[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Gedrin

An observation on the use of really pricey weapons, such as missiles, against lightweight targets: The equation in those cases isn't really $ per casualty. It may well be $ per Morale, and not necessarily your side's or even combatant morale. Similarly, you can get into situations where preventing allied casualties is paramount, and the equations change again.

"In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one." :-)

Originally Posted by Gedrin

I suspect I was wrong about using a powder per casualty metric. It's too valuable and the best bang for the buck isn't in whacking soldiers. You want a powder per capability metric, using it to deny or disrupt things that require a substantial time critical response. That sounds like directed fire to me.

Volleys of fire have been used as well, but only against heavy troops that would otherwise be fairly impervious to missiles. Since the strategic realities are that the PCs have fought every battle in this war either at sea or on a coast while being supplied from the sea, it's worthwhile for them to spend a lot of money on allowing a numerically inferior fast-moving force (hence more easily transported quickly to outmaneuever the enemy) to defeat even well equipped heavy infatry.

Basically, the PCs have a TL advantage in tactical, operational, logistics and strategic terms. They've parlayed that into a superiority at sea, which has pretty much put paid to the enemy's existing strategy and caused him extreme logistical disadvantages.

They are, however, facing an enemy with a lot more potential resources and historically, no cultural constraint has been enough to prevent nations from adopting clearly superior military technology from their foes, if they are economically able to do so. So the only chance that the PCs have is to take the fullest possible advantage of their current ascendancy over their foes and win the war before the other side can weather the necessary political and military changes.

This means that extreme spending for even minor advantage may be justified if it has a chance of tipping the balance and resulting in the enemy losing the political will to continue their invasion, as no long war can possibly end in anything other than disastrous defeat for the PCs' side.

Originally Posted by Gedrin

That said, it occurs to me that guided missiles and torpedoes are well within the reach of your party.

Ankhapet can shoot Spell Arrows that trigger Find Weakness on his target (often a ship or a fortification) and then designate it for mechanical artillery with smokepowder bombs. Abadas often uses fiery bolts or a blaze to mark ground targets for his air Dropping wizards.

Both of them have Forward Observer/TL4 at high levels. They also have high Observation and Abadas has Cartography and Mathematics (Surveying). Forward Observer/TL4* is actually being taught to element leaders in Abadas' flying mage force. Knowledge spells like Measurement and Know Position, among others, are very useful in precise targeting for artillery and help with Dropping too.

Ankhapet has been pestering a variety of wizards in his employ to develop more enchantments to allow the guiding or homing of artillery ammunition, slaved to his arrows, of course. Abadas could benefit from the same, with dropped bombs, though in his case he'd prefer that he be able to designate the target with a fiery bolt. Worst case scenario, he'll use his very high Dropping skill to make an accurate strike that will then allow homing for other bombs.

*I guess a case can be made for TL4+1 or even more, using magic to substitute for technology.

Originally Posted by Gedrin

Impact triggers + elementals are a pretty devastating combination. A natural tactic is to use a relatively low expense/high threat lure, say a sniper (assuming we're talking sharpshooters not SF types), and a forward observer that can direct an elemental guided bomb to immediately counter the reaction to the sniper. You can reverse this just as easily, drawing elite teams into sniper traps as they try to eliminate controllers, but I'd imagine the ability to direct elementals is more rare than the ability to be above average with a long gun.

The emphasised part is an excellent reason for why smokepowder weapons are worth using, even in a world with wizards and priests who can cause damage at a range with merely a prayer or a murmured phrase, guano and a bit of sulphur.

It's not really that hard for someone to get pretty good at shooting a gun. If he has the temperament to be a soldier and the necessary ruthlessness to kill, the technical challenge of hitting a human chest at 300 yards with a rifle, even one comparable to Low-Tech ones, is not that remarkable. A good marksman with a crossbow can probably pick it up fairly quickly and there are thousands of mercenary crossbowmen in the setting.

Even a very different ranged skill, like using a sling, probably has a lot of aspects that transfer over. Judging distance, motion of target, etc. It might not change cost in GURPS, but it justifies a fairly fast pace of learning for a good slinger learning to be a rifleman.

Originally Posted by Gedrin

Were I to do this, I'd continuously deploy air elementals to do the drops, whittling away at the elite and counter sniper capability, until they adopt some sort of overlapping close in counter fire.

Actually summoning useful air elementals and binding them to serve for a useful period of time is confined to pretty powerful wizards and priests, in setting. Enough so that training griffons, hippogriffs, pegasi and even giant albatrosses to serve as aerial mounts is worthwhile.

If you merely wish to bomb your enemy while remaining safe yourself, you don't need to have an elemental under your control to do it, anyway. You can use a mage or someone capable of using Imbuements who can fly high above the battlefield, learn the skill Dropping and use either spells (Hawk Vision, True Strike, etc.) or Imbuements to direct the bomb.

As Abadas (PC) and his ever growing band of flying mages (and other things) delight in demonstrating against the hide-bound and tactically out-dated Mulhorandi, it really sucks when the other side controls the air and has no cultural constraints on using it to attack an enemy that can't strike back.

Originally Posted by Gedrin

The described opponents can come up with some pretty natural tactics to shoot down weapons and protect troops close in. Then I'd switch to an earth elemental deployment system with a heavier load (with cobbled streets, you don't even need fragmentation effects on your warhead).

The Mulhorandi (the enemy) have really suffered for being an army with a TL1+1* to TL2+1** doctrine, theocratic/aristocratic command, a lot of generations since a real war and monumental cultural resistance to change. Their biggest problem is that their society considers war to be largely a backdrop to duels between divinely-powered champions and their merely human soldiers have mostly had to worry about overawing the population, hunting down barbarian bandits and occasionally surpressing a revolt among some desperately poor subject peoples or outright slaves.

The upper echelons of the Mulhorandi know, on a level far deeper than mere experience has so far been able to reach, that the proper function of a flying chariot or a winged horse is to allow a champion to dramatically approach his opposing counterpart in order to face him in a famous duel between the armies.

There are a lot of clever men among their armies, who can see very clearly that they need to concentrate their magical assets that allow for aerial operations or counter-air capability and come up with a unified doctrine for these, but most of the magic in question isn't controlled by military commanders. It's owned by the Pharoah personally, the churches or by nobles.

And a mere common-born commander of soldiers, even if they are thirty thousand soldiers and involved in an enterprise that requires hundreds of thousands to support them, does not have the authority to confiscate church property or noble family heirlooms just because they would be better used by someone else under his command.

So far, the most effective aerial capabilty among the Mulhorandi has been provided by champions who were loaned or gifted with their magic (or flying mount) by the Pharoah himself, e.g. religious champions in the Royal Guard who can take on the form of birds of prey.

There was also a group of griffon riders belonging to one of the churches that worked together well, albeit not subject to any coordination with ground forces. And once a band of powerful clerics summoned a flight of warrior angels to face Abadas and his merry flying men.

Much of the rest of their capability is scattered in a haphazard way, each man with a way to magically fly deciding for himself how he will best try to counter the flying enemy.

My point being, so far, just being able to fly has been a really reliable way to be able to drop explosive or incendiary things on Mulhorandi armies with relative impunity. Well, apart from the individual champion duel, which is always entertaining.

*The really prestigious priests, nobles, temple guards and aristocratic retinues, as well as the largely ceremonial army of the Pharoah.
**The regiments that are largely responsible for any genuine success at arms over the past century, mostly descended from a caste of originally foreign mercenaries and/or belonging to a less prestigious religious order that actually accepts some innovation in the hallowed art of war, at least if they are hit hard enough over the head with it on the battlefield.