Diagoras
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Everything posted by Diagoras
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Karranthain, I can always count on you to plume the thread up when it needs it most. Defensive works and fortifications are a bit outside the purview of this thread, but since there's going to be a stronghold I feel that showing off the defenses of the era is in order. Below is the layout of the city-fortress of Rhodes in the late 15th/early 16th century. The ditch outside of the curtain wall. On the right is the counterscarp, a stone faced drop into the ditch that enemies would have to climb down while under fire from the defenders. The wall on the left rises straight out of the floor of the ditch, meaning that it is high and difficult to climb for attackers while still preventing a low profile to enemy artillery. This is a tenaille - a sort of miniature wall in the center of the ditch. It's a forward defensive position that defenders can use to provide enfilading fire until they're forced to fall back to the main wall, as well as an additional defense against enemy cannon fire. Below is a bulwark surrounding a round tower. A bulwark in this context is a thick, modern defensive structure constructed around an older tower that provides defense against cannon fire, a platform for heavier cannons, as well as one or two additional levels for arquebusiers/bowmen to fire from. The tower itself would support more cannons and soldiers. This one is semi-circular, as opposed to the ideal pentagonal shape that will emerge later. Another tower reinforced by a bulwark, the Tower of St. Nicholas. It was the site of fierce amphibious attacks during the Siege of 1480, as the Turks attempted to end its control over the ocean and reduce a source of enfilading cannon fire. The Jannissaries breach the Post of Italy in the same siege and are met by the defenders in a desperate struggle.
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] They really do.
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1520 is the date I have for spiraled grooves, though they were rare and not as effective as mid-16th century rifles (when they tightened the spirals). Still, they existed and were used for certain specialized functions. Now that is cool - and bizarre. Where'd you spot that? Clearly. I'm jealous.
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Hot damn, Woldan. Where do you live where they have guns like that on display? And the armor from your previous posts? If I'm spotting them right: bonkers two-barreled wheellock pistol, wheellock arquebus and pistols, handgonne, more wheellock arquebus, close up of wheellock mechanism. Were any of those arquebus rifled, or have rifled inserts? They look like hunting weapons, and I think I spotted both rear and front sights on some of them.
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Buddy, you best believe it. Rampant confusion of "clip" and "magazine" are big ones, as well as horrific trigger discipline from the actors. And I'm not even into modern guns. Also, what's Dream's problem? Did you kill his dog or something, because the amount of effort he puts into crawling your background for evidence to use in denouncements is...interesting.
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Only fancy plate for rich people. Munitions plate would have the previous Doppelsöldner scraped out of it and repaired so that someone else could get shoved in.
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Woo! Thanks!
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Can't believe I didn't see this until now. Went ahead and donated $8 to Project: Eternity. Can I get my title as "Gunsage of the Obsidian Order"?
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The following are images depicting the Second Siege of Rhodes or the Siege of Malta. I feel that none of them do those two battles the proper justice (especially Malta!), but they're the best I could find. The Wikipedia articles on them are decent at conveying the scale, intensity, and flat-out insanity of those battles. I find the hybrid Medieval/Early Modern defensive techniques and structures particularly interesting. Towers and bastions, portcullis and earthen-works existing side-by-side.
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Is this really the case? Because I've seen female bodybuilders in person, and I'd say that they have much more in common in physique with Arnold Schwarzenegger than myself. As far as I can tell, the idea that hyper-muscular men have more (in terms of physique) in common with weedy-looking guys then hyper-muscular women is wrong. Which sort of makes the argument for the past few posts nonsensical, if we take people's claims that they want special armor for women due to their inherently different physiques demanding it. Personally, I feel all the realism discussion is a red herring and that the devs should differentiate armor types based solely on a combination of aesthetics, usability and intuition. It just seems weird to insist that they do it because women's alien physiques demand unique armor, or something.
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And you really think that generalizes to this case? More than class and ability scores? A female Fighter with 18 strength will have a wimpy little body, while the male Wizard with 8 strength will be buff and strong?
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I may have misread this thread, but are people still assuming that sex will be a helpful measure of body type? Despite the class and statistic ability differences no doubt informing body type far more?
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The argument, short of Game of Thrones interludes, has appeared to move to whether plate should be customized to the proportions and sex of the wearer after everyone accepted my tabard suggestion. This is good, because tabards are awesome, and I will not suffer the presence of those who think otherwise. My answer to this new question would be: yes if it's expense, no if it's cheap. Milanese/Gothic full plate harness and anything else near that ungodly level of protection and cost would obviously be carefully matched to the wearer's form, as would the various layers of padding and mechanical connections that hook the power armor-esque suit together. Munitions plate, on the other hand, would be slapped on you so long as it had the head hole in the right place. Stuff in between could be more customized or less. In reality, I'm not seeing this being a big male/female identifier for the purposes of this game. The type of adventurer likely to wear serious amounts of high quality plate is probably going to be big, buff and drawn from the top 1% of the human population when it comes to physical ability no matter their gender. Even if not, it's far more likely that the weedy wizard/brawny barbarian divide will say much more about their body type than the male/female one.
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Since the problem is identifying unique party members in bulky armor, why not have the ones in bulky armor be identified the way soldiers were historically? Painted armor, insignia on their backplate and breastplate, tabards, battle-flags, distinctive helms, etc.
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Anyone worried about this, please answer the following question: Why would the inclusion of period accurate firearms trigger this concern, when I assume you weren't worried about this happening in Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter Nights/Dragon Age? Did the inclusion of period accurate two handed swords trigger the same worries? How about plate armor?
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Why are people seemingly assuming that adventuring is the equivalent of being a hobo? Adventurers don't bum around and have fun in their job - then it would make no sense for them to be so heavily armed and armored. Adventurers seem to be individuals who spend most of their time hunting down and killing various horrific creatures in exchange for preposterously huge amounts of money. They're more like Late Medieval mercenaries, and I'm thinking Landsknechte/Condottieri/Swiss Pikemen here, than fantasy novel protagonists. With that in mind it makes complete sense for them to choose the arms and armor they do. While I wouldn't wear plate while travelling through the woods, it would be near the top of armors I'd don once we were near the Ogre's lair. Likewise, gigantic two handed swords, warhammers, steel frame crossbows, and firearms are absolutely the weapons I'd go for to fight the Spider God of the Nightmare Forest. And I could afford not only these items, but the very best of them, as I'd be compensated to a ridiculous amount for dealing with these monstrosities - after all, people aren't very price sensitive when their lands are being ravaged by a spider the size of a house.
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Yeah, musket were deployed weapons that couldn't be shoulder-fired. See below: And I'm pretty sure bayonets are a 17th century invention, and a late one at that. Even plug bayonets. The bayonette you mentioned were not only at the absolute tail-end of the 16th century, but the consensus was that they weren't meant to be used attached to the firearm. TBH, if you're shot and somehow get into close combat with enemy pikemen, halberdiers, or zwei handers, you're kind of screwed.
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No horses. Imagine that.
Diagoras replied to Jarmo's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Sent you a PM with my response, as our discussion is off-topic. Suffice to say, what you're saying doesn't really reflect the realities of 16th century firearms and their usage. That's an interesting question. My only reading about this is from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel in which he claims that there isn't really another creature that can replace the horse on Earth, but that's obviously not a real source. None of those creatures effectively replace the horse. And I don't quite see the point of making a world without horses if you proceed to populate it with magical horse equivalents. I noted that - but dogs aren't horses. Now that is a species that I flat-out forgot about! Yeah. camels could replace horses in some roles, and I'm honestly ignorant as to how effective they were vs. horses. Could you have effective replacements for shock cavalry with camels? Fast mounted archers? And, arguably most importantly, would a camel collar provide equal results to the horse collar which revolutionized European farming? -
<Mandatory nitpicking> Shoulder-fired weapons of this era are usually referred to as arquebus, musket being reserved for bulky, deployed weapons. And bayonets of a sort did exist, but they were screw-on mace heads for your weapon - a bladed bayonet isn't going to do anything against an armored enemy. And even those weren't used much, as the butt of the weapon really works just as well - this is why the pistols end with a giant round ball. </Mandatory nitpicking>
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No horses. Imagine that.
Diagoras replied to Jarmo's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
You seem to be constructing an entire, elaborate magic system. That's fine, but I'm not sure how it's going to be related to Project: Eternity's soul-based system, or avoid making the setting a completely unidentifiable civilization completely distinct from the currently targeted Late Medieval aesthetic. This has been the case since someone picked up a rock. Firearms were not revolutionary, they were evolutionary. I feel this statement is a little broad. What kind of bow, what kind of firearm, and what kind of accuracy? Rifles exist in the time period P:E is emulating, and the windage of 15th century firearms was far less of their 18th century descendants - there's a reason that sharpshooters of Late Medieval era used arquebus. And firearms were not really used because of their psychological effects, but rather their fantastic armor penetration relative to any other class of weapon (among other qualities). The same is true of the crossbow and shortbow. In fact, the firearm is far more complex and dangerous a device than either of those, especially in the pre-simplified drill matchlock era. Not to mention that judging any class of weapons by the majority of its users is a bad idea for generalizing to the whole - from that we'd learn that all polearms are useful for little more than poking in formation at another formation. The horse isn't really replaceable by any other creature in the world. They lack its domesticated state, speed, size, and general suitability for combat and civilian use. Try mounting a deer and charging it through an enemy pike formation, or using a relay messenger system of cows. The first Dragon Age had an interesting take on horseless society. While horses exist, they are nearly totally absent from Ferelden. This results in the training of vicious war dogs that serve a similar (if far less effective) function as heavy shock cavalry: smashing enemy formations and morale. As well as a much less hierarchical society, what with lacking an equestrian class. -
No horses. Imagine that.
Diagoras replied to Jarmo's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Is there a reason this applies to firearms, and not to swords and bows and polearms? In fact, wouldn't the existence of cheap, easily used destructive magic basically end all military technology development? What's the point if you can just vomit a fireball out of your hands? Likewise, fortifications would never be developed. I'm guessing the reason that firearms are present is the same reason that the setting mimics Medieval Europe in other ways - magic is magic and technology is technology. Magic isn't a push-button, systematic, and consistent system similar to technology, but rather similar to historical conceptions of magic - and thus not very suitable for widespread military deployment. -
Magic and the Economy
Diagoras replied to Tagaziel's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
The terms you used to describe this seemed to refer to any technological explosion - thus it had our primitive hero riding a tiger and talking to birds. But if your just talking about maintaining a Medieval aesthetic, then you do need to keep the setting Medievalish. Sorry about the misunderstanding. The Dark Ages tends to refer to the Early Medieval period, while gunpowder was used in the High/Late Medieval period. Otherwise agreed. I would say the aesthetics, more than the limitations. Almost all standard fantasy settings that use a pseudo-Medieval setting give their protagonists magic powers and fantastic abilities that overcome any and all such barriers. But you're absolutely correct that the overall society needs to retain the Medieval aesthetic and sensibilities - which is an argument for having magic be something other than a stand-in for technology, as it is in many systems. When you look at traditions and stories of magic throughout history, you tend not to see the sort of mechanistic magic that we take for granted in the modern era. Technology is one thing (the reliable mastering of the consistent forces of the natural world) and magic another (the unreliable bargaining with the whimsical forces of the supernatural world). -
No horses. Imagine that.
Diagoras replied to Jarmo's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
First, whatever you based it on would have to be pretty unrelated to Medieval Europe. Medieval European warfare was so driven by cavalry (shock cavalry in particular in the West) that you can't even remotely approximate it without an equivalent. I'd recommend looking at North and South America and Southern China (pre-widespread adoption of cavalry) for examples. Pikes would still be around. They're primarily an anti-infantry weapons - the pike formations devastating charge is its main advantage. They were neither defensive, nor primarily anti-cavalry weapons. Interestingly enough, European warfare already did this. For reasons that are unclear (though I have a few thoughts of my own), Western European ranged weapons tended to focus far more on power (and thus range, accuracy, and armor penetration) than many other cultures, in which rate of fire was prioritized. Just look at European vs. Chinese crossbows. European forces in the Late Medieval era absolutely had to deal with giant, armored monsters - men-at-arms in plate armor match that description pretty well. And, as expected, they developed powerful crossbows and firearms to deal with them. Thus, the windlass crossbow and the musket - both specialized heavy versions of existing weapons with armor penetration as the driving design consideration. In fact, I'm a little puzzled by the devs thinking in regards to firearms. They seem to be suggesting that shot would be reduced to a "complex curiosity" by the existence of monstrous creatures on the battlefield - but if forced to, shot is exactly what I would use on such creatures! I mean, what's the alternative? A volley of arrows? A pike charge? Send in some zwei hander's to hack at its leg? Musket or even field artillery seems the sensible solution. -
Another mega-image dump. Most of these range from about 1420-1570, with P:E being nominally set in an equivalent of the early 16th century, but if you spot anything out of place then I urge you to speak up. Lots of artillery and guns in this round, but I found some interesting pictures of badass men-at-arms to mix it up. And, for any Americans in the audience, I give you: the first mustering of the Massachusetts State Militia! Check out the steel armor, both on the musketmen (note the forked sticks) and pikemen in the background!
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Magic and the Economy
Diagoras replied to Tagaziel's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
I have no idea how you would have a medieval world that wasn't an ongoing explosion of technology, especially in the Late Medieval/Early Modern period that all fantasy stories appear to be set in. Contrary to what Edward Gibbon said, the entire Medieval period is best characterized as period of history created by an explosion in revolutionary technology that brought the old Empires (in Europe at least) to the ground, and was defined by incredibly rapid and constant innovation in military technology at the very least. As to the topic at hand - I stand by my assertion that the best magic system is one that's truly magical, not just a fantastical version of technology. That means unpredictable, uncontrollable, personal, and mystical. D&D magic doesn't quite apply.
