Re: Bombardment Howto Questions pending

>  Paul Westermeyer,
>
>     I am trying to put together a paper on bombardment by Spelljammeing
>ships  and have asked you a number of times to provide a figure for the angle
>of the cone formed by possible projectile trajectories to target.
>
>    So far you have not done this despite assuring me you would.  You were
>the most vocal opponent to my idea of Bombardment and it effects that I
>wanted information that I could attribute to you fitted into this use of
>SpellJamming Technology and be more true to the Technology levels present at
>the latter half of the Renaissance era.

If you wanted speed you needed to send me a check:)  Since I consider the
idea defunct this has been on a back burner for me,  other topics and
subjects in both my gaming and "real" worlds took a far greater priority.
Sorry if you felt we signed a contract or something,  and I resent a little
the tone of your post.  Concerning that please reply to me via private
e-mail.

Otherwise;
As I recall I said I would look into the accuracy of siege weapons.  That
can be put rather simply,  a stationary weapon firing at a stationary
target fired by an expirienced crew could be on target within 5 or six
shots.  This is at ranges easily seen by the naked eye.  I doubt that says
anything at all about orbital bombardment except to point out that the
first shot fired by a siege weapon from a given position almost always
misses.  Since orbital bombardment would be by definition from a different
position each time every rock would miss its intended target (or,  at the
best 99% would missand a 1%(generous estimate) would hit.  The blast
radius' you mentioned (2 miles was the largest likely,  IIRC) would not
require pinpoint accuracy,  but since we are talking orbital bombardment
the potential impact zone would be _very_ large.  The math is too involved
for me to mess with,  it's long but not overly complicated.  Any 1st year
university physics class gives the basic formulas on trajectory.  Just
don't forget changing temperatures and high winds as "chaos" factors to be
included in the outcome.

I suggest you look at the Gulk War Air survey (unclassified summary),  even
with modern aircraft,  equipped with radars and computors,  accuracy was
about 50% or so (an artificially high % because it includes laser guided
weapons whose characteristics could only be duplicated by an equivalent
magical or technological weapon in SJ).  Look at some of the more recent
works on the bombing campaigns against Germany or Japan using the very
advanced optical Norden bombsight (perhaps 20% accuracy when the targets
were the size of factories).

To be blunt that requires you to do the research because I have far to much
work of my own to do and I am already familiar with that literature.

Otherwise I think I expressed my opinion on accurate orbital bombardment
pretty clearly before,  use it in your own games and have a blast.  Could
make for a great game.  It isn't really very likely (remotely possible
would be a less polite phrase) considering the tech level but hey,  we're
playing a game where galleons fly and giant hippomen talk.  Fun is what
matters.

Now,  if you want to talk about some point in my Realmspace updates (maybe
a "standard magic item armory" could be developed for IEN ships)  I'd be
happy to oblige,  but I don't want to do a major rehash of this old topic.


"We look on the same stars,  the sky is common,  the same world surrounds
us.  What difference does it make by what pains each seeks the truth?  We
can not attain to so great a secret by one road..."
Symmachus,  "Memorial on the Occasion of the Removal of the Altar of
Victory from the Senate House" (392 AD)

westermeyer.3@???.edu
Paul William Westermeyer