Poll: Choose your weapon!
- Thread starter King of the Sandbox
- Start date
If you're going to fight in an army, the whole unit is going to have similar kind of weapons. And BTW people, swords were the sidearms of the era: secondary weapons and status symbols. They weren't used in big battles. Halberds and spears were the most common sight, along with all sorts of oversized tin openers.
And about armour, it's much like cars. If you're going to battle, you're going to have some kind of protection. (conscription didn't exist as such, btw, but people could enlist as mercenaries, provided they had weapons) Anyway, armour is like cars: the average man-at-arms had perhaps a leather armour and chainmail(a toyota corolla), while the filthy rich lords had ornate full plate armours (a Ferrari 599). That's around 1300 AD. In 1100, a full set of ring mail was a rich man's privilege. In 1400 plate armour was relatively common, considering what it had been 100 years earlier.
And about bows and crossbows: you can't use one, unless you've been training for years. Many of the archers filling the ranks of medieval armies were hunters by profession, drawn to military in hopes of loot and plunder. The English were the first to employ full time archers as professional soldiers, in 1227 AD. The Welsh originated longbow was a deadly weapon that long rivalled the range and penetration of firearms (and so did the continental favourite, the crossbow). The point was, archery and marksmanship takes years to be useful in combat. England had a law that required every able bodied man to practise archery daily, all the way up to the 1800, when it was removed as "useless". Go figure.
The construction of medieval armies is quite simple, since feudalism is the word of the day. i.e. knights get land and the right to tax that land, in return they fight for the king. The knights form the core of the armies, (which are not standing armies, but instead summoned in the time of need) as the fighting elite, professional soldiers. They rightfully maintained their position as the elite on the battlefield for 500 years, until infantry tactics and firearms made professional mercenary armies more fitting to the kings who no longer wanted to share power with the nobles. (did you know the word "freelancer" originates from the middle ages: it meant a mounted armoured professional soldier, a knight without a lord, that is, who fought for anyone willing to pay.)
The knights had their own men-at-arms and sergeants following them and these, along with mercenaries made the auxiliary troops, the bulk of the force. Archers included. This of course is a horrid simplification and generalisation, but whatever.
To answer the rather annoying question of the topic: anyone who takes anything else than a pole arm is pretty much dead. Took a sword, you did? Good riddance to the flank guard, no shield walls there. Took a mace or an axe? Shock trooper you are, now run towards the enemy's ranks and try to make a gap before they stab you to a gurgling, well ventilated death. A bow you say? well you might survive, if you run at the right moment.
If you claim you're big and rich enough to be a horseman and wield a lance, you better have a very impressive a title and a rich family. Knights were rarely killed in battles: demanding ransom for the buggers was much more profitable. A fully armoured knight is very, very hard to kill. But swarming them and dragging them off horseback (for fucks sake, don't kill the horse, it's worth more than all the peasants who died of the plague ever made in their lives!) shouldn't be too difficult. Then overwhelm the knight and drag him off and hide. Demand ransom.
Hope he had rich family.
Profit?
And about armour, it's much like cars. If you're going to battle, you're going to have some kind of protection. (conscription didn't exist as such, btw, but people could enlist as mercenaries, provided they had weapons) Anyway, armour is like cars: the average man-at-arms had perhaps a leather armour and chainmail(a toyota corolla), while the filthy rich lords had ornate full plate armours (a Ferrari 599). That's around 1300 AD. In 1100, a full set of ring mail was a rich man's privilege. In 1400 plate armour was relatively common, considering what it had been 100 years earlier.
And about bows and crossbows: you can't use one, unless you've been training for years. Many of the archers filling the ranks of medieval armies were hunters by profession, drawn to military in hopes of loot and plunder. The English were the first to employ full time archers as professional soldiers, in 1227 AD. The Welsh originated longbow was a deadly weapon that long rivalled the range and penetration of firearms (and so did the continental favourite, the crossbow). The point was, archery and marksmanship takes years to be useful in combat. England had a law that required every able bodied man to practise archery daily, all the way up to the 1800, when it was removed as "useless". Go figure.
The construction of medieval armies is quite simple, since feudalism is the word of the day. i.e. knights get land and the right to tax that land, in return they fight for the king. The knights form the core of the armies, (which are not standing armies, but instead summoned in the time of need) as the fighting elite, professional soldiers. They rightfully maintained their position as the elite on the battlefield for 500 years, until infantry tactics and firearms made professional mercenary armies more fitting to the kings who no longer wanted to share power with the nobles. (did you know the word "freelancer" originates from the middle ages: it meant a mounted armoured professional soldier, a knight without a lord, that is, who fought for anyone willing to pay.)
The knights had their own men-at-arms and sergeants following them and these, along with mercenaries made the auxiliary troops, the bulk of the force. Archers included. This of course is a horrid simplification and generalisation, but whatever.
To answer the rather annoying question of the topic: anyone who takes anything else than a pole arm is pretty much dead. Took a sword, you did? Good riddance to the flank guard, no shield walls there. Took a mace or an axe? Shock trooper you are, now run towards the enemy's ranks and try to make a gap before they stab you to a gurgling, well ventilated death. A bow you say? well you might survive, if you run at the right moment.
If you claim you're big and rich enough to be a horseman and wield a lance, you better have a very impressive a title and a rich family. Knights were rarely killed in battles: demanding ransom for the buggers was much more profitable. A fully armoured knight is very, very hard to kill. But swarming them and dragging them off horseback (for fucks sake, don't kill the horse, it's worth more than all the peasants who died of the plague ever made in their lives!) shouldn't be too difficult. Then overwhelm the knight and drag him off and hide. Demand ransom.
Hope he had rich family.
Profit?
I'm "stuck" in medieval times, implying I have got there somehow. I would have probably got there in a time machine, so as it is obviously not working, as I am "stuck" (although it could be lost, in which case I'd find it and run away instead of getting killed for desertion) so I would make a really blunt or weird looking weapon out of the time machine which was electrified so that I could kill people in their armour without having to slice through them.
Lasers are overrated, not enough penetration, and they get reflected from targets by mirrors and even stopped by mist... MIST for gawd sake!Pararaptor said:
Newton's Laws of Impact Depth [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth] are universal, kinetic energy weapons have done us good so far as you pretty much NEED a projectile that weighs the same as the amount of material you need to displace. For example a bullet can only penetrate as deep through a human as the length of the bullet times the difference in density between.
E.g. a 1 inch long bullet will NEVER penetrate all the way through a 2 inch steel plate.
And the problem with a laser powerful enough to flash-incinerate the target (and create a destructive shock wave) is the atmosphere which interacts with a high energy laser beam making the range so incredibly short you might as well just use a gun.
Lasers are useful in space as weapons, but otherwise, they are only good for sensing like range finding, laser designating, etc.
I think any future of ranged weapons will be basically mini-Stinger missiles, auto-homing, extremely fast and burrows through thick body armour to detonate inside the centre of the target for massive damage (against the giant enemy crab, lol).
Longbow as i have some experience with it, plus I'm further away from the guy's with pointed sticks who are trying to kill me.
I'd pick a Katara:
Why? Because it's a lot easier to use than any sword (don't know if you know it but handling a sword efficiently requires A LOT of skill, and if you can't then you'll most likely get killed on the battlefield by someone who can), the speed of a Katara thrust is pretty fucking spectacular and it gets even faster the better you are at handling it.
And also: the attack is armour piercing, since a thrust with that blade with your whole bodyweight behind it will punch through even plated metal armour.
So basically: easy to use, fast, rugged design (no I wouldn't pick an ornamental type as the one on the picture, but something more durable of course) and armour piercing. A rather ideal weapon if you ask me...
Why? Because it's a lot easier to use than any sword (don't know if you know it but handling a sword efficiently requires A LOT of skill, and if you can't then you'll most likely get killed on the battlefield by someone who can), the speed of a Katara thrust is pretty fucking spectacular and it gets even faster the better you are at handling it.
And also: the attack is armour piercing, since a thrust with that blade with your whole bodyweight behind it will punch through even plated metal armour.
So basically: easy to use, fast, rugged design (no I wouldn't pick an ornamental type as the one on the picture, but something more durable of course) and armour piercing. A rather ideal weapon if you ask me...
