The Pub Discussion Board

Barbarian3165 · 2018-05-31 11:53:49

As to vehicles in Dugerra, I guess we will need to disagree. Although they might not be as convenient in a deployed fight, I can think of at least a few deployment roles.

Quick transport from a rear area to the front.

Quick set up of a base since the vehicles pre-enchanted for defense and then driven to an area to be used as housing, mess-hall, command or other mobile structures. You've already established that the inside of a carriage can be much larger then the exterior anyway. This could allow the troops to lower the amount of work they need to do once arriving in an area. It would also allow for quicker expansion of a base unless a permanent site was desired. You could even use the vehicles as troop transport in order to set up a forward base of operations.

As to dropping things on your troops using conjuring, if your going to go that route, why not use a Thor Shot on the Vrudenan capital? David could go buy a Tungsten-Steel telephone pole and have it covered in Shuttle style heat tiles. Then conjure it say 100,000 feet above the Vrudenan capital and let gravity do its work. Radiation free crater? Dead Alpha? Vrudena sues for peace? The only downside is civilian casualties, but in war shit happens.

I will of course bow to the story and how you wish to write it. I just like throwing out suggestions for people to think about.

Last edited by Barbarian3165 (2018-05-31 11:54:59)

xanbalest · 2018-06-01 02:44:43

The first main drawback one could bring to argue the concept of vehicular warfare concepts, the majority of carriages are peg drawn or horse drawn. This comes with the drawback of vehicle weight. Sooner or later, the vehicle becomes too heavy to move by pegs. Now, granted, i'm not sure about the RDIS style carriages and how much a peg team can carry, but the professor who did the creature familiarization seminars stated specifically that the teams they use always have at least two extra pegs compared to what they think they'll need, and he was referencing the school carriage in the same statement, so I assume that weight does play some sort of part in making the problem more difficult. Sure, a large enough team could carry a large team, but it would also be expected that it would slow down the transit.

As for a Rod from the Gods concept, conjuring has it's own issues, not the least of which is that you're assuming he can conjure an item that far. With the conjuring room, he could overcome the distance problem, but how does he get to that altitude? There's not a lot of air up there, so a peg wouldn't be possible. Being a ghost doesn't give him the power of flight. I remember reading a part where he was working on a potion or something to allow someone to fly, but if he got it right, 'how high' becomes the next question. Finally, David doesn't seem the type to do something like that. The fact that he'd be responsible for the deaths of all those innocents would stop him from doing it. Not to mention, how many people would stay friends with him if he did that? I imagine he'd be branded public enemy number one Dugerra wide if he did something like that. After almost seven years of trying to prove he's not one of the monsters that other people assume all demi-ghosts are, doing something like that would instantly negate all of his hard work. So no, unlikely.

Augur · 2018-06-01 04:11:54

Aeromandy+levitation? Even if you need a team of several people to do it, it´s not actually impossible as I understand Dugerras´world. Still the problem I would see is twofold. On the one hand the orbital calculations to guarantee that the rod would impact on the place you want (as the planet keeps rotating underneath the rod) not some place a few kilometers, or even half the world away although not exceedingly complex, still outside what I would think David actually would be able to without considerable study and several magical, or technological distance and such measuring devices as if you dropped the rod just over the enemy capital it most probably wouldn´t actually fall on the target you wanted (unless you dropped it from precisely the distance needed for the rod to be able to accelerate under gravity and Dugerra had the precise time to completely turn one or several times underneath till the falling rod actually impacts the ground). What would be a little more problematic is the consequent escalation of the conflict. Ok, you get your first city destroyed (for some reason no one is able to foresee such a huge event with divination), then you have several consequences:
1. You no longer have surprise on your side and if there is a known risk, it would have wizards and sorcerers watching the skies for these kinds of threats.
2. The enemy is able to follow up on the idea and do similar attacks of their own, essentially initiating global Rod of Thor (orbital impactor) war.
or
3. The whole of Dugerra unites against Callamandia and wipes it out of existence for using WMDS. Remember this would be an atrocity and a war crime.

It´s probably doable in Erics world, but I would consider it a measure of last resort and perhaps not even then. There are other arguments against this, but those are the ones that immediately pop up to my head on the subject.

Eric Storm · 2018-06-01 08:24:05

Okay, I want to tackle the most ludicrous of these suggestions first, The "Thor Shot", as outlined by Barbarian. His plan: Take a titanium telephone pole and drop it from 100,000'. Now, because all the damned calculators are in metric, I will refer to 100,000' as 30,000m. It is actually 30,408m, but we'll assume that David didn't have a tape measure to figure exact height from 20 miles away.

Now then, a typical size for a telephone pole would be .5m in diameter, and 10m tall. (There are various sizes for telephone poles. This falls within the normal range.) Such a cylinder, made from titanium, would weigh approximately 36 metric tons. Because every impact calculator I found online assumes a roughly spherical object, I have to convert our cylinder into a sphere of approximately 2.5m diameter. (This is based on the cylinder's volume of 8m^3.)

Now, we take that object, conjure it to 30,000m, and just let go. Gravity will accelerate the object at 9.8m/s^2, taking just over 78 seconds to hit the Earth, at a speed of 767.1m/s. Yes, we are ignoring air resistance for this, given the shape of the object, and the fact that air resistance just slows things down, and I don't need this to go slower to make my point.

So, our 36-ton ball of titanium slams into the city of Vruhaup Tas, digging a huge, gigantic...

well, it's pretty big...

I mean, it's not something you'd want in your neighborhood...

well, okay, really, it probably wouldn't bother you if it was...

ahem....

you wind up with a crater 20' across and 5' deep.

I hope you aimed well enough to hit the right room in the Alpha's house, otherwise you might not even wake him up...

That is, assuming that you were a good enough conjurer to lift a 36-ton object 20 miles up with no visual assistance whatsoever... and release it at the right moment to hit your target...

The reason that mass drivers... sorry, "Thor Shots"... are so effective is because they accelerate the projectile to way beyond "free fall" speed, to the tens of thousands of miles per hour range. And they use huge objects, at least hundreds of feet across.

But, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that this tactic would work. The king would never authorize it, and David would never do it. The loss of innocent life caused by this weapon makes its use... er... um... ahem....

Barbaric.

3dsmile

Now, on to the other topics mentioned:

Glidecars as quick troop transport:
Peg teams have been handling troop transport for centuries, and are just as fast as glidecars... AND can circumvent local terrain obstacles, which glidecars cannot. Yes, it is prohibited to bring a peg team within range of a battle... but try getting the glidecar there. Most battles aren't going to happen on open ground near a road. They're going to be fought from cover. The best you could hope for is that your battle occurred in a village, so you had roads to use... but now you've destroyed the mobility of the vehicle, because you can only move it in a straight line, where the road goes. Glidecars will balk at plowing through a building. Ask the guys from WWII how much fun it is to be driving through a town in a tank while someone is shooting at you.

Using mobile buildings to make a camp: Okay, the issue of the pegs necessary to move "normal" carriages for this task has already been mentioned here: it would start to get very difficult for them to do the job. However, I'm pretty sure you were continuing your assertion concerning the use of glide-vehicles to do this. And here's the problem with that:

Glide-vehicles are horrendously expensive. Consider that David, who is roughly three times richer than God*, balked at having a custom one built. Instead, he modified the one he already had, completely changing its shape.

The reason glidecars are expensive is that they are very hard to make. Then you're going to add on top of that all the necessary defensive protections and security protocols. The question quickly becomes, "Do we spend our resources on this newfangled gadget, or just buy five times as many of the old things which are 1/10 the cost?" I'm not pulling this stuff out of the blue: this is all material that's in the book series, if you care to look for it.

Further, as to the whole saving the troops the trouble of setting up: I'd suggest you go back and re-read the chapters involving David's camping trip with his little brothers, and Olissa's punishment exercise. Both of them involve self-assembling objects that require no work on the part of the user whatsoever. A wizard military camp would go from flat ground to fully operational in less than an hour. And when you're not using them, they take up a hell of a lot less space.

I'm not at all sure why you feel the need to turn wizard warfare into Army warfare, but it is both illogical, and unnecessary. The wizards "have got this," okay?

Eric Storm

* David is forcing me to tell you he's also better looking than God. Not sure how he knows that, but... *shrugs*

Augur · 2018-06-01 08:59:01

It all comes down to speed of impact. From LEO (which is much higher than the 30 km you thought about Eric, standard LEO is considered from 160 km up to 2000 km) the impact force would be the kinetic equivalent of some 30 tons of TNT, but as long as you make the right calculations you don't need to restrict yourself to low earth orbit, you could go to GEO and beyond (more than 35000 kilometers, or 22000 miles up), or use different forces to accelerate the object if you so wish. Elemandy allows for controlling electromagnetic forces, which would allow for a magically powered and controlled mass accelerator if so needed, so in essence the power of such a weapon would be limited only by the wishes and power, intelligence and knowledge of the mages performing the attack. Still, the more powerful the attack, the more it would be considered an atrocity by the rest of the Dugerran states (or as Eric so called it "barbarism").

xanbalest · 2018-06-01 12:36:35

I think both Eric and myself were going based off the difficulties of the problem of a mass driver as stated by Barbarian, rather than a true earth orbital shot. Regardless, you again come across limitations, including how the heck do you get something that big to the location. The furthest I remember seeing David conjure something was to the desk of the secretary of the office of outlawed magic, over that whole incident with the auditor or whatever. Which was, if I remember correctly, Bolmont to Senesty with mirror assistance. And it was a scroll. Maybe five pounds, if it had a bar through the middle of it. Once you can come up with a reasonable explanation for how to get an object to a location one hundred and sixty kilometers straight up using conjuring without a mirror, which David has yet to do, then your calculations can be considered reasonable, but this entire topic is basically a hypothetical exercise that has already been said to be pointless. Eric has already confirmed by two routes, this would never happen.

Augur · 2018-06-01 13:05:13

Xanbelest I do agree it´s difficult, but as I explained I do think it´s possible. Aeromandy to carry a breathable air bubble with the attack team, levitation for the conjurer, the aeromander and the levitation spell controlling mage(s). Keep the rod in the conjuring room, carry the necessary instruments (magical or technological) to measure altitude from the surface of the planet (knowing with previous calculations what height do you need to reach for the rod to actually strike the location you wish to attack). After reaching the height planned for the attack, just conjure the rod from the conjuring room to where the mages are in orbit. You can even dispense the conjurer if the mage(s) with the levitation spell is/are able to ferry it to the required height (after all it would be VERY heavy).
Still the other points would still apply as such an attack would still be an atrocity with all its political consequences. Not a good idea in my book.

Last edited by Augur (2018-06-01 13:05:56)

Jennatalia · 2018-06-01 20:00:02

That all sounds a lot more complicated than 20x as many soldiers lobbing energy balls--which I would imagine is net more effective than one super weapon team.

Edit: Considering the unfamiliarity of the Callamandian armed forces with gunpowder weapons, and the obvious superiority of those weapons against spells--see the assassination attempt demonstration-- wouldn't the Callamandian Army benefit from procuring an Earthen weapon system?

Last edited by Jennatalia (2018-06-01 20:05:48)

Eric Storm · 2018-06-01 23:34:44

Um... Augur, you are making some COLOSSAL assumptions about the supposed power of wizards.

Wizards cannot fly. There is no levitation *spell*. There are some enchantments which can be placed on objects, but not living things. None of those enchantments is going to be able to levitate more than a few hundred feet above the ground (because it simply isn't needed).. Levitation of people is achieved only through potions... and David's potions are the strongest of those. David's levitation potions would never have gone so far as to be able to move someone a mere mile above the Earth, let alone into low earth orbit. AND those potions caused orientational instability: you wouldn't have been able to DO anything while levitating, because you wouldn't be able to stabilize yourself enough to concentrate.

So, big error #1: Levitation to even LEO is not possible. How, exactly, are you getting them up to GEO? Let's say levitation's a possibility to get them to GEO. That's 22,300 miles up. The fastest we've seen anyone in the Dugerra world travel is 100mph. So.. that's 223 hours to get there, and 223 hours back, so 446 hours of strictly travel time. Let's assume a few hours to line up and perform the task, so 450 hours, or 18 days and 18 hours of total time.

Outside an atmosphere.

So... just HOW big an air bubble are you taking with you?

And let's say you CAN bring enough air... you are now in the middle of the Van Allen radiation belt. How are you planning to keep your wizards from getting fried?

Big error #2: An electromander could control enough electricity to power a "railgun", of sorts, to accelerate our mass to useful speeds: Let's throw in some numbers: A typical negative-charge lightning strike is around 30,000 amps. A big one, maybe 120,000 amps. A positive-charge lightning bolt (rare, and always more intense) carries up to 400,000 amps.

A typical railgun of the type currently in development uses a current of one million amps to accelerate its payload. So you're suggesting that an elemander could wrangle the power of some 30 typical lightning bolts into a single loop, in order to create the acceleration effect.. Oh, and this would, by the way, only add about 3000m/s to the speed. It sounds like a lot, but if you did this from 22,300 miles up, you're only adding a little over 10% to the final speed of the object. It should also be noted that the railgun normally fires a projectile weighing 7 lbs, not 36 tons, and I'm pretty sure the amount of energy needed would be consequently rather higher.

Big Error #3: You think that someone can conjure a 36 METRIC TON object into their Conjuring Room. The heaviest thing we've seen David put in his CR is some luggage... maybe 50-60 lbs. Remember, the CR is much harder than normal conjuring: this is why students wash out at this stage of their training in Conjuring, even when they can conjure objects easily from place to place. I'm pretty sure that putting 80,000 lbs into your CR would be beyond the capability of any wizard.

Big Error #4: The assumption this would make any really significant difference. Let's say that everything you posited happens. We take our 36 metric ton ball up to 22,000 miles, and we accelerate it using a railgun. It impacts the earth at a speed of nearly 30,000m/s. The crater? Less than 200' across, and less than 50' deep. You've managed, with all your effort, to take out a single city block. I hope you were dead certain of the Alpha's location...

Eric Storm

Eric Storm · 2018-06-01 23:36:22

Gunpowder weapons have to be maintained and supplied. Since this would have to be done from Earth, rather than from Dugerra, it's a logistical nightmare.

It would also be seen as a dishonorable form of combat.

Eric Storm

Augur · 2018-06-01 23:59:55

It´s your world Eric, but in no place in the books that I would remember you have ever placed such limits on levitation potions, spells, or otherwise. As for air amount I can see countless ways to solving the problem, some of them just by again using the conjuring room for storing and retrieving supplies.

And let´s remember this would be a big project, so there is no need to limit yourself to one elemander, or one wizard of any particular type. If needed you may have 30 of them. 3dsmile

You have your calculations wrong. Please use the following tools:
https://www.angio.net/personal/climb/speed.html to get impact force in joules which for the aforementioned option of 30 tons object falling from 35 km (or 35.000.000 meters).
And joules to tons of TNT
https://www.google.lt/search?ei=itoRW4D … PnHYwwizL8

Which gives a 30 ton object droping from 35 km high an impact force equivalent to 2,46 kilotons of TNT.
Use this to estimate the damage area (with groundburst):
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns): 0.69 km (1.48 km²). I´m sure this would destroy a large part of the vrudenan capital (they are much smaller than modern cities after all).

As for the rest of your arguments, it´s your world if you want to impose limitations to eliminate a particular plot option, I see no problem with that. Remember I have stated several times already that I consider such an action would be treated as an atrocity by the rest of the Dugerran governments, so it would only serve to escalate the conflict and involve all the other countries in a war against Callamandia. Another option could be simply conjuring a huge amount of primed TNT bombs all around the Vrudenan capital which could be done either by a small team physically carrying the explosives close enough to the capital, or an invisible (ghosted) David reaching the vrudenan capital and then taking the primed bombs from the conjuring room and conjuring them all around town, or surgically close to the alphas´palace, and so on. But all of these options are kind of cheating and would probably break the story you want to write, so it´s natural to impose limitations even if it´s just for "reasons" in order to write an entertaining story.

I was just speculating on the possibility of using the known elements of the Dugerran world to implement the orbital bombardment possibility using magic as suggested by Barbarian.

shadowlord · 2018-06-02 00:57:56

Augur wrote:
(knowing with previous calculations what height do you need to reach for the rod to actually strike the location you wish to attack)

What do you use for a guidance system? WW2 bombers had trouble dropping unguided bombs onto the town they were aiming at from a height of a few km...

Last edited by shadowlord (2018-06-02 01:19:55)

darthel0101 · 2018-06-02 01:26:48

Maybe a Dr Strangelove option?

Eric Storm · 2018-06-02 01:44:04

Augur wrote:
It´s your world Eric, but in no place in the books that I would remember you have ever placed such limits on levitation potions, spells, or otherwise.

I specifically discussed David attempting to create a stronger levitation potion. That he would need to do this very strongly implies that nothing else already exists, otherwise why was he wasting his time?

And let´s remember this would be a big project, so there is no need to limit yourself to one elemander, or one wizard of any particular type. If needed you may have 30 of them.

Assuming there are thirty elemanders strong enough, that you can spare for a month, and you're willing to risk your strongest personnel on a single mission with high risk and dubious reward...

You have your calculations wrong. Please use the following tools: [...]
Which gives a 30 ton object droping from 35 km high an impact force equivalent to 2,46 kilotons of TNT.
Use this to estimate the damage area (with groundburst):
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns): 0.69 km (1.48 km²). I´m sure this would destroy a large part of the vrudenan capital (they are much smaller than modern cities after all).

Those calculations are for a nuclear bomb. This is not a bomb. It is a meteorite. There would be no "groundburst". There would be an impact, and crater ejecta. There would be shock damage from the impact. It is unlikely that there would be actual heat damage as far out as half a kilometer. I used online calculators to do the math: I do not know advanced physics. I do know that you cannot take "damage done by a nuclear device of Xkt" and equate it to the same impact force from a meteorite, because one is an explosion, and the other is an impact. They WILL do different things.

This assumes the damned thing even reaches the ground. The impact effects calculator from Imperial College / Purdue University suggests that an object of that size and density traveling at 30km/s would disintegrate 122,000 feet above the ground. The frank effects on the ground would cover a circle of about 550'. Barbarian's suggestion of using the thermal tiles from the shuttle would probably not work. The shuttle's trajectory into the atmosphere is extremely shallow, to reduce this heating effect. Our bombardment penetrator would be going straight in, thus getting much hotter.

I was just speculating on the possibility of using the known elements of the Dugerran world to implement the orbital bombardment possibility using magic as suggested by Barbarian.

Known elements that would have to be at least an order of magnitude greater in power than ever shown in the book series...

Eric Storm

PS: Of course, all of this assumes that you would have any notion of where the Vrudenan Alpha was... and you have no way to get that information, as he has emplaced both ghost prevention devices, and anti-divination magic around himself... And would probably have "protected" numerous locations just for the purpose of you not knowing where he is...

Augur · 2018-06-02 02:45:48

BTW Eric, sorry to bother you, as you have already stated the next chapter would be posted late, but how late is late? Next couple of hours (as in before 23:59), or later? I´m asking as to know whether to wait for the story today, or rather go to sleep and read it tomorrow 3dsmile

Eric Storm · 2018-06-02 02:52:12

Today has been a really bad day. Keeshaba had to go to the doctor, and that visit took about an hour longer than anticipated. Then we wasted another hour in the phone store trying to get a problem with Keeshaba's phone fixed. (Did we get it fixed? Depends on how you look at it. We found out her phone is broken, and now neither of us has phone service thanks to some idiot's screwup...)

I will start proofing it now, but it's going to take a couple hours. Decide for yourself if you want to wait. I do apologize to those who are waiting. I never expected today to go like this.

Eric Storm

Augur · 2018-06-02 03:00:15

No problem Eric, there is no hurry. I just wanted to know to decide what to do. Thanks. Sorry for your problems with your phones. My own phone has been giving me headaches since I bought it, but those problems are intermitent (as in the sound subsystem freezing, so alarms, or phone calls not emitting any sound till I restart the phone), this happens once a day, or two and it has been cause of some greef, but being intermittent it´s difficult to enforce warranty, so I´m having to deal with it as it is. Expected that system upgrades would help, but haven´t seen any improvement, but I can´t justify the expense of a new phone when the current one works most of the time. Have had it for almost a year and I think I will let it reach it´s second birthday (for reference my phones usually last me some 4-5 years). Still what I meant is that I understand your frustration. Good luck.

Last edited by Augur (2018-06-02 03:06:12)

advancewar · 2018-06-02 04:03:35

Sorry for the bad day eric. And well get it wene you decide its ready and no sooner 3dsmile

(posted from the Item Information Page)

IBSwimmin · 2018-06-02 06:02:49

Spoiler free reaction

😢

(posted from the Item Information Page)

KaosKing · 2018-06-02 06:26:11

I second that spoiler free reaction.

gaianwizard · 2018-06-02 06:51:43

In all seriousness, third.

StoryJunkie · 2018-06-02 07:12:01

OK, now I am pissed at you Eric....these stories are NOT supposed to make us cry!! I'm almost 46 freaking years old and this had me in tears. 😢

ok, now that that's over....I liked the chapter (but for that one part dammit) it's interesting to see how things are developing in the war. I'm looking forward to the next chapter when you have the time to write it up and get it posted, and yes I remember, it will not be next month...take your time to let things marinate and good gravy something good better happen in year 8 to make up for this!

(posted from Chapter 12: May)

Last edited by StoryJunkie (2018-06-02 07:16:35)

StoryJunkie · 2018-06-02 07:18:56

Augur wrote:
, but I can´t justify the expense of a new phone when the current one works most of the time.

Auger, you may already know about this, look up Groupon.com in your area, they usually have good deals on cell phones, yes they are used, but most are refurbished already. and sorry for posting this here Eric, I don't have his email address....

bigfoot · 2018-06-02 07:23:35

My heart...she weeps...

darthel0101 · 2018-06-02 08:20:26

I don't like this chapter, but war is hell.

(posted from Chapter 12: May)

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