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Noblesse Oblige [Znt/SI]

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MinorGryph said:
The protagonist's ten second smackdown of a single opponent is treated as such an impressive feat it causes an army of "professional soldiers" to stop fighting so they could watch. And if that wasn't enough to make it clear that the protagonist is supposed to be The Very Best, after the battle they literally start sobbing over how inferior they are.
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Good god, man, learn how to read between the fucking lines. They weren't sobbing over how inferior they were, they were crying because Henry -- the very nice guy who gave them stuff, treated them better than they ever have been by people in power, who seemed to actually care about them, and whom they had a duty to defend above all others -- charged into battle at the head of the army and could have very easily died. The only guy who was crying because of how "awesome" Henry was was the Bannerman, who was in all likelihood a rookie who had never seen battle before and had just gotten his life saved by the guy who he had been brought up to believe was his absolute superior, and at great risk to said VIP too.

Wobulator said:
But then why not use heavier pieces? You aren't going to be bringing the cannon into the city proper anyways, so there's no downside.
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Well, why not bring the smaller cannons into the city? It's a lot easier to use a small 12-pounder for urban warfare than it is to use a 20. The way I see it, it has the same anti-infantry role as a lightly armored tank does in modern city-fighting.
 
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tq343 said:
Well, why not bring the smaller cannons into the city? It's a lot easier to use a small 12-pounder for urban warfare than it is to use a 20. The way I see it, it has the same anti-infantry role as a lightly armored tank does in modern city-fighting.
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Because what's the point? You aren't going to have any reasonable sort of range(because cities weren't exactly laid out in an orderly manner in the Middle Ages), enemies can come from any side(and even a 4-pounder isn't particularly mobile), and you aren't going to have massive concentrations where grapeshot is useful.

Solid shot is basically worthless- the range is too short.
Grapeshot could be useful, but you aren't likely to encounter groups where it's useful.
Meanwhile, you constantly run the risk of your cannon being seized and used against you.
 
Wobulator said:
Because what's the point? You aren't going to have any reasonable sort of range(because cities weren't exactly laid out in an orderly manner in the Middle Ages), enemies can come from any side(and even a 4-pounder isn't particularly mobile), and you aren't going to have massive concentrations where grapeshot is useful.

Solid shot is basically worthless- the range is too short.
Grapeshot could be useful, but you aren't likely to encounter groups where it's useful.
Meanwhile, you constantly run the risk of your cannon being seized and used against you.
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They have all kinds of uses in a city. Let's say your city is rebelling; a bunch of revolting peasants have risen up and challenged your god-given authority. Or maybe a rebel army has invaded; whatever. You're going to have plenty of roving bands of combatants, densely packed and high-numbered because quantity has its own quality, that you need to rout or destroy. You can have your professional soldiers engage them directly; they would almost certainly win, unless significantly outnumbered, but it would take time and you would end up losing men. So, you can either have them charge in with shields raised, or you can fire off grapeshot at close range to kill a bunch of them and terrify the rest into running.

You're also going to have things like wooden barricades and strongpoints -- basically tough wooden buildings -- that need to be overtaken and/or destroyed. You can send in your men to assault the strongholds (which is going to take time and cost you a lot of people even in the best conditions), or you can have them use fire arrows to try to burn out the defenders and their walls (and probably burn down the city), or you can bring in a small cannon, load in a solid slug, and fire it down the street to make holes and let your guys in. You don't need to be far to do that successfully, just beyond accurate arrow range.

And sure, your weapons might get taken, but that's also true of muskets. It's actually better if peasants loot cannons than muskets, because they take a fair bit more training to use properly and, statistically, you're likely to have a lot more musket-trained peasants than you are cannon crews.

As I said, there are a lot of uses for a small cannon in a city. Yes, it has its downsides and can be difficult to use, but there are enough situations where a small cannon is either very useful or outright irreplaceable that bringing them into a city is better than not.
 
Wouldn't it be easier to have some earth mages thought how to wizard up wrought iron cannons or some mortarets, with rear removable chamber canisters?

They are used only for that battle, as their millage is poor, but would serve the same purpose as a custom made expensive as hell cannon.
And if they do get captured you won't cry over it.
 
tq343 said:
to read between the fucking lines. They weren't sobbing over how inferior they were, they were crying because Henry -- the very nice guy who gave them stuff, treated them better than they ever have been by people in power, who seemed to actually care about them, and whom they had a duty to defend above all others -- charged into battle at the head of the army and could have very easily died. The only guy who was crying because of how "awesome" Henry was was the Bannerman, who was in all likelihood a rookie who had never seen battle before and had just gotten his life saved by the guy who he had been brought up to believe was his absolute superior, and at great risk to said VIP too.
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You don't need to read between the lines to understand that, its pretty explicitly stated in their dialogue.

Certain scenes existed soley to remind readers Henry is The Best and everyone loves him. We already knew this. As a delivery mechanism its clunky as all hell. If its supposed to be impressive that Henry defeated an opponent, let that feat stand on its own instead of having every other character in the scene hastily bend over.

The tone of the battle was a real rollercoster due to those inclusions. Constantly bouncing between grim serious War Is Hell and lighthearted sitcom shenanigans. Henry is being Rambo and survives a fight to the death... and switch to everyone doing a spittake at how cool he is! Henry sees corpses lining the halls and is poignantly respectful to the dead... and switch to Henry's soldiers comedically bawling!
 
tq343 said:
They have all kinds of uses in a city. Let's say your city is rebelling; a bunch of revolting peasants have risen up and challenged your god-given authority. Or maybe a rebel army has invaded; whatever. You're going to have plenty of roving bands of combatants, densely packed and high-numbered because quantity has its own quality, that you need to rout or destroy. You can have your professional soldiers engage them directly; they would almost certainly win, unless significantly outnumbered, but it would take time and you would end up losing men. So, you can either have them charge in with shields raised, or you can fire off grapeshot at close range to kill a bunch of them and terrify the rest into running.

You're also going to have things like wooden barricades and strongpoints -- basically tough wooden buildings -- that need to be overtaken and/or destroyed. You can send in your men to assault the strongholds (which is going to take time and cost you a lot of people even in the best conditions), or you can have them use fire arrows to try to burn out the defenders and their walls (and probably burn down the city), or you can bring in a small cannon, load in a solid slug, and fire it down the street to make holes and let your guys in. You don't need to be far to do that successfully, just beyond accurate arrow range.

And sure, your weapons might get taken, but that's also true of muskets. It's actually better if peasants loot cannons than muskets, because they take a fair bit more training to use properly and, statistically, you're likely to have a lot more musket-trained peasants than you are cannon crews.

As I said, there are a lot of uses for a small cannon in a city. Yes, it has its downsides and can be difficult to use, but there are enough situations where a small cannon is either very useful or outright irreplaceable that bringing them into a city is better than not.
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This requires a fair bit of mobility, though. A 12-pounder(which I'm assuming these are- nobody would be stupid enough to put a 4 or 8 pounder on walls) weighs about a thousand kilograms. You can move it around with horses(which have plenty of problems in ruined cities) or with men(which is gonna take a really long time).

They just can't move fast enough to be able to dash from skirmish to skirmish.

You have a good point with opening up enemy strongholds, and I agree that they would be useful there. However, I don't think that that one use outweighs the cost of having lighter pieces.
kaazmiz said:
Wouldn't it be easier to have some earth mages thought how to wizard up wrought iron cannons or some mortarets, with rear removable chamber canisters?
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If you want to have cannons exploding in your face, sure. People used bronze for a reason- it didn't explosively rupture.
You could make the walls extremely thick to counter the inevitable quality differences from mage to mage(or even from day to day for the same mage) but then your cannon is so heavy that you can't carry it anywhere.
It could be useful for fixed defenses, and given what we know about FoZ, cannon conjuration is pretty much perfect for that. However, given that everyone and their dog doesn't have large cannon, there's probably some problem with that.
 
crepusculum said:
Mhmmm surpised that Henry hasn't invested in AP rounds or HE rounds or straight up go for a boltor. Or mated a bag of holding full of water to a Gatling gun. Or made a railgun via magically reinforced rails and wind mages. Curbstomp harder is what I am saying. :lol
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AP rounds are kind of useless when you are the only one with a vehicle made of metal against, wooden ships and fortifications you are better off with HE. For automatic weapons henry has examples of the MGs and auto-cannons on the zero and they probably have some sort of spell to keep things cool.
 
MinorGryph said:
You don't need to read between the lines to understand that, its pretty explicitly stated in their dialogue.

Certain scenes existed soley to remind readers Henry is The Best and everyone loves him. We already knew this. As a delivery mechanism its clunky as all hell. If its supposed to be impressive that Henry defeated an opponent, let that feat stand on its own instead of having every other character in the scene hastily bend over.

The tone of the battle was a real rollercoster due to those inclusions. Constantly bouncing between grim serious War Is Hell and lighthearted sitcom shenanigans. Henry is being Rambo and survives a fight to the death... and switch to everyone doing a spittake at how cool he is! Henry sees corpses lining the halls and is poignantly respectful to the dead... and switch to Henry's soldiers comedically bawling!
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Huh. I got a different impression when reading. To me, it wasn't that they paused because they thought he was awesome, they paused and stared because of "...why the fuck is the prince fighting with a flag?" I mean, nobles are not supposed to be in the frontlines so that they can cast magic so it was more surprise from him going into melee and not dying immediately.
 
It should be noted that the doctrine of Karin is to be a monster at all ranges.

So unlike most other mages, actually being able to fight at melee range well is one of the things she would have thought unlike say colbert. Canon Wardes who was thaught by karin similarly also fights at melee range. And since you only need a sword wand and can instantly summon a shield by partially chanting a wind spell , it's not as bad as it should be.

Still runs on shonen tropes, though it's not unexplained.
 
Wobulator said:
Who the fuck uses cannons for peacekeeping?
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edit: standard disclaimer that the below is true only in so far as i know what I'm talking about, and that the degree to which i know what I'm talking about varies. do your own research before basing actions on the rambling of an entity who may or may not be a flag./edit

In the Napoleonic era light cannons were pretty much The answer to riots. Much more practical to move a light cannon and enough guys to defend it while it sets up than enough infantry to actually deal with the rioters, and generally "there is a cannon pointing at us, loaded, right now!" was more of a reason to give up and go home than a line of infantry (no hope of taking it with you, after all) ... meanwhile Cavalry combined the issues of "you're running straight into a block of foot soldiers who have no where to go, while having no room to turn around." ... which is basically how infantry have Always killed cavalry. Pikes just reduced how many of them got trampled in the process. That combined with the cavalry tending to have... Attitudes... that meant if they got called in to suppress a riot they'd rarely even try to convince it to disperse, they'd just show up, charge, kill a bunch of people, then Probably get wrecked themselves.

Such is my understanding, anyway. Certainly works if you've set your city up to have nice straight roads with few side roads for a good distance as the only accesses to any important buildings.

Remember, most of the nice modern "less lethal" methods rely on tech which didn't exist yet. Cannons intimidation value Was the least lethal option... and if that didn't work and you had to actually shoot the rioters, it was the option that resulted in the least casualties for the soldiers.

Now, granted, there's some evidence that the people in charge in such places tended to be rather ... liberal... in their definition of 'riot'. on the other hand, organized peaceful protests which were acknowledged as Not being riots weren't really... things yet. All it took to turn a fairly non-violent angry mob into one trying to burn down your palace and hang you is one idiot chucking a rock at the wrong time... or less.

Sooo... yeah, who used cannons for peace keeping?
Once there were light enough field pieces, pretty much everyone, basically, until better options became available.
 
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You'd have to do much to convince me at this point that void users aren't just Joestars reincarnated at this point.

And Karrin.
 
InfiniteDaze said:
You'd have to do much to convince me at this point that void users aren't just Joestars reincarnated at this point.

And Karrin.
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wouldn't most of the void users have been born before any of the Joestars? What with the whole 'thousands of years of history' versus the what... six generations of Joestars( from canon?Now you could maybe claim that Joeseph or Johnathan or Kujo are reincarnations of say... Brimir or Sasha(do familiars count for this purpose?) but you couldn't say the same for the inverse.
 
Cold Burn said:
wouldn't most of the void users have been born before any of the Joestars? What with the whole 'thousands of years of history' versus the what... six generations of Joestars( from canon?Now you could maybe claim that Joeseph or Johnathan or Kujo are reincarnations of say... Brimir or Sasha(do familiars count for this purpose?) but you couldn't say the same for the inverse.
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Easy enough to solve: Reincarnation assumes souls as a separate thing which exist either on a different plane of reality, or at least in different sets of dimensions. ...ramble ramble theological technobabble.... nothing says reincarnation is bound by linear time.
edit: especially across worlds.
fake edit of edit: not that i have any stake in this at all, all i know about JoJo is forum references and the like. limited cultural osmosis...
 
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Cold Burn said:
wouldn't most of the void users have been born before any of the Joestars? What with the whole 'thousands of years of history' versus the what... six generations of Joestars( from canon?Now you could maybe claim that Joeseph or Johnathan or Kujo are reincarnations of say... Brimir or Sasha(do familiars count for this purpose?) but you couldn't say the same for the inverse.
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...You don't know about Made in Heaven do you?
 
Chargone said:
Such is my understanding, anyway. Certainly works if you've set your city up to have nice straight roads with few side roads for a good distance as the only accesses to any important buildings.
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They probably haven't, though.
Chargone said:
Remember, most of the nice modern "less lethal" methods rely on tech which didn't exist yet. Cannons intimidation value Was the least lethal option... and if that didn't work and you had to actually shoot the rioters, it was the option that resulted in the least casualties for the soldiers.
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Fair enough, I guess.
Chargone said:
Once there were light enough field pieces, pretty much everyone, basically, until better options became available.
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But are these field pieces light enough? I've been putting FoZ tech at a bit less than Seven Years War, but tech dispersal way, way lower. See: Flintlock muskets existing, but almost nobody using them.

As far as I remember, there's basically one time we see an actual army- Saito's "brave and valiant" charge against the Albionese army, and even that wasn't very good, but from the 30s that I'm working on, the army certainly didn't seem very mobile- they had formations of heavily armored knights and spearmen(with fairly long spears, too), neither of which really lend themselves to maneuver warfare.

Light field pieces are really only useful when you need mobility over firepower- they have shitty range and shot weight, but you can move them without a team of horses. Against the Albionese army(assuming that all armies function in a similar way), that just wouldn't be that useful. Heavier cannon would plain perform better.

That's not to say that the technology doesn't exist, but given the existence of magic(and its common use in the military) and how mages are far more mobile than a cannon is ever going to be, I'd say that nobody bothered to ever make cannon that's particularly light.

Plus, of course, a noble is just better in every way imaginable inside a city- the range doesn't matter so much there, and while the only reload time I could find was for 24 pound naval guns with experienced and well-trained crew-members, that number was still three minutes per shot. A noble can beat that easily, so I doubt there was ever much technological pressure for light pieces.
 
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