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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

#101

Post by mcguire »

"Ideally, the solution to this problem is to split the army up. By moving in multiple columns and converging on the battlespace, you split one impossibly long column of troops into several more manageable ones. ... The larger problem is terrain – we’ve seen Ithilien in this film and the previous one: it is heavily forested, with few roads. What roads exist are overgrown and difficult to use. Worse yet, the primary route through the area is not an east-west road, but the North-South route up from Near Harad to the Black Gate. The infrastructure here to split the army effectively simply doesn’t exist."

Er, hatetobeapedanticfanboi, but...

There is a road north-south through Ithilien, and also a road east-west from Minas Morgul to Osgiliath. Where they cross was marked by the headless statue of the king. Frodo and Sam couldn't use the north-south road because of the large number of troops moving on it, including those moving up from the south to attack Minas Tirith.

"BOOK NOTE: In the film, Jackson has split the host of Mordor into three groups (the fleet, the Haradrim and the Orcs) each of which moves and arrives as a single unit. As discussed above, this is insufficient to resolve the overwhelming logistics problems of such large armies. However, the books largely resolve this issue."

Sigh. Pedanticfanboimode wasted.

"Naval supply, by riverboat or by ship, is far more efficient than overland supply (moving supplies by water is roughly twenty times more efficient than moving the same supplies by land in the pre-modern era)."

I want the reference for that.

From part II:

"As Clausewitz says (drink!), “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is hard.”"

Yeah. A Clausewitz drinking game.

[Edit] "Book Note: In the books, Denethor is nowhere near this stupid (this will be a theme)."

I'm glad somebody else saw this. Jackson really screwed up the plot arcs of the humans in the movies.

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

#102

Post by krapp »

mcguire wrote: post #40
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…

" 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.) " Well, teck-nik-ally,... Didn't another officer enter the transporter with Scott but not survive the process?

>Didn't another officer enter the transporter with Scott but not survive the process?

I don't remember, but it's still feasible in-universe. Transporter accidents happen anyway.

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

#103

Post by Fnoord »

Waterluvian wrote: post #26

"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…

> "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.

"Total War: Warhammer II" underlines both these statements.

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

#104

Post by boudewijnrempt »

I'm reminded of Mercedes Lackey's magically dwindling army in the Storm trilogy; where millions of invading soldiers turn into tens of thousands without much casualties. Also, I guess I've gained a bit of appreciation for WWI English officer training; apparently it was good enough to make Tolkien invent proper campaigns.

Heck, I'd like to see someone compare 14 day campaigns from WWI that Tolkien could have known about and see which one he reproduced in his books.

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

#105

Post by krapp »

mcguire wrote: post #92
TeMPOraL wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the strength of Trek weaponry, one photon would do. I remember reading somewhere that a standard photon torpedo carried 1.5 kg of antimatter on board, which is yield-equivalent to a Tsar bomba (almost 60 megaton). However, phasers could have been easily used for close air support, even from orbit - AFAIR Enterprise-D used them once as surgical tools for geoengineering. Most episodes seem to script around the ne…

" My personal favorite case of missed opportunity is the use of transporters to beam armed torpedoes directly onto enemy ships. It was used once in a Voyager episode. It's an obvious, but sadly plot-killing tactic, that hasn't been sufficiently hand-waved away in the lore, so one has to wonder why nobody uses it. " Akshually... Transporters cannot penetrate shield, usually either incoming or outgoing. Usually.

Akshually... it depends on the writer, series and episode.

The shields have the fatal flaw that anything operating at the same frequency can go right through them, including a transporter beam. That's come up as a plot point more than once.

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

#106

Post by Macha »

xg15 wrote: post #73

Slightly OT: I'm surprised that more sophisticated management of supply lines never seems to have caught on much in RTS games. The basic practice still seems to be that logistics are handwaved away and your units just spawn wherever you want (or where your factory is) provided you have enough money in the bank. I could imagine a game quite fun where you actively have to transport troops and resources to the front and…

Hearts of Iron (3 and to a lesser extent 2) are probably the biggest example of a warfare game with a focus on logistics. 3 especially got a reputation for being difficult and unfun, even among many fans of Paradox's other games, though obviously there are more contributors than just a logistics focus.

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

#108

Post by thaumasiotes »

firethief wrote: post #96
thaumasiotes wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the accusation is just "eating orc-flesh", the only cannibalistic taboo that would be violated by that unqualified act would be eating those who aren't members of your group. A practice of eating your own kind -- but not other people -- would be consistent with everything mentioned above, but would be incredibly bizarre for humans. We are much more likely to eat other groups while never eating our own. Orcs could…

> If the accusation is just "eating orc-flesh", the only cannibalistic taboo that would be violated by that unqualified act would be eating those who aren't members of your group. No. For example, it may be unacceptable if the groups aren't at war. > A practice of eating your own kind -- but not other people -- would be consistent with everything mentioned above, but would be incredibly bizarre for humans. We are muc…

Nothing in the Endocannibalism page suggests that any mentioned group ate their own members to the exclusion of eating members of other groups. That topic isn't discussed at all anywhere on the page.

The most prominently mentioned example, though -- New Zealand -- was definitely not exclusive endocannibalism.

The exocannibalism page confirms that the Wari' also practiced exocannibalism.

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

#109

Post by TeMPOraL »

mcguire wrote: post #92
TeMPOraL wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the strength of Trek weaponry, one photon would do. I remember reading somewhere that a standard photon torpedo carried 1.5 kg of antimatter on board, which is yield-equivalent to a Tsar bomba (almost 60 megaton). However, phasers could have been easily used for close air support, even from orbit - AFAIR Enterprise-D used them once as surgical tools for geoengineering. Most episodes seem to script around the ne…

" My personal favorite case of missed opportunity is the use of transporters to beam armed torpedoes directly onto enemy ships. It was used once in a Voyager episode. It's an obvious, but sadly plot-killing tactic, that hasn't been sufficiently hand-waved away in the lore, so one has to wonder why nobody uses it. " Akshually... Transporters cannot penetrate shield, usually either incoming or outgoing. Usually.

> Transporters cannot penetrate shield, usually either incoming or outgoing. Usually.

Except when they can, due to frequency matching, "technology generation" mismatch between shields and transporters, and countless of other one-off workarounds that happened. Think of every episode in which the Enterprise/Defiant/Voyager was boarded while in combat.

But even when considering the regular case of shields blocking incoming and outgoing transport, there's plenty of opportunities to use transporters offensively. They could be used as surprise first strike weapon to initiate hostilities by immediately taking enemy ship out. They could be used to finish off an enemy in a one-to-one fight. They could be used in coordinated fashion in fleet battles, where whenever an enemy ship loses shields, one ship drops their own shields and transports some photons over while other ships cover the vulnerable friend from immediate fire. Etc.

All in all, there are plenty of opportunities for offensive transporter use which were never explored in the series.

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

#110

Post by Animats »

Operations is the level of analysis between tactics (how do I fight when I get there?) and strategy (why am I fighting at all?).

The USMC calls that "campaigning". See MCDP 1-2 [1]. Campaigning is about which battles to fight and where. Strategy includes economic and diplomatic issues, but campaigning is purely military.

Military history can be divided into two parts - before machine guns, and after machine guns. Before machine guns, bunching up was good tactics. After machine guns, it was terrible tactics. Too much of WWI was about learning that the hard way.

[1] https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCDP%201-2%20...

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