Questions tagged [military]
For questions relating to the structure or relations regarding a fictional military or its parts.
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Fighting a dragon with modern military units (or Smaug vs. a MEU)
First off -- this differs from our history questions on this topic in that we are dealing with modern assets here, not historical ones, and from this question in that our military units are out to ...
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The role of anthropomorphic foxes in a medieval army
In my universe I am designing anthropomorphic foxes similar in appearance to the japanese mythological kitsune. For those who are familiar with the game League of Legends: Ahri is a good example of ...
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What kind of war would lead to Ultra-Heavy tanks being useful?
Ultra-Heavy tanks are a fun concept. Simply scale up a tank to weigh 1000+ tonnes, add a stupid amount of guns and armour, and you end up with something like the image below.
Of course, this monster ...
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Would keratin, spider silk, and bone make good bio-engineered armour?
So, setting is an extremely advanced race who use bioengineered tech in many applications, although most commonly in warfare. Their combat troops are large exoskeletal creatures ranging from hand ...
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Conquering a Metropolis with near-zero own casualties
You have a trillion dollar/year military budget. You can buy all the toys (that are physically and financially possible to build with current technology). You can hire the manpower, command the ...
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Is it plausible that a country developed steam engines before gunpowder?
Man, I really have to find a way to stop getting into logic dead-ends.
So, in the story I’m writing, there’s this country that developed big bad war machines that run on steam engines. The way they ...
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What kind of land transportation can be used for plowing through hordes of zombies?
Set in a zombie apocalypse world somewhere in Chennai, India.
News report shows an estimated 90% of the population here has turned into zombies overnight, soldiers setup a human chain perimeter ...
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How would medieval/Renaissance-era castles protect themselves from air raids?
Context : my fictional universe is set in a time period akin to the european Middle Ages/Renaissance. Think of the 1400s-1500s for reference.
In most aspects (political, social, industrial etc.) my ...
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How would modern naval warfare have to have developed differently for battleships to still be relevant in the 21st century?
So basically, battleships are awesome. I am interested in creating a setting where they were never superseded in their role of long-range command vessels and fire support by aircraft carriers, ...
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Storming Area 51 [closed]
As you've probably heard, there's been a recent tongue-in-cheek event on Facebook to storm Area 51 on September 20th. Over 222,000 people have "confirmed" that they are going, with more than 251,000 ...
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How is warfare affected when armor has (temporarily) outpaced guns? How can guns compete?
This a follow up on the previous post that asked how strong graphene armor would be and the general conclusion is that we have no idea sadly. So in this post I will ask a more relevant question.
...
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What does a naval ship's hierarchy look like in detail? [closed]
I am having trouble finding a detailed breakdown of the chain of authority on a naval ship. I have been able to find fully detailed charts for Merchant and Cruise ships, but not so much for a naval ...
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Why would they use human soldiers over undead ones?
In my setting you can revive people from the dead as long as the brain is intact, though you have to remove all their organs and replace them with a suitable alternative Egyptian mummy style.
The ...
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A sufficient justification for the infantry using lethal, directed energy weapons
It is really really hard to beat kinetic energy as a way to transfer
energy to a target. I'd expect handheld railguns before lasers. – John
Meacham 20 mins ago
It's just simply hard to find a ...
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Preconditions for 'Classical' Space Fighters and Carriers
Let's say that I, like many other worldbuilders before me, want to have 'classical' (space-operatic) space fighters and carriers in a space setting.
However, I don't want to do it by fiat and ...
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Creating a Species purely for Warfare
A species genetically engineered/corrupted/bred for warfare is a staple of fantasy. Lord of the Rings' orcs and Wheel of Time's Trollocs come to mind, for example. Creatures created by the bad guys to ...
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Micro Missiles combined into a compact rifle platform?
In this story I am creating, there is an airborne infantry that specializes in disabling small ships, rapid reaponse deployment, and supporting ground forces with a large number of them. For reference ...
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Robotic Replacement for Infantry [closed]
The year? 2050.
The United States of America, French Republic, Japan, and the Republic of the United Korea have pooled their resources and technical knowledge to solve a problem:
Armed conflict is ...
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Maximum relative size of a nation's military
As far as I can determine by my research, relative to the population, the largest (by measure of manpower) the US military ever reached was in 1945 at 12,209,238 military personnel (not limited to ...
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Which common military equipment could last 500+ years after an apocalypse?
So I’m writing a story set 500 years after a nuclear holocaust. In the scarred, charred wastelands of the former United States of America, a beacon of light, a humanitarian, righteous organization ...
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Would walkers work on airless worlds?
We all know that walkers are useless militarily as Star Wars so kindly showed us in Episode 5 of the Skywalker saga. However what I have noticed is that planes can only fly if there's an atmosphere to ...
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Is there any real reason for Dwarves not to have cavalry?
It's a fairly common trope in fantasy worlds/stories that dwarves don't use cavalry.
But is there any real reason why?
Off the top of my head the two most likely ones seem to be:
Their size. Except ...
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What kind of spells would magicians cast in combat if the fuel to magic is very expensive
In the story I’m working on, there is a strict ruleset on how magic works, one of the main points being it needs a “fuel” to work, and that “fuel” is VERY expensive. That being, most magicians use ...
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How much havoc can a small amount of people cause in a metropolis?
Our forces have surrounded the modern city of Vale; a large metropolis of over 5 million citizens who all have decided to try and rebel against us and form their own country. The city has large dams ...
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How to stop soldiers from selling their equipment?
Assume there is a resource that allows for rapid regeneration of body parts and termination (magical deletion) of foreign objects in the body upon usage. Let's say it is scarce enough that you can't ...
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Reason to use tridents over other weapons?
So, I wanted one of my species in a world of mine to primarily use tridents as their weapons. I'm not sure of their location outside of a mesa. I did a little research and tridents were indeed used in ...
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How would a command structure and strategy for a galactic war be organized?
Background
In a galaxy not so far far away....
The Andromeda galaxy is presided over by two major powers - the Y'Ing and the Y'Ang. These powers have existed together but never integrated with ...
user10945
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How to kill an alien with a decentralized organ system?
I had a cool but not so original idea: aliens with many many redundant organs, and a nervous system spread across their bodies. This creates some issues. How do I kill one?
What the Alien is like:
The ...
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Mounted Cavalry in the Modern Era
Let's assume for a moment that horseback cavalry somehow managed to survive to the modern era. This might have been due to extremely strong cultural foundations, or archaic legal policies, or perhaps ...
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Could The Spartan Discipline Work on Larger Nations?
From the moment it was born, a Spartan was bred to service the state. If a baby passed inspection with a clean bill of health, he or she would be spared until age seven--agoge season. If a baby ...
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How to create a foreign legion?
I'm admiral general Aladeen, the beloved ruler of Wadiya, who won the elections with 99.999% of the votes. Wadiya is sparsely populated country, very rich in mineral resources. We have one of the ...
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What is the best way to defeat a enemy of superior numbers but inferior technology?
Our protagonist civilization is based on a large island in the middle of the pacific(think half the size of Australia), has a population of 100 million, has abundant resources and is totally self-...
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What stops a race of giants from wiping out humanity?
Starting from 435 A.D., a race of sea-faring giants has made land-fall in Eurasia and is raising hell. Due to socio-political pressures in their island homelands in Polynesia and Australia (constant ...
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Would tanks or small walkers be better for Lunar militaries?
This question is similar to my other question "would walkers work on airless worlds?", however even though it's the same setting and I am talking about the same battle group tactic that question dealt ...
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Spells that would be effective against a modern day army but would NOT destroy a fantasy one [closed]
I'm developing a story about a few hundred modern day US Marines who are transported to a fantasy world and must do battle with an army of Orcs and dragons. I know they will be extremely effective at ...
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Orbital Drop Pods: Useful?
Orbital Drop Pods are a new-coming part of Futuristic science fiction. Triple A games like CoD: AW and Titanfall feature them as ways to easily reach ground level by cramming armament (such as ...
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Increasing respawn times. How?
How Regenerators work
As I mentioned before, thanks to the Foundation, this setting has access to "Regenerators", enormous machines that can bring thousands of people back to life if ...
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How would a treaty banning specific weapons be enforced?
The world has a Plot Device Treaty which, being a Plot Device, bans aircraft from being effective against ships.
As we have seen from history, such treaties are often violated, circumvented, or ...
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The practicality of Corinthian-style combat helmets
I'm considering creating a fictional multi-national black ops unit called S.W.O.R.D (Special Worldwide Offensive Resolution Division) designed in a highly organized and militarized manner such as you ...
user48508
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How to classify military spacecraft? [closed]
Many authors and worldbuilders swear by the space-navy organization scheme:
Frigate - a light vessel used to enforce borders and partol
Cruiser - a flexible vessel that can operate independently
...
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What changes would we see in humans genetically engineered for combat?
I've got a group of humans who believe as a central tenet of their religion that humans should be as physically perfect as possible. In pursuit of this goal, they've spent a few hundred years applying ...
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Would lightning bolts be effective against modern military vehicles?
In my setting, wizards from a pre-industrial fantasy world come to real life. One of these wizards is a destruction mage recruited by the US military and tries out her talents against modern forces. ...
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Army composition of feudal gunpowder society
The Society
The society in question is feudal in structure. The most advanced widespread technology defining this society is the flintlock muzzle-loading firearm (I'm undecided as to rifled or not, ...
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The feasibility of a robot with a chest-mounted missile launcher
I have a humanoid 6-7 foot tall combat robot that can let loose a barrage of small homing missiles via a series of missile launchers built into the chest. I do realise that it would require a great ...
user48508
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How can a revolution occur if the leadership class is indestructible?
In the future, a globalized economy gradually stitches the various governments of the world together into a single federation. The richest and most powerful of each state and economy entrench their ...
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Why develop AT-AT or AT-TE walkers? [duplicate]
After thinking about the issue of the development of this type of vehicles, I have some doubts about why the decision of this type of transport and not another.
Realizing that AT-AT and AT-TE are ...
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How would laser weapons affect combat and military tactics? [closed]
I miss the part where that kid screams in agony as the vaporized water in his cells cause small bits of him to violently explode.
In my story, future's warfare extensively uses laser weapons both in ...
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How to alert Houston of the coming barbarian invaders in time, without instant communication?
Background
Centuries ago, nuclear inferno engulfed the world, and billions were killed. Most people were knocked back to Texas, one of the mightier states in the bygone era, was split up into many ...
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How Many Soldiers are Needed to Patrol/Defend a Medieval Wall?
I have a walled city in a medieval RPG setting. It's out in the middle of a desert and has an impossibly efficient means of acquiring water and producing food off of farmland inside the walls (magic ...
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In a general sense, would it be better to equip troops with plate carriers, body armor, etc. if they’re fighting against zombies?
In a general sense, would it be better to equip troops with plate carriers, body armor, etc. if they’re fighting against zombies?
Right now, my Troopers (what someone in the US Garrison is called) ...
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