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Torroar's word is ultimately what matters.
Warhammer Fantasy: A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism
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yes....... hence the I´ll shut my trap part at the end of the post.
It´s inherently silly to try to force realism on a setting of Gods, Dragons and magic after all.
Just, I´m a bit of a nerd about this era and a lot of stuff said by you (general you) was ..... if not necessary wrong a very pop culture picture of a star fort (and tbh, a some of it was also just straight up wrong) that is incomplete to say the least.
So, if @torroar is comfortable and alright with it, I would explain in detail what a star fort is, what it was made to defend against and why I think it is very well suited against most of the threats in warhammer
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Alright.
Basically, i guess from all of your responses, your image of a star fort is this
That is basically the pop culture image of a star fort. But that is not correct, or rather, is about as much a star fort as the keep is a castle.
An actual star fortress is an extremely complex multi layered structure of ditches, platforms, walls, trenches and moats that employs defense in depth.
Star fortresses are, to be frank, some if not the greatest defensive structures ever made by humanity.
A star fort usually consists of three to four layers, that were not only made to neutralize cannon fire, but were very much also designed to make it impossible to simply storm them via simply mass alone. Contrary to popular believe, medieval style castles were not rendered obsolete merely by the introductions of gun powder or cannons. No, something else that lead to their down fall was the ability of states to muster ever more numerous armies and properly equip them with ever more robust armor, meaning that one of the most popular methods of taking a castle was to simply overwhelm with numbers of men that were to well equipped to reduce before they stormed the fortifications.
To prevent this from being possible, star forts possessed an extensive defense in depth.
A star fortress ususally possess one, two or even more of these defensive positions before you can ever even get to what, in pop culture, is commonly known to be a star fortress, with these walls mainly serving as a high laying emplacement to rain down cannon fire on the attackers who try overcome the maze of trenches, ditches, Glacis and earth walls that lead to the Stone walls.
Even if you managed to breach the outer defenses, which often took months if not years for an attacking army to overcome, the inner star fort can still over all the protection a traditional castle can. Plus, simply "isolating" one of the tips of a star fort is impossible as they were build to be mutuall supporting.
Trying to force such a fortress with sheer numbers was almost always bound to fail, one of the best known examples being the Ottoman siege of vienna in 1529, were a mere 7000 men were able to fend of repeated attempted stormings of over 100 000 ottoman soldiers. As such it was necessary to remove the "Outer defences" of a star fort with mines and underground tunnel warfare before the actual assaults on the city or fortress could begin, a process that was highly costly and took months.
Of course, now, say, tens of thousands of skaven slaves or goblins or beastmen could simply try to rush these defenses without the moral issues of a human army..... but they would still need to overcome multiple ditches, moats and earth walls, all so layered that each can support the one below it with gun fire, cannon fire, grenades and pikes, would need to fill out multiple moats to get..... to the point where they would simply needed to run with a traditional castle.
Trying to force this could produce tens of thousands of casualities in the past and I have no doubt that poorly equipped skaven slaves beastmen and goblins would far worse.
Sure, our castles are supported by magic, runes and what not, but is that really an argument against a star fortress? Can a star fortress, after all, not be equipped and supported by those very same means while still having it´s highly complex and effective layered defense in depth?
Plus, yes, magic could be a threat to this that didn´t exist in real life.... but again, in real life in took tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of cannon shots to blast a star fortress open. Taking a competently build and defended star fortress is a battle of material attrition as much as it was one of lives, so i´d assume that a star fortress would be able to tank at least some magical bombardment.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9P1QkpFdKo&ab_channel=SandRhomanHistory
I recommend this video for some context on just how f******** difficult it can be to take a star fort
Tldr: I am a nerd of post medieval warfare. Reject traditional castles, embrace star fortresses
Basically, i guess from all of your responses, your image of a star fort is this
That is basically the pop culture image of a star fort. But that is not correct, or rather, is about as much a star fort as the keep is a castle.
An actual star fortress is an extremely complex multi layered structure of ditches, platforms, walls, trenches and moats that employs defense in depth.
Star fortresses are, to be frank, some if not the greatest defensive structures ever made by humanity.
A star fort usually consists of three to four layers, that were not only made to neutralize cannon fire, but were very much also designed to make it impossible to simply storm them via simply mass alone. Contrary to popular believe, medieval style castles were not rendered obsolete merely by the introductions of gun powder or cannons. No, something else that lead to their down fall was the ability of states to muster ever more numerous armies and properly equip them with ever more robust armor, meaning that one of the most popular methods of taking a castle was to simply overwhelm with numbers of men that were to well equipped to reduce before they stormed the fortifications.
To prevent this from being possible, star forts possessed an extensive defense in depth.
A star fortress ususally possess one, two or even more of these defensive positions before you can ever even get to what, in pop culture, is commonly known to be a star fortress, with these walls mainly serving as a high laying emplacement to rain down cannon fire on the attackers who try overcome the maze of trenches, ditches, Glacis and earth walls that lead to the Stone walls.
Even if you managed to breach the outer defenses, which often took months if not years for an attacking army to overcome, the inner star fort can still over all the protection a traditional castle can. Plus, simply "isolating" one of the tips of a star fort is impossible as they were build to be mutuall supporting.
Trying to force such a fortress with sheer numbers was almost always bound to fail, one of the best known examples being the Ottoman siege of vienna in 1529, were a mere 7000 men were able to fend of repeated attempted stormings of over 100 000 ottoman soldiers. As such it was necessary to remove the "Outer defences" of a star fort with mines and underground tunnel warfare before the actual assaults on the city or fortress could begin, a process that was highly costly and took months.
Of course, now, say, tens of thousands of skaven slaves or goblins or beastmen could simply try to rush these defenses without the moral issues of a human army..... but they would still need to overcome multiple ditches, moats and earth walls, all so layered that each can support the one below it with gun fire, cannon fire, grenades and pikes, would need to fill out multiple moats to get..... to the point where they would simply needed to run with a traditional castle.
Trying to force this could produce tens of thousands of casualities in the past and I have no doubt that poorly equipped skaven slaves beastmen and goblins would far worse.
Sure, our castles are supported by magic, runes and what not, but is that really an argument against a star fortress? Can a star fortress, after all, not be equipped and supported by those very same means while still having it´s highly complex and effective layered defense in depth?
Plus, yes, magic could be a threat to this that didn´t exist in real life.... but again, in real life in took tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of cannon shots to blast a star fortress open. Taking a competently build and defended star fortress is a battle of material attrition as much as it was one of lives, so i´d assume that a star fortress would be able to tank at least some magical bombardment.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9P1QkpFdKo&ab_channel=SandRhomanHistory
I recommend this video for some context on just how f******** difficult it can be to take a star fort
Tldr: I am a nerd of post medieval warfare. Reject traditional castles, embrace star fortresses
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- Location
- Germany
Question for me is: what forces the Skaven or whatever to attack the Fortress instead of directly going for a city? From what I've seen they don't actually contain the population, but are more of a military strong point. Good for a choke point or to control certain areas or paths, but not really helpful to protect a city and its people.
Normal human armies cannot ignore it because they would inevitably lose their supply lines to the garrison. Orks (would probably just attack it, but Skaven or smarter Beastmen?
The fort isn't the city and even if it's close to it, it doesn't actually protect it. The population can't retreat to the fort and a small force can keep the garrison at bay, while the rest of whatever is attacking is slaughtering the people.
Unless I'm missing something this is a good idea for defenses the enemy cannot avoid, but falls apart otherwise.
Normal human armies cannot ignore it because they would inevitably lose their supply lines to the garrison. Orks (would probably just attack it, but Skaven or smarter Beastmen?
The fort isn't the city and even if it's close to it, it doesn't actually protect it. The population can't retreat to the fort and a small force can keep the garrison at bay, while the rest of whatever is attacking is slaughtering the people.
Unless I'm missing something this is a good idea for defenses the enemy cannot avoid, but falls apart otherwise.
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Traditionally star forts were build at tactically important positions like supply lines, ports, mountain passes etc..... but it is absolutely possible to just make a city a star fort.
It´s just..... absurddddddddddddddddddddddddldlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy expensive.
Seen here. The star fortress city vienna.
Also known as: "The capital of the greatest dynasty in european history." And. "That place that proved to be really really really difficult to take for ottomans, frenchies, swedes etc"
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- Location
- Earth, Sol
If I may add my two cents, a good example of a Star Fort City would be Vienna back in the 1683 which held off an Ottoman Siege, 150 000 Ottoman troops vs 16000 defenders. It wouldn't be too far fetched to just Star Fort a City. A good video on said Siege.
View: https://youtu.be/ukyquQkQAYo
edit: ninjaed with better explanation
View: https://youtu.be/ukyquQkQAYo
edit: ninjaed with better explanation
- Location
- Africa
we can and will afford it as soon as the GM gives us the okay to build it and price tag to work towards
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- Winchester
Still need an in character reason to come up with the idea though. Hope one of the engineers or an architect rolls well on drunken inspiration?
My dude. Uh. Things are about to get very expensive. We have a major city to rebuild and ongoing bills and another war or three in the wings. Money is getting a little tight.
Yes, we have a major city to rebuild. Works out nicely, since we'd want to make it as resilient a stronghold as possible.
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Uh, star fortresses are the pinacle of castle "technology". They more or less made land battles outside of sieges a dying race for almost a century until the reforms of Vauban.
They deploy lapsed and multi layered defenses, extensive earth work, parapetts and often involved literally remodelling the environment they were built in.
And that is just for strongholds. Turning Major cities into star fortresses involved redesigning them at times entirely (which lead admittedly to truly spectacularly powerfull fortress cities, vienna being the best example). I´ll repeat myself, this is capital E Expensive, in time, material and money.
en.wikipedia.org
And we would need to probably develope them first.
Star Fortresses are awesome, but we shouldn´t be blind to how much cash we will have to pay for them. (They are completely worth it though).
They deploy lapsed and multi layered defenses, extensive earth work, parapetts and often involved literally remodelling the environment they were built in.
And that is just for strongholds. Turning Major cities into star fortresses involved redesigning them at times entirely (which lead admittedly to truly spectacularly powerfull fortress cities, vienna being the best example). I´ll repeat myself, this is capital E Expensive, in time, material and money.
Bastion fort - Wikipedia
Like, really expensive. And Amsterdam´s and Sienna´s defenses weren´t exactly on the level of vienna, aka what we´d want for wolfenburg.
And we would need to probably develope them first.
Star Fortresses are awesome, but we shouldn´t be blind to how much cash we will have to pay for them. (They are completely worth it though).
let´s just ask malagor, malekith, the norscans and the orks if they can be so nice to wait a couple generations
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What were his reforms?
I'm reading about socket bayonets, early trench warfare and ricocheting cannon fire, but none of that seems directly related to breathing fresh life into open war.
The biggest issue here is that it's difficult to build star forts when nobody has invented star forts yet
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Vauban is one of the most underrated military geniuses, he was basically the Napoleon of siege warfare.
And while it might actually not sound like much, ricocheting cannon fire and properly angled cannon fire on a large scale was one of his greatest inventions.
A good metaphor would be the cannonade equivalent of disciplined volley fire.
Basically, shooting the walls empty by pulling napoleonic era style volley fire just with cannons with the enemy being unable to respond. Then when the enemy retreats to defensive line behind it, build a closer trench, move artillery there, rinse and repeat.
Was made possible by a massive raise in powder production.
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There is also the fact star fort works with pure gunline armies, or at least armies going in that direction at a decided pace, at least for infantry. When melee is bound to stay a big thing for armies in Mallus for a while.
And they were built in a world where firepower can halt the enemy attack. Something not always a given with things like Ogres, Daemons, Chaos Warriors, Undead, Skavens, Orcs, Chaos Dwarfs... You get the drift.
Now, I think the shapes of star forts and trace italienne can work against Magic As Artillery for instance mind you, but it demands an army a bit different that what the Empire actually has now, and needs against some of its foes and their own extra abilities. I can see elements of this system integrated in other fortifications, but not a wholesale change towards it though. Unless the Empire's armies change pretty massively.
And they were built in a world where firepower can halt the enemy attack. Something not always a given with things like Ogres, Daemons, Chaos Warriors, Undead, Skavens, Orcs, Chaos Dwarfs... You get the drift.
Now, I think the shapes of star forts and trace italienne can work against Magic As Artillery for instance mind you, but it demands an army a bit different that what the Empire actually has now, and needs against some of its foes and their own extra abilities. I can see elements of this system integrated in other fortifications, but not a wholesale change towards it though. Unless the Empire's armies change pretty massively.
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Star forts were the primary fortifications of the 15th, 16th and partially 17th century, also known as the pike and shot era.
Armies at the time had an heavy melee focus that would not change until the dutch reforms and the battle of
A star fort in particular relayed on mix of melee, close and long range infantry.
Pike men would defend the ditches and choke points, swords men and skirmishers would rush out to raid enemy trenches or lines within the first or second layer of breached outer defenses, while grenadiers pelt the enemy with grenades from the next earthen wall or glacil, with muskets laying down fire from the earth wall and the cannons shooting from the stone wall (in the siege of vienna, following the ottoman breaching into the line, this type of fight delayed the ottomans for almost a whole month before they could break out of the first layer of ditches).
The armies of the time and for whom star forts were constructed with in mind were not even remotely pure gunline armies
No?
Often enough an enemy assault would reach the glacis and then be halted outright as it leads directly into a mutli meter deep and broad ditch directly into a second line of muskets who stand protected behind a wall while the few ways to cross the ditch are protected by pikes and have cannons trained on them.
The only ones you mentioned who could easily cross this are demons and maybe the chaos dwarfs if they bring bridgelayer stuff. Though i imagine that would be instantly targeted and focused on by cannons
of course.
I mainly am making these posts because people here have the assumption that star forts would be ineffective against warhammer foes.
*gestures at post* i strongly disagree
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1) Get your timeline straight. Crecy is 14th century. Thinking about star forts only started with the Italian Wars, 150 years later, give or take.
2) Counting for the maturation time, the design is fully ready by the 1550s. By then, granted pike and shot armies.
3) Except the design really reached its peak with the 17th century, who saw the death of pike and shot armies, like Spanish tercios, the iconic pike and shot army, as the move to pure gunline happened. That's the time where Vauban did his work. After the tercios had died on the fields of the 30 Years War.
Only one third of the design's lifespan was P&S armies. Big number, alright, butcit still means having armies needing to cgange a lot to fully exploit it.
No?
Often enough an enemy assault would reach the glacis and then be halted outright as it leads directly into a mutli meter deep and broad ditch directly into a second line of muskets who stand protected behind a wall while the view ways to cross the ditch are protected by pikes and have cannons trained on them.
The only ones you mentioned who could easily cross this are demons and maybe the chaos dwarfs if they bring bridgelayer stuff. Though i imagine that would be instantly targeted and focused on by cannons
Let me rephrase: Mallus is chokeful filled with armies having either the surhuman toughness, superlative numbers, fanatic drive, supernatural artillery, which includes magic, and supernatural bullet-stopping armors to punch through early star forts like the ones accomodating heavy melee contingents. And more often than not, they have several of these things at the same time. And I stopped at the bad guys here.
Now could you please cease and desist with your geeking out on the subject, please?
Who do we have on hand that can conceivably have the plans for Star Forts?
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Staff Notice - Rule 4: Spaghetti posting is disruptive to the participation of other users.
Derp, i meant the battle of rocroi
Yes..... and?
That doesn´t help them just.... magically ignore the moat/ditch they need to fill to get past the first layer of defenses. Short of them literally filling it with their bodies but, which yes, is an option for skaven, orcs and the beastmen but that just means the fortifications are doing their purpose, no? Making sure to kill tons of the enemy as they attack.
I am not saying the star fort would be invincible or just as hard to crack as irl, just that it would still be damn effective.
Yes? I mean, I mentioned vauban and, to be honest, i disagree. The peak of the star fort was, if not in it´s design but it´s effectiveness, the time directly before the death of the tercio, in the 80 years war.
Later on, while the design was improved, Vauban´s reforms allowed for one to reliable crack them with relatively little loss of life for it´s soldiers.
what i meant.
yes, but i meant that for a really long time, Star fortresses were working with almost exactly the type of army we had, arguably at their greatest efficiacy. (the 80 years war)
- Location
- United States of America
While it's a cool idea , and something to consider in the future I very much doubt we're gonna have the time to research said defense styles or have the funds for quite a while while we recover from this, then the beastide, then whatever shit happens as a result from those events .
Restalaan
What do you mean i am not a real cowboy?
The problem of building such a thorough and large-scale defense has always been time, regardless of how fast/focus we try.
Salkaten took multiple turns to develop into the large port in Ostland which is pretty much our kind of semi-star fort port. It would've held up decently against most norscan invasions and if the Druichii hadn't come, we would've been able to made it bigger and larger.
Also frankly, I think most of us expected a Black Ark to come and serve as a harbor for their raiders, army, not for them to take their Arc and decide to engage in a bit of aggressive terraforming.
So far, Wulfenburg hasn't been subjected to that kind of pressure just yet (And it's also why we're still taking any chance to further develop the city further.) and so long we keep rebuilding it, Wulfenburg can become something like the former Nippon capital city of multiple tiered castles on castles.