Magic vs Technology mistborn edition

[bmcclure7]

A continuation of this discussion but for mistborn. 

One side has a metalborn population (with a    elite class class of mistborn and ferochemy) 

Harmonium tec, medallions, and one fullborn

 

The other has post ww1 tec

Location post harmony scadrel.

 

[alder24]

8 hours ago, bmcclure7 said:

A continuation of this discussion but for mistborn. 

One side has a metalborn population (with a    elite class class of mistborn and ferochemy) 

Harmonium tec, medallions, and one fullborn

 

The other has post ww1 tec

Location post harmony scadrel.

Didn't we already have this one with Scadrial?

You give them a Fullborn? Well, Scadrial wins. After all, a Fullborn already conquered a 1800s world in the past. 

WW1 tech doesn't give them anything that could harm a Fullborn. You need modern technology to achieve this, satelites, precision guided hypersonic missiles, huge explosions etc. Normal artillery won't do that.

 

Now without a Fullborn (and without Harmonium-Trellium nukes), WW1 tech does have a significant edge over Scadrial - planes. Scadrial already have early WW1 tech, they are very close in the time frame, but they don't have planes, bombers, blimps etc. Scadrial only has AA batteries to deal with them, normal Allomancy won't help them shoot bullets up kilometers high. This is a big advantage.

On top of that we don't know what Malwish warships can do, how they are armed etc. They have bombs, but do they have guns? Artillery? Machine guns? We don't even know if Malwish are on the same technological level as the Basin - I doubt so, skyscrapers and electricity seemed to be alien to them. Because of their size and slow speed, they would be sitting ducks for WW1 warplanes. Hard to bring down, but unable to fight back.

Plus Earth has training and tactical advantage. Outside of artillery, dynamite thrown at a short range and nicrosil boosted coinshoters/lurchers (without pewter to enhance their body, they might not be able to damage a tank), Scadrial has no means of dealing with tanks of WW1 - they don't have tanks of their own.

I could once again bring up numbers, we know Scadrial has currently an army numbered around 30k troops, but I think this is pointless, we all know millions of soldiers, tens of thousands of pieces of artillery, thousands of planes and hundreds of warships were involved in WW1. Even with Metalic Arts, Scadrial would have a hard time dealing with this.

Then if you do the same thing like with Roshar vs Earth, and make one province into an Earth-like WW1 tech, with a larger population, massive artillery, planes and tanks would give them significant advantage over Scadrial.

 

But with a Fullborn on Scadrial side? Scadrial wins.

[cometaryorbit]

There are several key things that will decide the outcome:

- are we assuming equal populations, or does the tech side get the advantage of being able to support a larger population?

- "post-WW1 tech" covers a huge amount of advancement in some relevant technologies. 1919 warplanes were pretty feeble, 1938 ones not so much. I think Malwish airships would probably be ok against 1919 ones, but couldn't fight near-WW2 ones.

- land vs naval. If it's a pure land fight, the Metallic Arts side does better. WW1 battleships are going to be really hard to hurt; their gun range is a lot larger than the altitude from which a Malwish airship could effectively bomb (which is surprisingly low to get decent accuracy, with even early WW2 tech).

- what kind of mundane tech does the non-tech side? To have all sixteen metals available, you need at least 19th century technology (aluminum and cadmium were both discovered in the 19th century). 19th century tech plus Metallic Arts is a lot different situation than 10th century tech plus Metallic Arts.

I think if we assume 1825 tech (aluminum was the last of the Allomantic base metals to be discovered in 1825) + Metallic Arts and Malwish ettmetal tech, that side clearly wins, but that might not really be the spirit of the comparison. 1825 is already beginning to industrialize.

--

I don't think WW1 tanks are a clear winner. They're more of a "pitched battle" thing and a Fullborn could imo wreck them fairly easily. Compounded F Iron for incredible weight + A Duralumin boosted A Steel and Iron = probably broken tanks.

But the way to beat a Fullborn isn't pitched battle. They can only be in one place at a time, so their side can still lose the war. A huge logistical advantage and advantage in numbers would suffice.

(Also, sabotage and treachery. 1920 tech can kill a Fullborn. They aren't immune to very large explosions. Wayne wouldn't have survived the end of TLM even with full goldminds, and a Gold Compounder is just a Gold Ferring with always-full goldminds. Any explosion that blows the Compounder into tiny pieces is lethal, since the goldminds will be gone.)

Edited May 2, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[alder24]

34 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I don't think WW1 tanks are a clear winner. They're more of a "pitched battle" thing and a Fullborn could imo wreck them fairly easily. Compounded F Iron for incredible weight + A Duralumin boosted A Steel and Iron = probably broken tanks.

"Probably broken tanks"? I think you meant tanks would experience how planes are feeling when soaring through the air.

35 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

(Also, sabotage and treachery. 1920 tech can kill a Fullborn. They aren't immune to very large explosions. Wayne wouldn't have survived the end of TLM even with full goldminds, and a Gold Compounder is just a Gold Ferring with always-full goldminds. Any explosion that blows the Compounder into tiny pieces is lethal, since the goldminds will be gone.)

While Fullborn isn't invulnerable to big explosions, the probability of one hitting him is just almost non existing. He has A-tin and F-tin and steelsight to detect incoming shells, he has F-zinc to analyze trajectory of each shell, he has A-electrum, F-chromium and F-zinc to see his own future and be able to comprehend every electrum shadow, he has F-steel, A-bendalloy and A-pewter to increase his speed to dodge any shell incoming, he has F-brass to absorb vast quantity of heat energy released by explosion and A-pewter and F-gold to heal any damage done by non direct hit. He can even use F-iron, by storing most of his mass and using blast waves of near explosions to get launched far away. Taking all of that into consideration I'm pretty sure that WW1 artillery, the primary source of big explosions during that time, has no chance of scoring a direct hit on a Fullborn, not even in close proximity to him. They pose no threat to a Fullborn. And an explosive trap is also no threat, as Wayne alone created a time bubble and gave Wax enough time to escape the blast wave - for a Fullborn this would be child's play.

[cometaryorbit]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

"Probably broken tanks"? I think you meant tanks would experience how planes are feeling when soaring through the air.

That's also possible, but breaking the tanks by Pushing and Pulling simultaneously on different metal parts of them is probably more metal-efficient than throwing them around.

Tossing tanks through the air ought to be possible with Compounded F-Iron and Duralumin Steel, but would probably require a lot more metal than a normal Allomancer usually carries. Vin could throw horses around with a vial, but Mark I tanks are ~50x heavier or more.

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

While Fullborn isn't invulnerable to big explosions, the probability of one hitting him is just almost non existing. 

That's why I said "sabotage and treachery". Yes, a Fullborn on a battlefield could dodge* projectiles moving at WW1 tech speeds, with F-zinc + F-steel.

But if the Fullborn is not expecting a threat and is suddenly caught in a giant explosion when not tapping f-Zinc or burning bendalloy for crazy reaction speeds...

Once actually in the explosion that's probably the end. The only chance would be to F-Steel out before being destroyed, and even Marasi's BoM speed might not be enough for that.

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

LAnd an explosive trap is also no threat, as Wayne alone created a time bubble and gave Wax enough time to escape the blast wave - for a Fullborn this would be child's play.

No, Wayne threw Wax off the ship before the bomb was set off. The duralumin time bubble gave Wayne a chance to work (internal time) but didn't protect him because it burned out in basically zero external time, and the explosion was still there.

*TLM suggests that even a user of the BoM - with much higher Allomantic strength than a hypothetical "generic" Fullborn - would need some extra, not-yet-understood "conflux" power to deal with a missile, which is kind of surprising because you'd think F-zinc for mental speed + F-iron for weight + Duralumin A-Steel for Push would work. So the upper limits of some of this may be lower than we tend to assume. But the dodging should still work.

Edited May 3, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[therunner]

There is one thing that would really ruin Fullborn's day, and that is sufficiently powerful electromagnet.

Now, not all metals are magnetic, so only some metalminds and vials would get stolen from Fullborn, these would be (most likely)
 

• Iron -> so no weight changing for pushes/pulls and no pulls
• Steel -> so no superspeed movement and pushes
• Tin -> so lost senses
• Zinc -> no mental superspeed, no rioting
• Cadmium -> no "force fields" from overlapping speed-bubbles
• Bendalloy -> no speed bubbles

Net result of this, is that Fullborn is left without mobility (no Iron/Steel), lower capacity to perceive danger (no Tin, Zinc) and lowered ability to avoid danger (no Bendalloy), and with exit wounds were metals were ripped from body.
As such, if this attack was successful, regular guns and explosives can be used to finish off Fullborn, who at that point is dangerous primarily through A/F-Pewter, A-electrum and Duralumin Soothing. Sufficient explosives should blow away metalminds away, and so kill Fullborn.

Also, since compounding can cause Savantism in Feruchemy, loss of those metalminds could also have severe side-effects on Fullborn (e.g. without F-steel they would be slugish, similar to how without A-Tin Spook's senses were too weak).

In ultrastrong magnetic fields others could be drawn as well, but WW1 tech would be insufficient to produce such electromagnets.

(Sidenote: Bendalloy has melting point of only about ~70 degrees Celsius, so Fullborn cannot do much with Brass, lest they melt it away )

[alder24]

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Tossing tanks through the air ought to be possible with Compounded F-Iron and Duralumin Steel, but would probably require a lot more metal than a normal Allomancer usually carries. Vin could throw horses around with a vial, but Mark I tanks are ~50x heavier or more.

Yes, but she also moved huge stone doors that weighed the Lord Ruler only knew how much. At the very least, a French Renault FT weighing 6.5 tonnes would fly (for a short time) with little to no effort. But like you pointed out, there are so many ways for a Fullborn to deal with tanks that he doesn't have to toss them into the air. He can, but doesn’t need to.

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

But if the Fullborn is not expecting a threat and is suddenly caught in a giant explosion when not tapping f-Zinc or burning bendalloy for crazy reaction speeds...

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

No, Wayne threw Wax off the ship before the bomb was set off. The duralumin time bubble gave Wayne a chance to work (internal time) but didn't protect him because it burned out in basically zero external time, and the explosion was still there.

I'm talking about AoL, when the butler tried to poison Wax and set up an explosion in his basket. Wayne created the time bubble the moment the explosion went off.

AoL ch 9

Quote

Waxillium looked up with a start, realizing that the dying Tillaume was fiddling with the basket he’d brought in—the man reached a bloodied hand into it and pulled on something.
“Wayne!” Waxillium cried. “Bubble. Now!”
Tillaume fell back. The basket erupted in a blossoming ball of fire.
And then froze.

[...]

The fire blast had vaporized the basket before Wayne got his bubble up. The blast wave was slowly expanding outward, burning away the carpet, destroying the doorframe and the bookshelves. The butler himself had already been engulfed.
“Damn,” Wayne said. “That’s a big one.”

 

3 hours ago, therunner said:

In ultrastrong magnetic fields others could be drawn as well, but WW1 tech would be insufficient to produce such electromagnets.

I thought so. With the modern day Earth it would work very well. They can deal with him.

3 hours ago, therunner said:

(Sidenote: Bendalloy has melting point of only about ~70 degrees Celsius, so Fullborn cannot do much with Brass, lest they melt it away )

That's low. Huh. Put it in a gold box and even if it melts you can recover it later. Or if he is very very skilled, he can change temperature only in certain parts of his body. For example, making your hands hot, while reducing the temperature of your arms and the rest of your body. But that's something that none can do for now. In the case of explosions or flamethrowers he just needs to store heat and will be fine.

Spoiler

Thoughtful Spurts

If tapping heat means your own body gets hotter, does it also mean you become immune to hot temperatures so long as you're tapping it, or should you fill heat and grow colder for that to happen?

Brandon Sanderson

As everything in Feruchemy, you become immune to the effects of the ability only. Like weight doesn't crush you, but at the same time doesn't have a net gain in strength. Growing colder, however, would be more helpful in this regard.

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

 

[cometaryorbit]

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

Yes, but she also moved huge stone doors that weighed the Lord Ruler only knew how much. At the very least, a French Renault FT weighing 6.5 tonnes would fly (for a short time) with little to no effort.

[...]

I'm talking about AoL, when the butler tried to poison Wax and set up an explosion in his basket. Wayne created the time bubble the moment the explosion went off.

AoL ch 9

Yeah, those smaller tanks should be doable with reasonable amounts of metal and anchoring (and either F-Gold or Duralumin A-Pewter to withstand being crushed). Vin flings multiple horses with one vial - and that's by their horseshoes, Pushing on all metal objects like a tank should be more efficient (better anchor quality).

Wax saw Tillaume fiddling with it and warned Wayne; Wayne wasn't reacting to the explosion itself. In the quote you posted, Wax warns Wayne before the "blossoming ball of fire"; the bubble and explosion are developing at the same time.

A detonation wave is faster than the speed of sound; there's no way to react to a nearby explosion in time unless you're already tapping Zinc (or maybe Steel) or burning Bendalloy.

Minimum normal human reaction time is about 100 milliseconds (150-200 ms is more normal iirc) and speed of sound in air is about 1100 feet per second, so the explosion would have to be farther than 110 feet away (or probably 160 feet plus since the Fullborn probably doesn't have peak human reactions without powers).

Now, a Fullborn might be burning Pewter just by default, which might improve reaction times somewhat ... maybe raising it to the human peak of around 100 ms, maybe even more (if pewter is double normal strength, maybe it's half normal reaction time, down to say 75 ms) ... but that still won't be enough to deal with an explosion in the next room.

To be fair, the ability of Allomancers to stop coins shot at them, which must be moving quite rapidly (though still subsonic, I think, since we don't hear sonic booms) suggests that Allomantic reaction times might be faster than physical reaction times.

They don't seem able to react to individual bullets, though (as opposed to Pushing on everything generally, or doing a steel bubble), and Era 2 bullets are probably around the speed of sound. So I don't think even Coinshot Allomantic reaction times support reacting to explosions nearby when unprepared and unwarned.

--

The point is, fighting a Fullborn directly is generally a losing move (unless you're Vin backed by Preservation, with Ruin messing with your enemy's head).

But if this is a large scale war, the tech side can still win by winning all the fights the Fullborn isn't personally present at.

The larger scale problems are dealing with Pushes on guns, and Malwish airship bombing.

Medallions won't be that decisive, because it seems from TLM that there are no medallions for the really combat-heavy powers.

Pushes on guns can probably be largely dealt with in WW1+ era, given longer ranges. Musket era armies had to get pretty close to hit things, so they'd get messed up badly by even a small number of Coinshots in the enemy front line. But I think WW1+ ones can do better.

Malwish airship bombing, though... I think once 1920ish planes were re-armed with incendiary weapons, they could take down Malwish airships. I don't know how effective just shooting them up would be, since they're not dependent on a gasbag or even really on aerodynamics - you'd have to hit the engine- but incendiaries should work.

That depends, though - could the Malwish-tech side just put F-Brass technology in their airships to store the heat, as easily as the regular-tech side could equip their planes with incendiaries? If so, the Malwish airships might be really hard to deal with.

-

A naval conflict is much better for the tech side. Steelpushing/Ironpulling flight doesn't work well over the ocean since you can't drop anchors (as pointed out in TLM); you'd need a Mistborn with the skill to pull off Vin's (utterly unique) horseshoe flight trick. So basically all the Metallic Arts side can contribute here is Malwish airship bombing, and they can't bomb accurately from a height that battleship guns can't hit them.

Edited May 3, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[alder24]

39 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

A detonation wave is faster than the speed of sound; there's no way to react to a nearby explosion in time unless you're already tapping Zinc (or maybe Steel) or burning Bendalloy.

But not faster than the speed of light.

I don't see a reason why would a Fullborn, during a war with unknown technology, just stop burning and tapping metals why Rashek was burning at least 2 metals and tapping 2 metalminds constantly. Burning or tapping tin and zinc is something that I would be always doing. If you manage to set an explosion directly on him while he isn't burning any metals or tapping any metalminds, then you might kill him. But why would he stop burning/tapping?

49 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

But if this is a large scale war, the tech side can still win by winning all the fights the Fullborn isn't personally present at.

Yes, but every battle he's present, he brings total devastation, death and complete moral breakdown. At some point soldiers might simply refuse to attack fearing that he will show up.

46 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

The larger scale problems are dealing with Pushes on guns, and Malwish airship bombing.

Normal planes, and I mean normal fighter planes, can drop bombs (I mean some WW1 planes have their pilots manually drop bombs from cockpit, crazy times) on Malwish ships and destroy them, not with machine guns (I don't know if they used higher caliber than 7 mm on them). And if Malwish ships lack AA defenses, planes can just fly right above them, drop bombs with delayed ignition and fly away without looking at explosion, like cool guys do.

51 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Malwish airship bombing, though... I think once 1920ish planes were re-armed with incendiary weapons, they could take down Malwish airships. I don't know how effective just shooting them up would be, since they're not dependent on a gasbag or even really on aerodynamics - you'd have to hit the engine- but incendiaries should work.

Not much with low caliber guns. You would have to mess up their way of reducing the mass of the ship, if this is wired like a fabrial, few lucky shots can sever the metal wires and make one side of the ship too heavy to fly. The best way to damage the airship with machine guns is to aim for its propellers beneath it - I just thought about it. This can do a lot of damage and bring the airship down.

55 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

A naval conflict is much better for the tech side. Steelpushing/Ironpulling flight doesn't work well over the ocean since you can't drop anchors (as pointed out in TLM); you'd need a Mistborn with the skill to pull off Vin's (utterly unique) horseshoe flight trick. So basically all the Metallic Arts side can contribute here is Malwish airship bombing, and they can't bomb accurately from a height that battleship guns can't hit them.

Yeah, Dreadnoughts would be almost impossible to deal with for Scadrial. Their guns have a range of up to 24 km, and that's twice the width of the whole Elendel city (the city is ~7 miles in diameter, 12 km). Plus the Basin has extensive canal and river networks, which might fit Dreadnoughts and this would extend their range of operation far inland (unlikely because it's very risky and they are stuck there). Just park a few Dreadnoughts in the Hammondar Bay and level the entire city - until Fullborn arrives. Without a Fullborn Scadrial has no way of countering them.

Pewternauts have a firing range of 16 miles, 25 km, it's comparable to Dreadnoughts, but their alone in the Basin's naval fleet composition, with no air support, nor submarines. They would be sunk fast. Or not leave the Bilming port if the Tech side just mined the bay and sea.

I love the name Dreadnought and I love that Brandon named them Pewternauts on Scadrial. That sounds so cool. 

[cometaryorbit]

6 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Normal planes, and I mean normal fighter planes, can drop bombs (I mean some WW1 planes have their pilots manually drop bombs from cockpit, crazy times) on Malwish ships and destroy them, not with machine guns (I don't know if they used higher caliber than 7 mm on them). And if Malwish ships lack AA defenses, planes can just fly right above them, drop bombs with delayed ignition and fly away without looking at explosion, like cool guys do.

Not much with low caliber guns. You would have to mess up their way of reducing the mass of the ship, if this is wired like a fabrial, few lucky shots can sever the metal wires and make one side of the ship too heavy to fly. The best way to damage the airship with machine guns is to aim for its propellers beneath it - I just thought about it. This can do a lot of damage and bring the airship down.

WW1 hand bombs dropped by pilots from planes were indeed a thing, but those were small bombs falling at relatively slow speeds, so one Coinshot on each airship could protect against them very well. 

I was thinking incendiaries because they aren't necessarily metal-containing*, so a Coinshot couldn't just Push them away.

*I guess you could make nonmetallic bombs even with pre plastic technology, though. Explosives in a ceramic pot with a hand lit fuse? They'd be more like early attempts at bombs than like WW1 bombs, but they could work, I guess.

--

Yeah, Dreadnought battleships are probably the biggest tech advantage.

I'm actually not totally sure a Fullborn could deal with them. Their gun range is more than even a Duralumin Steelpush jump, so as long as they stayed well offshore (and sank any boats moving toward them) they might be just immune.

But that ties into a key question: how much knowledge is each side assumed to start with about the other side's capabilities? Things like a Fullborn's powers, or aluminum bullets being immune to Allomancy, or how emotional Allomancy works, would be really hard to figure out except by luck or betrayal ... spying might be key.

Without knowledge, a Mistborn with Duralumin Emotional Allomancy could mess up whole battles by morale.

Now, longer range of WW1+ era guns may make this avoidable ... but if the Tech side doesn't know emotional allomancy exists, then would they know why their army suddenly routed?

[alder24]

3 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I'm actually not totally sure a Fullborn could deal with them. Their gun range is more than even a Duralumin Steelpush jump, so as long as they stayed well offshore (and sank any boats moving toward them) they might be just immune.

Bend barrels of its gun with duralumin steel push, or just walk through it and kill everyone on board. But getting on board if far away off shore will be a problem - dropped by an airship is the only way to do so.

8 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

But that ties into a key question: how much knowledge is each side assumed to start with about the other side's capabilities? Things like a Fullborn's powers, or aluminum bullets being immune to Allomancy, or how emotional Allomancy works, would be really hard to figure out except by luck or betrayal ... spying might be key.

Yeah, that's important. I always assume that they have minimal knowledge about each other, and they're figuring stuff on the run. In the case of WW1 tech I'm not sure how widespread was aluminum, it was used in aviation, so in some other area as well, and they would figure out that aluminum can't be pushed or pulled.

[cometaryorbit]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Bend barrels of its gun with duralumin steel push, or just walk through it and kill everyone on board. But getting on board if far away off shore will be a problem - dropped by an airship is the only way to do so.

Yeah, if the Fullborn gets on board he can wreck the machinery and kill the crew very easily. But if the battleship crew know that's a possibility they can prevent him getting on board - an airship can't get very close to a battleship at all. We don't know the speed of large Malwish airships (the 'skimmers' like Wilg are slower than a train apparently), but they're probably not any good at dodging. And battleship guns have quite a range.

That's why the knowledge issue is so key. If they know Fullborn are a possibility they can stay 5 miles off shore and blast every port city into rubble with total immunity. But if they get too close they could easily lose the ship.

On land, the knowledge issue might go the other way. Emotional Allomancy would be really hard to figure out if you don't already know about it - there's no obvious external sign, and emotions are running high in battle anyway. That could have huge morale effects.

--

Yet another key question: does the Metallic Arts side have Hemalurgic constructs? Koloss won't be effective on a WW1+ battlefield* - they'd just be machine-gunned down - but Mistborn assassinating, and kandra replacing, a few key enemy leaders could wreck a war effort. 1920 tech definitely can't spot them, even if Brandon ultimately decides they can't mimic at the DNA level. Inquisitors are also

 

 

*frankly, they seem kind of questionable even in the early-1800s environment TLR invented them in. They don't sound terribly effective against even Napoleonic armies; I doubt they're any good with guns. They're tougher to coins, and so probably to bullets, than normal humans - but not *that* tough (pre-lerasium Elend can kill one with a knife and unaided strength), and a lot would die before they closed to blade range.

But it kind of sounds like, from Tindwyl's book, their real advantage was logistics - they can eat almost anything, while their enemies were still food-depleted from the Deepness. Maybe gunpowder logistics were messed up too?

And TLR didn't need to train koloss (especially as he could directly mind-control them) so as long as he was willing to kill or transform lots of people, he could replenish losses terrifyingly fast. So maybe losing a ton of koloss in each major battle was acceptable. And they'd have a huge morale advantage.

So I'm thinking they worked for TLR largely because he was dealing with an already near-collapsed civilization; giving koloss to one side in a 19th century conflict between two powerful nations probably wouldn't accomplish much, and once some version of machine guns shows up (by the late 19th - Gatling guns in the 1860s, fully automatic Maxim guns in the 1880s) they'd be useless.

[alder24]

29 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

*frankly, they seem kind of questionable even in the early-1800s environment TLR invented them in. They don't sound terribly effective against even Napoleonic armies; I doubt they're any good with guns. They're tougher to coins, and so probably to bullets, than normal humans - but not *that* tough (pre-lerasium Elend can kill one with a knife and unaided strength), and a lot would die before they closed to blade range.

Well Napoleonic warfare relies on bayonet charges straight into enemy positions and for this Koloss are not only perfect, but unstoppable. Koloss are only vulnerable in their head (thick skull maybe?), neck (arteries) and heart, the rest is just mass of muscles. Hitting them at those spots would be hard when soldiers are meeting something like that for the first time in their life.

In case of facing machine guns and artillery of WW1 they would still be effective. Very. After all, the main tactic of WW1 on the Western front was to charge through no man's land without getting killed, drop into enemy's trenches and switch to mainly hand to hand combat. Admitebly, Koloss might have trouble in fitting into trenches, but they can mow down enemies for above. Losses would be of course far greater, but replacement not possible with Harmony in charge. But using Koloss in role of stormtroopers would be very effective, but costly.

[cometaryorbit]

Hmm, OK, maybe they're more useful than I thought.

I think you're overestimating how tough they are though. A koloss should still have all the same vital points as a human. They're somewhat tougher & have more muscle shielding vital points, but I don't think they could just ignore Napoleonic-era bullet wounds in torso or limbs. Especially newly made koloss which are still human sized, which is what TLR would have had at the beginning.

Edited May 3, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[alder24]

15 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

I think you're overestimating how tough they are though. A koloss should still have all the same vital points as a human. They're somewhat tougher & have more muscle shielding vital points, but I don't think they could just ignore Napoleonic-era bullet wounds in torso or limbs. Especially newly made koloss which are still human sized, which is what TLR would have had at the beginning.

I based this on Vin's thoughts during her fight with them in WoA, ch 54 translation:

Quote

The coins didn't stop the creatures, and they weighed too much for her to Push without an anchor. Besides, her supplies of steel and iron were running low

In the previous chapter, Sazed faced 12 ft Koloss but he tripped and fell on the ground, that's when Vin returned and killed him with a coin into his head. Because of that, gun bullets hitting Koloss’ head would certainly kill them. Later in this chapter 53 translation:

Quote

She leaped, as only Allomancers could, and gracefully flew over the plaza. She landed in a swarm of koloss and spun around. Coins flew like angry insects, cutting through the celestial bodies. The creatures didn't die as easily as humans, but the attack caught their attention. They turned their backs on fleeing soldiers and helpless city dwellers

Based on that I think bullets just piercing through Koloss' body without hitting any vital organ (heart, arteries, brain) would not be able to kill them, and Koloss would just keep going and killing. Keep in mind, bullets are smaller than coins and Koloss just disregarded them.

[cometaryorbit]

Coins seem to be subsonic (sonic booms aren't mentioned), so they're comparable to early bullets, which were way larger (in mass) than coins.

Early 1800s (Napoleonic era) was still largely muskets, though rifles were around. Musket balls were very large - they had to be. The French Napoleonic Charleville musket used a 27 gram ball... a US quarter is about 5.6 grams.

[alder24]

3 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Coins seem to be subsonic (sonic booms aren't mentioned), so they're comparable to early bullets, which were way larger (in mass) than coins.

Early 1800s (Napoleonic era) was still largely muskets, though rifles were around. Musket balls were very large - they had to be. The French Napoleonic Charleville musket used a 27 gram ball... a US quarter is about 5.6 grams.

Yes, the larger but lighter coins were cutting fully through Koloss' body (quote above). Coins make a big hole, bullets are smaller and would make a smaller hole through the body, despite having a greater kinetic energy. That's why I said hitting non-vital parts wouldn't kill Koloss as they just ignored coins passing through their body when fighting VIn.

[cometaryorbit]

Hmm, ok. I guess I always misread that part as the coins cutting into the koloss, not literally passing through their bodies.

Coins fully passing through koloss bodies is super weird because they shouldn't have enough momentum to do that - once metal is in the body it can't be Pushed further.

[alder24]

14 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Hmm, ok. I guess I always misread that part as the coins cutting into the koloss, not literally passing through their bodies.

Coins fully passing through koloss bodies is super weird because they shouldn't have enough momentum to do that - once metal is in the body it can't be Pushed further.

True. But theoretically there is a hole in the body, so this might allow her to push coins for a bit. Or it's magic, it has magical momentum or something.

[+robardin]

On 5/1/2023 at 7:53 AM, alder24 said:

Didn't we already have this one with Scadrial?

You give them a Fullborn? Well, Scadrial wins. After all, a Fullborn already conquered a 1800s world in the past. 

WW1 tech doesn't give them anything that could harm a Fullborn....

Well. A Fullborn already conquered an 1800s tech level world in the past ... AFTER LITERALLY REMODELING THE WORLD, changing its toplogy and ecology (and even to some degree, its biology), blocking out the sun with ash, and so on.

That gave him rather a bit more advantage than "just" being a full Feruchemist who ingested a lerasium bead, you know: that world-changing development massively disrupted all his targets for conquest.

It's not like Rashek personally kicked everyone's butt from Urteau to Seran, he had troops (koloss and human alllies) and followers to establish his rule after the fighting was done. And as Tindwyl and Sazed noted in reviewing a biography of one King Wednegon, "one of the last leaders who resisted the Lord Ruler in any sort of meaningful combat":

His soldiers could not stand against the Conqueror's koloss, and his men had been beaten back repeatedly ever since FellSpire. However, the king didn't blame his soldiers. He thought that his problems came from another source: food.

He mentioned this idea several times during those last days. He thought that if he'd had more food, he could have held out. In this, Wednegon blamed the Deepness. ... its touch had depleted Darrelnai's food stores.

His people could not both raise food and resist the Conqueror's demon armies. In the end, that was why they fell.

Sazed and Tindwyl reviewed this passage in the context of determining that "the Deepness" (from before Rashek's Ascension) referred to the mist choking the plants from growing, but it could also be that the writer - writing in a just-post-Ascension time, after the world was remade by Rashek - was also using the term to refer to the fact that all their crops, originally seeded to grow under a yellow sun and clear skies and already reduced by the mist effects earlier, could no longer grow well in a world of ash afterward either.

They needed to change the plants raised and the methods used to raise them to feed themselves, and Rashek could well have set himself up to do so more quickly with his allies than his enemies.

[alder24]

6 minutes ago, robardin said:

Well. A Fullborn already conquered an 1800s tech level world in the past ... AFTER LITERALLY REMODELING THE WORLD, changing its toplogy and ecology (and even to some degree, its biology), blocking out the sun with ash, and so on.

That gave him rather a bit more advantage than "just" being a full Feruchemist who ingested a lerasium bead, you know: that world-changing development massively disrupted all his targets for conquest.

It's not like Rashek personally kicked everyone's butt from Urteau to Seran, he had troops (koloss and human alllies) and followers to establish his rule after the fighting was done. And as Tindwyl and Sazed noted in reviewing a biography of one King Wednegon, "one of the last leaders who resisted the Lord Ruler in any sort of meaningful combat":

His soldiers could not stand against the Conqueror's koloss, and his men had been beaten back repeatedly ever since FellSpire. However, the king didn't blame his soldiers. He thought that his problems came from another source: food.

He mentioned this idea several times during those last days. He thought that if he'd had more food, he could have held out. In this, Wednegon blamed the Deepness. ... its touch had depleted Darrelnai's food stores.

His people could not both raise food and resist the Conqueror's demon armies. In the end, that was why they fell.

Sazed and Tindwyl reviewed this passage in the context of determining that "the Deepness" (from before Rashek's Ascension) referred to the mist choking the plants from growing, but it could also be that the writer - writing in a just-post-Ascension time, after the world was remade by Rashek - was also using the term to refer to the fact that all their crops, originally seeded to grow under a yellow sun and clear skies and already reduced by the mist effects earlier, could no longer grow well in a world of ash afterward either.

They needed to change the plants raised and the methods used to raise them to feed themselves, and Rashek could well have set himself up to do so more quickly with his allies than his enemies.

All of that is true. But as I've mentioned in this topic, WW1 technology can't kill a Fullborn. An Army of Mistborn, Mistings and Ferrings (I think there are 20k Metalborn in Era 2), supported by a Fullborn, would wreak havoc in WW1 lines. Fullborn alone can march from Berlin to Paris uninterrupted. They can't stop him. 

[therunner]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

All of that is true. But as I've mentioned in this topic, WW1 technology can't kill a Fullborn.

It can, just blow him up. Difficult to set up, but possible (e.g. lure him onto a ship that is rigged to blow up for example). As long as you can separate his body from Gold metalminds, Fullborn dies relatively easily.

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

n Army of Mistborn, Mistings and Ferrings (I think there are 20k Metalborn in Era 2), supported by a Fullborn, would wreak havoc in WW1 lines. Fullborn alone can march from Berlin to Paris uninterrupted. They can't stop him. 

Fullborn still has to take time to Compound his stores, then he is vulnerable (see Miles, who regularly has to get Gold to be able to do what he does).
Also, 20k of Metalborn is across the entire population, most of them won't be combat ready (too old, young, infirm).
At best you could get ~8k Metalborn, but many of those would not have powers suited for combat (even if we assume that all powers are equally likely), roughly only 2/3 of them would have combat ready powers.
So you have one Fullborn, few Mistborn and Feruchemists, and ~5-6k Mistings and Ferrings who have powers somehow useful to war effort.

Edited May 11, 2023 by therunner

[Walter The Moral]

13 minutes ago, therunner said:

It can, just blow him up. Difficult to set up, but possible (e.g. lure him onto a ship that is rigged to blow up for example). As long as you can separate his body from Gold metalminds, Fullborn dies relatively easily.

I'm pretty sure it was talked about further up in this thread, but that is much easier said than done. If we assume that the fullborn has some time to prepare, they could store an incredible amount of different attributes in their metalminds. Every time you compound, you get 10x what you started with, so you could very quickly get a LOT of any specific attribute. You could do it even faster if you were burning Bendalloy, to compound even more in less time. The Fullborn would most likely always be tapping F-Zinc to think incredibly quickly, and even more so if they were going somewhere possibly unsafe. If they figure out that it isn't going well, they could probably get out by tapping F-Steel and running away. That's assuming they're not a Savant with Bendalloy, allowing them to travel with their speed bubble.

The only real problem with this is the access to metals, although I don't think it would be too hard. In Era 2, metals are rare, but not so rare they can't be sold commercially. The metals that the Fullborn would need a lot of in order to compound are quite common (those metals being Gold, Steel, Zinc, and probably Bronze). 

I haven't even thought about how Electrum burning could effect this, but it could be very useful. If you see your future self exploding in a ball of fire, you're probably gonna tap steel and run. A similar effect could probably happen by compounding and tapping Chromium, allowing you to react instinctually to the SR (that's just speculation though).

[cometaryorbit]

2 hours ago, robardin said:

Well. A Fullborn already conquered an 1800s tech level world in the past ... AFTER LITERALLY REMODELING THE WORLD, changing its toplogy and ecology (and even to some degree, its biology), blocking out the sun with ash, and so on.

That gave him rather a bit more advantage than "just" being a full Feruchemist who ingested a lerasium bead, you know: that world-changing development massively disrupted all his targets for conquest.

It's not like Rashek personally kicked everyone's butt from Urteau to Seran, he had troops (koloss and human alllies) and followers to establish his rule after the fighting was done. And as Tindwyl and Sazed noted in reviewing a biography of one King Wednegon, "one of the last leaders who resisted the Lord Ruler in any sort of meaningful combat":

His soldiers could not stand against the Conqueror's koloss, and his men had been beaten back repeatedly ever since FellSpire. However, the king didn't blame his soldiers. He thought that his problems came from another source: food.

He mentioned this idea several times during those last days. He thought that if he'd had more food, he could have held out. In this, Wednegon blamed the Deepness. ... its touch had depleted Darrelnai's food stores.

His people could not both raise food and resist the Conqueror's demon armies. In the end, that was why they fell.

Yeah. One invulnerable superhero/supervillain can't necessarily win a large-scale war. Even a Fullborn can only be in one place at a time.

Also, Scadrial pre-Deepness was early 1800s tech; the Deepness-driven chaos might have destroyed most of that infrastructure before TLR's conquests really got going.

[+robardin]

15 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Yeah. One invulnerable superhero/supervillain can't necessarily win a large-scale war. Even a Fullborn can only be in one place at a time.

Also, Scadrial pre-Deepness was early 1800s tech; the Deepness-driven chaos might have destroyed most of that infrastructure before TLR's conquests really got going.

Indeed, nothing disrupts steam locomotive rail lines (if they existed) like, oh, moving around land masses and creating enormous Ashmounts out of whatever used to be there…!

We know that he basically formed the core of the final Empire starting with the Empire that Alendi had assembled before going up that mountain with him, convincing ten (all?) “lieutenant kings” under Alendi to serve him instead with a display of Fullborn power and the lure of lerasium beads for them and their descendants to become Mistborn and Allomancers.

So with that plan in mind, he likely shuffled things around to preserve that core Empire more than other areas he intended to conquer.

That would also explain how he could have twiddled humanity into “noble” and “skaa” subgroups while Ascended, but only providing the lerasium beads for Allomancy to founders of the Ten Great Houses afterward: “noble blood” was identified with Allomancy after a couple of hundred years, but initially, the “nobles” were probably just people from that core existing “Empire” he inherited (and expected to garner quick support from), and “skaa” were the people from the other areas to be conquered into the FE.

And the spread of Allomancy among the nobles was due to the strict Steel Ministry laws requiring nobles only marrying/breeding with other nobles, in order to concentrate that power only among Rashek’s core supporters.

Edited May 11, 2023 by robardin