Gisaku75

Fabrial tensioner: when applied to a crossbow makes it a light weapon and loses loaded 1, 3 Charges. 
Spend an action and 1 charge to activate the fabrial for the entire scene. 
drawback:Inefficent.

The problem of Kaladin's depression had already been extensively covered in the first 3 books. You could close at the end of Oathbringer with Kaladin taking the fourth oath and move on. Kaladin's story arc in book four is a tedious repetition of the evolutionary path taken before, and I hope it finally moves on.

2 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

You are conflating two technologies that are related but not precisely the same. Wooden armour against longarms was hopeless even as early as the 18th century. But that is not what we are talking about in a saloon fight. They were using handguns.

As far as metal armor is concerned, the idea that it totally vanished many centuries ago is false. Breastplates remained in use on the battlefield into the 19th century. Why did shields vanish? Because armor you can wear is superior in terms of mobility and allows both hands to be used.

I corrected my post look at the posted video and you will realize that your deductions are totally wrong

28 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Sure, but why? Because 1850 or so it had a decent chance of working. It seems to me that we are approaching old movies with an attitude of hubris. They were made by people whose grandparents still had memories of using weapons powered by black powder. Remember that muzzle energy goes up with the square of velocity.

old movies were made to show off not to be historically accurate, and grandparents' stories don't count as accurate historical accounts. If a wooden shield had been able to stop a bullet it would not have disappeared from the battlefield a couple of centuries before 1850. The armor disappeared precisely because it did not provide any protection against firearms. If 2mm of steel can't stop a bullet it is impossible that a normal table can.

This is an example of what guns do at a wooden table. Also note that Wax uses the equivalent of a Colt Pacemaker which is much more advanced than the gun in the video. Weapon technology on Scadrial is post 1870 not 1850.

I personally think that sanderson studied the subject more on a cinematic level than in terms of realism. That of shielding yourself with the tables is a typical scene from old Western movies.

This is an example of how Navani's ships would not be a major threat to Scadrial's army. As Wax flees in the flying ship, he is worried that the Set is equipped with artillery precisely because he is afraid of being shot down. At best they could be useful as transports for the radiant. Even so, they would require an enormous amount of Stromlight to be concealed. But once identified, it could be easily torn apart.

And this is why even indestructible shields are useless against a modern army. All the speculations that are made are based on the misconception that Radiants can easily go into close combat with Scadrial's forces. Because that's what a medieval army does. But a modern army is based on ranged combat and not massing troops in one visible spot. Scadrial has a longer firing range and an ability to spot targets at much greater distances. By the time a Windrunner spots a firing post, two others have already targeted it.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

I never said the difference is not huge, only that the momenta are actually comparable, which is what was relevant for my point. I was mistaken on the kinetic energy and thank you for correction, I was mostly concerned with the 'barrel' speed, which would help arrow more, but even then the arrow would still have ~10x less kinetic energy even in favorable conditions.

I'm sorry but your reasoning is fundamentally wrong. Both bullets and arrows are penetrating weapons that concentrate all their impact force in a single point. Arrows are much more effective against soft materials such as sandbags due to their weight. Bullets are much more effective against rigid materials such as metal due to their speed. The plates are an extremely rigid material, in fact they do not bend like metal but crack like glass, breaking into a thousand pieces once the breaking point is reached. The fact that they do not transmit any kickback to the wearer is given by the strength and weight increased not by the resistance of the plates. A shard hammer is less effective than a rifle bullet because it distributes the force of the impact over a larger surface and is much slower. And the speed increases the impact power exponentially and not linearly as happens with weight.

24 minutes ago, therunner said:

I never compared arrows to bullets, I only mentioned arrows as an example of how Plate seems to be very heavy (as the momentum of the arrow did not even nudge it). Also, while penetration mechanism of arrow and a bullet differ (cutting vs pushing) their momenta are actually comparable, as typical arrow is ~4x as heavy as a bullet, but moves ~1/4 of the speed, giving comparable momenta. Of course in kinetic energy bullet will win roughly a 4x.

No, the difference in power between a bullet and an arrow is huge, which is why rifles have replaced bows. The 45 70 cartridge was the standard for both rifle and gatling guns from Western times. it has a minimum power of 2304 joules, which is enough to drill 3mm of hard steel. a 160lb longbow has a power of 109 joules 20 times less and can only dent 2mm of steel. A rifle shot can severely damage or break a plate. An upgraded weapon for an Allomancer could easily injure a shardplate warrior.

Mistborn even against a 4 oath. But there are too many metals with unclear effects that could make a difference so there is no clear answer.

3 hours ago, The Technovore said:

The topic of war tactics has come up before, we discussed it exhaustively in the 20s and 30s of this ridiculously enormous thread. 
 

I'm just going to link what I said about that topic, it's the first spoilered section of the post:

TL;DR, in my heated opinion, Scadrial has far superior technology and the potential to create a superior army. What they do NOT have is an army. They have a police force. They don't have artillery, they don't have tanks, they don't mass produce grenades and machine guns and explosives. There are weapons manufacturers and talented gunsmiths, obviously, but they don't have the scaled production lines to make arms of that type and scale. They also don't have soldiers and generals that have any experience concerning the realities of war. And it would take months to years to get there.

Roshar has the superior military experience, numbers, resources, and battle hardening. They have more soldiers, they have more generals, and while they're grossly behind technologically and tactically, they have enough thinking minds to adapt quickly, and, since the time of this hypothetical is about 10 years after RoW, they also have the time to close it.

Scadrial does not have a clear advantage in the tactics department. I won't say that Roshar has a clear advantage, I don't think that either. They're just very different with very real exploitable weaknesses on both sides.

this is an excerpt from the newspaper articles published in BoM "Each ship carries 12-inch twin gun with each turret, having a range of six-teen miles, said Severington. Other improvement include reinforced armor hull, electrical rangefinders, and a top speed of 24 miles an hour". it is a presentation of a fleet built by a noble. It seems clear to me that Scadrial has both the technology and the industrial facilities needed to mass produce heavy weapons of war. And if they have a navy it means they also have a ground military force with cannons and machine guns. Even just as a precaution in case the Koloss want to go to war. The fact that the books focus on the vicissitudes of a policeman does not mean that Scadrial does not also have a military force at its disposal.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Yeah but her entire flight start to finish took between 6 to 8 seconds in my estimate. If Straff is at same elevation as her starting point, then from symmetry she fall half the time of the total flight, which is between 3-4 seconds, and from that we get 45-80 meters (0.5*10*3^2 = 45, or 0.5*10*4^2 = 80). He very quickly corrects himself on her not being an arrow (the very next sentence he says the the object is too large) and he very specifically is not burning metals in that situation (he describes how his drug makes him feel as if he was burning metal).

Sorry but your evaluation of time is based on how long it takes you to read the paragraph? It seems very convenient to me. One would have to be very shortsighted to mistake a person for an arrow or a boulder two hundred meters away. Even with the falling ash. Mine was a generous evaluation. Staff camp is located at a safe distance from the city and must use scouts to guard it not lookouts, 500 meters or 1 km is the minimum distance, in case of a danger, to raise the alarm and deploy the troops in defense. Staff just finished deploying troops and the Kolosses have just started charging. They are still out of reach of the archers so certainly more than 300 meters.
Vin and Kelsier by burning steel can reach a height of 100 feet or 30 meters, the walls of Luthadel. So with duralumin 300 meters high are perfectly reachable.

39 minutes ago, therunner said:

I meant my post as a reply to @Frustration, where he was comparing arguably greatest feat of d-pewter for which we have good numbers for force (crushing human head) to feat of shardplate.

Where did Dalinar fall 50 feet? I vagualy recollect it, but I was unable to track it down in book.

In the book there are no numbers (it is on pages 705-706 of WoA, start of 55th chapter), either for angle of her jump or the distance between vanguard of koloss charge (her starting point) and Straff (her end point). We do not see the moment she pushed off (only through Straff's eyes), only her landing. Her flight took about ~6-8 seconds (my estimate  based on Straffs thoughts), which would put her maximum height at ~45-80 meters (assuming her landing position is at same height). Is the Straffs camp at some heightened position or not?

And yeah, the text says she bisected the horse with Koloss sword, into front half and back half. From the description the only way it makes sense to me is that she must have held the sword with its tip pointed down and she dragged it through both Straff and the horse (she hits Straff first and on the head, the only other way I can imagine that is if she fell straight down, but then would not make sense to describe what she did as "jump").

 

No a body in free fall travels 313 meters in 8 seconds 176 in six. When Vim jump Staff mistaking her for an arrow, and he's a tineye. In order not to distinguish a person, Vin had to be at least 500 meters away or more.

42 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Crushed is more like it, that's how Brandon describes it, crushed by the force of the hit, not cut.

Does it say 500 feet in text?

No the text says that the horse fell in two pieces not that it is smashed to the ground.

It is an approximation like all the calculations we are doing. Based on a fairly realistic distance and the fact that she falls at an angle of about 45 degrees. If someone knows about ballistics, he can make more precise measurements.

8 minutes ago, Frustration said:

1. Straff is a Tineye not a thug

2. A parabola doesn't make sense given what we know of Steel, it would be a single shot,

1 And then? We are talking about a man in armor and a horse cut with a single blow as if they were paper.

2 The scene is clear, Vin starts upward, the thrust of the steel wears off, then plummets towards Staff from about 500 feet high. So we are talking about a parable. and the fall does not cause any harm.

6 hours ago, therunner said:

I would correct the numbers a bit here. That would be a chasmfied that is 6 times as tall as the length of african elephant, but with their height and width unchanged. Chasmfiend per coppermind are 20 feet wide x 36 feet tall at peak x ~72 feet long, so in metric units 6 m x 11m x 22 m. African elephant would be ~1.5 m wide x 4 m tall x 5m long. In total the Chasmfiend has volume larger by a factor of 4x2.75x4.4 = 48.5, so lets conservatively assume ~40 times. Largest african elephants can weight at 15000 pounds ~ 7 tons, hence our chasmfiend weights at 7*40*0.7 = 196 tons in Roshars gravity, or 420 000 pounds.

Of course chasmfiends also attract Mandras, making them lighter than they should be, but even if 90% of their weight is taken by them, they still weigh at 42000 pounds, and Dalinar held exceptionally large one, that was also attacking, with deadplate. Either way, deadplate feat is at least at 2-3 times greater than what was demonstrated by Vin with duralumin. I would assume that burst strength of plate could be even larger than sustained strength needed to support an object.

There is no scene where Vin lifts something while using d-pewter.

At the end of the Luthadel siege, Staff's army is lining up to attack. They will be at a distance of at least 500 meters from the city. Vin makes a D-Steel jump and within moments reaches Staff and cuts him in two along with his horse, landing without a scratch while he is flaring pewter. I don't mean ballistics but I guess the highest point of a 500 meter parabola is about 150/200 meters 500/650 feet. Dalinar in shardplate after a fall of just 50 feet, held back by buildings, has lost all the pieces of the left arm and the rest of the plate is in pitiful condition. It is quite evident that pewter strengthens a body much more than a shardplate.

1 minute ago, Bigmikey357 said:

1. She may have killed the thing but she didn't punt its head 30 yards or something. The kick basically broke its neck. No matter how imposing,  Koloss are still only flesh and blood. 

2. A Thunderclast is solid stone. Even with Pewter and Duraluminum her leg would break way before any harm would come to it. 

3. Not even a Radiant with Plate is trying to go for punching matches with one of those.  That's what the Shardblades are for.

4. Decapitation of a Thunderclast wouldn't kill it. It's spirit animated stone, no brain stem or spinal chord to speak of. There are only 2 ways to kill one. Chop it into little,  unthreatening pieces or dismiss the animating spirit.

5. Chasmfiends are way more than 4 times as large as an elephant on average.  

6. Confidence is one thing,  but you seem to be trying to get Vin killed if you really think she could solo a Chasmfiend.  I guess if you think that, a Radiant would be no problem huh.

1 No in the book says that the blow broke his skull. practically it is the shot of a cannon.the koloss head weighs more than Vin so it was pierced and not blown off.

2 at most would bounce back because his bones at that moment are harder than steel. If you hit a wall with a steel club, the wall may not be damaged and neither is the club.

3 the point is that with duralumin the blow of a mistborn is much more powerful than a plate.

4 ok

5 no the proportions are exactly those. savanna elephant 10.4 feet tall by 21 feet long. Camsfiend, coppermind source, 20 by 40 feet.

6 In fact, Kaladin just has to stick a shardblade down his throat to kill him. With duralumin Vin is practically a 110 lbs cannonball as you said a Chamsfiend is just muscles and carapace.

1 minute ago, Frustration said:

It's twelve feet not meters

i corrected. I corrected. However, a rhino is just over 12 feet long and an elephant is just under 12 feet tall. A Chamsfiend is 20 feet tall and twice as long.

19 minutes ago, Bejardin1250 said:

Vin is a weird case her Pewter always made no sense for her size

It was a blow to the head that’s why the Kolos dies it woudnt kill a rhino and exapecial not an elephant 

We see one Duralumin pewter I think it shatters someone skull that’s all it also doesn’t leave Vin unharmed when she does

A chasmfeind is also practically a rock there is no way Vin would break that when Shardbeareds have a hard time with these things

No Vin is slightly stronger than normal. in fact when the pewterman blocks her she is unable to free herself, because she is too thin in constitution to compensate with Allomancy. With duralumin, she breaks free easily and blows his head off without being affected in the least. A 12 feet Koloss is exactly the same size as a rhino  and therefore by flaring pewter it can be killed easily with a hit in the head. a Chamsfire is about twice the height and length of an elephant and four times the size of a rhino. So only by ten times the power of the blow the Chamfiend would have no hope. in both of the scenes I mentioned, I just reread them, Vin doesn't suffer any backlash from her attacks, simply in the first case she has to recover from the fact that the Pewterman was strangling her.

1 hour ago, Bigmikey357 said:

@AirsickAviar

I'm going to have to disagree about how powerful you believe that duraluminum is. It's a game changer but it's nowhere near  a 3000x force multiplier. 10x? Sure. Maybe even 20x. I could see that. But ascribing that sort of power to them would mean that Vin could drink a vial, go up to a Thunderclast or Chasmfiend and punch a hole right through them without any ill effects. 

In fact, it could easily do it with duralumin.
The power of a blow is given by 3 basic factors, the weight of the attacker, the speed of execution and the resistance of the attacker. pewter does not increase weight but increases the speed of execution and resistance of the Pewterman. Vin, from what I have found is 5'4 '' tall and weighs 110 lbs. In the third book just by flaring the pewter, kills a 12 foot Koloss, basically the size of a rhino or elephant, with a single kick to the temple, and without suffering repercussions. With 10 or twenty times that power Vin could leap off the ground at the speed of a bullet, smash a Chamsfiend's head, and land unscathed as her body would become harder than steel.

51 minutes ago, Bejardin1250 said:

Allomancy gets diluted as the bloodline gets further away from the original Mistborns

So eventually there will be no mistborns and very little mistings that will be almost powerless

They are creating Fabrial (for lack of better term) mistborns like that bomb and medallions to combat that

While Radiant will never end

the Radiant will always be a number limited to a few thousand at a time. And once a Radiant is dead the spren has to choose another candidate who has to reach the third sworn to be a threat. And it's not an immediate process. Southern Scadrials have been making medallions for 300 years, for their entire population as a means of survival. It means a production capacity of tens of thousands of medallions. Which means tens of thousands of F-steel soldiers with hours of speed thanks to the compound.

20 minutes ago, Frustration said:

1. Scandrial is progressing incredibly slowly, so it will take them a longer time than you think to get there.

2. Radiants are something Metalborn aren't, replaceable.

3. Scandrial's communication is hundreds of times slower than Roshar's so Roshar will be far faster at mobilizing. 

1 Roshar has been stuck in the Middle Ages for at least two thousand years and has only recently begun to change. But education is still a privilege of a few and all goods are built in an artisanal way. Scarial went from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Era in 300 years. It is backward by Sazed's expectations not compared to Roshar. It is already several centuries ahead of Roshar in all fields. It has universities open to all, factories and mass production so it can potentially develop much faster than Roshar. And the people of the south are even more advanced.

2 Radiant ones are limited by the number of spen and if one dies the spren must find another person who swears at least 3 oaths before being a threat. With the medallions I can create as many metalborns as I want.

3 Wayne's protege theorized about radio waves and a telegraph system already exists. So spanreed do not represent an insurmountable advantage.

14 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

That is until Roshar figures out Harmony's tone and makes the Ettmetal mute with antiharmony.

Yes, and in the meantime, the Ghost Bloods may have recovered the same technology and allowed Scadrial to build bullets capable of killing the spren and rendering the radiant harmless.

13 hours ago, The Technovore said:

I love the Metalborn magic system, really it's amazing, but Mistborn doesn't have a plot point around metalborn potentially cracking their planet. Ishar the Bondsmith and the ancient surgebinders tore Ashyn apart, and while Dalinar the Bondsmith isn't likely to do such destructive things with his powers, Navani is very likely to test the limits of the Radiant's newly unchained surges. It's literally an SA plot point that they might end up cracking Roshar.

It's also a plot point that Stormlight may be able to get transported off planet, and see in the First of the Dawn sequel that they've succeeded (i.e. the Skybreaker loads some form of energy pack into his new ShardRifle that is very very likely Stormlight).

Scadrial's only hope is to make sure they never have to set foot on Radiant home turf (Roshar), and that the Rosharans never figure out how to take their planet-cracking powers to Scadrial, which is why Thaidakar is meddling so hard in RoW.

Give all those plot-points 10 to 15 years to develop (remember, it only took a year and a half to go from "Oaths sworn" to "Everstorm created" to "Anti-Light discovered"), and you have a big potential problem for Scadrial. Any offensive Scadrial makes on Roshar is doomed, even with espionage knowledge, because in 10 to 15 years more spren will be bonded, Radiants will be more practiced and more powerful, and more incredible fabrial tech and Investiture theory will be discovered.

Any offensive Roshar makes on Scadrial would be very costly indeed, but Scadrial has exactly 0 experience with large-scale combat situations and guns don't make up for lack of military discipline when the enemy has flying, shape-shifting, destructive, energized, planet-crackers on their side. I wouldn't say Roshar wins no matter what, but there's a reason why Thaidakar is so concerned with Roshar. It's a massive threat to the Cosmere at large if they manage to take their powers off-world.

At the end of BoM it turns out that on scadrial there is a civilization that has been building flying ships for decades and has already developed something very similar to an atomic warhead. 10 15 years Scadrial can develop weapons capable of annihilating an army of radiants from miles away. Elendel Basin already has cannons, gatlings and the first cars, in 10 15 years they can develop tanks and machine guns. Not to mention the mass production of Unkeyed metalmind and medallions. However, the number of Radiant is limited. Scadrial can field tens of thousands of super soldiers and weapons capable of smashing shardplates in one shot.

17 hours ago, Frustration said:

Mental speed =\= knows what you're doing.

If you don't know what to do all that is going to happen is you will run out of ideas faster.

Do you think you could build a working nuclear submarine without help from anyone else and your only advantage is you can think faster?

No but you can design it much faster and with the certainty that it will work when you go from theory to practice, that's what computers are for. A project like navani's flying ship requires tons of math to work. On roshar those calculations have to be done in mind by dozens of people over a period of weeks or months. On Scadrial you can do the same job with in a hundred of the time thanks to the Zinc that transforms all your engineers into human computers.

7 hours ago, ScadrianTank said:

I don't think that Scadrial stole airship technology. In BoM, Jordis said that the ship they flew home, in the end, was decades out of date. It implies that aviation in the south exited for around half a century, give or take ten years.  The timeline doesn't match up. Then there is the fact that Rosharan flying machines use drastically different methods of propulsion. 

Scadrial's airships are powered by ettmetal and soar thanks to Allomancy. They are completely different from Navani's ship. 

If we talk about technological improvement, Scadrial's ability to progress is immensely superior thanks to the medallions and unkeyed metalminds. With a combination of zinc and aluminum a simple Rioter can produce an unlimited amount of mental speed. Transfer this skill to the best scientists and you'll get human computers a hundred times better than any team Navani can put together. Do the same with your generals and you'll get unbeatable military geniuses. On roshar they are still on the abacus and use logicspren for clocks.

the introduction of medallions guarantees a huge advantage in all fields. you can transform any individual into a Feruchemist, all Allomancers into duomancers and go even further. Wax with a triple F-steel, F-gold and F-iron medallion can wipe out an army with a handful of nails and a pair of daggers.