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Stopping the Sharonan advance

"Hell's Gate" and "Hell Hath No Fury", by David, Linda Evans, and Joelle Presby, take the clash of science and magic to a whole new dimension...join us in a friendly discussion of this engrossing series!
Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by Castenea   » Fri May 29, 2015 9:08 pm

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Astelon wrote:
Do you mean the USS Maine (ACR-1)? Best guess says she was destroyed when a coal bunker fire ignited the magazines.
A magazine explosion will do the job, I just question whether lightning will even get to the magazines. I can find no information on any such occurrence to an armored vehicle or ship. if you have any such information, please share.

By the way what exactly happened to the M-60? Electronics failure, or total and catastrophic destruction?

Basically the Sharonians are going to be using lightly armored steam powered apcs. What will it take for Arcanans to penetrate that armor? I get the impression that Arcanan dragons would require several shots to penetrate 13 layers of light paper spaced 1 inch apart. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield

Will defeating the armor on the bisons require heating the bodywork to loss of structural strength? If this requires a lot of firepower, the Sharonians may be able to use their Bisons much as tanks were used in the First World War.
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Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by Bewildered   » Sun May 31, 2015 6:47 am

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Why fight them? Why not simply cut the supply line and let them run out of steam? Sure APCs would work as bunkers but they should be much easier to kill. A cargo dragon dropping a heavy sharpened log from high altitude could have an interesting effect for instance.
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Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by Keith_w   » Sun May 31, 2015 7:11 am

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Bewildered wrote:Why fight them? Why not simply cut the supply line and let them run out of steam? Sure APCs would work as bunkers but they should be much easier to kill. A cargo dragon dropping a heavy sharpened log from high altitude could have an interesting effect for instance.


It is very difficult to hit anything that way, and since they run on steam, dropping a heavy log that misses is supplying them with fuel.
--
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
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Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by Mil-tech bard   » Sun May 31, 2015 3:57 pm

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Astelon wrote:
Do you mean the USS Maine (ACR-1)? Best guess says she was destroyed when a coal bunker fire ignited the magazines.
A magazine explosion will do the job, I just question whether lightning will even get to the magazines. I can find no information on any such occurrence to an armored vehicle or ship. if you have any such information, please share.

By the way what exactly happened to the M-60? Electronics failure, or total and catastrophic destruction?



Yes I mean the Maine.

The US Navy thought for decades after the Spanish American war that the Maine's destruction had to do with either static electricity or issues with propellent stability.

They foreswore cordite as a propellent -- the standard Royal Navy propellent -- afterwards as a result.

I ran into the above chasing issues of smokeless/flashless propellent in WW2 rifles in the Pacific.

The Japanese Ariska rifle in 6.5mm was over long due to the Spear kata they adopted in lieu of European bayonet fighting techniques. It gave them a bolt action rifle with neither flash nor smoke in the Salomon and New Guinea Islands jungle fighting because their barrel was so long.

This positively unnerved US and Australian ground troops early on and there were a whole series of US Army Ordnance Corps and US Navy Bureau of Ordnance reports explaining this in late 1942 early 1943.

Japanese Army procurement never noticed any of this and was in the process of replacing the 6.5mm with 7.7 mm rifle bullets as the war was ending.

As for the M-60A3 Tank, after the antenna hit the overhead electrical line, whether electricity killed the crew or knocked them unconscious was not discoverable.

The electrical surge ignited the propellent of the fully combat loaded tank (60 plus 105mm rounds and thousands of machine gun rounds). Since the propellent ignited low order detonations of the 20(+) HEAT shells worth of high explosives. There were not even complete charred husks to examine.
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Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by Howard T. Map-addict   » Mon Jun 01, 2015 6:14 pm

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See HHNF page 125.
Arthag and chan Boskey are discussing Skirvon's admission
of Arcana's plans:
First option is find a defensible Portal and hold it.
Second option is to use dragons and cavalry to attack
Sharona's supply lines.

Those of us who have been harping on this idea,
probably have some memory of that discussion.

Of course, neither A, cB, or S could have known that
Myr and Harshu would throw away so many battle dragons
and so much heavy cavalry at Fort Salby!

HTM
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Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by Astelon   » Tue Jun 02, 2015 1:35 am

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The plans to attack supply lines could slow down the Sharonan offensive, but I doubt they will stop it. The advance will just sit at a portal, while they wait for the rail lines behind them to be repaired, and for the supplies to catch up, then it resumes.

The Arcanans really need some kind of chokepoint that limits the attack options available to Sharonan commanders. The swamp portal into Hell's Gate would probably work, and if it didn't the swamp itself might. Building a road or rail line across that while under aerial attack would be a difficult proposition.

Chan Geriath and his staff discussed how the Arcanans could cut the rail lines and hold it to starve his force, but I am not sure the Arcanans could actually accomplish that, not with more mechanized cavalry coming up to clear out the blocking force.
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Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by PeterZ   » Tue Jun 02, 2015 10:24 am

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I wonder what altitude the operational ceiling for a mounted dragon is? Sharona has timed fuses, precog far seers and a variety of field guns. Given enough time to set up, a Sharonan portal fortress or two can make it very costly to try and get dragons across. That is unless dragons can take their riders safely above a fortress gun's effective range.

For small enough portals balloons on steel cables floating along the fortress' side. Dragons can't destroy the balloons from their side of the portal and would have a difficult time navigating around the cables. If the portal is small enough, the dragons can't fly high enough to void the fortress' artillery and still stay inside the portal. I am sure others have brought up this topic in other threads.

The combination of cabled balloons and artillery around portals will take a toll on dragons, especially transport dragons. So, while any Sharonan advance can be slowed by rear area raiding via dragon, the cost will increase to a prohibitive level as that advance progresses. Combined with troop deployments to protect the forward rail lines and raiding becomes a good way to destroy the air force in the short to medium term.
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Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by Mil-tech bard   » Tue Jun 02, 2015 12:30 pm

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A better question to ask is what is the operational ceiling of a Sharonan hydrogen filled barrage balloon compared to the top of a gate.

Dragons are likely more maneuverable than fixed wing aircraft, but they still need to see to avoid barrage balloon cable obstacles at defend gates.

IOW, barrage balloon fortified gates block dragon movement at night and in low visibility for casualty sensitive Arcanian raiding operations.

If you add things like Sharonan search lights, or artillery delivered flares, it gets even more interesting.

See US Army WW2 search light battalion links below:


http://www.skylighters.org/introduction/

See also the article titled:

1. "Battlefield Illumination for the Infantry" and
2. "AA Searchlights on the Normandy Beachhead"
in this PDF copy of the Jan-Feb 1946 issue of the US Army branch publication 'Coast Artillery Journal'

http://sill-www.army.mil/ada-online/coa ... 201946.pdf




PeterZ wrote:I wonder what altitude the operational ceiling for a mounted dragon is? Sharona has timed fuses, precog far seers and a variety of field guns. Given enough time to set up, a Sharonan portal fortress or two can make it very costly to try and get dragons across. That is unless dragons can take their riders safely above a fortress gun's effective range.

For small enough portals balloons on steel cables floating along the fortress' side. Dragons can't destroy the balloons from their side of the portal and would have a difficult time navigating around the cables. If the portal is small enough, the dragons can't fly high enough to void the fortress' artillery and still stay inside the portal. I am sure others have brought up this topic in other threads.

The combination of cabled balloons and artillery around portals will take a toll on dragons, especially transport dragons. So, while any Sharonan advance can be slowed by rear area raiding via dragon, the cost will increase to a prohibitive level as that advance progresses. Combined with troop deployments to protect the forward rail lines and raiding becomes a good way to destroy the air force in the short to medium term.
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Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by PeterZ   » Tue Jun 02, 2015 2:00 pm

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Hydrogen filled barrage balloons tethered close to the portals that are not over manned positions with napalm sacks attached to them. Dragons cross the portal breathe on the balloon and ignite the napalm. Set up by a portal that's not high enough for dragons to fly over the balloons and Sharonans might develop a taste for fried dragon steak soon enough.

Dragons breath cannot cross a portal so a dragon has to get close to the balloon. Close but not over leads to crispy critters. Enough napalm on the wings is enough to at least mission kill a dragon.
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Re: Stopping the Sharonan advance
Post by Astelon   » Tue Jun 02, 2015 3:20 pm

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PeterZ wrote:Hydrogen filled barrage balloons tethered close to the portals that are not over manned positions with napalm sacks attached to them.


I wouldn't use hydrogen for those balloons if I expected them to come under dragon attack. They would be easily exploded sacks. Use hot air or helium. Helium may be in limited supply with current Sharonan tech, but they have multiple worlds to get it from, making for a much larger supply than the United States could procure.

I wouldn't include napalm either, just machine guns. Let the dragons deal with weapons fire from the ground and air as they try to doge the cables. Extra ballons could be held at ground level, and sent up when an attack is underway, or to relieve those already on duty.

Dragon operational ceiling is high enough for it's pilot and passengers to require oxygen bottles to breath. That indicates a ceiling in excess of twenty thousand feet (the approximate height at which most people can no longer get enough air to breath properly). That would probably put dragons well above any balloon airship, or artillery fire that Sharona can currently manage. I expect that anti-air guns will soon be able to reach the height necessary (but maybe not in time for the current war).
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