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The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

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Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#21

Post by z3phyr »

nephrite wrote: post #5
HenryKissinger wrote: post #2

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

Flying wraiths lack firepower, so they provide no real air support. Just fast transportation/communication.

They lacked physical firepower, but they had metaphysical/magical firepower. I imagine they purposefully filled gondorian soldier's mind with dread and misery using their powers (think fighter planes with capabilities of high end electronic and cyber warfare capabilities instead of traditional weapons)

If not for Gandalf using his own metaphysical powers to give hope to the soldiers, I imagine the gondorians would have become inactive with shock due to terror and dread in the airwaves.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#22

Post by krapp »

jacobush wrote: post #18
_Microft wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a bit like things rendering Enterprise's transporters inoperative just when beaming up the away-team would have been the easiest solution. Oh, and to make it less obvious, you better announce a few minutes earlier that a plasma storm is forming in the upper atmosphere.

Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" . Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.

They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail.

They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever this is even mentioned, the shields have to be re-adjusted manually.

Unauthorized people can appear on the ship, and crew can vanish from the ship, and the computer either doesn't notice, or does and never alerts anyone or activates any sort of countermeasures. The first officer can be sucked into a pocket universe and have his organs rearranged by non-Euclidean bug monsters and no one will ever know unless they happen to ask the computer where Riker is at the moment.

It's been established that transporter buffers can be used to "back up" a person, even long term (in the TNG episode "Relics," Scotty is discovered having stored himself in a transporter buffer for decades with no ill effect.)

Replicators can't do latinum and living tissue, but they work by literally converting energy into matter and assembling it into something atom by atom. At that resolution, there's no difference between anything and anything else, so there's no reason why replicators shouldn't be able to replicate anything.

The former two items, along with the holodeck (which can create sentient life on request, BTW) should guarantee that no Federation citizen ever truly ages or dies, or even ever has to exist in a physical body. The Federation should be a post-human, post-singularity society. Yet for "plot reasons," none of these glitches (like the transporters being able to clone people simply by refracting the transporter beam) are ever harnessed for their real potential.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#23

Post by pjc50 »

KineticLensman wrote: post #16
ghaff wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of military SF (and, I guess, fantasy that I've never read as much of) that wants to mostly restrict the action to ground forces. The result is that they have to either just ignore the decisive power of air support or just come up with hand-wavy explanations for why air powerisn't effective in the hypothetical scenario.

The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross includes (spoiler) an assault on the city of Leeds in the UK by a combined arms Elven battle group. The elves have Battle-tested air-land integration doctrine that sees them using their dragons in a close air support role. The elves use other magical means for ISR of the deep battle. Stross’ elves are somewhat more waffen-SS than Tolkien’s

This results in a dragon vs. RAF Tornado dogfight. He got an ex-RAF chap to consult on the technical detail too.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#24

Post by wbl »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #19
Mvhsz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just rewatched the battle scene from the movie, and the wraiths took out a few trebuchets and a decent number of soldiers on the wall. They weren't effective against soldiers under any sort of cover, but picking up and dropping soldiers on the city would be a good psychological warfare technique. Gandalf is seen riding around the city telling soldiers to return to their posts. And the communication and intelligence…

C2 Witch King: >

They are friendlies: the Witch King thinks the ghosts are reinforcements because they are flying Mordor flags. When they disembark the ruse is revealed too late.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#25

Post by b0rsuk »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #2

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

Actually the author also has a 3 part article about war elephants https://acoup.blog/2019/07/26/collections-war-elephants-part...

He is of the opinion that elephants were okay (not great) on battlefield, but awful in terms of logistics, supply usage and breeding. A horse reaches adulthood in 4 years. An elephant needs 15, and pregnancy lasts over 3 years. There are no known examples of breeding elephants. Supply-wise, you could have 1000 cavalrymen or 54 elephants. He says the main reason India widely used elephants - aside from proximity - was to show off status.

Also, don't make fun of J.R.R. Tolkien - he fought in trenches of WW1, on top of strong familiarity with medieval warfare because of all his reading.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#26

Post by Waterluvian »

"Let’s be clear on this point: ancient and medieval warfare was mostly about sieges." I also learned years ago that when medieval battles actually happened, the goal was to rout the enemy, not actually fight them and kill each other.

I find these points illuminating because it reminds me that people back in the day were not primitive idiots. There was a very sensible logic to how they waged war. Ultimately, everyone back then wanted to live comfortable long lives like we do.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#27

Post by Freak_NL »

krapp wrote: post #22
jacobush wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" . Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.

They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail. They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever…

Star Trek: TNG made a teenage me wonder why starships encountering each other always appeared to have matched their orientations.

Was there some kind of prearranged signal? A diplomatic code adhered to even by enemies? Just a general preference on all sides concerned preventing headaches and vague unheimlich feelings of discomfort? So many questions…

If I was harassing the federation I would keep my ship at an awkward angle relative to theirs at all times just to keep them on edge.

I was totally fine with the other plot holes though.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#28

Post by _Microft »

krapp wrote: post #22
jacobush wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" . Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.

They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail. They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever…

Don't forget that they do not have auto-aiming for their phasers and despite their advanced photonic torpedos, these are usually not homing either. (It might be that the Defiant's phasers, which were shooting these bolts instead of the continuous beams, were auto-aimed)

(Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved Star Trek. TNG and DS9 in particular).

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#29

Post by ghaff »

krapp wrote: post #22
jacobush wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or my favorite order never heard on the bridge of Enterprise "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" . Fine, often it would go against the ethos of what they are trying to do. But sometimes, they could have beamed home the away team and proceeded to rain fiery death from above with photon torpedoes or whatever.

They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail. They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever…

Larry Niven once wrote, in either an intro or separate essay, about the problems associated with building universes where you introduce extremely powerful technologies. As time goes on, it gets harder and harder to write around why $TECH can't be used to solve almost arbitrary problem.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#30

Post by krapp »

_Microft wrote: post #28
krapp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have phasers with enough power to boil the oceans of a planet, and torpedoes that can travel faster than light. Yet every conflict takes place at extremely close proximity, often on the same plane, as if they were ships in the age of sail. They have force fields with a critical flaw (harmonic resonance means any energy weapon using the same frequency as the shields can just shoot right through them) but whenever…

Don't forget that they do not have auto-aiming for their phasers and despite their advanced photonic torpedos, these are usually not homing either. (It might be that the Defiant 's phasers, which were shooting these bolts instead of the continuous beams, were auto-aimed) (Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved Star Trek. TNG and DS9 in particular).

Their torpedoes don't even have to be "homing." It should be possible for them to have onboard AIs smart enough to allow them to develop complex strategies, use swarming tactics, evasion, etc.
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