effect would be significant enough in this specific case to save the man in the helmet.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Go try to break something by hitting it with a sledgehammer at a steep angle and get back to me chief, not my fault you've never worked an honest day's work in your life.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You dont seem to know a thing about terminal Ballistics, how terrible for you, someone who clearly wants to be able to talk about terminal Ballistics.
                Is impact energy the only, or primary, significant factor in blunt trauma? Take your time responding, really think through it (unlike before where you confidently had the wrong answer lol).

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You should tell that to tank designers, let them know terminal ballistics makes their sloped armor useless.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Again you try to substitute the principle for the specific context, you could call this one old reliable if it ever actually got you anywhere.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Brooo, terminal ballistics means deflecting projectiles actually does nothing lol for sure man

                Who cares if a rock only loses 10% of it's energy on a glancing hit on a slopes helmet? Nah man, that guy is sure to die anyway

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Scale of impact forces doesn't mat-ACK!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Oh wait, are you an actual autist who thought I was implying a sloped helmet could protect you from ANY rock? Lmao, no. But it'll protect you from anything in the range that a bird person could easily carry.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Okay sure I dont know anything about blunt force trauma
                >Sure I thought you could use Energy values to compare rocks and bullets in blunt force trauma
                >Sure I thought the biggest difference between a rock and a musket ball hitting your chest besides armor was the surface area
                >Sure I didn't know that 99% of the time people are barely hurt when shot wearing soft armor
                >Sure I don't actually know how much force specifically or as an estimate a rock would transfer against a sloped helmet
                >Sure I don't know how that compares to the forces the helmet can handle
                >Sure I have zero practical comparisons
                >Sure I have nothing to back up my assumption about the specific case at hand with the specific parameters involved
                >B-but- The helmet would just make you invincible okay! Because things glance! In Real life things glance, therefore everything glances harmlessly and safely up to a limit I'm not prepared to talk about!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Feel free to share how you imagine a fist sized rock falling straight down would hit this thing with enough force to seriously injure the wearer.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Feel free to share any practical testing data you have about how a man would fare after such an impact.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Just because test data for a rock of a certain size/velocity impacting an extremely old helmet design doesn't exist (because why would it) doesn't mean that we can't apply common sense to the problem based on how similar objects behave.

                Feel free to try and break a rock with a sledgehammer by hitting it at a similarly steep angle. You will find it nearly impossible, as your hammer will continually glance and slide off the rock without dealing any appreciable damage.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Nothing about an impact is self evident devoid of context the results of an impact are determined by the specifics of the impacts. You cant even produce evidence of a vaguely similar helmet consistently withstanding a vaguely similar impact (mostly because you thought bullets and substantially bigger-than-bullet rocks could be compared directly on an energy to energy basis lol)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >You cant even produce evidence of a vaguely similar helmet consistently withstanding a vaguely similar impact

                I know it's hard for you to understand, but people don't regularly toss rocks from hundreds of feet down at people wearing conical helmets.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Just because test data for a rock of a certain size/velocity impacting an extremely old helmet design doesn't exist (because why would it) doesn't mean that we can't apply common sense to the problem based on how similar objects behave.
                The problem is you're incredibly shaky on what even constitutes a "similar object" as you've already proven. I'd be more than happy to accept any data you have on actually similar impacts, out to a fairly wide margin of similarity. Unfortunately I don't think you have any, otherwise you would have posted it.

                >You cant even produce evidence of a vaguely similar helmet consistently withstanding a vaguely similar impact

                I know it's hard for you to understand, but people don't regularly toss rocks from hundreds of feet down at people wearing conical helmets.

                So you're just assuming, having absolutely nothing comparable, that everything would just work out the way you want it to without a shred of actual evidence to go off of.
                "Theres a slope so I just assume that will be enough in this case" literally.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >It's not that you don't own a hammer, you've literally never used one in your life. Not just that, you have such a total lack of familiarity with the application of physical force to objects that you think force transfers just as well through a glancing blow at a steep angle as it does with a direct hit.
                Hahahaha this from the dumb Black person who thought bullets and hammers would hurt the same per energy level through Kevlar.
                This dipshit's never handled a piece of fabric before apparently.

                Not about to go an do algebra for this, but the physics absolutely back what I've been saying the entire time.

                http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/duck.html

                The force of a glancing strike is significantly reduced, specifically because of the lower force transfer due to the duck retaining most of it's momentum. This is the exact same principle behind how aerodynamics works, and it's really quite baffling that someone could be so stupid to not understand such a simple concept.

                Whatever speed is left over after a glancing impact is energy that is not transferred into the target. This is simply an elemental fact of physics, but feel free to find a reason for why it doesn't apply to a helmet and a rock.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >If I just seethe and struggle and shit and piss enough I can use my imagination to warp this conversation into being about the principle of glancing blows and not about this specific blow and whether or not I have any kind of information to suggest this particular instance would be fatal, because I actually have no information to suggest an answer to that one way or another.

                The scale of a fist sized rock weighing 2.5 pounds is not sufficient enough to prevent a deflection. I'm fairly certain that if you really dug down into it, you'd need an object of similar or greater weight to the human head+helmet itself in order for the projectile to move the head instead of the head moving the projectile.

                But hey, feel free to prove how a 2.5 lb fist sized rock dropped at terminal velocity on a hardened conical steel helmet with thick padding would for some reason break all known laws of physics.

                >The scale of a fist sized rock weighing 2.5 pounds is not sufficient enough to prevent a deflection. I'm fairly certain that if you really dug down into it, you'd need an object of similar or greater weight to the human head+helmet itself in order for the projectile to move the head instead of the head moving the projectile.
                If only there was any way for you to prove that.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Feel free to try and prove that the laws of physics don't apply to a rock and helmet. I'm not really interested in doing any math because I know that the the laws of physics will be on my side based on the fact that a rock of that size and weight impacting a helmet of that shape would self evidently glance off, retaining significant velocity.

                The only reason it wouldn't would be if the falling object had significantly more mass/power behind it than the object it was hitting, which is clearly not the case for a relatively small rock moving at a relatively slow speed.

                But please, feel free to do whatever math you think proves that the laws of physics do not apply here.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So you don't know how hard of an impact the helmet could take before the man wearing it was killed, you don't even know approximately how hard of an impact the helmet could take, or even anything vaguely comparable, and you especially don't know how that mystery figure compares to the impact of a decently sized rock at 120MPH glancing off. You've just "decided" vague figures out of the ether for all of these crucial statistical values, with the same shrewd senses that lead you to so many obvious wiener ups previously.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Considering a much less severe angle was able to transform a fairly thin sheeet of metal into something capable of stopping rounds up to a .50 BMG, I think it can handle your extremely slow rock. Especially considering that type of helmet was likely designed, specifically to protect soldiers from lead/stone bullets from slings falling at a steep angle.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Boy howdy we're back to comparing blunt force transfer from bullets to heavy slow weights again! Wow!
                With an added bonus of comparing spitzerized bullets, which hunters have known for a hundred years or more deflect even more dramatically than spheres or flat fronted projectiles!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Feel free to point out the scientific principle that provides an exception in how we can calculate force transfer after impact via the difference in velocity.

                You are also ignoring the fact that we can continue to make the helmet taller and at a steeper angle until we achieve the desired result. Give the fact that we know steeper angles result in less transfer of force, there will at some point be a helmet that is steep enough to deflect the projectile without causing harm to the user.

                I'm sorry, but you still do not understand how sloped armor works.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >You are also ignoring the fact that we can continue to make the helmet taller and at a steeper angle until we achieve the desired result. Give the fact that we know steeper angles result in less transfer of force, there will at some point be a helmet that is steep enough to deflect the projectile without causing harm to the user.
                I'm sure the world will be very impressed with your army of nine foot tall Hotwheels racetracks that deflect coastal defense guns.

                >Feel free to point out the scientific principle that provides an exception in how we can calculate force transfer after impact via the difference in velocity.
                Feel free to point out the principle by which conical, soft cored bullets with different momentum transfer equivalent force per energy level somehow as compared to stones lol.
                You're still stuck on the "Kevlar should protect against cinderblocks and pistol rounds equally per energy level" thing, it's truly embarrassing for you.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >It would glance off therefore it wouldn't hurt him, regardless of any scale
                >I-I-mean Scale is important, but I cant decide at what scale!
                Try as you might you just cant manage to make this into the argument you want. You wish this could be me saying "Things dont glance" and you saying "yes they do" but instead it's me saying "You cant prove that glancing would save a man from this specific impact" and you screaming "YES THINGS GLANCE!!!!!"

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Again, the physics shows that you can measure the amount of force placed on the target based on the change in velocity on the target. We also know that the change in velocity gets lower the steeper the angle. Considering the helmets have an extremely steep angle and could hypothetically be made larger and steeper if needed- it is self evident that a helmet could easily be constructed that would deflect a rock of the specified size and velocity.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >it is self evident that a helmet could easily be constructed that would deflect a rock of the specified size and velocity.
                We're not talking about whether it would deflect, we're talking about wether it would deflect SAFELY without injurious force transfer to the wearer.
                It is not self evident, it would literally need to be proven.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It's already been proven. If the projectile is deflected at enough of an angle, the force transfer is minimal, resulting in no injury to the wearer. This is again, patently obvious as even if the current angle on the helmet is not enough, we can just increase the angle until we achieve the desired result.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >By helmets I mean theoretical helmets, I cant tell you how tall they'll need to be or how thick they'll need to be or how heavy they'll need to be or anything whatsoever about the terminal effects of stones falling at terminal velocity but just trust me that there is an ambiguous number for all of these that produces an effective army completely immune to rocks.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >But it'll protect you from anything in the range that a bird person could easily carry.
                If only there was any way for you to prove that.

                https://i.imgur.com/5HCg03g.png

                Did you even watch the video you're posting? The improvised armor in that video is at quite a bit of a wider angle than something you'd see on the type of helmet I'm talking about. Despite that, a very thin sheet of metal was able to punch well above it's weight in terms of stopping projectiles. That video clearly demonstrated the value of sloped armor. The helmet in question would be at a steeper angle and protecting against a projectile with much less overall energy spread out over a wider area than a .50 BMG.

                So in other words: you still don't understand how sloped armor works.

                >Sloped armor has an effect in principle thus it will be effective ENOUGH in this specific case because- Because I say!!!!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It's self evident. If you're ever thrown a rock or used a tool in your life, you should be able to judge how effective using blunt force on an object at an angle like that would be. You'd be able to figure out how much energy was transferred by how fast your object is travelling after impact and deflection. If your object is travelling at significant speed, after deflection, you failed to exert and significant force onto the object.

                I know this is a bit too much to handle for someone who has never actually used a sledgehammer or thrown a rock in their life, but this really is not hard to figure out for someone who has.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >The specifics of the situation are Irrelevant! I don't need to know how well this helmet would hold up against this much weight moving this fast at this angle, because in PRINCIPLE things just GLANCE therefore it just works and the guy will be fine! Stop asking for specifics specifics don't matter!!!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I really can't help you if you've been such a shutin your entire life you don't have a fundamental intuitive understanding of how glancing blows are really bad at transfer of force into an object. Go outside, buy a sledgehammer and try it for yourself.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >If you don't believe me about an impact I want to make sweeping statements about but cant possibly reference any real world data on you like, don't own a hammer, man
                lol what a homosexual you are.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It's not that you don't own a hammer, you've literally never used one in your life. Not just that, you have such a total lack of familiarity with the application of physical force to objects that you think force transfers just as well through a glancing blow at a steep angle as it does with a direct hit.

                I'm sorry, but you literally still do not understand how sloped armor works.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >It's not that you don't own a hammer, you've literally never used one in your life. Not just that, you have such a total lack of familiarity with the application of physical force to objects that you think force transfers just as well through a glancing blow at a steep angle as it does with a direct hit.
                Hahahaha this from the dumb Black person who thought bullets and hammers would hurt the same per energy level through Kevlar.
                This dipshit's never handled a piece of fabric before apparently.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                [...]

                Not about to go an do algebra for this, but the physics absolutely back what I've been saying the entire time.

                http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/duck.html

                The force of a glancing strike is significantly reduced, specifically because of the lower force transfer due to the duck retaining most of it's momentum. This is the exact same principle behind how aerodynamics works, and it's really quite baffling that someone could be so stupid to not understand such a simple concept.

                Whatever speed is left over after a glancing impact is energy that is not transferred into the target. This is simply an elemental fact of physics, but feel free to find a reason for why it doesn't apply to a helmet and a rock.

                >Scale is completely irrelevant! But only inside bounds I've secretly decided based on no real world information! If you don't think this specific impact would be safe then you just don't understand the Principle!
                Pure, untainted autism flowing out of you.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The scale of a fist sized rock weighing 2.5 pounds is not sufficient enough to prevent a deflection. I'm fairly certain that if you really dug down into it, you'd need an object of similar or greater weight to the human head+helmet itself in order for the projectile to move the head instead of the head moving the projectile.

                But hey, feel free to prove how a 2.5 lb fist sized rock dropped at terminal velocity on a hardened conical steel helmet with thick padding would for some reason break all known laws of physics.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I'm fairly certain that if you really dug down into it, you'd need an object of similar or greater weight to the human head+helmet itself in order for the projectile to move the head instead of the head moving the projectile.
                Wait this might actually be dumber than I thought, you know there could be a significant transfer of momentum in terms of wounding characteristics without repositioning the head and the helmet a significant amount, right?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                What's the velocity change of the rock after impact? If it's not significant, then there was not a large force transfer and the wearer of the armor will be unharmed.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Did you even watch the video you're posting? The improvised armor in that video is at quite a bit of a wider angle than something you'd see on the type of helmet I'm talking about. Despite that, a very thin sheet of metal was able to punch well above it's weight in terms of stopping projectiles. That video clearly demonstrated the value of sloped armor. The helmet in question would be at a steeper angle and protecting against a projectile with much less overall energy spread out over a wider area than a .50 BMG.

                So in other words: you still don't understand how sloped armor works.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You know that when you're talking about terminal Ballistics momentum can play a tremendous role in addition to energy right?
                You know that speed is part of the scale of impact forces right?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Anon, how do you think the energy of an object is calculated in joules?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Only homosexuals use metric lol, but regardless comparing energy between the impact of a bullet and a big rock hitting you and thinking that's representative of the actual effect is massively moronic, everyone knows that. A four inch wide rock with the energy of a musketball would do something significantly different to you than a musketball with that amount of energy, particularly if both were hitting a piece of armor first.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Joules is a measurement of both the mass and speed of an object you moron. Hitting sloped armor, it's going to have the exact same effect

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                How exactly do you imagine your rock killing someone wearing this helmet while falling in a straight down trajectory? There's no solid, flat surface to punch through, it's just going to bounce off. You'd crush more toes than skulls.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Terminal velocity varies based on drag and mass. Terminal velocity for a 3 inch wide, 10lb, stone sphere is 733 fps.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >3 inch wide sphere of rock
                >10 lbs
                Wtf this thread is so moronic
                If you want to autistically play with imagination and measures fricking teach yourself basic dimensional analysis and algebra and trig instead of spinning the axle off your mental hamsterwheel and insulting those who read your shit by thinking up the history of a fictional bird.
                You know a lead sphere with that diameter weighs half that weight right? It's fictional DU rock?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I don't think any of the people in this thread arguing in favor of the birds have ever picked up a rock in their lives, let alone fired a gun.

                It must be the fantasy aspect drawing in nogunz people who normally just lurk

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >3 inch wide stone
                >weighing 10 pounds

                homie are you dropping uranium? Have you never picked up a rock in your entire life?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Yeah one, maybe two guys. But you're not going to land accurate hits by dropping rocks from several hundred meters in the air. Your flyers then have to RTB and probably rest for a while. You just invented field artillery but it's much shitter and less effective. Aerial bombardment was a largely theoretical exercise before shit like bomb sights, because hitting something with an unguided projectile while moving high up in the air is very hard

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Yeah, but you have loads of fliers. Its not like you have to train pilots and build planes. You literally just consprict more. You could have them work in shifts, dropping rocks from outside gunnery range all day. Then they keep doing this for weeks. Even if it only kills one or two guys, its still killing them and they can't do anything about it. The effect on morale alone would be devastating.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Most posters agreed a pre-gunpowder army would be absolutely fricked by flying fantasy races in the first few posts, that's why now the thread quickly degenerated into a long argument about what point a gunpowder army would beat flight.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Depends entirely on how high they can fly. After a few hundred feet you're not going to hit anything reliably with smoothbores, and even circa WW period planes that were eminently hittable and killable with infantry weapons were still obviously useful.

          When you're dealing with magical birds there's absolutely nothing saying they couldn't fly a mile in the air (some birds fly over five miles up, and then you're just fricked as far as hitting them with infantry weapons, though obviously the higher they are the more niche their combat becomes because they can't accurately drop shit on you anymore.

          Still even as of Vietnam they were still using prop aircraft to drop boxes of knives on people in a niche capacity.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Doesn't know about flight arrows
        Idiot

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >The real way to take advantage of these guys is for disrupting logistics.
      Nah, use them as messenger to quickly ferry orders back and forth as well as use them for recon. If we're going by real word physics they should be pretty weak an useless at actual fighting.
      Perhaps poisoning or sabotaging enemy positions or advances as well.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You can disrupt logistics by throwing caltrops on important roads, burning down bridges, sneaking into camps and burning supplies at night. On a nice dark night, you might even be able to sneak one birdman into a fort and blow their magazine. It would, at the very least cause a ton of chaos and force the enemy to be much more paranoid at all times

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >I don't think they're going to be useful for straight up shooting it out with any enemy army.
      Depends on how high the flight is and what they can carry

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Similar way to real life dragoons - use superior mobility to reach advantageous position but fight on foot.

    Fighting from above would probably be useful only in a niche similar to light cavalry - screening, harassing and chasing but diving straight into prepared enemy formations would be suicidal.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It'd be a handy way to rapidly move large numbers of troops across less than ideal terrain. They get obliterated when dealing with any kind of modern guns.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Spec Ops I suppose? Have them move fast, hit fast, and then GTFO before the enemy can react. They don't seem to be built for head on engagements so surprise factor is probably what they're best suited for.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That's a good thought. They'd be extremely useful for night raids on enemy encampments, considering they can just bypass all the guards, and start killing people in their tents. This would probably result in some sort of secure mobile sleeping fortifications with a roof for soldiers- but this is going to significantly increase the logistical problems of the army and slow them wayyy the frick down.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They'll be invincible and incredibly destructive as archers. All they have to do is stay above the reach of arrows, which is about back-of-the-envelope 400 yards. They won't even need bows, just drop weighted darts which will be more destructive than any normal arrow. They can attack from anywhere, any time, on and off the battlefield. If not wearing sufficiently protective armor, troops will have to spend their entire time watching the skies or under a canopy of shields, which is not feasible under close combat. They'll be absolutely devastating both to morale and sheer damage in a low magic setting that somehow allows flight, even more impactful and decisive than the introduction of chariots and cavalry to mundane warfare.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      what about in the era of gunpoweder? Could an effective air defense be managed with black powder weapons?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Massed musket fire would work pretty well. Canons would quickly be developed that are on swivel mounts and fire grapeshot, and at that point they'd be completely useless.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          not useless, but definitely limited. They could still be used to harass logistics, and would make good scouts and skirmishers.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Maybe good scouts, but they'd quickly be made irrelevant by having grapeshot loaded swivel guns loaded and read with any significant logistical column. They'd be relegated stuff to stuff like raids on unprotected villages and such

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              It'd be the same as sending any other soldiers to attack convoys. You just accept that some of them will die.
              Their mobility would make them excellent light infantry. They can get in quick to exploit any openings then get out just as quick if things get too hot.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >It'd be the same as sending any other soldiers to attack convoys. You just accept that some of them will die

                I mean not really. They're not able to wear any armor. Flying actually will make it easier to spot their movements at a distance, so the enemy will always know when they're operating in an area in advance.

                As for light infantry, their wings are going to be a massive impediment when it comes to taking cover or going prone. Not to mention the danger of their feathers catching fire while they're shooting their muskets/rifles.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >They're not able to wear any armor
                that isn't very relevant to conflicts involving 18th and 19th century technology. Visual range gives them at most a few hours advance warning. It could take days or longer to be issued the proper air defense. Besides, thats still forcing the enemy to spend more arming and defending their convoys, which is a drain on logistics.

                >As for light infantry, their wings are going to be a massive impediment when it comes to taking cover or going prone.

                wings fold up when not in use. you know that, right? Thats just a couple extra inches added to their profile while on the ground.

                > Not to mention the danger of their feathers catching fire while they're shooting their muskets/rifles

                People wear clothes all the time and those don't catch fire while shooting.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >that isn't very relevant to conflicts involving 18th and 19th century technology

                Sure, but now you're at the point where anyone with a gun can accurately shoot them out of the sky. It runs into the same problem that you'd have with modern jet/hover packs. As for visual range, it's not a few hours advance, it's literally anywhere even remotely friendly territory for your enemy is going to result in people in nearby villages rushing over to tell the enemy army where they saw your fliers.

                >wings fold up when not in use

                Wings don't vanish when you fold them up. And any creature that has both arms and wings is not going to be able to fold their wings as efficiently as a bird does, due to the presence of their arms

                >People wear clothes all the time and those don't catch fire while shooting.

                Clothes are not made of the same materials as feathers. Also, if your wings catch on fire, you can't just take them off.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Ok, I'll concede modern warfare. AA is so good these days that any flying infantry would get vdv'd in any kind of contested airspace
                >Also, if your wings catch on fire, you can't just take them off
                how often does your hair catch fire when shooting? It doesn't matter if it theoretically could happen, it would be so rare that its a non-issue. This is also implying that dried processed cotton is somehow going to be less flammable than feathers attached to a living breathing animal, complete with all the perspiration and bodily oils.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I don't think you understand flammability. A big part of it is the amount of air available to the flame. Cotton burns easily because it is big and fluffy. It doesn't burn as easily when in clothing, because it's spun into dense threads and woven close together. Feathers inherently have a lot of gaps for air that make them more flammable than clothes, and any type of bird creature that is using a musket is going to have some feathery part of their body close to the part of the gun that explodes and sends sparks flying everywhere.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                ok here's a forum post where somebody tested it.
                https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/how-flammable-are-chickens.1427172/
                Feathers can catch fire if held to a heat source, but don't sustain a burn. So basically they burn like hair. I don't think this would be a major issue, especially for something intelligent enough to understand how to deal with a fire.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >So basically they burn like hair

                Hair is significantly more flammable than clothing, and there are plenty of accounts of malfunctioning/close quarters gunshots causing someone's clothes to catch on fire. Muskets make a lot of smoke, fire and sparks out of both their barrel and near the firing mechanism. You'd have to be careful to keep your feathered arms/hands away from the flame at all times, and space a good ways away from any other bird people. (this means that firing in volleys/tight formations is a no go)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It may happen, but it won't be nearly common enough to invalidate the use of musketry. 99% of the time when a spark lands on something it just goes out, stop acting like the 1% is the rule and not the exception.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                If you're going to have an entire company full of bird using muskets, it's going to be a problem when someone catches on fire every other volley.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                it wouldn't be every other volley. It'd be way rarer that that. Even if they do catch fire, as previously stated, the don't stay on fire. But hey, if that's not enough for you, you could cover the parts most exposed to sparks with wool clothes. Still not enough? There are plenty of ways to make materials flame moronant, I'm sure you could find a way to do it with the technology that existed then.

                Even if with all that, nothing says that these flyers feathers are that flammable. They could be like wool, and a have a chemical structure which makes them flame moronant. Or hey, they might not even have feathers. Maybe they fly using skin flaps, or maybe their wings are solid sheets of chitin like an insect's.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Just make your birds wear clothes bro
                >just have magic feathers that don't catch on fire bro

                >muh skin flaps
                >muh chitin

                Skin flaps are way more vulnerable to injury, and insectoid biology is incapable of having manipulable joints capable of using firearms

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Just make your birds wear clothes bro
                I mean if they're under your command then they can't really say no
                >just have magic feathers that don't catch on fire bro
                This is all fiction. Sentient flying animals don't exist, and are much more outlandish than feathers having a higher than usual water and nitrogen content (which is what makes wool flame moronant).

                But hey, if you're really that opposed to them using guns. Give em bows, crossbows, or even sabres. They'd make fine hussars.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Give em bows

                hollow bones

                >crossbows

                arrows fall out of the quivers when they fly

                >sabres

                hollow bones + can't wear armor

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >hollow bones + can't wear armor
                Dude, hussars don't wear armor. Plus hollow bones aren't that fragile. They're more likely to get broken bones than normal soldiers, but they're not made of porcelain.
                Also hollow bones aren't necessary for flight. Bats, for example, have solid bones.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Dude, hussars don't wear armor

                >muh bats

                Irrelevant. Even without weak hollow bones, the arms of any flying creature are going to underdeveloped just like their legs. There's only so much muscle mass they can fit on their body, and most of it's going to their wings. Your puny gay birdman is going to get raped to death by any groundchad in a 1v1

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >winged hussars
                not hussars, hussars are light cavalry armed with sabers.
                > the arms of any flying creature are going to underdeveloped just like their legs
                The legs need not be week. Birds, especially birds of prey, have quit strong legs. Arms need not be weak either. Bats have incredibly strong back muscles for their size because of the way they fly. A sentient bat creature likely would do very well bow.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >polish hussars aren't hussars

                > Birds, especially birds of prey, have quit strong legs

                Not compared to a human the don't

                >A sentient bat creature likely would do very well bow

                No, because you can't use the same muscles for both your arms and your wings moron, and arm weight will just make it harder to fly.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >polish hussars aren't hussars
                yeah, they're polish hussars. Pic related is what a hussar looks like.
                >No, because you can't use the same muscles for both your arms and your wings moron
                A bat's arms are its wings. If it just a thumb and a couple extra fingers it would be able to operate anything a human could.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >A bat's arms are its wings. If it just a thumb and a couple extra fingers it would be able to operate anything a human could.

                I don't think you understand how joints and anatomy work

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I think I do. You just add a couple extra fingers and an opposable thumb and its good to go.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Yeah bro, that's totally going to work well for wielding a sword. Great mobility, flexibility and range of motion there my dude

                polish hussars are hussars in the way a flight III Arleigh Burke is a destroyer. It's not, but people pretend they are because it evolved from one.

                >hussars aren't hussars

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussar

                Hope this clears up this misunderstanding for you. I'd suggest you take some language classes as well

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                the wikipedia article is wrong. Polish hussar is a misnomer. If you look at a hussar from literally any other country you'll see an unarmored light cavalryman with a saber.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Hussars aren't hussars

                What is it about this thread that seems to specifically attract only the lowest and stupidest subset of subhuman morons?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                ok Black person, you know what I fricking meant. Hussar = light horse with no armor. Polish Hussar = heavy horse with loads of armor. Literally everyone used unarmored hussars except the polish during the age of musketry.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Still doesn't change the fact that some hussars used armor. Perhaps try making your point without being an uneducated tard next time?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                you're just being a petty butthole for the sake of it.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                No, I'm being a correct butthole, and you're being an incorrect butthole. :v)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                ok, genuine question here. Do you get some sort of pleasure or satisfaction from being the "correct butthole"?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous
              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                what's that from?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Yes. Maybe try doing a google search next time before being so confidently wrong about something you didn't even take five seconds to look up first

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                look, you were the one that brought up polish hussars when you knew I meant hussars as they existed for the 17th, 18th, and 19th century in literally everywhere except poland.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >horsemen don't use guns
                >yes they do
                >no they don't
                >here's proof horsemen used guns
                >DUUDDDEE WHY ARE YOU SUCH AN butthole WHY DIDN'T YOU READ MY MIND TO FIND OUT THAT I MEANT SPECIFICALY 10TH CENTURY HORSEMEN WAAHHHH WAHHHH

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                look, whenever someone says hussar, they mean the guys with sabers wearing the silly outfits. When they want to refer to polish hussars they specify polish hussars.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >the most famous example of a hussar isn't a hussar, because reasons

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                forgot pic

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >hussars aren't hussars

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussar

                Hope this clears up this misunderstanding for you. I'd suggest you take some language classes as well

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                polish hussars are hussars in the way a flight III Arleigh Burke is a destroyer. It's not, but people pretend they are because it evolved from one.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You'd need gigantic and muscles wings to allow flight for anything remotely human sized, even more than actual birds because a humanoid appearance isn't ideal for aerodynamics. You just aren't going to fold up a 6-8m wingspan into a few inches of profile

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I can only say that the idea that blackpowder cannons would be able to reliably hit a bunch of fantasy creatures in flight to be unlikely. Modern small arms would force flyers to fly higher, but not high enough to make them unable to hit the ground-bound. So you'll need high caliber automatic weaponry forcing flight ceilings high enough to the point that casualties taken are no longer worth the casualties inflicted. However, it's hard to hit something in the air, even a giant formation, so you'll need to cart around a crippling amount of artillery (in such a world all artillery would be dual-purpose). And that's for a field battle. Any supply depots or supply lines would remain vulnerable unless you have an extraordinarily large amount of artillery. Indeed, a nation of flyers at any time era would be most effective behaving like interbellum theories of a strategic air force, hitting any of a wide array of vulnerable strategic points without a counter beyond marching speedily to the homeland to force a battlefield confrontation. At some technological point the introduction of flying machines and dispersed infantry would had made the entire idea of dropping bombs manually obsolete.
        1/2

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Athough biplanes would likely be vastly outnumbered in the skies, their speed would make them a terror in the skies. Operational movement would remain an option however, birdmen have no need for dragoons or paratroopers, they will have incredible tempo on a campaign. Then again, this would be a fantasy world, so you can imagine a race of surface-dwelling dwarves with an artillery piece on the roof of every home to counter any attack by flyers. All in all, I would say parity in battlefield prowess would come around an equivalent of early 19th century, certainly no later than early 20th century. It has to be remmebered that technological development would not be the same as in the real world, they would develop specifically countermeasures against flying troops. Forexample, I said that a crippling amount of artillery would be required, but that's just by our standards, for a man living in such a world it would just be a normal requirement. However, I'm not particularly impressed by the current suggested ideas about how humans would deal with intellignet fantasy flying creatures beyond simply getting their own, either as mounts or as allies/auxiliaries. And in the context of a combined arms, they would be absolutely devastating. Having to deal with a ground army and an air force requires non-synergistic and contradictory measures.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >race of surface-dwelling dwarves
            disgusting.
            Also dwarves would be relatively immune to birdmen on account of living deep underground and only needing to worry about attacks at their entrances.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Napoleonic era field battles regularly has hundreds of guns in use by both sides. Grapeshot kills in a wide cone out to over 400 yards.

          The idea that giant birds couldn't be easily countered by giant shotguns is moronic.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Really it depends on the extent of weight these auxiliaries can carry while in flight. Perfect scouts and messengers, possibly useful harassing units with javelins(ability to drop into larger formations while minimizing the risk while aiming a crossbow or bow), or should there be lighter infantry could be a good shock unit if you can drop a group of armored ones amongst a group of less equipped enemies. Perfect for also harassing baggage trains to prevent resupplying to the front line troops. Hell you can also take a mass of untrained ones and just have them pick up heavy stones and drop them amongst enemy formations and that would be good enough.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Drop flaming tar and Molotovs from higher than a bow can reach
    >Can attack any flank and penetrate defenses to attack the rear
    They're overpowered if your opponent doesn't have them.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Having birds try to drop flaming tar and molotovs is probably the worst idea I've ever heard

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >I would give birds fire arrows

        The geniuses in this thread just don't stop coming

        Look at this fool. He thinks people are suggesting the birdmen carry an open flame all the way.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          How do you imagine lighting and throwing "flaming tar" will work in midair?

          >flaming arrows

          You've watched too many movies

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Oiled quiver and some flint. They start the flame on the ground and fire from a good position. Huuuuuuuurrrrr duuuuuurrrrr!!!!

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >They start the flame on the ground

              Your flame either goes out due to wind, or the tar spills all over bird, setting in on fire. This kills the bird.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Oil flame
                >Being blown out by wind
                Better tell all the fire dancers that they're breaking physics, then.

                >Assuming wind always exists at a level strong enough to blow out flames but not considering that this would make flying a b***h as well
                Quite the sign of low intellect.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >hurrr durr dancing is the same as flying at 40 mph into headwinds of 50 mph

                I'm not sure if you've ever watched a bird before, but they're quite capable of flying into a headwind. their bodies are literally built to be aerodynamic and generate lift. What part of this basic concept are you not understanding?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I'm not sure you've ever seen a fire dancer spin some burning, rag covered logs on a rope as fast as a human can spin them. It's very fast and the flame isn't extinguished by it. There's other examples of wind proof flames I could provide, like flares and shit, but really, I know you get the point.

                Reliable flame making tools are portable. People have done it since civilisation started. Therefore it's feasible to suggest that some birdman commando can get behind enemy lines with a quiver full of oiled arrows, start a fire on the ground and launch a few.

                Hell, he could probably ignite a handful and just fly over a camp, dropping them one by one. No need for a bow. Increase the tech level and we can give them contact detonated firecracker bombs, too.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And yet in the real world, armies had to deliberately use weak bows at short ranges to reliably shoot fire arrows without the wind blowing them out.

                I'm sorry that reality and history don't align with whatever moronic fantasy you have in your head.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Anon I've got news for you. This isn't the real world, and you've ignored the fact that we have a birdman who can land close to or directly fly over targets.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >OP asks how birdmen could realistically be used to fight in a war
                >HURRRR GIV DEM DUH FIRE ARROWS

                I'm sorry you're so moronic. I'm sorry your only exposure to military history is by watching that vikings show on the history channel. You're the kind of stupid nothing can fix

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You've said you're sorry so many times today. Personally I don't feel sorry for you at all.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I would give them fire arrows and make my enemy towns regret building tents out of cotton and straw.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >I would give birds fire arrows

      The geniuses in this thread just don't stop coming

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Give them wizard hats and tell them to shit on the enemy, enlarging it to grotesquely lethal proportions before it lands on them.
    >cause of death, crushed to death in sudden shit storm

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    These fellars would be a drone's worst nightmare.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    no mention of communication? Probably not applicable in a modern setting but a person with wings can relay orders and information better than a runner in every way. In any situation where they are likely to be more vulnerable to enemy fire than a runner they can travel on foot, assuming they are anthropomorphic enough to not be impeded in this regard by their flight organs

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Can they fly faster than sound? Then probably a dumb idea, considering bugles, horns etc have been in uses as signals for a long time.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        bugles and runners served different purposes. A bugle was short range and only carried simple orders. Long complex messages, or ones sent outside of earshot needed runners.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    *beeess*

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Cross bows aren't very accurate at range. If the flying race is too high for enemy arrows to reach, they're probably also too far to hit individual ground units, even if their aim were perfect.

    Pouring out bags of lead shot high above the enemy might also be hard to land meaningful hits. A flying man-sized creature is going to have limited capacity, and the shot may become too defuse for good odds of hit as it falls.

    Maybe fire arrows? Even if they're a bit too high to hit a man, maybe they can still reliably shoot a thatched roof?

    I think I'd use them to launch hit-and-run attacks directly on the enemy leadership.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    fly way over everything and drop shit on them. lead darts, bombs, whatever.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Recon, skirmishing, harassment, basically everything that drones do already but with more utility since ptesumably you can carry more than a drone. Just give your flyers weapons like snipers, AMRs, missile launchers, etc and they'll wreck shit, until they get captured by spiders and forcibly filled to the brim with eggs

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Just using them to scout and send messages would massively increase the capabilities of any pre radio military

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    just make them fly far above the reach of hostile rangers and then drop multiple jars of piss on the enemy army. then fly back to base to restock on piss jars.

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Probably most useful as scouts, skirmishers and saboteurs. Although they will lose a lot of their utility as technology advances. Their "golden age" will probably be the pike & shot era equivalent of that universe, where they can use their superior mobility for flanking attacks with black powder weapons. The fact that they would be relatively slight of build and have limited flight time would also make armies comprised purely of them rather weak, if annoying, which might lead to the other races genociding them to preempt their usage by the enemy

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >anons don't understand physics or geometry of using a 2km ranged weapon that when fired vertically has much smaller range and the general difficulty of hitting a fast moving flying object that requires considerable lead
    Birds can easily fly up to 10,000 ft (3000m). Bows have no chance, even WW2 timed flak have difficulty and they're using rangefinders and mechanical computers to calculate aimpoint and time of flight.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Okay, so now you've flown up to 10,000 feet. What exactly are you planning to do up there? You're sure not going to be able to hit anything on the ground with any accuracy.

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Iranian Shasneed drones can barely be intercepted in 2022, and most were not intercepted
    >Yeah I'm just going to autowin with grapeshot and muskets

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Those drones cruise at aproximately 185km/hr while most birds fly at around 30-40 km/hr. It's also much easier to hit your target when you are suicide bombing it. I'm sure if you could convince a bunch of birdmen to become suicide bombers, they might be more effective.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >suicide drones sometimes can't be intercepted
      >this means they random bird people with 1800s grenades would be an effective battlefield weapon

      This thread really did attract all the morons

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Those drones cruise at aproximately 185km/hr while most birds fly at around 30-40 km/hr. It's also much easier to hit your target when you are suicide bombing it. I'm sure if you could convince a bunch of birdmen to become suicide bombers, they might be more effective.

        Whoops looks like the birdmen dropped grenades onto your massed antibridman artillery and musket formations.
        Turns out they were wearing wizard GoPros and posted videos on palantir. How embarrassing for you.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Sadly the wind picked up the grenades and blew them back into your own troops, and the only ones that did hit had their fuzes blown out by the wind. One soldier had a sore neck. Very sad!

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They can be easily intercepted and are on a regular basis. They also fly at roughly 3x the speed that your bird could and are at best half the sizer

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Drop fire bombs on enemy housing/food/supplies

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'm not particularly paying attention to the argument but I do want to say that using smug anime girls in every reply is both incredibly insufferable and nearly counts as avatar usage

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      you could go anywhere on the internet but yet you choose to come here and complain about anime on a anime cambodian pearlfishing enthusiast forum.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous
  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Pretty much it's been said already but harassing force, recon, communications. If any sort of setting/timeline allows for explosives then that's what they'll primarily use dropping grenades and firebombs to help force enemy movement that is advantagous to me and help coordinate with distant troops and take their bird eye view of the battle field to better plan attack and defense.

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    meh

  27. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Like paratroopers but sneakier. They would have greatly diminished distance they could travel in the air compared to aircraft but they'd still reasonable be capable of travelling long distances quickly and without being detected by radar systems. Land just over the horizon and defend key objectives or assault vital enemy positions from the flanks.

  28. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Dump rocks on the enemy from too high up for them to shoot at
    >Have them fly overhead and rob the enemy blind while the battle goes on
    >Messenging
    >Sabotage
    >Drop propaganda fliers on enemy cities
    >Drop caltrops in the path of an advancing army
    >Have them sneak around and set things on fire
    >Use them as scouts and sentries because their eyesight would presumably be very good
    Birdmen would be OP in pre-modern warfare

  29. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >you couldn't possibly invent a contact fuse
    Just do fins and a metal rod that sparks flint up when the ground pushes on it. Reliability isn't even a big deal if it works the majority of the time. You're still dropping grenades into massed enemy formations or onto their powder magazines. Even with ancient tech you have clay pots with pitch and oil and a smouldering rope to ignite the splashed oil.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Could do leather, oilskin or other bags of pitch and oil too to save weight. The smouldering match is simply dropped with the bag.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >brooo just get giant flying birds to light up and drop a bag of pitch and oil from 400 yards up in the sky en masse

        Nice way to deliver freshly cooked KFC directly to the enemy soldiers

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >bro just invent 1900s tech to make your bombs work
      >btw the enemy forces won't develop any new tech at all like rifling

      literal morons in this thread

  30. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They'd be tiny helicopters. Fly up fast and hit something hard. You're not supposed to fight dedicated anti air, you're supporting infantry, supporting armor. Flying javelin sounds pretty good.

  31. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You use them to raid horse lines before battle, frick up mounted troops in battle, and to land behind dismounted infantry and shoot at them, since that's where the least armored men universally end up, and pre-modern forces generally lack much in the way of reserves or c&c.

  32. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    ?t=99
    castles would make less sense. I would dig into mountains for defense

  33. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If your asking for help with writing a fantasy novel just say so op.

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