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Old 05-02-2022, 10:32 PM   #11
Michael Thayne
 
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

Depends on what other traits it has. Does it have any form of Injury Tolerance? Nictitating Membrane?
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Old 05-03-2022, 12:21 AM   #12
oneofmanynameless
 
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

Bows, swords, spears, cavalry... all useless. Can't hurt it at all. Cavalry might be able to give it some bruises, but only if you're willing to let all of your expensive horses and best trained soldiers die for the cost of bruising it.

Fire will kill anything sooner or later, but the technology to apply fire isn't nearly strong enough at that TL to take out a non-flammable target of that size and mobility. burn down the forest it's in is a viable strategy, but very costly (loose the forest) and you have to get the fire going without it realizing what's going on until too late or it will do ye-old "jump through the flames" and then your ****ed.

The strongest siege weapons and direct fire weapons can hurt it, but will need to hit it repeatedly to take it down. That's going to be nearly impossible because it's an intelligent moving target and those weapons are slow and difficult to aim, even against stationary targets like castles.

Hitting it with an indirect fire weapon is more it's mistake then your success and you can't count on intelligent foes to make obvious dumb mistakes. If you manage to trap one in a confined place that you've already targeted with a whole battery of trebuchets good for you. But don't count on it as a reliable way to kill it.

Direct fire weapons like very heavy ballista are more promising: faster and easier target acquisition and they don't give the snake the time to move out of the way. Of course they also take a whole battery of them landing their shots to slow it down. So without very careful and broad scale set-up, or with even mild ill-luck with those things, it's going to evade and retaliate and you'll probably loose any chance at a second volley, as well as all the people and machines in the process. Maybe it works, probably a lot of people die.

Fixed installations like castles and forts could be designed and built like large scale traps that could kill them: have a giant castle sized spring loaded spike that fires up when the roof is ripped off (read that in a fantasy book for killing a dragon once), arm the keep with a vast battery of ballista strategically place to strike at it based on how it's likely to approach the keep, etc. These are going to be extremely expensive and often one use only traps. But they'd work.

The key way to deal with these is not militarily or conventionally. They're not a conventional opponent and they're nearly immune to conventional attacks. You don't fight them. You hunt them like bears.

A very heavy ballista with properly designed bolts that have triangle shaped bodkin point heads and plenty of barbs. Thoroughly rub the point and barbed shaft with dung, rotting flesh, etc. Set up the ballista in a camouflaged blind along a path it is likely to go based on observing it's movement patterns from stealth and via trackers. Make sure you have an escape route: rocky terrain with tight crevices it can't get into but we can, or dug out holes in the ground that we can escape down into but it won't fit. Wait for it to come by and shoot it once then escape (if you can set up multiple ballista in the area then shoot your volley in sync and escape). It's not seriously injured enough to slow it down any more then a buck is dropped by a single arrow... but it will bleed. Especially if it tries to get the bolt out. And if the bleeding doesn't kill it within an hour or two the wound will turn septic anyways from the bacteria. Triangle points keep wounds from properly closing. Snakes don't have opposable thumbs so good luck to it on bandaging itself. Let it bleed out or get sick and die while tracking it carefully with trackers from safe distances.

And then keep doing that until they've gone extinct. don't wait for them to come to you.

EDIT: I don't actually support genocide or hunting things to extinction, it just seems like the best military strategy in the context described. Ethically, rather then hunting them to extinction, maybe just use diplomacy wherever possible.

Last edited by oneofmanynameless; 05-03-2022 at 12:27 AM.
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Old 05-03-2022, 12:38 AM   #13
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

Maybe lure it into the sea? Humans have boats, right?
I was thinking shooting salt at it but at that TL salt isn't exactly grocery store common.

Alternatively, if it's a snake, lead it into the snow.
Or the desert if it's a worm.

Worms don't like being dry, and snakes generally don't like being cold.
Nighttime attacks could be good.
Cake every spear in p00.
Send out stabbing/infection parties.

Poison its food. Even if it's humans.

Blind it when it sleeps (if it's a worm, would it even have eyes?)

Or use its human intellect to strike a deal, treat it like a dragon and pay tribute to it. Maybe it'll become an ally of a kingdom.

And oh with that DR 'dirty spears' migh not work, but ballista bolts could.
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Old 05-03-2022, 03:16 AM   #14
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

Wait for it to be infected by human bacteria.

Use spells to bring HMS Thunderchild back to TL3.

Bribe it.
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Old 05-03-2022, 03:25 AM   #15
sir_pudding
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
Depends on what other traits it has. Does it have any form of Injury Tolerance? Nictitating Membrane?
Yeah if you can stab it in the eye or through the roof of the mouth,, or feed it poisoned meat, these are viable.
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Old 05-03-2022, 03:41 AM   #16
transmetahuman
 
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

Is the DR tough skin? If it's a hard rigid armor, as a worm/snake it will need many relatively vulnerable joints in order to bend and curl - either ring shaped segments or giant scales, overlapping. Those vulnerable points could reasonably be considered the equivalent of "chinks in the armor", and to hit penalties would be offset by the size modifier.

Whether barely penetrating tough skin, or targeting chinks in the scales/rings, the army should be able to penetrate to vulnerable flesh with some work, and use poison or flammable liquids. Same for the mouth or eyes, especially if they're to scale.

But I like the idea of just negotiating.
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Old 05-03-2022, 04:56 AM   #17
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

Could it be persuaded to swallow an enormous calthrop or similar device that would shred it from the inside out?
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Old 05-03-2022, 05:04 AM   #18
Phil Masters
 
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

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Could it be persuaded to swallow an enormous calthrop or similar device that would shred it from the inside out?
A guy in a coach covered in iron spikes is traditional. But I don't think that Persian dragons really qualified as human intelligence.
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Old 05-03-2022, 05:04 AM   #19
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

If it were an animal, I'd suggest luring it to a cliff (possibly even a concealed, man-made one - you've got an entire army worth of diggers to work with) and tricking it into running off it. That DR isn't going to do it much good (it's only 10-20% of HP), and falling damage scales with HP, so any fall far enough to kill a human would kill it as well.
(Realistically, given the square-cube law, I believe larger creatures actually take proportionally more Injury from a short-ish fall than a human, but as HP in GURPS can mean more than raw mass, they opted for just scaling with it linearly).

But it's a person, and people are harder to trick. TL3 does have access to serpentine powder IIRC. If you can figure out a method for igniting it when a heavy weight goes over it, you could fill part of the battlefield with massive black powder landmines. Honestly, you might just need to surround human lands with them (akin to the Korean DMZ) so the worms can't come over.
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Old 05-03-2022, 06:47 AM   #20
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Default Re: Military Stratedgies against a 300 Foot Snake/Worm

In the fantasy settings or mytholgies that support indestructible giant wyrms with malignant intelligence, the traditional military tactic is to either pray for divine intervention or search for a wandering champion to bring down the beast.

Other than that, I'd suggest mind control magic to force it into a prepared burn area or over a large cliff.
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