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How do you arm your heroes?
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Basically, I go with what is considered standard for a soldier, policeman or secret agent in a given time period and place. Don't give me a modern hero in the USA today that fights with a bow and arrow, because I would then call him an imbecile, as he/she is not likely to survive a fight against gunmen for very long in the real world. Like Sean Connery said in the film 'The Untouchables': don't bring a knife to a gunfight! I could also refer to the movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', when Indiana Jones shot the big Arab swordsman doing a showoff with his big scimitar.
In my opinion, the arsenal is not the point - it is how the weapons are used. In the first two books of my Gaius Claudius Scaevola trilogy, not unnaturally the scutum and gladius appear to be the primary weapons, with a couple of pilii per soldier added in, and some artillery (ballistae and onager as added extras) and cavalry as a clean-up weapon. However, I would argue the real weapons were marching and discipline. The point about marching was that winning often depended on being best able to take advantage of terrain. As an example of what I mean, most commentators argue that the winning of the battle of Issus was due to Alexander (and to some extent, incompetence by Darius) but in my opinion, the key move was due to Parmenio on the left flank. Everybody seems to think that Darius' cavalry was making real progress there and despite being blocked by the sea, they were pushing back Parmenio's troops. My opinion is that Parmenio deliberately pulled the left flank back but putting an angle in his line, letting the cavalry advance but unevenly. Now consider the effect of those long spears if Parmenio orders a push forward from the phalanx. The histories note there was a major killing of Darius' cavalry here, but they argue it happened because they were trying to retreat after Alexander won. That would be total crap - in those days, you had no idea what was going on on the other flank. Here, in my opinion, it was the discipline to be able to execute such a manoeuvre that won.That, also, is why my Roman could win space battles later on. One major battle he won effectively used the strategy of Cannae (as for that matter did von Manstein at the third battle for Karkhov.) The essence of a good repeatable strategy is its simplicity, although one can add to it. Thus while Hannibal took one day, von Manstein executed this over a three month period, and still the opposition did not catch on, allowing him to annihilate the opposition with 9:1 against and no air power!
I also agree with Michel that so-called heroes fighting with inappropriate weapons or methods will be dead nobodies.
My latest heroin flies a space-born fighter (usually close ground support) that is armed with several types of missiles and a pulse cannon. Since she's also an assassin and a spy, she carries a needle gun (100 round magazine) and sometimes a replica sawed-off shotgun.
Cool. Is a needle gun like a flechette gun?
Graeme Rodaughan wrote: "Cool. Is a needle gun like a flechette gun?"Needles are accelerated magnetically (? I never really specified) and carry a variety of "warheads" that can explode on contact, put someone to sleep, explode AFTER contact (penetration), etc. It all depends upon what you've loaded. It's a quiet gun -- until the explosion, and a low-level, shaped explosion can be fairly quiet.
It's a good weapon for assassination as well as combat use.
And no, I'm not the first author to use a "needle gun".
Where is my Klingon disrupter when I need one?
Michel wrote: "Where is my Klingon disrupter when I need one?"It was obsoleted by the Vorlon V12 blaster and cake icer.
I have a variety of weapons that I could go into at length.[1] Swords & Battle-Axes.
[2] Automatic shotguns, H&K MP7s, Assault Rifles. .50 cal sniper rifles. Grenades of various types. Claymore mines. Milkor MGLs.
[3] Two classes of Helicopter gunships, variously armed with Hellfire & Stinger missiles, 7.62mm, .50 cal mini-guns and 20mm cannons.
[4] A drug called 'Lethe' that wipes memory of the last 24 hours.
Graeme Rodaughan wrote: "I have a variety of weapons that I could go into at length.[1] Swords & Battle-Axes.
[2] Automatic shotguns, H&K MP7s, Assault Rifles. .50 cal sniper rifles. Grenades of various types. Claymore m..."
A best friend of mine died a couple of years ago. He had several patents on the Stinger. I loved talking physics and missiles with him.
I write mostly sci-fi and fantasy, so so far I've armed my sci-fi people with knives and bows (they're the descendants of people lost for three hundred years) but they did invent explosive arrows...I have made them rather good at unarmed combat though, and then there's the 100kg felines who glow in the dark, can vanish at will, and are their constant companions. They tend to make up for the missing tech.
Leonie wrote: "felines who glow in the dark, can vanish at will..."Some dangerous creatures -:)
Nik wrote: "Leonie wrote: "felines who glow in the dark, can vanish at will..."Some dangerous creatures -:)"
But very loving.
Inventing believable non-human characters is a fine art I think.
Graeme Rodaughan wrote: "Inventing believable non-human characters is a fine art I think."I think the key if to also invent a culture to go with it. It can't be totally alien or it would become incomprehensible, but it has to be different from ours and I think it helps if you can think of a reason why they are like that. The Star Trek borg come to mind here.
One of my efforts was in "Ranh". The civilization is based on evolved therapods related to velociraptors. We have some therapods now to get the odd clue from (birds), especially in relation to finding mates, but there has to be something different. I invented a game (tailball, of course) but now think of how they would play it. Recall they evolved from vicious killers.
Ian wrote: "Graeme Rodaughan wrote: "Inventing believable non-human characters is a fine art I think."I think the key if to also invent a culture to go with it. It can't be totally alien or it would become i..."
I also have some insectoid invading aliens, and another sentient race which is huge and lives a very long time. It was a challenge inventing completely different cultures, but rather fun, really, as you sort of have to get inside a different culture's head when you're writing their POV.
The insectoids have a beam type weapon, and quite a differently structured society.
My superhero, Grim, has superior strength and speed. He and his adoptive brother Jaxon created a suit to withstand knives and punches (they are still trying to make it better for bullets but are new to this and can't figure out how to make it lightweight and flexible at the same time...since Grim goes out anyway thinking he's invincible (he's not) this just might get him into trouble). His actual weapons other than his powers (can snap a person's arm with one hand), his suit has razor sharp blades on the forearms that he uses in close combat. :)
Hi Jennifer,Love your imagination there.
I've got a dungeon/cave maze coming up that harbors adult Olgoi Khorkhoi - as an initiation test for one of my characters.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongoli...
I have a creature with a siren song to lure prey, and full chameleon powers with super speed/strength/regeneration/intelligence and longevity.An APEX predator.
My Freedom Reigns Series was inspired by the idea of using transporter technology in absurdity. Ships don't have cannons and they don't fire missile because they've weaponize matter replication/transportation. In one confrontation, the bridge crew has their hearts beamed out of their chests one-by-one. In another, an adversary dematerializes an entire enemy vessel and merges it with another. While they have the ability to block the signals if they act in time, another tactic is to materialize random debris and junk directly ahead of a moving ship so that the ship's movement turns that junk into moving projectiles.
Graeme Rodaughan wrote: "Hi Jennifer,Love your imagination there."
Thank you so much! :D
J.J. wrote: "My Freedom Reigns Series was inspired by the idea of using transporter technology in absurdity. Ships don't have cannons and they don't fire missile because they've weaponize matter replication/tra..."Is there any defense?
Sounds like he who fires first wins.
Interesting... you could lobotomize your victims, thus leaving them wandering about like drooling lunatics instead of killing them. That way, they could interfere with any survivors.I guess it's all about the range and the time frame in which to scramble the frequency, which might be directly related to range.
No deterrence guarantees war.
One of my heroines (a demon Succubus no less) uses magic spells as weapons, rendering her enemies either drooling idiots, blasting them with fireballs, disintegrating rays, flaming hands and the like, when she is not sucking their life essence while having sex with them. The perfect femme fatale!
SADMs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special...On their way to a major city - can the heroes stop them being used? What if they get stolen by a rival faction?
If cruelty was expected and it was part of an attempted manipulation.
Graeme Rodaughan wrote: "If cruelty was expected and it was part of an attempted manipulation."-:)
Next question may be how you disarm/neutralize your anti-heroes? -:)
Well that would be giving away the plot.
My main anti-hero/nemesis character doesn't like the sound of screaming so she typically kills her opponents so quickly they can't make a sound - or even draw a breath.She stalks the battlefield like a chill breeze that carries a deathly silence in it's wake.
Graeme Rodaughan wrote: "J.J. wrote: "My Freedom Reigns Series was inspired by the idea of using transporter technology in absurdity. Ships don't have cannons and they don't fire missile because they've weaponize matter re..."They have a signal disrupter that cancels out the signal, but they can't use their own system when it's active. And the size/power of the particular "scrambler," as I called it in the series, dictates how large an object they can manipulate, so eliminating an entire ship in one shot takes a larger device than they normally carry.
The point of it all was not just how ridiculous it can get, but how abusive the technology can become...they store everyone's "pattern" so when people die, they can be brought back with the save, but their memories and their bodies are reset to the point of the save (so there is a lot of "amnesia") Because there is no oversight of the space programs, people are treated as disposable. It becomes a variant of a cryochamber because you can just dematerialize people for storage and materialize them when you need them. When they need ground troops, they just replicate as many versions of the same individuals they need and let them all get killed. As far as the nations with the technology, combat is nothing but a game of who can push the buttons faster...there's no ultimate victory or defeat because everything can be undone at the end of combat, so there's this friendly hostility among the nations...one revelation comes when the central character learns his host has been trading his life pattern with captains thought to be adversaries.
The device is used to reimplement slavery because they can just drop a workforce onto a planet, and when the job's done, they are dematerialized for removal, but they fail to save the patterns, so when they drop them onto another world, they have no memory of the work they've already performed and hence they don't have to pay them.
Then there's the doctor conducting off-the-books experiments by adding alien DNA into the life patterns of human subjects and materializing the result to see what happens, essentially creating monsters without any regard to ethics.
@J.J.: Remind me never to visit your world. A civilisation that treats people that way, like disposable slaves or lab experiments, deserves only to vanish. I know that it is only a fiction story, but I do like to have something to cheer about in a novel, not only horror and cruelty.
My heroine assassin's favorite weapons are her own hands and feet, her shimmerblade (a knife with a special edge that can shear through pretty much anything) and her needle gun with its magazine of drugs and poisons.
Michel wrote: "@J.J.: Remind me never to visit your world. A civilisation that treats people that way, like disposable slaves or lab experiments, deserves only to vanish. I know that it is only a fiction story, b..."The idea I had in the background was what happens when a society falls out of the public light, when suddenly they get to operate without any oversight. Just as our companies today increasing do what they want for as long as they get away with it, those nations operating in space regress morally because the rest of the world has no exposure.
The whole series focuses on a UN inspector who was given access and brought aboard a ship for a ride-along, and he can't keep his mouth shut - he can't sit back and simply observe. Throughout the series, I play with variations of the Hitler conundrum, ie. if you could go back in time and kill Hitler before he rises to power, would you, or would you actually make things worse by doing it? As if the technology itself doesn't lead to the absurd, I threw a time traveler into the mix to make a bigger mess of their civilization, and he presents the hero with the literal conundrum, but on other levels, he faces it in the present where he gets the real opportunity to try his hand at making a difference, but he only makes things worse because he doesn't understand the complexities of this "world" beyond his observations. To him, the situation is so horrible, he has to act, and he makes mistakes.
Any new weapons, guys? Maybe those that don't work when needed?
Boomerang, AK-47, nuclear submarine, alien inventory, blowgun or maybe knitting appliances?
What's your arsenal?