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Old 01-05-2018, 11:16 AM   #42
ericthered
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Default Re: Logistically Viable Weapons AtE

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
There are hundreds of billions of bullets, all of which are more resistant to the end of the world than the billions of people. Worrying about running out of ammo quickly seems to be solving the wrong problem.
https://www.nraila.org/articles/2003...l-of-democracy

In WWII the United states furnished 47 Billion rounds of ammunition to the army and to foreign allies. The axis had under 8 million military deaths. which means over six thousand bullets were produced for every kill. I suspect over half of those were fired. The number of remaining bullets also depends on how your world ended. A nuclear conflagration probably destroys most of the biggest ammo caches. Things fall apart involves conflicts that go through most of your ammunition. And AtE is set a time after the end, not during it. In this time, bullets are consumed, while fire arms are not. These factors vary, but the default for AtE is that bullets are precious.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomsdad View Post
Sorry the two above are linked.
They really are, I agree. And if you have the economics to mass produce good bullets, you should certainly do so. One of the wonderful things of fiction is to produce situations that don't exist naturally in history.

Quote:
Even by the early C19th cavalry charging against infantry in all but the most favorable situations was a bad idea, so its not really a case that cavalry were regularly and successfully charging home against riflemen 100 years later unless there was machine gun in play.

Have you got cites of these successful charges happening a lot? As opposed to cavalry being used a lot because they are good mobile force for fighting in the more open eastern front context. But actually most of the time they fought like mobile infantry.
I'm going to quibble with the claim that early C19th cavalry charging against infantry was a bad idea in all but the most favorable situations. Cavalry was always a unit that you deployed carefully and picked your battles for. They are expensive and can save you in a pickle. When I look at the way cavalry was outfitted in the Napoleonic wars, in the US civil war, and in the Crimean, I have no doubt they were used to charge infantry and especially artillery. The charge of the light brigade was routine until they were given the wrong target. Even then, they successfully overran their target, and had their sister battalion, the heavy brigade, followed up, the battle would have been over there and then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_...Napoleonic_era

I don't have any stats for cavalry on the eastern front of world war 1. I've merely been following The Great War you tube channel, and it comes up. The main video on the subject is :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDFZPIl0JtE

But that focuses mainly on the western front, and its really just proof that before world war I the cavalry charge was deeply entrenched in military doctrine and not at all abandoned. I can't find all the times when the eastern front charges come up, (actually, I can't find any because that would involve combing hours of footage), but they are in there.

Against true TL6 troops who aren't counting bullets, cavalry charges are almost always a bad idea, and the exceptions are just that. I will concede this freely. But I will hold to the claim that against muzzle loading troops, and against those who don't have hundred of bullets to use for covering fire, the cavalry charge remains a strong weapon capable of deciding battles.
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