Scadrian vs. Rosharan magic post RoW

[Frustration]

Just now, Bzhydack said:

Shardblade is useless if you get shot from distance. Plate is better, but still not enough. My point stands:

Not really, primer cubes only last for a short amount of time, and Chromium takes a while to drain. High oath Radiants could push through.

1 minute ago, Bzhydack said:

When Roshar cancells Scadrian magic, removes only one Scadrian strengh.

The only other strength they have is firearms

2 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

When Scadrial cancells Roshar's, IT cancells Roshar completly.

Superior generals, advanced battle tactics, etc,

Radiance/fabrials are far from Roshars only strength.

[Gisaku75]

the conception of war on roshar is firm in the Middle Ages. It is based on melee and tight formations. He would have no hope in a modern army like Scadrial's, based on firearms and ranged combat. And no military genius could bridge this difference except in the long run. If you can cancel or limit the magic, Roshar has no hope.

Edited February 15, 2021 by Gisaku75

[ScadrianTank he/him]

12 hours ago, Frustration said:

Odium litteraly said they can be rebuilt so long as the spren are unharmed.

Rebuilding a building-sized fabrial where it broke and moving it to another planet really isn't the same.

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

Superior generals, advanced battle tactics, etc,

As @Gisaku75 said, Rosharan tactics revolve around formations. Wit said it himself that warfare will have to move away from those. If Rosharan generals march their armies using these advanced battle tactics, they will be slaughtered like the French at the beginning of WW1, and the French had firearms at the time.

12 hours ago, Frustration said:

I was using that as a comparison. Steel compounders are no longer worth the steel they eat if their power turns off.

Gold is useless.

Individual Metalborn and a military branch are not at all comparable. Blocking Compounding, however, raises a fascinating topic in terms of mechanics. It's beyond doubt that you can make a suppression fabrial that can stop Allomancy and likely Feruchemy individually. But the specifics of what you are blocking and where Metalborn draw their power can lead to different results.

Since Harmony holds both Ruin and Preservation, would it be enough to suppress Harmony to block Allomancy and Feruchemy at the same time? Or one would have to create a separate fabrial for each Metalic art to disable them? 

If you suppress only Feruchemy and prevent Ferrings from filling or tapping a Metalmind, would it prevent a Compounder from burning that Metalmind? How would these fabrials affect Medallions that grant Allomancy? Brandon said that  Feruchemichal nicrosil works like a Coppermind, IIRC.  Does that mean that if you are using an Allomantic ability granted by a Medallion, you can keep using it even with Feruchemy suppressed, or would that Investiture somehow return to the Medallion?

How do these fabrials interact with Hemalurgy? That depends a great deal on whether or not stolen Allomacy still draws its power from Preservation.

Edited February 15, 2021 by ScadrianTank

[Frustration]

6 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

Rebuilding a building-sized fabrial where it broke and moving it to another planet really isn't the same.

As @Gisaku75 said, Rosharan tactics revolve around formations. Wit said it himself that warfare will have to move away from those. If Rosharan generals march their armies using these advanced battle tactics, they will be slaughtered like the French at the beginning of WW1, and the French had firearms at the time.

It is still advantagous, not a huge advantage, but an inch up none the less.

6 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

Individual Metalborn and a military branch are not at all comparable. Blocking Compounding, however, raises a fascinating topic in terms of mechanics. It's beyond doubt that you can make a suppression fabrial that can stop Allomancy and likely Feruchemy individually. But the specifics of what you are blocking and where Metalborn draw their power can lead to different results.

Oh, so people capable of moving faster than sound, and others who just about can't die are not comparable to hard to hit and fast moving weapons in real life, why on earth would they not be?

 

But anyway, I found another solution, Unmade are strong enough to push through supression, so have someone swallow a gemstone, and send in Yelig-nar.

 

[The Technovore he/him]

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

But anyway, I found another solution, Unmade are strong enough to push through supression, so have someone swallow a gemstone, and send in Yelig-nar.

Now I'm just imagining Roshar building a fabrial railgun in the CR pointed a scadrial and just catapulting all the Unmade over there. Let it be their problem now. Makes me chuckle.

Also, there is a good point about middle-age formations falling quickly to armies of coinshots and gunslingers, but I think it should be mentioned that in RoW they're already seeing significant upheaval in their tactics. If Scadrial invaded the day after RoW ends, they'd be in serious trouble, but what if it was in Books 6-10? After the spren have performed the Nahel bond en masse due to Adolin and Maya's diplomacy? After Rosharans work out how to use that Dawnshard they have? After they've had 15 years of (presumably) peace to advance both technologically and tactically? I kinda feel like when we're comparing Era 2 to RoW on a planetary, it's clear that Scadrial is still advantageous. I mean, obviously. Scadrial has 2 shards for the price of one, and Roshar is in the middle of civil war. That spells "vulnerable" for Roshar. Although, actual Twinborn/Mistborn vs Radiant matchups are somewhat even, where it could go either way depending on the Radiant order and who is best able to adapt to the other's tactics. 

Remember that this originally wasn't supposed to be a "who would win" between Roshar and Scadrial in a hypothetical war, this was a comparison between magic systems and their on-screen power-levels. Whatever happens to this topic, we'll likely have to take it up again after Book 5 where we know how Roshar stands (with Odium or with Honor) and after TLM so we know how Scadrial stands (Is saze okay or is Trell taking over and what's happening to their society?), and again after Book 6 and Era 3. 

Honestly I kinda look forward to "Roshar vs Scadrial" being the fandom meme for the next couple decades.

[Frustration]

5 minutes ago, The Technovore said:

Now I'm just imagining Roshar building a fabrial railgun in the CR pointed a scadrial and just catapulting all the Unmade over there. Let it be their problem now. Makes me chuckle.

Oh my goodness this is hilarious.

Dlainar: So why are we shooting this planet with splinters of divine hatred?

Hoid: the memes.

Dalinar: What?

[cometaryorbit]

On 2/14/2021 at 4:21 AM, Gisaku75 said:

You don't need the power of a modern anti-tank rifle to penetrate a shardplate. 

True, it can eventually be broken through by regular weapons, but...

 

Quote

Szeth manages to demolish a dead shardplate with a 20kg stone traveling at approximately 140ms. 

...that's not a good example, as that is a huge amount of kinetic energy, a couple hundred thousand joules. The Parshendi warform weapons would probably be better examples - I still think they're significantly more than demonstrated non-Duralumin allomantic steel shots, but it's not completely out of scope.

Quote

Vin during the siege of Luthadel kills a 12-foot Koloss by hitting it in the skull from about 30 meters. And I think he was just flaring his steel as he still uses the coinshot afterwards. Given the size of the Koloss, Vin's bullet has the same power as an elephant gun.

I strongly disagree here. Sure, that was non-Duralumin, but I think you are greatly overestimating the toughness (as opposed to strength) of koloss.

Elephant guns had to be crazy powerful to stop a charging elephant because the front of an elephant's skull is really reinforced.

Koloss skulls are probably just human scaled up (and we know koloss don't scale well - square-cube law issues with their hearts eventually kill them - they may not even be 2x thicker than human skulls).

[Gisaku75]

2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

I strongly disagree here. Sure, that was non-Duralumin, but I think you are greatly overestimating the toughness (as opposed to strength) of koloss.

Elephant guns had to be crazy powerful to stop a charging elephant because the front of an elephant's skull is really reinforced.

Koloss skulls are probably just human scaled up (and we know koloss don't scale well - square-cube law issues with their hearts eventually kill them - they may not even be 2x thicker than human skulls).

I do not agree. The Koloss' flaw is that at some point they die of a heart attack, as happens to many athletes who play sports based on physical mass, such as sumo fighter or wrestlers. But to hold their own weight, bones must be as strong as those of an elephant or they would simply break at the slightest movement.

[Frustration]

6 hours ago, Gisaku75 said:

I do not agree. The Koloss' flaw is that at some point they die of a heart attack, as happens to many athletes who play sports based on physical mass, such as sumo fighter or wrestlers. But to hold their own weight, bones must be as strong as those of an elephant or they would simply break at the slightest movement.

And in order to use Koloss swords Vin and Elend would have to weight several hundred pounds of else they Newtons third law would send them flying.

Brandon follows the rule of cool.

[cometaryorbit]

13 hours ago, Gisaku75 said:

I do not agree. The Koloss' flaw is that at some point they die of a heart attack, as happens to many athletes who play sports based on physical mass, such as sumo fighter or wrestlers. But to hold their own weight, bones must be as strong as those of an elephant or they would simply break at the slightest movement.

I don't think so, really, for a couple of reasons.

Bone strength is funny, and is very different in compression vs tension vs bending. Bones are very strong in the direction they are "supposed" to be stressed (barring disease states like osteoporosis). Doubling a human's weight wouldn't just break their leg bones (otherwise it wouldn't be possible to lift another human being without breaking your legs).

But breaking a leg in a bad fall is pretty common (since bones are weak in bending).

(I also don't think a 12' koloss is as heavy as an elephant. They're more robust/bulky than usual humans, with massive muscles, but I don't think a 6' koloss would weigh 700-800+ pounds, which is about what you'd need for a 12' one to be in the 3+ ton range of usual elephants.)

7 hours ago, Frustration said:

And in order to use Koloss swords Vin and Elend would have to weight several hundred pounds of else they Newtons third law would send them flying.

Allomantic pewter gives general physical improvements, not just strength, and I think its added grace helps here. And the action/reaction effects wouldn't be that bad - koloss blades probably aren't all that heavy. Koloss start at 5' tall, so at least some blades are probably no longer than that.

Even impractically huge, ceremonial two-handed swords on Earth were more like 10 pounds, and they could be six feet long (or more, including hilt, IIRC).

[Frustration]

2 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Allomantic pewter gives general physical improvements, not just strength, and I think its added grace helps here.

But not weight.

2 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

And the action/reaction effects wouldn't be that bad - koloss blades probably aren't all that heavy. Koloss start at 5' tall, so at least some blades are probably no longer than that.

Even impractically huge, ceremonial two-handed swords on Earth were more like 10 pounds, and they could be six feet long (or more, including hilt, IIRC).

they were big enough to split someone in half down the front.

[cometaryorbit]

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

But not weight.

Right, but a 10 or 15 pound object shouldn't be literally swinging a human around with equal and opposite reaction (especially if the weight is largely closer to the hilt; I don't know how koloss blades' width or thickness vary along their length). It would be impractical - too impractical for swords that size to have been used in real battle in RL history - but not physics-impossible for a normal human to use, I think - and pewter's grace can fix the former.

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

they were big enough to split someone in half down the front.

I think that's more of a measure of the strength of the swing than the size of the blade; a human's not that wide front-to-back. (I think Vin cut from Straff's head or shoulder downward, not using the whole length of the blade lined up with the body foot-to-head.)

That doesn't happen with RL swords because there's a ton of bones in the way, also, the sword would probably break - koloss blades are probably single-edged and wedge-like.

[Bigmikey357 he/him]

On 2/15/2021 at 1:08 AM, Gisaku75 said:

the conception of war on roshar is firm in the Middle Ages. It is based on melee and tight formations. He would have no hope in a modern army like Scadrial's, based on firearms and ranged combat. And no military genius could bridge this difference except in the long run. If you can cancel or limit the magic, Roshar has no hope.

Scadrial has the technology but not the numbers or the tradition.  They have no concept of true military action. SoScad fights like tribesmen and NoScad is barely competent in police action. 

Roshar is behind in tech (although not quite as far as you imply) but well versed in warfare vs magical weaponry.  Firearms would not particularly faze them, they'd look at them as a different type of fabrial and immediately seek ways to counter it. Modern warfare isn't all that different than ancient warfare,  tactics change but objectives do not.

Sure Scadrial has the tech to squash a Rosharan army if they knew how to effectively employ their weapons. The question becomes how fast can Scadrial figure out how best to employ their weaponry before their tech advantage dries up? They're not stupid but they don't think militarily and that mindset takes time to cultivate.  Meanwhile if say Sadeas saw a firearm in action it would take him at most a battle and a half to figure the best ways to employ said weaponry or find a workable defense against it. 

The thing about warfare is the longer it goes on the smarter the enemy gets. Roshar has been at war off and on for about 7000-ish years. There are less capable commanders, but nearly all the stupid or incompetent ones are dead.

[Frustration]

7 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

Scadrial has the technology but not the numbers or the tradition.  They have no concept of true military action. SoScad fights like tribesmen and NoScad is barely competent in police action. 

Roshar is behind in tech (although not quite as far as you imply) but well versed in warfare vs magical weaponry.  Firearms would not particularly faze them, they'd look at them as a different type of fabrial and immediately seek ways to counter it. Modern warfare isn't all that different than ancient warfare,  tactics change but objectives do not.

Sure Scadrial has the tech to squash a Rosharan army if they knew how to effectively employ their weapons. The question becomes how fast can Scadrial figure out how best to employ their weaponry before their tech advantage dries up? They're not stupid but they don't think militarily and that mindset takes time to cultivate.  Meanwhile if say Sadeas saw a firearm in action it would take him at most a battle and a half to figure the best ways to employ said weaponry or find a workable defense against it. 

The thing about warfare is the longer it goes on the smarter the enemy gets. Roshar has been at war off and on for about 7000-ish years. There are less capable commanders, but nearly all the stupid or incompetent ones are dead.

Not to mention that Navani could figure out how they work in no time, and Dalinar would know how to best use them in a similar period.

add to that the fact that the number one advantage firearms have is how quick they are to learn, adn Scandrials chances go from decent to miniscule after maybe three engagemanets

[Bigmikey357 he/him]

56 minutes ago, Frustration said:

add to that the fact that the number one advantage firearms have is how quick they are to learn, adn Scandrials chances go from decent to miniscule after maybe three engagemanets

Yep. Unless you are insanely talented and have a natural affinity it takes a bowman years to be competent.  The US Army makes competent rifleman by the busload every 2 weeks. 

[Gisaku75]

13 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

I also don't think a 12' koloss is as heavy as an elephant. They're more robust/bulky than usual humans, with massive muscles, but I don't think a 6' koloss would weigh 700-800+ pounds, which is about what you'd need for a 12' one to be in the 3+ ton range of usual elephants.)

Mike tyson weighs around 220lb by 6ft tall, Thor Bjornsson weighs around 440lb by 7ft tall. weight increases exponentially with height not linearly. So a 12-foot Koloss will weigh several tons, and his bones will be 8-10 times stronger than those of a human not just twice as much or they would break like bread sticks. An elephant distributes its weight over 4 legs and not two legs, so the bones of a Koloss are reasonably similar to those of an elephant.

[Gisaku75]

9 hours ago, Frustration said:

Not to mention that Navani could figure out how they work in no time, and Dalinar would know how to best use them in a similar period.

add to that the fact that the number one advantage firearms have is how quick they are to learn, adn Scandrials chances go from decent to miniscule after maybe three engagemanets

No firearms have completely revolutionized the way of fighting. Dalinar should completely overhaul his way of thinking about warfare, which is all about close combat, and re-train all his men, making him completely change his mentality, not an easy feat. Navani should first be able to get a weapon from the enemy, and that would already be a challenge. Studying gunpowder, a chemical compound he doesn't understand the basics of, and start producing working prototypes. At the same time Scadrial would have already decimated Roshar's army and began massive weapons production and mass training.

in a year of war Dalinar was unable to regain even a meter of territory from the Parshi. Indeed, the parshi have improved their warfare techniques while the alliance has remained firm. As a military genius, he's not worth much.

Edited February 17, 2021 by Gisaku75

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, Gisaku75 said:

No firearms have completely revolutionized the way of fighting. Dalinar should completely overhaul his way of thinking about warfare, which is all about close combat, and re-train all his men, making him completely change his mentality, not an easy feat. Navani should first be able to get a weapon from the enemy, and that would already be a challenge. Studying gunpowder, a chemical compound he doesn't understand the basics of, and start producing working prototypes. At the same time Scadrial would have already decimated Roshar's army and began massive weapons production and mass training.

in a year of war Dalinar was unable to regain even a meter of territory from the Parshi. Indeed, the parshi have improved their warfare techniques while the alliance has remained firm. As a military genius, he's not worth much.

Considering he can and I quote"taste when something is wrong." In battle I'd say his knowledge is instinctual, he did learn how to fight, he lived it.

Assuming Scandrial wins early battles is completely unreasonable.

One Radiant is worth at least 200 untrained Scandrian soldiers.

And there can be hundreds of them.

Add the Fused, Heralds, Unmade and Scandrial has exactly one chance and that is Kelsier.

[BenduLuke he/him]

@Gisaku75 Navani may not hold a candle to Ranet when it comes to developing weapons

In the last few days I have seen people arguing neutralizing power, and in this Scadrians have the advantage in my opinion because they have allomancers which can determine the proper tones to negate investiture using Bronze. In addition their aluminum tech is far more advanced than Roshar and aluminum is the anti investiture metal nullifying virtually any invested ability.

Scadrial has also been shown to advance technologically much faster than Roshar since the death of TLR and projectiles are a natural outgrowth of having coinshots.

Colos are presented as being very strong and durable and may be comparable to a Knight in shardplate so underestimating steel pushes is a mistake.

Another challenging combination would be a Thug/Spinner. Always able to fight in just the right way having just the right weapons with the physical abilities to back them up. A thug archivist could be the most advanced warrior in existence storing and tapping knowledge of combat, tactics, and strategy for any situation with the physical ability to pull them off.

[Frustration]

6 minutes ago, BenduLuke said:

Colos are presented as being very strong and durable and may be comparable to a Knight in shardplate so underestimating steel pushes is a mistake.

*Koloss

Big sword =/= 72 story tall monster.

[BenduLuke he/him]

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

*Koloss

Big sword =/= 72 story tall monster.

my mistake I listen not read the books. In addition to Koloss being strong and durable, Inquisitors could prove as much or more of a challenge than a KR. For that matter most orders of Radiants would be at a disadvantage to full Mistborn/Feruchemist, many mistings, feriings and twinborn combinations.

Some of the leverage to use Koloss swords comes from Steel and Iron. Of course a complete enhancement coming from Pewter doesn't hurt either.

Oh Rosharand fabrials are much more fragile than Scadrian fabrials and Rosharan weapons are much more limited than Scadrian weapons so either of  those facts could decide a battle.

[Bigmikey357 he/him]

Roshar completely outclasses Scadrial in terms of magic and magical constructs. However strong and durable Koloss are, there are no more pure blood ones, so even if they were stronger than Thunderclasts with bones made of mythril and adamantium, they are no longer available.  And as far as Inquisitors there is exactly one. Unless Marsh is telling,  unless Harmony allows him to tell, they don't know how to make them anymore.  

Scadrial's technology advantage has only a little to do with firearms.  Nothing Scadrial has is any more complex as a modern fabrial; give Navani an uninterrupted hour with the thing and she’d know it well enough to have a working prototype before the week was out. Scadrial's greatest technical marvel is the same as Earth, mass production.  They can put a devastating weapon in the hands of every person on their side and still have leftovers. Both men and women since Vin pretty much killed gender bias on the planet.  If only Scadrial knew how to really wage war they'd slaughter Roshar.  But they don't.  And their magic is pretty low wattage compared to a Knight,  Regal or Fused. 

So again the question is, how soon can Scadrial develop real military tactics?  Can they do it before Roshar can adopt all their technological advancements and use them against them? I can imagine Navani telling her husband to capture a factory once she knows about guns. And another thing to consider.  Once a Radiant figures out how to get their spren to become a gun then the entire Cosmere got problems. 

[cometaryorbit]

12 hours ago, Gisaku75 said:

Mike tyson weighs around 220lb by 6ft tall, Thor Bjornsson weighs around 440lb by 7ft tall. weight increases exponentially with height not linearly. So a 12-foot Koloss will weigh several tons,

Square cube law means, assuming equal proportions, x2 height = x8 mass.

So if a 6' man is 200lb, a 12' man would be 1600lb.

Koloss are bulkier and heavier than average humans, so I would suggest around 2500-3000lb for a 12' koloss. Probably not several tons.

Still, being bipeds would put more stress on their legs, but that stress is fairly 'localized'. Leg bones would be thicker than direct scaling would imply -- but there's no reason to think the skull (which is no more stressed than a human one) would be extra-tough.

And the leg bones probably don't need to be as extreme as all that -- human bones have more strength than they minimally need in the direction the weight is applied, and koloss probably don't scale exactly like humans -- also, koloss gait might be different from human, which could help a lot.

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Colos are presented as being very strong and durable and may be comparable to a Knight in shardplate so underestimating steel pushes is a mistake.

Koloss are very strong, but nowhere near Shardplate strength. Dalinar uses a hammer in Shardplate that is difficult for two strong men to carry, so probably 150lb plus. Real-life warhammers were more like 5 pounds, so I'd argue Shardplate is about x30 normal human strength.

Allomantic Pewter seems to be too comparable with Koloss strength for them to be on that scale. Pewter is about x2 strength for a normal Allomancer, x3 flared.r... likely a bit more for Vin and significantly more for Elend, but not x30.

As for durability... well, in Well of Ascension Elend kills one (before he becomes an Allomancer) with a knife, and while he's had some training he's hardly a full-on warrior at this point. Admittedly it's a small one, but ... Koloss can be more resilient than default humans, and ignore pain in berserk rage, but I think there is a tendency to overstate their durability.

[cometaryorbit]

7 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

However strong and durable Koloss are, there are no more pure blood ones,

Sure there are. There are Koloss-blooded as well, but full Koloss totally exist in Era 2 (they live as tribes out in the Roughs).

"Pure blood" isn't exactly the right term though, they are born as Koloss-blooded (humans with some extra strength and bluish-tinted coloration) and don't become full Koloss unless they actually get the Hemalurgic spikes (which the Koloss don't know how to make, so there are a limited number available).

[Bigmikey357 he/him]

37 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Sure there are. There are Koloss-blooded as well, but full Koloss totally exist in Era 2 (they live as tribes out in the Roughs).

"Pure blood" isn't exactly the right term though, they are born as Koloss-blooded (humans with some extra strength and bluish-tinted coloration) and don't become full Koloss unless they actually get the Hemalurgic spikes (which the Koloss don't know how to make, so there are a limited number available).

You're right about the Koloss, I forgot they were mentioned.  However we can still put them off the board effectively  because how are you going to incorporate them into an army? They're completely undisciplined and it would take a literal act of God (Harmony in this instance) to make them an asset in battle even as shock troops. 

For all the good Harmony has done for at least one half of the planet,  he really put the restrictor plate on the local magics after he ascended. 

(P.S. @cometaryorbit, try not to do the double post thing on here, it tends to be frowned upon in these parts.  In future,  just edit your previous post. Thanks.)