ScadrianTank

We can do something like Ranete and use it for secret doors, switches, etc. If your character is a very skilled Lurcher, who can reliably split iron lines of complex objects, they might be able to fire bullets in chambers and magazines of the enemy, like Wax in the prologue for BoM. Maybe something lockpicking and thieving related? Yanking purses, picking locks, that kind of thing.

If Dalinar makes it through book five without becoming a Fused, he could transfer the bond to Taln and hope that they help each other.

Are all alloys of aluminum inert to Invested effects like Allomantic pushes and pulls? Can we say that any aluminum alloy that doesn't have a blue line has the same magical properties? For example, if we used the alloy the Set used for aluminum guns and lined the room with it, would it have the same effect as pure aluminum the wall guard used in Kholinar? Now that I think of it, do we know if duralumin is Allomanticaly visible to a Coinshot or a Lurcher?

The Ire talked about it in Secret History.

If we go by what Ruin and Zahel said in Secret History and RoW, respectively, Kelsier would be more affected by his perception of himself. Presumably, this also applies to Lift, at least to some extent.

I'm not sure how to put this without spoilers for the rest of Oathbringer, but the Alethi seem to be on the boring side of the nations of Roshar. Vedens have the same problem because they and the Alethi are so alike, but we get a lot less of them. That said, while Singers are better at organizing, it's only because of the Fused and the Voidspren. They started enough Desolations to learn the entire organizing your species for war thing by heart. How they would manage society if they won is a different matter and not at all obvious.

The Vanishers used a rotary gun when robbing their last train.

I do not doubt that Copperminds will contribute to more people having a higher level of education. Depending on how widespread they will be, there is even a chance that it will improve the education system itself since it won't have to focus so much on learning facts but applying them. However, I don't think that learning with Copperminds is as simple as tapping someone's knowledge on the subject from a Metalmind and getting a degree the next day. Let's look at Sazed, for example. A lot of what he memorizes is text. His store of knowledge as a Keeper was repeated to him verbatim. At the beginning of the WoA, Sazed records the architecture of the Inquisitor fortress in two ways. One is storing the words he spoke after he finishes the thought, the other is storing his visual recollection. What we get from this kind of storage is a book on a magical USB drive. It is useful only to a point. What is more interesting to us is the coin from BoM. It had a visual record, sound, and a hint of thoughts and deeper memories of the user. When experiencing this recording, Wax doesn't get how Kelsier knows that people burned all wood just like other villages and has no idea what a building reminded a person storing this experience. From this, we can infer that this type of storage works well with single, uninterrupted experiences. Now we have a magical recording. While this is much more useful for our pursuit, it still doesn't allow us to learn easier than conventional methods. With these methods, we can now create a metalmind that will contain theoretical information on the subject, recordings of lessons explaining the theory, and showing its use in specific cases. The end product would be something between a book and a non-interactive online course on a subject. While this is undeniably helpful, it is nowhere near a point where a metalmind, or a lot of them, can allow one to bypass learning altogether. You would still have to practice, make notes and solve problems (or make things, if we are talking about a practical skill) on your own to become proficient at it. I hope that nicrosli compounding works in such a way as to allow one Metalborn to create many medallions of the same power. Otherwise, there will be a lot less magic on Scadrial as time moves on.

It would be faster that way but not as useful in high-level theory and academia. As knowledge isn't the same as understanding, Unsealed Copperminds will likely help plenty of students through high school and early college but not in developing something new. But it's not like civilization won't be served by more people knowing integral table by heart.

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.

I always read those scenes as Leras trying to make Elend go away from where Ruin wanted him and Vin to be.

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. 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.

To remove air support, you need the suppression bubble to reach them. A portable version of the device doesn't affect an area large enough to provide a tactical advantage over airships. So unless you plan on using sabotage, planting a field of suppressors on balloons hidden by Lightweawing, or moving the Sibling around, I don't see them being much of a threat to airforces. Not sure how I feel about moving the portals that are known for being stationary.

Both of these seem sort of irrelevant, IMHO. Turning powers off point is meaningless when combat occurs over distances. Also, Scadrians can do the same with Leeching fabrials. It seems to me that Roshar is much more vulnerable to that because they only use Investiture as a fuel and energy source. That would depend on how you would define being ahead, I guess. Roshar has been creating fabrials for a long time, yes. But as I said, most of their fabrials do the same thing as our technology. If you look at it that way, Roshar still comes out ahead, but only by several devices like Oathgates and Surge fabrials. Since the first only exist on Rohar at its time, I'm not sure that their advantage is as great as you present it to be.

One of the aspects that we haven't touched on much in this thread is fabrials. And I think that there is a possibility of Scadrian fabrials being more versatile than Rosharan ones, but having fewer effects and less power. It seems to me that too many Rosharan fabrials do the same things as conventional technology does, but use Stormlight instead of gears or electricity. At the moment, I see Feruchemichal iron as having the most potential in terms of effects Scadrial can produce. It can be used in a multitude of areas, from construction to space exploration. The fact that F-Iron doesn't make the object weaker gives it incredible potential for use in warfare. Tanks that can move faster than their chassis would allow under normal circumstances and grow heavier to increase accuracy. Railguns can increase the barrel weight while firing projectiles much lighter than usual. Fighter jets can perform increasingly daring maneuvers without straining the pilot as much. Some effects also have the potential to be extremely powerful, but I doubt that they can work with machines. Feruchemichal brass and zinc come to mind, with Allomantic pewter and electrum coming close. If brass can reliably siphon extra heat from machinery, it would be very convenient. Similarly, if zinc worked with computers, Scadrian computers could be as fast as ours with much slower hardware. (This one seems less plausible than others for meta reasons since Brandon is already doing something very similar in the Cytoverse.) A-pewter can work like the Rosharan Augmenter fabrial. A-electrum could be used in vehicles as a safety measure, maybe?

Navani and her POVs were my favorite part of the book. The mechanics of magic systems are one of my favorite aspects of the cosmere, so no surprise there. Shallan's disorder made her chapters harder to read in Oathbringer and it got worse in this book. The scene with Ruthar felt forced and uncomfortable. Somewhat upset by the fact that the book titled "Rhythm of War" didn't have much war in it. The glimpses we got were really cool.

One of the funniest things I can imagine is Ruin Investing in Roshar and the Highstorm gradually destroying the planet.

If Navani's understanding of the Lights is correct and they don't produce the Rhythms on their own but echo them, all that changes when you place Investiture in a vacuum is that it goes silent and deaf. It changes the moment it starts to hear and echo the Rhythms again. So Voidlight in a vacuum is still Voidlight, Odium's Investiture. It has several interesting implications for the future of the cosmere. For one, you won't be able to use Allomantic Bronze as a radar for a spaceship. And for another, if converting one Investiture into another is possible via a Rhythm and similar process, it would also happen the moment it can echo the sound again.

From what Raboniel told Navani, kinetic Investiture is just static Investiture being actively used. Sand from Taldain reacts stronger to Stromlight in a working fabrial. Allomantic Bronze can detect metals, but not the mist. The point about static Investiture providing only passive effects is really good, though.

A meta reason is that the plot needed it to happen, so Fortune made it happen in-world.

If my read of RoW was correct and I haven't misinterpreted anything, the fact that varieties of Fused are called "brands" seems to indicate that is innate. One of my issues on the topic comes more from the mechanics of Fused getting Singer bodies. If they function like a Cognitive Shadow, a Divine Breath, and a Surge combined into a single entity, once they get a body - they should behave similarly to a Returned. But the ease with which they can leave their body made me think about whether the body is even part of the soul in their case. Like you can't steal regular Breath from a Nalthian because it's not a part of their soul, are the Fused even connected enough to the corpse they possess to spike something to of it? And if this is true, you might have an easier time stealing from a Fused in their spren form in the Cognitive Realm.

We know from WoBs that Hemalurgically stealing the powers of a Radiant is difficult. Since Surgebinding comes from the spren, not the Radiant themselves, the spren can choose to simply refuse to bond with a Hemalurgist. But can you steal the Surgebinding from the Fused and successfully use it?

I think @Bzhydack is right on this one. Every time we've seen a Soulcaster in action, they turn an object into a substance of their choice. One thing turns into a different thing. Creating complex mechanisms with many different parts made of distinct materials isn't something Soulcasting does. And it's not like it needs to, because once the cosmere starts to use advanced materials like carbon nanotubes, graphene, and superconductors - Rosharans would be able to create those with ease.

You don't kill enemy scientists during a war, especially when they have a technological advantage - you recruit them. And usually, by the time people figure out that the enemy has new technology, they are already fighting it, so killing scientists who figured it out in the first place is no longer useful. Having Lightweaver spies kill people every time someone has a cool idea would require that they infiltrated every scientific, military, and political institution on the planet and force them to fight one another. Which, they did, by the way, if we think that the Set is Odiums force. And by the end of the BoM, leaders of the Set realized that it would be easier to destroy all life on the planet.

I don't know if civil war even applies when talking about a planet with several different nations. Even if you started a war on Scadrial so large that it threatened industry and population on the whole planet, Scadrial as a whole would come out of it even more technologically advanced in all areas, as evidenced by two world wars we had. To do what you propose, Odium would have to start a Desolation level event, which seems like it would take more resources than on Roshar, given that Scadrial is more advanced and all. On the point of killing Harmony, we are talking about a state of the cosmere at the time of RoW, where he would have some difficulties reaching Sazed. And if we assume that he could just kill Harmony, he wouldn't even need to fight the Scadrians, just Splinter Sazed, and go on to the next Shardworld.