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Old 05-03-2022, 01:45 PM   #41
thrash
 
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
Logistics may also limit that... I'm still deciding what these things eat. the obvious answer is "A Lot", but I'm thinking of making them mostly carnivores, but able to digest heaps of cooked human food as well.
Realizing that real world ecology has about as much to do with these things as the square-cube law...

Even if the creature doesn't mind carrion, shipping meat at TL3 usually requires on-the-hoof and slaughter only when (or if) needed.

Most animals need about 10x their body mass at the next lower trophic level to support them. Using Anthony's figure of 250-500 tons, that's 2,500-5,000 tons of prey population -- maybe 5,000-10,000 head of cattle. Let's say 25% replacement per year: 1,250-2,500 head of cattle per year, or 3-7 head of cattle per day -- or the creature starves.

Don't fight the beast: kill its food supply, before it gets close enough for the beast to eat. Much lower DR.

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I suddenly wonder what the DR on the roof of the mouth should be. especially as it might not be vertebrate.
What's the DR on its alimentary track? If you can't interdict its food supply, intercept it and try to feed it carcasses laced with obsidian flakes, broken swords, etc.

Or, how about its lungs? Instead of burning the entire forest, set pots of pitch upwind and put noxious chemicals in them to burn -- sulfur, lye, white lead, poison ivy, bougainvillea, lacquer, etc.
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Old 05-03-2022, 02:01 PM   #42
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

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Most animals need about 10x their body mass at the next lower trophic level to support them. Using Anthony's figure of 250-500 tons, that's 2,500-5,000 tons of prey population -- maybe 5,000-10,000 head of cattle. Let's say 25% replacement per year: 1,250-2,500 head of cattle per year, or 3-7 head of cattle per day -- or the creature starves.
Roughly speaking, daily food consumption scales linearly with BL (larger animals eat meals that scale linearly with their weight, but the number of such meals they need per day scales linearly with the inverse of height/length, in Bio Tech). So, one of these things needs about 400x as many calories as a typical human does. A GURPS character needs 3,000 kcal per day while adventuring (although 2,000 should work when they aren't), so that implies one of these things would need 1,200,000 kcal per day while engaging in military pursuits (and probably 800,000 when not). I believe a GURPS human needs around 0.5 lb of meat (with an optimal butchering result giving pounds of meat equal to IIRC 60-70% of the animal's weight) per meal, or around 1.5 lb per day, so that's 600 lb per day for the worm-snake (or 400 if relatively-inactive), which a good butcher can get out of a ~1000 lb animal. A modern beef cattle tends to be around 1,210 lb, and while those at TL3 were probably smaller, I'd imagine you can get away with 1 cow per day (2 cows every 3 days when it's inactive... or even less if it can actually reduce its metabolic rate, which would be a useful adaptation for such a creature). That's still quite a bit of beef, of course.
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Old 05-03-2022, 02:48 PM   #43
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

The creature could have a fat storage on it, perhaps not needing to eat all the time, perhaps they're linked with breeding cycles of their prey.
Perhaps they wait until mating seasons to devour bucks and the like and keeping the does alive so they make more deer.

Perhaps they are omnivores and can also eat plant matter. In that case they might gorge themselves on things like acorns (beeches and acorns and the like were used to fatten up pigs IRL for example)

And otherwise they just forage and snack. It's a pretty big creature but that doesn't have to mean that it has to be dangerous, food wise, all the time.

And since OP already stated that some of them are making pacts with humans, maybe these creatures could also be regarded as guardian (spirits) of regions by more primitive tribes, or just spiritualists.

They cull wildlife, they eat swathes through the forests for flight animals to sprint through. If they live up to their wormyness, they might divert rivers by just eating through soil every now and then. Maybe even conciously to landscape. Like gardeners.
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Old 05-03-2022, 03:57 PM   #44
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

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Roughly speaking, daily food consumption scales linearly with BL (larger animals eat meals that scale linearly with their weight, but the number of such meals they need per day scales linearly with the inverse of height/length, in Bio Tech). So, one of these things needs about 400x as many calories as a typical human does. A GURPS character needs 3,000 kcal per day while adventuring (although 2,000 should work when they aren't), so that implies one of these things would need 1,200,000 kcal per day while engaging in military pursuits (and probably 800,000 when not). I believe a GURPS human needs around 0.5 lb of meat (with an optimal butchering result giving pounds of meat equal to IIRC 60-70% of the animal's weight) per meal, or around 1.5 lb per day, so that's 600 lb per day for the worm-snake (or 400 if relatively-inactive), which a good butcher can get out of a ~1000 lb animal. A modern beef cattle tends to be around 1,210 lb, and while those at TL3 were probably smaller, I'd imagine you can get away with 1 cow per day (2 cows every 3 days when it's inactive... or even less if it can actually reduce its metabolic rate, which would be a useful adaptation for such a creature). That's still quite a bit of beef, of course.
Checking LTC3, Butchering is 40% weight on a success, +5% per MoS (maximum 70%), so 60% would be MoS 4, which should be achievable (not all butchers are going to have the ~skill 15 needed to pull this off on average, but then you don't need all your butchers doing the work). However, I was wrong about food consumption - LTC3 marks each pound of meat as one meal, not two, so the snake needs twice as much as I calculated. We also get a weight range of only 800-1000 lb, meaning if we assume 60% of the animal is available for consumption, that's 480-600 lbs, out of a needed 1200 lbs, so between 2 and 2.5 cattle needed per day. Of course, the worm-snake might be able to eat the cow whole, but I'd argue that more-or-less just gets them the full 70% rather than 100% counting as food (bones and the like don't have a lot of caloric value, and I figure the 70% maximum includes getting the marrow out anyway); that's 560-700 lb, averaging out to simply two cows per day.

They may be able to supplement their food with the corpses of the enemy and their horses (or other beasts of war), but that would only be more-or-less immediately after a battle, and may well not be an option (they may balk at consuming other sapients, the laws of war might disallow desecration of corpses and count "Consumption by worm-snake" as such, etc), so probably not worth taking into account.
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Old 05-03-2022, 04:24 PM   #45
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
ST200 is basic Lift 8000. "Lots of people" is therefore 400.

Of course you have to think of a way to attach all those ropes first.
That's a really nice calculation to have; thanks! And it seems it comes up in the feeding conversation as well. Which is somewhat relevant, because the wyrms do have to eat.


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May I suggest the chasmfiend, from The Stormlight Archives? It's similar, albeit a bit smaller - it appears to be around 20x the size (its length vs his height) of Kaladin Stormblessed, who is himself I believe around 6 feet tall, for around 120 feet long. They can be fought by armies, although this is difficult and will result a great deal of loss of life without Shardbearers (guys in magical powered armor with oversized cut-through-anything swords) involved.
I'm very aware of greatshells: I like the books. However, I have at this point promised the players a worm. that, and the chance to steal its egg, are about the only thing I have promised!


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I had the same issue initially; look up Lambton Worm instead.
Thank You. That's bit of information worth having seen.

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Originally Posted by Lovewyrm View Post
If the worm doesn't have vitals above the mouth (or the part that isn't already basically 'death' for the stabber)
Then that probably wouldn't matter much anyway.
Not sure in worms or snakes, but many animals heal very quickly in the mouth mucosa.
Which makes sense since that's a major interface between your metabolism and probably unwilling food.
True, but isn't it also often sensitive? I suppose that most creatures I can think of have at least some armor there, but often less than just outside the mouth.



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And thinking about that, I'm now wondering about segmentation, as in, assigning hitpoints to the creature for segments.
Like limbs for humanoids, with the result that hurting a limb after it's basically mangled doesn't do much more damage overall.

So if the worm has 100hp for example, and it can live 'chopped up' then even bisecting it won't put it into death zones.
Perhaps that could be used instead of very high DR?
I'd like to keep the creatures as slow growers who would very much be impaired by the loss of a third of their mass. I think I'm dropping the DR to 20 and adding armor chinks at some to hit penalty.

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
LTC2 suggests being able to make impaling weapons armor piercing at, IIRC, either +3 or +4 CF, by making them with hardened steel... but that's TL4. I'd need to reread "The Deadly Spring" to see where that places armor piercing arrows at.
thanks for the reference! That option is a game changer! page 12.


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It occurs to me this could be part of their deal with humans - perhaps the parasites are of a similar size to humans (or a bit smaller) and the worms have difficulty dislodging them, but humans are able to clear them off - largely by fighting and killing them.
I don't think the parasites would be human sized... but cleaning off parasites on the shell periodically does sound like a good bit of color.

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You need around 5d+2 damage to have a ~50% chance of getting through DR. I think that's around the damage of a Wall Gun; even a cavalry charge isn't getting through that (and charging right into the worm is probably going to kill the horse and possibly rider from the impact, it's not like you can charge past something that size and do anything more than scratch it).
with the armor piercing lances and armor chinks at DR20 it should be doable though... though you probably have to charge in pairs with the understanding that one of you is doomed.


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Originally Posted by thrash View Post
Realizing that real world ecology has about as much to do with these things as the square-cube law...
I'm trying to mostly respect the square-cube law here. Mostly. The food intake is interesting, especially as a lot of these wyrms are fed primarily by humans.
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Old 05-03-2022, 04:28 PM   #46
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

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The lambton reference probably googles to "lambton worm".
We will refrain from mentioning that the earliest known reference to the Lambton Worm comes from the 18th century, around the time that the family came to public renown. But anyhow - it was a constrictor with extreme regeneration/body segment reattachment abilities, which was induced to attack a guy with spear points welded all over his armour, in running water which swept the body segments away before they could reattach.

Looking up Persian myths, which had some of the earliest “spiky blade-covered bait” stories, reminds me that those were just a subset of the “persuade it to eat poison” stories. (There were also “persuade it to eat incendiaries” variants.) Which might be the best bet here, if someone can scrape together enough poison; even beings of human intelligence can fall for a basic poisoned dinner trick.
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Old 05-03-2022, 04:54 PM   #47
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

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I'm trying to mostly respect the square-cube law here. Mostly.
'Respecting the square-cube law' means 'stand still and watch it die, crushed under its own weight'.
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Old 05-03-2022, 04:56 PM   #48
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

Much like writers, tacticians and strategists are prone to stealing/recycling/filing off serial numbers.

For the lowered DR version of the Doom Worm I suggest stealing from the best. The Desert Fox.

Early in WW2 the Germans ran across The Matilda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_II

They found that the 37mm and 75mm short barrelled tank cannons that they had could not hurt them.

Their answer was to preset and Camouflage 88mm anti-aircraft cannon (long barrelled, relatively immobile tactically) and use the 'useless' tanks to draw the Matildas into and across the 88's killbox.

Wasn't always easy on the tanks, but it worked.

File off Tank and 88mm flak, scribble in calvary and Extra Heavy Ballista and you are halfway home.
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Old 05-03-2022, 05:08 PM   #49
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

Summon a 150 foot mongoose, stand back and watch the show?

If magical enchantments are available and you have sufficient lead time Penetrating Weapon cast on 72" Scorpion (LT, p. 82) bolts would reliably pierce even DR 40. Even without enchantment they'd reliably pierce DR 20. If you allow bodkin points for such missiles that would have similar effects to an enchantment.

Assuming 7d+1 (2) damage, you'd get an average of (25.5 - 40/2 = ) 5.5 points of damage per hit, so 20 hits would have a fair chance of incapacitating it even with DR40. With 1/2D range of 275 and RoF 1/30, even a stationary scorpion could get off about 2 shots before the beast got within range. 50-100 would likely be sufficient to seriously injure or incapacitate the beast in that time period.

In any case, an army is only going to defeat such a monster with fast, mobile tactics which draw it into traps or unfavorable terrain, as well as defense in depth.

Cavalry or the fantasy equivalent of horse artillery are your only options for engaging the beast, everything else is just crunchy snacks.

Mount the scorpions on heavy duty wagons (at 1190 lbs., just doable) pulled by large, fast teams of horses so they can outrun it. Use "horse archer" tactics to gall and distract the beast while retreating units reload.

Perhaps use harpoons trailing heavy weights to slow the beast down.

Use the infantry as signalers, preferably protected by tall, very tough towers or stationed on hilltops. Alternately, have them pre-positioned to set massive fires to channel the beast's movements.

If you have any sort of air power, the equation changes. A vehicle or creature capable of dropping 100 lb. rocks from 100 yards height will reliably do at about 32 HP of damage and has an outside chance of doing 40+ HP. Since the beast is land-bound, it can't attack aerial units even if they're slow.

"Combined arms" ops would use aerial units as signalers and scouts, as well as "fire support" for ground-based units.
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Old 05-03-2022, 05:21 PM   #50
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

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Mount the scorpions on heavy duty wagons (at 1190 lbs., just doable) pulled by large, fast teams of horses so they can outrun it. Use "horse archer" tactics to gall and distract the beast while retreating units reload.
At TL 3 I do not believe you have ANY fast, heavy wagons.

They would be either/or not both. And considering that wagon suspension didn't really exist at TL 3 shooting while moving would be pretty much a no go. Probably same deal with reloading on the move.

Some 'horse artillery' might exist in some TL 3 games. But anything heavy enough to hurt even the lesser version of the Doom Worm IMHO would not really have tactical mobility. Never mind tactical 'speed'.
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