Questions tagged [logistics]
For questions about the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet some requirements
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On a world with differently sized humans, how do I keep wages fair?
Imagine that due to an excess amount of handwavium, my world has humans ranging from only a couple of inches, to around 20 feet. Society has evolved to include people of all sizes into the workforce ...
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What does a medieval army cost?
Something I was wondering about recently. My world has a medieval/fantasy setting. Most of the factions are either empires or kingdoms and they all have some sort of standing army. In time of war, ...
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How many slaves do I need to keep my mountain palace supplied?
As the (reputedly) Mad Wizard-King of Jagatap, I would like to move my court to the remote fastness I recently finished building in the be-jungled hills of Nam.
(Image from DudQuitter at DeviantArt)
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The logistics of corpse disposal
A pair of fearless killers, thousands of years old, guard a path to what is believed to be heaven. Of course, all towns in the area have different ritual and traditions where either their criminals or ...
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24 hours to evacuate all of Florida. How many make it?
The year is 203X, and a small-ish asteroid is detected just 24 hours before it hits the atmosphere above central Florida. The kinetic energy is estimated to be "a few" exajoules (1 exajoule ...
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What are the feasible means of keeping a space station existing and operational for thousands of years?
In my space western setting, I went nuts with the time scale, so now I have a faction living entirely in space stations (with planets used for transit and agriculture, but that's irrelevant for now), ...
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In a world without any beasts of burden, what alternatives for transport are there?
There are basically no non-sentient lifeforms of a size that could, and would be willing to, pull wagons from city to city.
The only lifeforms that physically could, are sapient.
Medieval, so no ...
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Can I overcome the bandwidth limitation on my photonic railways?
The Humern Empire is a vast, well established empire that spans the galaxy. Despite having no FTL travel they have kept their empire together with a series of subluminal transport methods.
Heavy ...
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Modern military equipment in a fantasy world
So we've (re)discovered a portal to a magical realm akin to 12th century Europe but with magic. We have giants, trolls, dwarves, wizards, etc. One faction calls upon our aid. Invoking a supposed ...
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Pre-Modern Shipping Containers?
Modern international trade basically runs on standardized shipping containers and the infrastructure developed to handle them. Looking at just a small part of it, using crane to unload full containers ...
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Medieval Europe With Modern Logistical Industrial Concepts
A medieval European ruler (specifically whom and of what country doesn't matter, but may be specified by an answer) one day finds in his bedchamber a group of textbooks and self-improvement books. ...
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How to calculate your kingdom’s population size?
How do I figure out the population numbers in my various kingdoms?
I've seen the population growth tables for the entire world showing how the population grew and died off over time (yes Genghis, I'm ...
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How can I move a magical water-producing artifact?
An adventurer (named Moses, for humor's sake) finds a clear pool of water deep in a cave. Upon taking a swim, he finds at the bottom of the pool is a mystical stone that eternally puts out water, ...
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What is the minimum number of staff members of each role to keep a Medieval estate running?
Before we begin, I know full-well that the answer changes based on the time-period, size of the estate, number of people being taken care of, amount of money available, and so forth. A correct answer ...
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How is it possible that some extra-dimensional pouches can store living things while others can't? [closed]
The extra-dimensional pouch is a portable and lightweight container that is capable of storing almost unlimited tangible objects of any sizes inside a pocket dimension, but why might certain extra ...
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Logistics Problem With Water Creation Magic
There's a facet of my magic system that uses a certain kind of crystal to create water out of the magic energy stored within. But, I don't want to solve the entire world's water supply issues with ...
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How to secretly harvest/farm human beings as a primary food supply?
A group of individuals from a technologically advanced alien race have been found to be intellectual dissidents by their peers and exiled to Earth as a consequence.
Earth was selected as the location ...
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How to run a prison with the smallest amount of guards?
So, this takes place in a post apocalyptic world, within the borders of a government called the USC. 30 miles north of The Junction (modern-day Bakersfield) is the JSCF, or Junction State Correctional ...
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Modern military tactics and strategy effects on the past (WWII)
For reasons unbeknownst to them, a hundred US military personnel from 2016 have been thrown backwards in time, coming out in the middle of Kansas, December 9, 1941, one day after the Pearl Harbor ...
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If you had an infinite amount of any element, which would be the best metal to make bullets?
Lead is pretty much the go-to metal when it comes to making bullets. That is because lead is cheap, dense, soft, and has a low melting point. But of course, bullets can be made out of other metals.
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Constructing a secret villain base - best ways for covert short-range air transport?
I stumbled upon this map of northern Quebec the other day, and what really struck me was just how empty the interior was. No populated places, no roads, no navigable rivers - as far as I know no ...
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What's a plausible-sounding technobabble explanation for Mars to be a forest world supplying Earth with timber?
In the story I want to tell, it's a thousand years in the future and Mars has been terraformed into a forest world (something like the forest-moon of Endor). It's settled in a few small towns and ...
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How would literally evil societies function?
(This question moved originally from RPGs and pertains to the D&D game where individuals and societies may have explicit allegiances to good or evil.)
A typical convention in fantasy settings are ...
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Can an access to Matter Duplicator change a society of survivors stranded in pristine wilderness to evolve beyond Medieval level of civilization?
Clarification: based on the info below, are there non-obvious ways Matter Dulicator could be used to push the “tech level” of such a society so far past the late Medieval level that common dangers and ...
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Is there an immersive justification for littered resource crates in game worlds?
It is common to find resource/loot crates in games that be opened/broken by the player to find money, ammo, resources, and similar. For instance, Warframe contains both loot crates that drop resources ...
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Could superhuman pre-Industrial Orcs wage effective guerilla warfare against a modern military?
In my story, a portal links the modern world to a medieval fantasy world. This is sort of similar to Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There. The North Korean military decides to go through their portal and ...
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How would a completely urbanized city-planet support its population?
Related:
How would a completely urbanized city-planet be maintained?
How would the global environment of a completely urbanized city-planet be affected?
Why would a completely urbanized city-planet ...
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Huge lasers firing into orbit and eye damage; how to prevent mass blindness?
There are a few uses for ground-to-space lasers in science fiction settings. One is the laser broom, used to shoot space debris until it deorbits and burns up. Another is beam propulsion, or sending ...
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Military Logistics: F' 'em and Feed them Beans!
Lots of fantasy books have medieval style warfare in them and armies march all over the place to face one another in battle. Sometimes these armies are tens of thousands large, or even hundreds of ...
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Capital of British Empire without Britain
It's around 1895 and the British Isles have fallen to a communist uprising. Or sunk underwater. Or invaded by Germany or covered in ice or something. So the government, the Royal Family and a large ...
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Would a food chain based on bacteria in hot springs be able to support a human population?
I'm designing a city built to take advantage of valuable mineral deposits in a large polar desert. The city is built around a Yellowstone-esque region of hot springs and geysers, where underground ice ...
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How would a 21st century army supply an invasion of a floating continent?
Imagine a large chunk of land about half the size of the size of the United States cracked away from the main landmass and floated up into the sky for as high as a mountain (say, 2,800 meters, not as ...
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Can I build a self sufficient medieval city?
It's the ideal city for a siege. They have all the resources and man power required to sustain themselves during a siege.
They are able to:
eat
drink
be merry
mend weapons
make weapons
tend to the ...
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How do you differentiate a time machine from a disintegration chamber? [closed]
In settings where time travel is possible but only backwards in time (Terminator), how did the scientists that developed the machine know that the subjects sent back in time actually were time ...
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What did shipping/storage crates look like in the Middle-Ages? [closed]
If you search "medieval crate" on google you get 2 things: 3D crates that look suspiciously modern or you get real, chest-like boxes. I'm wondering if the latter is the norm for the time period?
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Modern military through a portal logistics
Background: It's 2020 and the US military needs to invade an alien planet for freedom purposes. Unfortunately, the only way to get there is through a Stargate-esqe, non-moveable wormhole located at ...
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Why would very large trucks regularly be used for logistics?
The very large trucks are mining truck size. They can haul 300 to 100 tonnes of Thing™. They can be outfitted to carry containers.
They have a roughly equivalent curb weight to their payload. They can ...
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Best way to hunt (a) Bigfoot with multi-million dollar resources?
A multimillionaire is going to hunt for Bigfoot in North America (let's just assume confined to USA). Capture preferred, kill acceptable. What would be the most sensible way to do it (highest success ...
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Where should compounds be built for an impending "zombie" apocalypse? [closed]
I have been working on a post-apocalypse world where over 90% of the world’s population died in a “zombie” apocalypse (technically living zombie trope). This apocalypse occurred around 125 years prior....
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Medieval military logistics with cannibalism and anthropophagy
General Urk is commanding an army of orcs in a pseudo-medieval low-magic fantasy world. Orcs are basically like humans in terms of smarts and toughness and equipment, but with one key difference: ...
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Logistics of high-quality lifestock delivery for alien megacity?
Essentially all the members of an alien species live within a single relatively sparsely inhabited megacity. The city has a surface area of about 30,000km².
The species happens to be almost ...
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Pre-modern logistics, how many food wagons are needed?
Assume that a pre-modern army numbering 50,000 men is going to campaign in a foreign territory for 180-days, during which they completely rely on their supply wagons which cannot be refilled, and each ...
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Binary system travel time for war
To set the stage, 2 opposing groups exist in the binary Alpha Centauri system. The 2 stars have a roughly 80 year orbit that brings them as close at 11 AU together and as far as 36. A ship at a 1g ...
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How to ensure every citizen gets exactly one Copper Ration?
The Silver Dominion
The great and grand Silver Dominion has a steel clad stranglehold on the continent's metal economy. In possession of WWI era industry and technology themselves, they keep their ...
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How would a medieval army poise itself for invasion at a given moment?
I'm DMing a D&D campaign and I'm creating a story for it. It is set in a Medieval Fantasy setting. Essentially there is suddenly an unclaimed piece of land bordering two nations. They both want to ...
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Horse-logistics for a militia of 350
There is a walled town, situated at a river ford, which maintains a militia of ~350 for a regional population of ~1000 farmers, rivermen, minor estates, townsfolk etc.
I feel that I'm getting the ...
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A War on Three Fronts
The antagonist of my story is planning to prosecute a war on as many as three fronts. What historical examples could I draw on to make such an operation seem plausible, even if it's doomed to failure ...
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Early Army without foraging: How do we keep ourselves supplied in the field?
In a previous question we determined that to survive on an alien planet, we'd be heavily reliant on stuff we brought with us. Whatever plants we could convince to grow that we happened to have on hand,...
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Feasibility of "in situ" ammunition production and salvage
In a (relatively) near future setting, several factions scramble to militarize as civil unrest on their planet turns into civil war. Factories are reprogrammed and prototypes sent to the front, guns ...
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In an Urban Fantasy Setting, Why Would a Magical Courier Be Hired Over Traditional Couriers? [closed]
The premise is that there's a guild of couriers that use a dangerous parallel spirit world for shortcuts through mortal space to deliver packages at great speed.
Despite the advantage of speed, why ...
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