[MUD-Dev] Source data on Crossbow

[Matt Chatterley]

On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Cynbe ru Taren wrote:

> Matt Chatterley <root at mpc.dyn.ml.org> notes:
> 
> | To quote the simplified version of NII:
> | 
> | F=ma
> |
> | ...
> 
> Heh, didn't want to betray my undergrad physics
> career :)

Heh. I'm talking more from a mathematical position right at this point
(mechanics). Don't listen too hard to me, I know this stuff, but I'm not
very good at actually applying it. ;)
 
> | If anyone is interested, I can try to turn these fps figures into impact
> | forces given average missile masses. I'm not terribly good at applying the
> | above, though. :)
>  
> Air resistance goes up as the square or cube of velocity?

Assume the missiles are particles - it makes things much simpler, and
doesn't *really* screw up the results.
 
> | I've not really seen much of such things, although I did know of their
> | existance (ie: saw them in a book once). Are there any other (un)commonly
> | refered to missile weapons to consider here? Perhaps ballistas.. although
> | that gets us into seige weapons ...
> 
> I was avoiding that, yeh.  Good article on trebuchets in Scientific
> American a year or two back, and L Sprague de Camp's book The Ancient
> Engineers has lots of stuff if anyone is interested in seige weapons.

<g> Siege weapons are actually of interest to me - the way towns are
implemented on Caffeine (as objects in larger scale rooms), esentially),
well, not just towns, all areas, ie: castles, means that laying siege to
and/or storming a castle becomes fully possible. Castles can of course
defend themselves suitably.
 
> Um, how exotic do you want to get? :)  Exotic weapons used to be
> an interest of mine.  Giant toads for hunting birds, comorants for
> catching fish, fun stuff.

Heh. :) Some thought should be given to wierd and wonderful missiles too -
armour piercing arrows, barbed arrows, exploding crossbow bolts, etc.
 
> The sling is a weapon not to be underestimated:  Light, portable,
> ammo is often easily available, considerable range and impact.
> Makes the longbow look skill-free by comparison, though:  Took
> me a -long- time before I could hit a three-foot-square target
> at about fifteen feet.  The missile's point of origin is at your
> feet or about five feet off to the side, depending which way you
> swing it, and trajectory is amazingly sensitive to exact moment
> of release.  But they used to be used on a par with archers as
> light infantry in the classical period.

Yup. Slings are very useful - also very portable. A bit of leather (size
varying depending on the kind of sling) or perhaps even cloth. You may not
even carry ammo, theres usually something useable on the ground when it's
rough ground, so just a small pouch of stones. There are some cute magical
(or technological even) things you can do with slingstones too.. screaming
stones caused a real fuss in one RPG campaign I ran a while back.
 
> Beyond that... bolas?  War bolas with elastic lines and heavy weights
> can be unpleasant: they only have to be accurate to within four or
> five feet to wrap around the target, with the weights ending the wrap
> with a bone-crunching wallop.  Boomerangs?  Serious weapon ones don't
> return, but are nontrivial threats, with a long flat trajectory.  The

Bola (and even nets) are probably very dangerous in the right hands - and
a very good way to bring down an opponent while you're chasing him.
Boomerangs? Well.. being hit by 'em would hurt, I imagine. ;)

> Chinese used sort of giant Roman Candles early in the gunpowder era.

Don't forget, even if you're working pre-gunpowder, you can still use
cannons - if you can reason a way that they might have been crafted, and
function by magic.

> Spears and pikes have always been much more important than the
> attention they recieve would have one think, from the hunter-gatherer
> era through the classic era (the Roman legionaire carried two types, a
> light one designed to penetrate a shield and then bend, crippling the
> shield and preventing it being thrown back, and a heavy duty one as
> well) the medieval Scandinavian era (the sword got all the poetry, but
> the spear was the principal weapon) and right on up through the
> bayonet period, although it sort of ceases to be a missile weapon at
> that point.  Add a spear-thrower, and it becomes even more dangerous.

Yup. One reason why lots of safety precautions are taken at javelin
throwing events. ;) They might not be too nasty if you have only the one
spear thrower - but if you have a group, or rank of an army who all throw
spears at their opponents, casualties are almost inevitable.

> An Aerobee-style flying ring with razor edges could be unpleasant, but
> didn't get invented early enough to find use.  No reason why the
> Greeks or Scythians couldn't have developed the design by trial and
> error and been throwing zillions of light rings three hundred meters,
> though :).

Hmm, wonder where we might have seen anything like that. ;)
 
> Fire and smoke and plague-ridden bodies and such don't really count as
> missile weapons, although they've been effective in sieges ...

Heh. ;)

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's
	mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -George Orwell