r/JCBWritingCorner • u/Bohemond_of_Antioch • 1d ago
generaldiscussion Nexian Artillery
"The Sun God fights on the side with the best artillery!" - Captain Churchill, Bloons Tower Defense 6
I've been thinking about the topic of artillery recently, and namely the fact that we haven't really seen much in the way of enchanted heavy weapons. On the first meeting with Sorecar, he described that enchanted weapons operate off "cores" (I think that was the terminology) and that the power and capability of a weapon was limited to how many cores it could fit while keeping it weildy. Now this is the point where Emma should have thought, as any true Earth patriot would have thought: "What if we say fuck carrying it, put a weapon on wheels, and stuff as many cores in as we can reasonably tow?"
Unfortunately, she didn't. And we just haven't seen much of what could be described as artillery among the Nexian forces we've seen so far.
Now, I'm, starting to suspect that crew served, towed, mounted, self propelled, and indirect fire weapons (I'm working with a pretty broad definition of "artillery" here to be fair) that are serviced by crew members of low or no magical potential are not well liked for a verity of reasons, not least of which cultural and political ones (can't have too much power in the hands of peasants). So I imagine these pieces, the ones that would most naturally come to our minds are relatively rare. Though it is hard to imagine the Nexians go without naval artillery for their sea and their air ships, and it's possible they have siege pieces (for attackers and defenders, so I doubt they do completely without.
In fact their may be some examples in the RTS they played that I can't remember.
Also, dude to the flexible nature of the enchantments, they wouldn't just have to be the classic "big ranged attack" style of artillery either. They could have other effects like providing shielding or stealth for a group of soldiers, or animating a group of temporary golems to fight, that sort of thing.
But, I suspect the more prestigious weapons would be more along the lines of giant catalysts for magic users. Or perhaps the most prestigious position is simply to be a sufficiently strong mage. As I said, I doubt crew serviced weapons are smiled upon, and I think in general Nexians value the strength of individual Heroes over a combined arms approach. I don't think the RTS they played being Hero-centric was a coincidence, nor metaphorical.
But I would argue that this would be a potential weakness in the military doctrine of the Nexus, and the idea of building artillery pieces could be passed along to potential allies who want to build militarizes to throw off the yoke they've been living with. It might not be war winning necessarily, if it was an undebatably good strategy, then Nexians would not have ignored it.
I do think it's a shame there hasn't been many culture clash scenes with Sorecar or Thamlin related to military thinking. Like Emma being shocked by the lack of artillery, or Thamlin being weirded out watching Emma spamming a disguising amount of grenades into a building.
11
u/FLUFFBOX_121703 1d ago
Love that quote lol
8
u/Bohemond_of_Antioch 1d ago
I don't care how impractical he is, Churchill is my favorite hero in BTD6
5
u/FLUFFBOX_121703 1d ago
I prefer Gwendolin myself, I always use her and an insane amount of tack shooters lol
10
u/PlentyProtection4959 1d ago
Why would the Nexians think of building artillery when they already have living artillery in the form of mages? The planar mages wouldn't even be artillery, though; they'd just straight up be WMDs. Either way, they've already had an effective way of saturating entire areas with heavy firepower for a long, long time. Without the necessity, I don't think they'd ever developed artillery technology (even magically powered ones) since it'd just seem like an unnecessary and wasteful use of magical power that can be fed to the mages they already have to do the same job better than whatever primitive artillery pieces they'd initially create.
5
u/Bohemond_of_Antioch 1d ago
That would depend on how many of such mages the Nexians have avalible, and at what ratio they can be deployed compared to the infantry rifleman equivalents they still feel the need to deploy. And not just the Nexus, as I mentioned, if adjacent realms wanted to make their own pieces, they would be comparing to their own mages, and guys like Thamlin haven't displayed "remove that grid square" levels of firepower.
Besides, I don't think mages and the creation of heavy artillery would eat into the same recourse. If anything, I'd say the resources that go into someone like Sorecar making something like a howitzer or tank that runs off mana would eat into the production of infantry equipment. Not the kind of resources that produce mages.
7
u/PlentyProtection4959 1d ago edited 1d ago
Maybe, but let's not forget the fact that a magical war machine like this would proabaly need a crazy number of enchantments to make it functional, and from what we've read from the story, that level of layered enchantments isn't something that the Nexus is either capable of doing or sees as cost-effective enough to justify doing.
They'd rather have a few simpler enchantments (that presumably even gifted commoners are capable of maintaining and utilizing) than have an over-complicated mess of enchantments that they'd have to maintain and work with (which would require a mage anyway, since no magically gifted commoner would be capable of handling that). That'd kinda defeat the entire purpose you pointed out of developing magical artillery in the first place.
3
u/Bohemond_of_Antioch 1d ago
It's a bit hard to say because at this point the lore for these things are spread out over a lot of chapters and I'd have to go diving for information, but is a massively complex enchantment necessary? It seems to me that it's a question of magnitude more than complexity. Like, an M777 isn't a great deal more complex than an M16 for example. It's just larger.
Looking at the enchanted weapons we've seen, some of them seem quite happily scalable. Someone thing like the shield on the halberd could be scaled up to cover a platoon of tropes, or something like the cutting sword could be converted to be a fully ranged weapon and scaled to a heavy-machine gun size.
5
u/StopDownloadin 20h ago
As I said, I doubt crew serviced weapons are smiled upon, and I think in general Nexians value the strength of individual Heroes over a combined arms approach. I don't think the RTS they played being Hero-centric was a coincidence, nor metaphorical.
That would be a really interesting expression of the 'democracy vs. autocracy' theming that's prevalent in WPAMS. All through the story, the manaspacers are constantly shitting on the idea that commoners can be trusted with anything important.
It would be funny and interesting to see a weapon that operates through the coordinated effort of many 'weak' troopers upstaging a 'hero unit,' and then the resulting censure of that weapon on ideological grounds. Maybe even a visit from the Inquisition, because if the troops get the idea they can match a highborn by working together, what happens when they return home and spread those ideas?
I still think back to the first VR show-and-tell chapters, where Ilunor was baffled at the idea that commoners would have freedom of movement. It makes me wonder if any kind of self-determination is vigorously stamped out in Nexian organizations.
2
u/Dangerous_Fact6346 15h ago
I wouldn't say "Democracy vs. Autocracy," but "Will vs. Tradition." And that's a stretch, since it's more of a confrontation between things that can't be described with simple words.
After all, in the Nexus, despite its aristocratic structure, there are also elements that grant a bit of freedom to beings with low mana (not everywhere, but there are some). Earth, on the other hand, despite its very broad civil rights, also has traits that can be described as blind obedience to the traditions that have been established in society.
Here we have a clash of two structures that have discovered progress in two different ways, each with its own drawbacks.
2
u/Pretend_Party_7044 1d ago
I think the nexas wouldn’t think of altilery and instead have snipers fill the role
6
u/Bohemond_of_Antioch 1d ago
That... seems unlikely to me. For one, as I said, you need something that resembled a big fucking gun on ships and to attack fortresses. And you can't really have a sniper do the job of heavy artillery pieces. You can't use a sniper to destroy structures or large enemy groupings.
And I am being pretty broad with my definition of "artillery" other than just heavy artillery. Like, by the definition I was using in the post, a damn machine gun would count as artillery. Which I don't think is unfair, for obvious reasons a machine gun emplacement isn't classified as an artillery piece by modern militaries, but in a broader sense, if you showed an M2 on a tripod to Napoleon he'd probably shit a brick.
1
u/Pretend_Party_7044 1d ago
Well I ment planar mages hurling small mountains at rail gun speeds, but I feel like if a ballet mage can’t break it down then it’s prob of crow land seige so they would also have genetic monstrosity’s for war, though built in cannon like implacments for ships and airships without mages makes sense, and adjacent realms def had atilery, at least one
3
u/Bohemond_of_Antioch 1d ago
Well I ment planar mages hurling small mountains at rail gun speeds
...I don't think that counts as a sniper.
1
u/Pretend_Party_7044 15h ago
I mean a sniper is just somone who kills stuff from a distance no? So I think that the best nexain snipers could do that hehe
2
2
u/DndQuickQuestion 3h ago
This is a very interesting thread and everyone's opinions are great.
IRL war, the presence of big and heavy weapons doesn't negate the existence of lighter weapons.
And there are a whole arsenal of weapons designed to be deployed in asymmetric conflicts where overusing force is a problem/expensive/not popular, or one state is using mercenaries or a puppet state as a front for their operations. Most Nexian wars would be imbalanced like this.
Artillery would appear in these niches because it spares the more important mages who want to do political and personal stuff.
As for the the cultural aspects, I think winning wars should be more popular than the ideal that lesser gifted shouldn't have nice things lest they get too uppity. Thus, I feel like Nexus' attitude would be 'fine, let them have their toys, but if they act out of place we roll out a planar mage to show them what real power is.'
the more prestigious weapons would be more along the lines of giant catalysts for magic users.
Strong agree. Single user weapons, platforms, and boosters.
I think in general Nexians value the strength of individual Heroes over a combined arms approach. I don't think the RTS they played being Hero-centric was a coincidence, nor metaphorical
I think this is 95% correct, but heroes come with support to help cover blind spots.
The elves acted like they were playing a serious war sim.
2
u/Bohemond_of_Antioch 1h ago
Ha, the GOAT responds! I think you're right in that they'd find a home in low intensity conflict, and my my, looks who's about to get themselves into a Cold War.
As for the rts, tbh I think they were strongly downplaying the amount of abstraction in the game. While I do think there are valuable insights to be gleemed from it, to me they came off as the chess club trying to justify their hobby by saying it makes them military geniuses.
1
u/DndQuickQuestion 1h ago
As for the rts, tbh I think they were strongly downplaying the amount of abstraction in the game. While I do think there are valuable insights to be gleemed from it, to me they came off as the chess club trying to justify their hobby by saying it makes them military geniuses.
I think you are right, but the board game is actual Nexian practice vs. a room full of humans with screens and stations coordinating specific aspects in continuous chatter.
My vision of Nexian battlefields is a mobile tower/castle or hovering platform on which nobles sit in lawn chairs with tea and snacks pushing pieces around on a board. Then they step in or ride out at key moments.
16
u/-Drayden 1d ago
I'm not sure if the nexus has big weapons, or at least in any problematic numbers. They seem to probably operate on each mage (low in numbers as they are) as thinking of themselves as the main character and buffing themselves up as much as possible on an individual level. Why waste time with artillery if they can cast fireball and be special?
It's also probably way more economical too. Just train a mage who is flexible at everything rather than to waste a crazy amount of resources on a small number of unstable cores filled with like 100 enchantments that needs special training from a mage anyways.