On Mon, 18 Nov 2013, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to me:
I know way too little about RL dinosaurs, to guess if any of them could be
used in such a fashion. I also don't know, with which it would be feasable
to enhance their natrual armour with metal one.
Barding would count against encumbrance, which reduces move but not ST,
right? Not exactly my usual topic.
It would be logical if both count against the encumbrance of the animal.
Your interpretation might be technical correct, but it seems like
rulelaywering to me. I don't know how well you could calculate barding in,
since it should not be plain more loaded weight because it should not
factor into some stats, like ground preassure either.
An other point with dinosaurs as draft animals would be to consider why
elephants have not been widely used as draft animals AFAIK, and how
various dinosaurs differ from them, as they seem to be the closes
equivalent among domesticated animals.
War elephants could propably used to judge how much DR a draft animal
really minimally needs to make a low tech tank feasable. I think the
animal should be mostly immune to ordinary missles (spears, bows) that
have been employed on battelfields in that area. Finding out how war
elephants had been brought down would be helpfull but again that is
something that would require research. My estimation of DR 10+ was a guess
that starting from there it definitly should work. Propably DR 6 would be
sufficient too.
The Hussite Wagenburg, but it used some firearms. The historical
precedent is a problem -- I'd feel cheating if I didn't research
it to adopt or reject individual parts for in-setting reasons.
You could officially make it a vehicle based on the popular percenption of
the Hussite Wagenburg and describe it as such in the introducation.
Even if I don't mention the precedent by name, I want to be aware of
it. I don't want to say oops when somebody asks "why didn't you...?"
about some well-known historical vehicle.
I can see that. Like i am often unstatisfied with the information
about ancient Rome that is easily accessable to me. I try to keep my
campain mostly correct, but i already have encountered all kinds of
mistakes. Sofar for most of them i have found them out myself and no one
else has yet commented on them.
Say you have a human tribe which lives on a world with a gate. There
is a low-tech mine and the henchmen of the Evil Overlords come every
couple of months to collect the refined ore. Why not more efficient
modern technology? Because then the Overlords would have to two bad
choices -- allow the tribe modern technology, and risk an effective
revolt, or base henchmen there permanently, make sure they don't get
seduced by the locals. The Overlords don't care what happens as long
as the ore quota is filled and the tribe doesn't develop dangerous
technology.
Or they don't want their technology fall into the hands of other system
lords or other rivals, and keeping the mining world save from intrustions
from them costs more, then the profits of extra ore.
The ore quota would go up if the tribe grows, so extra population
tries to fade into the hinterlands. But they won't break all ties
with the community at the gate, where one can get medicines if the
Overlord is merciful, or stainless metal tools, or glass pearls. A
regular caravan route develops, using technology which doesn't get
the henchmen bothered. Nothing which comes even remotely close to
a threat against the TL12 Grav Gunship, which means no gunpowder.
But there are bandits, so the caravan must not be too meek and
harmless, either.
Also nothing which is easy to track from orbit, or henchmen swoop
in, count the people, and raise the quota of the tribe. Of course
the primitives won't know exactly what that is, but centuries of
experience become ingrained taboos.
Or the mining operation itself requires caravaning stuff. Like if the
mines, the fields for food and the gate are all in different places.
You can have at least 4 types of primitives on the planet at the same
time. Enslaved natives, imported slaves, free natives and escaped slaves.
the overlord might not consider erradicating the last 2 worth the effort,
propably because if you run out of some resource, you can always steal
from them as quick fix. Even if there is some baditry happening.
The serfs of the overlord likely have better equipment, then the free
primitives, but that might be something like steel vs bronze.
What are the vehicles like? Wood, very little metal, no steam or
internal combustion ...
I suppose "Western" would be a good equivalent. I don't think many
vehicles there are actually gun powder dependent and it is otherwise a
similiar setting.
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