Oh, hell yes. Moar, friend Engineer!

>>15757474
Waiting patiently... Also, does anyone have a link to the last one?

>>15757525
Link is in OP

Eagerly awaiting, OP

Develop plumbing, cooling, reliable filtration systems, structural engineering, load bearings, repeating firearms, (before that you might wanna invent) combustible chemicals, a standard measurement unit, mining that doesn't murder people, advanced iron working, milling, precision interchangeable parts.

>>15757538
Derp. Thanks. It's like.. right in front of me.

Printing press is the first thing that comes to mind, you can also use underwater diving suits and bellows to impress royalty.

If I were you, I'd steal every industrial concept from the Chinese that I could, such as water-powered bellows for your smelting and refining operations.

I still think the cementation process for fining steel is not your best bet, because if you can manufacture pig iron and wrought you can easily jump to crucible steels ala Wootz.

But probably one of the biggest, best things you could do would be to, as >>15757562 said, introduce standardized measurements.

So, we didn't really get much finished in terms of proper engineering last session, because the bulk of the time was spent on a meeting with the Duke our liege insisted we accompany him to (as we later learned, at the Duke's request).

We did manage to hook up a shitty lathe we thought of to our windmill/water tower combo, and turned a chess set for our count as a test. The sowing season started and we got to test out some stuff we made earlier - a better plough and a simple seed drill, all animal-drawn obviously. We only tested it out on a field plot designated by our lord, since we don't really have the capability to build those en masse (not in time for them to be of use this year, anyway). We also used the measly amount of guano we managed to get mined and transported as fertilizer. The prototypes and new approach are for now far more expensive than the possible payoff from the increase in yield, but we hope to prove our point in terms of efficiency.

We planned to build a larger cementation plant to get more higher quality steel. Well, I say "plant" but I mean just a big, proper furnace as opposed to the relatively small clay vessels we used for testing the principle out. There were also ideas for making a full-on concrete factory, but it all had to be postponed - we got used to getting any amount of manpower we requested thrown at as (peasants are cheap, although that's rather uneducated manpower), but right now the commoners are needed in the fields and we can't really do much with just ourselves and the craftsmen aside from designs.

Pneumatic spike-cannon.
Airplane.
Trains.
Greek Fire / Napalm.
Chemical weapons.

>>15757685
>If I were you, I'd steal every industrial concept from the Chinese that I could, such as water-powered bellows for your smelting and refining operations.

was in use in europe from the 4th C.

infact, the europeans improved it with the development in the 10th C of the over-shot waterwheel, which produced about 8-10 horespower, compared to the older under-shot waterwheels which produce about 4 horsepower.

>>15757737
In that case, McCormick Reaper, John Deere Plow, and pesticides are your next goal. Increase crop yields while decreasing labor used. As a result, you'll have more people available to work with, that are better fed.

>>15757562
>>15757685
OP said in the original thread:
>The count was against us introducing new measures of length, so we took the local inch (taken as the length of our liege's thumb :)), assumed that as an universal constant of sorts, assumed one of us is EXACTLY 182 cm tall (giving his height/182 as our future centimeter) and laboriously converted every constant we know to the "Silesian inch". From that we can standarize weight based on a volume of water and so on.

>>15757737
>We did manage to hook up a shitty lathe we thought of to our windmill/water tower combo, and turned a chess set for our count as a test.

pole-lathes were in use from the roman era, and are able to turn wood peices very effectively.

the real trick would be to take the pole-lathe concept and transfer it to a constant belt-drive from the overshot waterwheel, allowing more accurate work.
the next stage would be to do the steelwork for a metal-cutting lathe, on the same principles, and a milling cutter.

pic is a pole-lathe.

True story:

Years ago in college, I get up one morning, grab some cereal, randomly turn on the TV. End up on some woodworking show. At some point my roommate, a mechanical engineer, wanders by and starts watching.

Dude on TV has a big chunk of wood, like a section of log, and he's roughly cutting it into a wheel shape with a hand saw. Then he starts planing it, making some comment about how it needs to be "perfectly circular." Engineer roommate gets annoyed. "There's no way it's going to be circular if you're doing that by hand. You can even see where it's uneven! Why wouldn't you do it right, and use a lathe?"

Dude keeps working on the piece of wood, sanding it, smoothing it down, all by hand. Roommate is increasingly annoyed. "It's sort of round, but c'mon, why wouldn't you just use a lathe?"

Then the guy on TV finishes drilling the hole in the middle of the wooden disk, and says, "so now we've made the flywheel for our new lathe..."

>>15757915
Hahaha.

On an unrelated note, OP, where's the rest of the story?

Pic is probably the most valuable device you could have.

its a screw thread, cutter

to get it you need to have two straight steel bars, mounted to form parralell rails.
any good smith working steel for swords or the likes can make the basic shape for those rails, as triangular or round section bar (round sections drawn through a drawplate is easiest.

the third bar is the hard one. you're going to have to *accurately* cut a screw thread, by hand, along the body of the bar, at, most likely 1/2 inch diameter, and probably 12 threads per inch. screw pitch should be between 50 and 60 degrees. a 60degree pich is likely the easiest if you can get a tri-square file.

that screw thread *must* be accurate, along at least 2-3 inches of thread. it will allow you to use that bar as a drawbar pulling the cutting head which slides along the two guide rails (which, being parralell, will keep it accurate) to cut screw threads.

what does that do? it supplies you instantly with fastenings which are interchangeable. prior to this, every nut and bolt must be marked as a pair, as every one is different.
cutting the screwthreads on unhardened steel will allow you to make taps, which will have flutes ground out of the sides, and then once hardened can then be used to cut the threads into holes bored into metal.
with that, you can have presicion accuracy. the screwthread can be used to machine a longer screwthread, which can be used to then cut a finer thread again, which means you can machine out any inaccuracy in the first master thread with successive generations, ensuring accuracy is increased with each machine making its more accurate successor.

>>15757994
created from the screwthread cutter, you can then standardise into these:
Taps and Dies.
a die which can be wrenched round with a pair of tongs will cut a screw thread on an iron or brass bar/rod.
the tap will cut the threads into a bock or plate, ansuring that the screw thread will fit.

each set of a tap and die can be fairly easily made in good steel, and hardened. distributed to blacksmiths and other smiths, these would ensure mechanical compatibility of fittings throughout every peice of equipment manufactured - vastly increasing efficiency and compatibility.

all for 4 little peices of steel.

OP here

I said in the last thread:
>One of our players is a serious business Catholic, so (in secret to the rest of the group) during confession in our starting months in the monastery he gave up our true story.
>We were visiting the Duke with our liege, and were called in for a private audience that pretty much opened with "So, the Bishop tells me you guys are from the future".
>So much for the sacred seal of confession.

So here we were in Kraków (pic related - lands under Silesian Duke Henry). The 60 year old Duke thought our story bizzare but was quite reasonable. He was interested in whatever future artifacts we had with us that the monks told him about, but we didn't bring much to the capital. Well, at least I had to part with my binoculars. He claimed to be more wary than his bishop (who was significantly younger and only held his post for a year), but he saw our looms in action (while his were still not operational) and was interested enough in whatever devices we might come up with to help extend our patronage. We also learned that our Count got in a bit of a debt building the loom and got strongarmed into a partnership - he's going to more or less share the profits of our loom with the Duke on a 50/50 basis. He said he was willing to authorise the Count granting us some land in his county, and would set aside part of the loom's profits to help us develop it (while at the same time we need to continue developing the looms). We should also be able to secure some additional support through the Count for specific projects, but we'd have to discuss that on a case by case basis.

>>15758058
Also we can't really make out what he really thought about our assurances that the "Tatar" invasion was a matter of historical fact. He said he was interestedd in hearing more about our times, but that would have to wait since he had official duties.

We also learned that the bishop was rather skeptical about the printing press in terms of printing books, but very enthusiastic about the gazette (though he thought about it more in terms of "periodical sermon delivery to noble manors"). Well, that might be a good start. We should work on paper making.

>>15757915
The Woodwright's Shop? I remember watching that- I think it's still on PBS, too.

>>15757994
Only one problem with that.
If they have mild steel, it works.
If they only have wrought, then it needs to be changed a bit- it can't cut the threads, it has to swage them out (you never want to cut wrought if you can, it breaks the fibrous structure).

Kind of sounds like Lest Darkness Fall. Guy gets sent back in time to ancient Rome, though after the Ostrogoths have toppled the Western Roman Empire. Becomes wealth through a copper still and selling brandy. Develops the printing press and a rudimentary telegraph system. Fucks up trying to make a mechanical clock, gunpowder, and a cannon. Becomes a Quaestor and through political maneuvering unites the Ostrogoths through a puppet king. Beats back the Imperials in Byzantine. In the end a stabilized Italo-Gothic Kingdom is formed. A constitution is introduction, ending of serfdom, building boats to travel eastward across the Atlantic. The Dark Ages have been averted.

>>15758107
>eastward across the Atlantic
lolwat

did he land in Rome, New York?

>>15758129
FUCK, that was a huge mistake. Westward, because he wants tobacco.

>>15758092
good point, and shows that I dont normally use forgework myself, that I forgot that it's be wrought iron - though it will work on latten/brass, which is a pretty good saving of effort.

it can also be used to make the dies which can be used for swaging the wrought iron which would be a valuable resource.

Why Europe? Shouldn't you be defending the Middle East or places that were actually wrecked by the Mongols? Unless this is some alternate history where the leaders of the mongols don't die and they continue attacking.

Hell, it was said in the last thread too, but the Mongols did more FOR European Society than against.

>>15758175
The damage to Muslims stays done whether or not Mongols get to wreck Eastern Europe.

>>15757737
>There were also ideas for making a full-on concrete factory, but it all had to be postponed
right now the commoners are needed in the fields and we can't really do much with just ourselves

Shit, you'd hit up against the guns/butter problem already! Shit, economics is a bitch.

have you considered implementing the 3-field system? Each season, 1 field grows grains, 1 grows root veggies, and 1 is just left to fallow. It might piss off some churchmen with it being crop rotation and all, but it freaking revolutionized food production in the post-Crusade period. One of the best things brought back from the Islamic world after the Crusades, after Aristotle and the number zero.

Want to make bicycles? No rubber? Fuck rubber. Make wooden bicycle.

>>15758240
heavy, uncomfortable, not very fast

why?

if you need messages just use optical signals, if you need to send people, have them walk, the time saved negotiating trails would make up for speed lost

>>15758136
Just got out of the shower and saw this.

Yeah, there are benefits and drawbacks to using steel over iron if you're working it by hand, most notably is that steel oxidizes like a motherfucker. It just doesn't feel as good under the hammer as wrought does (doesn't want to move as well), nor does it want to glue to itself as much when welding. Expect bitching from the blacksmiths.

Anyways, more storytime and brainbuilding from OP, please.

>>15758240
couldn't you make something akin to tires with bundled cloth?

>>15758308
This is pretty much it as of yesterday:
>>15758064
>>15758058
>>15757737

Doesn't seem like much but it took a good few hours. Sixth session next Friday.

>>15758323
Doesn't mean he can't bounce ideas off of us, and vice-versa.

>>15758092
Currently (according to the metallurgy guy, I don't really know that much about it) we have bearable quality blister/shear steel.

Part of our extended cementation plant plan includes a setup to refine it into crucible steel.

As for what's locally available and not made by us - there's not much beyond wrought iron.

>>15758355
I'm a bit busy today, but started the thread because I promised I would yesterday. I'm thankful for any ideas though :)

>>15758309

Let's see...no traction, no durability, won't hold air so you can't inflate them for shock absorbtion...might as well stick to iron and wood wagon wheels.

Stupid shit stupid.

How do you overcome the language differences?

>>15758203
Ah, due to the time-frame or what? I can't recall much of anything important being damaged in Eastern Europe that the world really cares much about. At least in Arabia there were all those ancient libraries that were sacked and destroyed.

>>15758092

You also need the ability to reliably forge or machine precision steel. Screw threading doesn't do shit for you if your tolerances are in the tenths of inches.

Interchangeable fasteners, for the level of tech they're working with, are a solution looking for a problem.

>>15757474
Am I seeing shit, women actually helping with crafting?

>>15758405
Hungaryfag here.

Russia remaining under Mongol rule for centuries is THE defining historical event for them.

Not to mention everything east of Germany got fucking RAZED and depopulated. The Duchy of Silesia OP is in was on a fast track to regional supremacy when the Mongols shattered it completely and drove around the duke's head on a speartip.

>>15758424
Her husband likes his sandwiches lightly toasted.

>>15758424
problem?

>>15758129
there's one in iowa as well

>oh you americans

just chiming in to say that this is very interesting.

thanks op and elegant gentlemen.

>>15758402
Addressed in the last thread.

op needs to tripfag

i have no patience to search for his posts

>>15757737
>>15758058
>>15758064
>>15758388

>>15758734
Those are his.

Manufacture penicillin; engage on biological warfare.

>>15758876
Risky, like all biowarfare.
He should look into penicillin and some of the tetracyclines if he can, though. Possibly sulfa drugs if his chem major has the chutzpah.

OP, first'a all, would you mind tripfagging?
It'd make you easier to follow.

Second of all, have you considered how you can use your weird future knowledge for fishing?
Seriously, look up a few of the modern nets that are banned for catching too many fish, and as soon as you get those looms up start churning them out. Prove how well they work with the rivers around you and then start selling them by the dozen to Coastal towns and ports, you'll make some quick capital.

Also, isn't there a lot of lead in Silesia? Tip/paint (if you can) your arrows with that shut and you've got yourself some cheap poison for the Mongols.

Next of all, bear traps should be fairly easy to make a lot of over the years (specially if you're rich by then) and, hidden in grass on masse should fuck the Mongol horses sideways. (especially if you somehow lead 'em up)

Oh, and if you ever need to poison someone discreetly, pewter plates and cut tomatoes (admittedly difficult to get as they are) produce a decent poison when together, so can you say salad bowl, Mr. Lord?

A lot of this is endgame-ish stuff I know, but still, it might be worth considering.

>>15759011
If a country had proper notions of hygiene and access to antibiotics back then, simply seeding the black plague could allow them to dominate the world.

Greenhouse Aquaponics

Fresh fish and fruit/vegetables during winter? yes please

The more you can set up peasants with the system, they won't need to store as much for winter, and the more of their food they can sell, the more prosperous the region becomes, the more dough you have to SCIENCE!

Mind you, probably outside the scope of 10 years

>>15759020
>tomato
>13th century europe

Y'know, just a thought, but as vassals won't you be allowed to train your own soldiers?
And hire your own smiths, leatherers and workers?

If so, try to get land that is high (a birch given the region, granted) and to the east of Silesia, then build your manor's as 'experiments in architecture' to jumpstart castle fortifications. Show 'em to your lord and offer to 'outfit them with the latest tech free of charge, as thanks for their generosity' to give you guys a potential defensive line and make it harder for the Mongols.

Also, make as many of your guys pikemen and, eh, marksmen(?) as possible while training them in the new tech, and you can later give a few of them to your fellow higher class if they like the tech so they can teach them for you.

>Gather potatoes
>Ferment
>Extract alcohol
>Stock pile
>Douse the fields night before invasion
>1 flaming arrow

>>15759052
there's no modern infrastructure to produce more types of antibiotics

suddenly, resistant strain

>>15759106
Hence why I noted they'll be difficult to find.
though surely greece and other Mediterranean states had some? I mean, I know nothing about exactly where we got them from but they're fairly common near everywhere so it was hardly from America, right

>>15759020
Caltrops over bear traps. One, easier to make, two, easier to deploy, three, cheaper than dirt.

Lead poisoning works, but you would probably be better off gifting the Khan/Lord incense laced with zinc- especially if you can convince them that it's medicinal. And tomatoes are flat out not happening- no contact with the New World yet.

>>15759052

True, but you're definitely playing with fire.

op didn't say the most important thing

WAS IT THE CHEMISTRY FAG THAT OUTED YOU TO THE PRIESTS?

>>15759112
>potatoes
>nope

>>15759112
>potatoes
>13th century Europe

nope.jpg

>>15759164
>>15759106
wait a minute

does this mean Italian cuisine didn't include tomatos for like a thousand years?

my mind is blown

>>15759171
>>15759164
Oh it doesn't have to be potatoes, alcohol is a popular result of fermentation

>>15759115

They don't have the infrastructure to make penicillin in the first place.

Shockingly, antibiotics takes a bit more than "grow bread mold, eat it."

How hard is it to make mustard gas?

>>15759115
Still, that's assuming you'd get infected. At best, only clean-up crews could get infected, since you know what the vectors of transmission are. Make special suits with gas masks for such crewmen, fumigate them once they're done. Quarantine infected locations. Arrange for the building of sewers and trash-collectors.

Dude, you want to stop the Mongols? Build MOAR castles. Seriously, no need for any timetraveller bullshit. Just convince the local lord to start building big stone towers surrounded by big stone walls. The Mongols suck at siege.

I mean hell, conquering China took the Mongols 40 years, Chinese military engineers, and tens of thousands of Chinese conscripts. The Chinese only had a handful of castles worth mentioning. It took them 15 bloody years to make it through the fortress at Xiangyang.

That's the real reason why they never pushed into the Holy Roman Empire (Germany) proper. Because there every hill, valley, and river crossing had an asshole with a title, a castle, and a company of men at arms. The Mongols weren't stupid.

So seriously, MOAR castles.

>>15759177
Not necessarily won/lost. There are things called diplomats in this day and age, and trade did happen- "A gift, for the Great Khan."

Zinc fume fever, on the other hand, kills damn quick, unlike lead poisoning (RIP Paw-paw). The only problem is saturation- which is why I recommended incense. Who says you have to poison people in open warfare when an assassin can do the job easily?

Though, if we're talking about poisoning, why not take a leaf from Hannibal and just lob clay jars full of snakes at people?

>>15759295
Does Poland have poisonous snakes?

>>15759251
Might as well prep them for gunpowder warfare, too, with star forts. Proper usage of salients in the castle walls means you have a nice way to crap on any sappers.

>>15759306
Whups. Don't think Poland has poisonous snakes, but still, having a jar full of snakes thrown at you would be pants shitting.

>>15759333
I think I'd probably shit my pants more if that jar of snakes was a rock.

>>15759355
Even better if that rock was on fire. OP needs incendiaries.

>>15759355
I think the Rate of Fire on hurling jars is higher than that of hurling large stones

>>15759295
I'd imagine that the snakes'd be easy enough to kill for a Mongol warrior, while a lead arrow is a lead arrow and WILL kill them eventually.

Though, assuming they know what the snakes are, it'd be great for causing chaos amongst 'em right before a charge (I'm guessing this'd be after you soften them with arrow volleys and right after they return fire, so you have less of a chance for your men to be slaughtered from afar)
Though in that case you'd be guaranteed to lose men to snakes as well......unless they were all actually constrictors.

Huh, throw in the incense assassination beforehand, combine with the caltrops and pit traps making them force their way to a bottle neck of some sort, and you could probably break them with only a few volleys of arrows to take out the head of the force and a single charge of our Knights With Fucking Awesome Armour From The Future to cut into them deeply.


OP, are you using a real world map of the region?
If so, we all need to start keeping track of where everyone is to help brainstorm ideas for where to fight the Mongols and such.

>>15759306
>mongol face when invading australia

Irrigation.

Both for agricultural and defensive purposes.

Sprinkle your enemies with oil; set them on fire!

>>15759388
Why would they invade Australia in the first place?

So where did we get with the gun poweder idea, like how hard would it actually be? How hard would firring caps be, because they're what really makes modern guns so versitile. If you can get firring caps down, then a couple springs and a bit better metal work and you can start making Ak's.

Imagine the look on the mongols faces when suddenly Poles with kalashnikovs. Poles with Kalshnikovs everywhere!

>>15759384
Are you really going to have enough jars of snakes the rate of fire is going to matter?

Fuck it, in that case, just throw everything you've got.

>'Hey, man, are you going to finish that bowl of hot stew?'
>'Yeah, I was jus- hey, HEY'
>TWANG

So... rapid fire crossbows?

The mythbusters built one, you should be able to build a better one within 10 years

>>15759385
Lead poisoning is not QUICK, it is very SLOW. You have to understand, it's already present in period-pewter.

Looking back on the snakes idea, it's probably better to go with creosote/naphtha/tar/alcohol incendiaries. Though having fucking snakes thrown at you still is a terrifying thought, and I keep some as pets.

>>15759438
The problem is making stable primers for percussion caps. The only one I can think of that works easily is not so stable- fulminate of mercury.

Now, paper cartridges are a possibility. Even in a musket, having pre-measured charges with wadding and Mine-ball would increase rate-of-fire to significantly higher levels. Especially with disciplined, professional troops.

Dig trenches. A lot of trenches. It takes only a few horses in the first row to collapse to fuck up the whole formation.

>>15759447
Flaming snakes.

>>15759324
Star forts are difficult to defend if you don't have fire arms, because the walls are easier to scale. However, that is something the engineers from the future could really do to help. Figure out how to make iron cannon and arquebuses. Don't worry about modern firearms, the technological base to make them is too high, so your yearly production is going to be only a handful a year. If you can figure out arquebuses, the local craftsmen can make them by the thousands. Give one third of your infantry some arquebuses, and the other two thirds pikes. Drill them heavily in pike and shot tactics. Congratulations, you now have 16th and 17th century armies in the 13th century. You win by default.

>>15759539
>>15759539

>Mongols attack
>Traps fail by GM fiat because otherwise it'd be too easy
>They come from North of where was expected, quickly progressing over the flatlands
>Engineer's lands stand in their way
>Mongols prepare to crush the manners, when, suddenly, TREBUCHET FIRE
>No boulders or bombs, or corpses or fire
>Just.....jars- OH SWEET SHIT

>Ten minutes of frantic panic later, Mongol side

>IM SICK OF THESE MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES ON THIS MOTHERFUCKING PLAIN!

>>15759584
Well plane d.

The problem with many proposed battlefield engineering and fortification is that the area is pretty much still covered with primeval forest. Although now that I think about it, it works both ways - not much land for horses to graze on, possibility to funnel enemy forces through clearings.

>>15759523
Well, I don't know much about chemistry but from the dialogue between the GM and our chemistry guy I've made out that mercury as actually fairly easy to obtain in the middle ages (byproduct of sulfur production)

>>15759148
No, it wasn't Chemistry guy, and there's four of us:
Tomasz - mechanical engineering - myself
Wojciech - chemical engineering
Kamil - metallurgy
Krzysztof - agricultural engineering

It was Kamil who went with the reveal.

Also, I got myself a trip.

>>15759629
Now you have to come back every Saturday and tell us the tale of your engineering shenanigans.

>>15759629
Have you considered cutting down a large swathe of trees through the Forrest, one side to the other, diverting some Mongols into the cut off, and starting a large series of fires?

>>15759629
Yeah, it's just unstable, which is why I wasn't sure if you guys wanted to pursue that route.

Yeah, though, if you've got it and want to use it, you can get primers, then. And if your chem major can get gun cotton- not so sure on this one- then you're gold...

If you can get the manufacturing down for your firearms. Manganese bronze for cannon, then as many muskets as you can get. Paper cartridges that are nitrided with fulminate mercury percussion caps. Caltrops, caltrops everywhere.

And then, iron-disciplined troops. I want to see shaven heads and faces, Roman-styled camp layouts, the works. Standardized uniforms.

>>15759385
>>15759584
>OP, are you using a real world map of the region?

Well, not much so for details in terrain (since much of the original forest doesn't exist these days anyway), but plains are still plains, hills are still hills, and major settlements are where they're supposed to be. Presumably ore is still underground in the same places we think it is. We haven't really done much thinking in terms of geography yet - for now the only thought we gave it was the times required to reach various places.

Using the map I uploaded earlier (pic related):

I marked the approximate lands under our Count's control with green. We're not really sure about the exact borders, but we know there's no cities proper within it. Actually now that I'm writing the post I think the southern border might be a bit more south because the city of Cieszyn is pretty much right outside it.

The capital of the Dukedom is pretty much Kraków (also marked with red), although Wrocław to the west is also very important and is actually Silesian (where the Dukes are from - Kraków was claimed later). Also marked with red is Legnica, the site of the final defeat against the Mongol army...

...and the site of an ENORMOUS copper deposit that middle age people don't know about yet. And we have the locations of all modern mines marked on a map (mentioned in last thread).

>>15759752
Copper, you say?

BROOOOONZE. We need tin, though. Fuck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAomnhzif7w

You must get help from the bellmakers. Seriously. The only reason why cannon shifted away from bronze to iron/steel was its availability.

>>15759324
>star forts
>lower to the ground
>sloped walls perfect for deflecting artillery fire
>completely useless against Mongol hordes that don't rely on cannon

>>15759629
Yeah, mercury was known to Medieval folks-- the old name for the element in English is 'quicksilver'-- and was wildly popular amongst silver miners as a way to extract the stuff. If you can find a silver mine, you can find a somebody who knows where to get mercury.

Also when you have the time, seriously try to introduce some organizational reforms in whatever army you can get your hands on. Logistics and drilling, man, logistics and drilling. Get a quartermaster corps up and running, and see if you can even make the minimum core of a standing army.

Fuck guns, they'll be more trouble than they're worth as long as you're the only producer of them and they can't be made anywhere else. Keep your men armed with pikes and crossbows, but just give them a modern training regimen.

>>15759828
>implying you can't build them with higher walls to compensate while still having defensive salients

Of course, there's also the stupid-simple moat.

>>15759828
>Fuck guns, they'll be more trouble than they're worth

I want to emphasize this point some more. Think about it. You'll be the only army out there with gunpowder weapons-- which means that you're the only ones producing gunpowder, cannon and guns. If you're in the middle of a campaign and your supply train is hit or you run out of gunpowder some other way, what are you going to do? You can't simply take some from nearby enemy towns, since nobody else has any. You can't seize ammo because there is none other than what you produce. There will be no ready pool of men who can easily refill the ranks of your gunpowder army because the only men who will know how to handle and care for the weapons are the ones you've already trained, because no one else will know how to make guns, no one else will know how to use guns, and no one else will have guns for you to take in a pinch.

DON'T USE GUNS.

>>15759904
>>15759828
We're actually kind of skeptical about wide scale musket-like guns ourselves, since that would take real large scale mass production that we might not have the industrial base to build in the first place. Not to mention small size = needs more precision.

We're more optimistic about "guns" in terms of artillery pieces, however.

>>15759828
A star fort is actually the best defensive fortification if your garrison has firearms and cannon. Yeah they were built originally to resist artillery, but turns out they work just fine against attackers without artillery. In fact, a star fort defended by firearms is a tougher nut to crack than a traditional medieval fortification. Old style castle walls are too high to properly shoot an advancing army to pieces, and the round bastions have too many blind spots. So yeah, if you've got guns, build star forts. The enemy will charge your seemingly vulnerable low walls and get slaughtered. However it's very important that you have adequate supplies of shot and powder. If the garrison is unable to use its firearms, the star fort is fucked.

>>15759904
There were no local gun makers in the Americas. That didn't seem to stop the Europeans from conquering the shit out of the place. And that's with the nearest gun smiths across the bloody Atlantic Ocean.

>>15760002
So defensive cannon/ field guns/mortars.

Crossbows. I'm fairly certain there are drawings of a 14th century lever-action crossbow. Use a spring steel prod (gogo crucible steel). Goatsfoot action? If muskets are a no-go, then compound crossbows are also probably a no-go.

>>15760002
Don't wholly rely on them alone, though-- always be prepared to build a trebuchet or onager as need be. Always remember that the shaky supply line between your source of gunpowder production and the site of your army can easy be severed by a quick raid, and if that happens the flow of powder and other supplies to your army will cease.


...Huh. Now I want to see how this scenario would be played by business or economic majors, and compare that to the performance of, say, social studies majors and art majors playing the same thing.

>>15760076
>There were no local gun makers in the Americas.

In, like, 1500. Which is why Cortez' conquest of the Aztecs relied as much on local non-Aztec levies as it did his crossbow-armed men, and why shot and powder was preciously protected like it was the One Ring To Rule Them All.

Why not profit over your knowledge of the world map in order to discover the Americas earlier? All the investment it takes are a couple carracks and sailors which you could merc, but the benefits would definitely outweigh the costs thousandfold.

>>15760084
Also, I might add, it's pretty simple to weld a gun barrel together if you're a decent smith- it's the same as making a pipe. I can think of two different ways to do it off the top of my head- coiling and welding it together from a single strip of wrought around a mandrel, or welding it together from two strips around a mandrel like a sandwich. You're not rifling it, you're not dealing with the pressures of modern gun powder (unless you score on gun cotton), you should be able to get decent musket barrels.

But there is still the problem of supply and manufacturing as >>15759828 pointed out. Logistics, logistics, logistics.

>>15760136
Cont, all it would take would be the introduction of navigational aids (sextant, astrolabe), really, would it not?

Also, don't forget oranges for the crew.

>>15760136
>but the benefits would definitely outweigh the costs thousandfold.

Describe these benefits to me, the Duke of Silesia. You just told me a giant horde of Tatars are going to invade-- why should I send men and money overseas to place I don't know for sure even exists, much less how to sail there? What will I get in return-- lumber? I have plenty of that. Grain? Poland is the larger producer of grain in Europe! Gold? At what cost? My men are still armed with only swords and bows themselves.

>>15760136
>the benefits would definitely outweigh the costs thousandfold
definitely not in the timeframe

maybe some 30 years before that would year any good results

>>15760151
It's not going to happen, but I did laugh at the idea of Polish Limeys.

hey OP

here's a fun idea:

SOAP. They'll already have this, and know how to make it - but they dont know jack shit about hygiene

impress upon your lordships that washing your hands and whatnot is good for you

cleanliness is next to godliness

its also a lot further away from disease

>Why not profit over your knowledge of the world map in order to discover the Americas earlier? All the investment it takes are a couple carracks and sailors which you could merc, but the benefits would definitely outweigh the costs thousandfold.

India was the only profitable colony ever apparently. Mostly because it had the whole infrastructure down to a well-developed banking sector and goods that were exportable right away.

The Americanas... had gold and land. And you need to wait out for epidemics to cleanse the land first to settle it and conquer it before you can get the gold.

>>15760178
In light of your crazy undertakings in the past, use the same argument which convinced the kings of Portugal - maritime route to the Indias. Besides, all one would really need were mercenary sailors and navigators and couple of your men to run the whole thing. A monetary investment, at most.

>>15760277
Even then, you cannot deny the super power status these colonies gave to the Portuguese and the Spanish.

>>15760319
Didn't it end up bankrupting them?

>>15760294
>A monetary investment, at most.

More than you can imagine, time-traveller in a hypothetical situation. You have many maps-- tell me, where are we located in Europe? Do we even control a single port?

>>15760269
Actually, that's a common myth. Medieval personal hygiene wasn't all that bad - Paris had over 30 bathhouses, and slavic lands like the one OPs still practiced a pagan ritual of bathing daily

The era of not bathing for months at a time came during/after the Plague (and in some part as a protective measure against the "bad air" that supposedly caused it).

Bottom line is: Roman era-1300 trumps 1300-1800 hygiene-wise in every way.

>>15760457
Polish navy joke inc.

>>15760595
>fifth polish nuclear kayak fleet

>>15760761
I giggled.

So, are we getting a confirmed vote on firearms or not? Your metallurgy friend might want to look into the reproduction musket hobby for ideas (woo buckskinning).

Man, I could read threads about stuff like this all day. I love stories that involve trying to make (at least) approaching-modern tech in the past.

Also, bump.

the gun as an effective weapon of war did not truely come into its own as a game changer untill the cartridge became widespread (side note, metallic cartridge based firearms are awesome, make that a side project), it would not be too remiss to say its rise was largely a case of collective fanboyism.


what is fuckwin though, are compound bows. more durable, more powerful then single strand or composite, using pullys as lever action allows you to use stronger and tougher materials with the same relative draw strength.

of courses, bows in their classic form are hard to aim and need speciallized ammunition, so take cues from crossbow design and incorperate a running rail, and have the bow string attached to a pull handle to make drawing easier. have a latch and trigger mechanism to hold the string back in place to make it even easier to aim shots.
to take the design further, you can incorperate a spring loaded magazine to increase rate of fire and reload speed substantially.
to take it even further, incorperate an adjustable gear plus winch to adust how much bow flex to recruit in a draw, allowing low draw weight for rapid fire, or high weight wind up for long distance or high powered shots. (this will probably take metal and finer machinery)


BOW DESIGN: rectangular AFB cross section (ala american indians) is the best for developing power, especially if you are using wood, d shaped longbow cross section is inferior.

cable backing (ala arctic inuit) is an excelent way of increasing the draw stength of the bow, aswell as reducing the stress placed on it, prolonging operational life, which allows even poorer quality materials to work effectively.

>>15760815
>>15760815
Small scale personal muskets aren't viable for OP right now.

Artillery pieces: cannons, mortars, etc, are more likely to be built and put to better use.

Also, if OP and his gang can produce enough gunpowder, they could just make a lot of explosives. If you've got a trebuchet, then make a hollow sphere, filled with gunpowder and small bits of metal. Light the fuse, the length of which is calculated for the distance and air time it's meant to travel, and light it, so that the cluster bomb explodes in the air right over the heads of the enemy forces.

>>15760841
>the gun as an effective weapon of war did not truely come into its own as a game changer untill the cartridge became widespread
Yeah. But those were paper cartridges. In the 16th century. Perfectly buildable.

>>15760832
you might like the original thread (link in first post) then

>>15760864
that would take a lot of experimentation and wasted powder

>>15760885


paper cartridge? meh, were still talking single shot muzzle loaders, best bet is to just skip that whole step in history and jump strait to breach loaders, meanwhile, multishot compound crossbows are feasible in the immediate time frame.

>>15760913
Experimentation for calculating the proper angles and length of time for the shots wouldn't need powder at all. They could have the containers and fill them with sand or something to get the same general weight. Load the trebuchet, have a target out in the field, fire, calculate, reload, fire, calculate, reload, fire, calculate. Over the course of a few days, they could get a good idea of adjusting for the angles for firing, the weight of their objects, and the total air time for the projectiles fired. Then they could try a single test shot. Projectile the size of a bowling ball, filled with powder, shot at the target, watched from a safe barrier to see if their targeting and airtime calculations and fuse length worked out correctly. If it does, guess what, they've got a potentially devastating weapon.

>>15760864
They said that they were leery of the idea, not that it couldn't be done- the first hand cannons were used in 13th century Asia. I think they were just more concerned about production quotas.

I think that they should consider producing a few, even if it's just for castle garrisons. Or you could introduce the nobles to the sport of skeet shooting. If the nobles like it enough, then you're set for money to throw at other ventures.

Nobles are vainglorious things that like novelties. Give them some novelties- the kind that make loud noises.

Fortifications with ballistae.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista

>>15760974
>breech loading
>+100 machining complexity

Consider looking into fuel air bombs, the fuses would be tricky, but they're pretty simple as long as you have a way of dispersing the fuel upon impact. Perhaps some form of chemically expanding reaction that would blow apart the shell after a set amount of time and spray the fuel into the air, then a second small impact bomb that explodes upon hitting the ground and ignites the cloud.

>>15760974
Eh, no, I'd avoid breech loaders because of the complexities and stresses involved with their mechanisms during use. Until you have the ability to machine breeches and blocks with precision, you're best off with having the barrel be as self-contained as possible.

The reason why you use the paper cartridge is because it's just pre-measured with wadding and ball ready to go- just ram it down, prick the cartridge with a quill, fill your pan with powder, aim, fire. Yes, there are steps involved. No, this does not mean it's really slow. You still can get stupidly high rates of fire.

>>15761072
Especially if you have dedicated loaders and shooters working in teams.

>>15761089
And fire discipline.
First rank, fire. Recover.
Second rank, fire. Recover.
Third rank, fire. Recover.

Let's also not forget the socket bayonet.

>>15761072

a fair point, but what better time to start development then right now? standards in presicion engineering have widespread applications beyond just firearms.


but beyond that, seriously, multibows, you wont get that kind of ROF, using easily atainable materials, with minimal precision nessisary, with rocks as a potential ammo source, until magazine loaders.

OP, if you can make soap, then why not get your chemical engineering friend to work on nytroglycerine?

Heck, even if you can only make a couple vials you should be able to do SOMETHING with them, like spreading 'em carefully over the field you think the mongol's and there horses will pass through on mass.
Write down how many there are and keep a map, and you've got a very crude minefield.

>>15761149
Or mix it with sawdust and make dynamite.

>>15761072
Presumably, Minie balls would be good to have in all this. you can cast the damn things from molds, and they have a lot going for them ballistic wise over a plain old round ball. It would be a pain in the ass to manufacture the initial one(s?) but after that, you could just make a bunch of molds.

You wouldn't even have to bother with the grooves in unrifled guns, either, which would make it easier.
I imagine the shape would help even in such a gun without rifling. But then, if you were only making so many guns and in a fairly exacting fashion, it wouldn't hurt to go with rifling, and the grooves to take advantage. You wouldn't be arming an army with Muzzle or Breach loading rifles, but the Minie Balls would let you have small groups of Riflemen to make people sorry for presuming it was safe around them in a fairly large radius.

>>15761193
>>15761072
One can also easily manufacture crude anti-personnel cannons packed with grapeshot. BOOM! Several dozen dead, scores more injured.

>>15761180
Or do both, have a minefield at first so the mongols get scattered and wounded, then have dynamite set throughout the tunnels you had the peasants build underneath the other side of the supposed battleground a year ago, ready to make a massive hole/tunnel for the Mongols to fall right into and be cut off by. Course that won't take care of there archers, but you'll certainly get any remaining cavalry.

(also, make use of the caltrops and such to make sure they have to go there in the first place - or, heck keep this as a last line of defence for if they get past your initial one. They'll hopefully be charging full speed to keep up the momentum and think you've ran outta tricks, and'll head right through where you've prepped the secondary defences (the minefield/insta-ditch and fort(s))

>>15761137
I'd like to see a bayonet for crossbows. That's probably a really retarded idea, but I'd still like to see it.

also
>gunpowder weapons not even introduced in Europe yet
>people are seriously urging OP to develop breechloaders, percussion caps, explosive artillery shells
>there is no industry to base this all off of
>all the weapons will have to be handmade
>by OP

You're all getting ahead of yourselves.

I don't know the process of creating explosives, but I'd think nitroglycerin would be a bit too unstable to try and work with back in the 13th century.

Maybe if there's something more stable they can make. I don't know. Can you guys produce ammonium nitrate?

>>15761225
Or even put dynamite on arrows. Light and fire like the Dukes of Hazard.

>>15761242
if you take nitroglycirine and add sawdust you have dynomite, its a perfectly workable explosive. just be careful with it cause if you drop it in the lab....

>>15761193

you raise an interesting point, a cadre of men armed with kentucky long rifles can be an excellent specialised unit type, able to reach out and touch the enemy at 1k+ yards, useful for scouting, sniping, picket patrol, or otherwise.

>>15761287
Yeah, but until you add it to the sawdust or other soft and absorbent substance, you haven't got dynamite. All you've got is a liquid that explodes if it's bumped too hard.

And the players don't exactly have a nice lab and tools work with.

>>15761298
>1k yards in 1231 with handmade rifles by engineering students rather than gunsmiths.

Sire, Mongol raiders have attacked our supply trains! All of our gunpowder has been lost. How are we supposed to fight now, sire?

Cannons made a big impression when they were introduced in Eastern Europe. At first, they merely scared people and terrified horses, and did damage. The scaring of horses was good. You see a lot of cavalry warfare. That, and actually harming horses would certainly take the moxie out of pretty much anyone that thought to belabor you with daring cavalry tactics, which would be anyone who was anyone in that time period in eastern europe. Bandits, other lords, howling steppe raiders and cossacks, the list goes on.

It would be ideal to get something like canister shot, as you can get an effective range of around 400 yards, and your mongol style composite bow is recorded as having made shots at 500, but not reliably.

If you supported a decent cannon with good powder, it would make a mess of any given group of anything. You could just have footmen and archers and crossbow men hang around, and take shots at anything the cannon didn't get.

If you could manage to make a battery of them, and keep the crews relatively safe with say palenquins or what have you,and support as above, it would be just brutal. Recall what fully developed guns of this sort did at Gettysburg.

Granted, you wouldn't get anything as good as a Napoleon Gun in this setting, but you wouldn't need it so much, especially if you were using canister, or plain old scrap metal and rocks at a pinch closer.

If you put guns like this on walls, good fucking luck for anyone messing with you. "Oh, you wanted to assault my wall? Enjoy your entire attack being turned into hamburger".

>>15761298
>1k+ yards

You realize the Army trains with M16's at 300 yards, max? Could you even see a target at 1000 yards?

>>15761324
LOAD THE GUNS WITH NITROGLYCERINE

>>15761226
>gunpowder weapons not even introduced in Europe yet

True. In use in Asia, though. They have the Prester John thing going for them, potentially.

>people are seriously urging OP to develop breechloaders, percussion caps, explosive artillery shells

Some aren't going to happen (I'm looking at the retard suggesting breechloaders). Others are quite feasible- incendiary and explosive shells have historical precedents that aren't that difficult to make.

>there is no industry to base this all off of

Also true. However, do not underestimate the capabilities of a blacksmith.

>all the weapons will have to be handmade

Also true.

>by OP

Nope. OP's group will explain how to, and they might make a few as prototypes, but I'd be willing to bet that a 13th century craftsman could turn out a musket if he had one in front of him to take apart.

Other than the trigger mechanism, they're actually quite simple- an iron tube with a touch hole. Hell, I've built one out of some pipe and M-80's.

>>15761331

with a scope you could

>implying telescoping sights
>in 1200

>>15761331
Let's add accurate optics to the list of things OP needs to start mass-producing before the end of the decade.

depending on what kind of metals you can make, you may consider skipping muzzle loading cannons and replicating breach loading cannons like modern artiallary and armor use, its much faster to load, can be mounted on carts and is much easier to train on.

>>15761344

im not suggesting breachloaders, im saying its somthing useful to look into along with a general theme of starting the process of standardized industrialization methods.

what i *am* advocatings, is (reloading) compound crossbows, which are entirely possible with given resources and craftsmenship

>>15761226

id dare say hed be better off carrying a spear or pike with his kit.

spear, pavaise, and ranged weapon sounds like a good combination for fighting mongols with infantry.

>>15761344
>Other than the trigger mechanism, they're actually quite simple- an iron tube with a touch hole.

That's just a matchlock, though, which everybody seems to be ignoring in favor of "OH OH OP YOU SHOULD GIVE AN ENTIRE ARMY GUNS MAYBE STICKS OF DYNAMITE TOO I DON'T UNDERSTAND LOGISTICS OR INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY".

For fuck's sake, what some people are advocating here would require a gunsmithing cottage industry to emerge out of nothing within a decade, and even then there's the problem highlighted by >>15759904 and >>15761324 that relying on gunpowder weapons on campaign when gunpower and guns are available nowhere but back in your own little fiefdom is daft beyond measure.

>>15761331
With a good scope, probably. Eventually.

HOW ABOUT WE DISCUSS THINGS OTHER THAN WEAPONS THAT THE OP AND HIS GROUP CAN MAKE?

EQUIPMENT.
VEHICLES.
ARMOR.
COMMUNICATIONS.

LET'S GET SOME BRAINSTORMING GOING.

>>15761298
You could monkey with what kind of rifle you wanted to use, naturally. A Plains Rifle might be a good choice in some situations because it has a lot of punch, and it's wieldy. If you were specifically shooting at a warhorses, or wanted to make sure you punched trough especially obnoxious and thick armor, it would be a good choice. It might be a good choice with men who were good enough shots to hit a target reliably, but not well enough to hit specific bits.

The Kentucky Long Rifle could certainly kill a man or a game animal dead, but for bigger critters, it really relied on precision.

The better rangers or rifle men could perhaps get the long guns to shoot at offending enemy officers and what have you, and anyone else you had that was worth a damn could get a Plains Rifle style gun to just plug away at things that needed to die.

If you couldn't get anyone good enough to aspire to sharp shooting, it would be a good idea. If they just hit a person or a horse it would be pretty bad if they hit solid. Big fucking holes, broken bones, infection. No fun.

At any rate, pretty much any sort of disciplined men with guns, and especially this kind would be a nasty surprise for small bands of raiders, who would no doubt be horribly surprised to be shot to pieces at some range by projectiles that pretty much screwed any anti arrow armor they might have. (if anything, your various padding and things like nice, sweaty silk would make it worse if you got shot. Lurv dem germs in your wound.)

>>15761422
>VEHICLES

A horse-drawn railroad is easy enough to build and can easily be upgraded to steam locomotives later on.

>ARMOR

Segmented Roman armor. You know you want it.

>COMMUNICATIONS

Semaphore. Flags. Discworld-like Clacks system. Postal service. I dunno.

>>15761402
If you can do a match-lock, you can do a flint-lock (unless you meant something akin to a match-lock arequebus with someone manually holding the match).

Which is what I'm advocating. I'd only mentioned primers because they have the potential to be useful, but only if you can manufacture them and keep them from cooking off.

Keeping them for castle/fortress defense would be the best bet. As a terror weapon, they've be hugely successful, especially coupled with grape-shot spewing cannon and mortars raining hell.

>>15761454
A horse drawn railroad would not be "easy enough". It would involve planning out a suitable route that not only would be easy enough to cut an entire pathway through brush and forests and whatever else, but also would have to go to population centers or commerce centers for it to be of any value.

And then there's the process in building and laying the track. Even if it's a track made of wood, you've still got to cut and shape the wood to exact specifications otherwise the cart will go off the tracks.

And if you're using horses to pull, why the fuck would you even use a track? That just makes shit difficult since it ties up the track going in one direction in case others want to go the other way. Not to mention if part of the track is damaged then the entire thing is fucked.

If you're going to suggest that, why not just use horse drawn carriages?

id say muzzle loaders are more or less of a dead end niche application, youed be better served using muscle powered missile weapons untill metallic cartridges start rolling out.

>>15761497
You are retarded.

>>15761497
That's why Cortez failed to conquer the Natives.

>>15761402
Screw campaigning. That way lies madness if you are confronting enemies like Mongols without as you say, an organized and well supplied force with lots of BOOM.

Pretty much any "BOOM", if you don't mind me using the term will certainly help. It doesn't even have to be that good. You could fuck with a lot of threats with a cannon that mostly made noise.

If you could make one, or more than one, it would be a vicious defensive weapon that turned anyone stupid enough to attack them into hamburger. I tend to think they would be best on walls really. You could use them to mess with infantry, or load solid, possibly heated shot to mess with siege engines.

Some of this is going to be long term, maybe. You'd be crazy not to do it if you lived long enough to get going on it.

And your supply thing? That's basically true of any army, ever, anywhere. You'd be screwed if your supplies got taken one way or the other.

For the long term, you probably wouldn't go far wrong with taking cannon with you if at all possible though. If you dug in arrows wouldn't matter much, and anything that didn't die from derping into the "giant Brass Shotgun of Death Zone" would get mopped up by your foot and horse.

Granted, that would be a ways off. Be nasty if you could manage it though. And if you wanted something that could be useful very quickly, just have horse artillery. That would certainly ruin someones day.

How well-developed a manufacturing base would you need to make barbed wire in useful quantities?

Because I can imagine something like that really fucking up cavalry.

As far as gunpowder weaponry goes, your targets are going to be meaty and relatively poorly-armoured, so focus on that. Cannon-scale blunderbusses full of horrible jagged bits of metal that'll scythe through enemy formations, or explosive shells packed with gunpowder and metal scraps and launched from trebuchet, fuses timed for an airburst that'll wound and maim troops across a large area. Any open space suited for cavalry charges, make sure it's riddled with concealed holes to trip the horses and break their legs.

>>15760864
Shrapnel or spherical case shot
An iron anti-personnel projectile containing an interior cavity packed with lead or iron round balls around a small bursting charge of just enough force to break open the thin-walled iron projectile. A powder train in a thin iron sleeve led to a time fuse inserted into a holder at the outer edge or the projectile. The fuse was designed to be ignited by flame from the propellant charge. Ideally the case shot fuse would detonate the central bursting charge when the projectile was six to ten feet above the heads of enemy infantry thereby showering them with the iron balls and fragments of the casing. (Invented 1784 by Lt. Henry Shrapnel, Royal Artillery, Great Britain).

>>15761494

No, a horse-drawn railroad line IS easy enough. They've got maps of the area, meaning that they already can get a rough idea of the lay of the land from that and mimic the path of later roadways if they want.

A light rail system offers a much smoother ride than a simple dirt road-- a horse-drawn train on a tramway could generally haul things quicker than horse-drawn carriages on an open road. There's a reason why these things existed in the first place, after all.

And most importantly, a rail system is going to be important to these guys, because whether they're building muskets or printing presses or lathes or whatever, they're going to be demanding a lot more material and producing a lot more goods than what the region's roads normally bear. The smooth transportation of freight will be important to them and to the growing industry of the region.

>>15761554
the problem with all this is that it requires static defense, which means you'll have to wait for them to come to you, you have a harder time pushing out since you'll have to set up.

unless you can train your soldiers well. treat em well too and make sure they're loyal.

also man power would be an issue.

Carcass
An incendiary/antipersonnel projectile designed to burn fiercely and produce poisonous fumes. It was constructed of an iron frame bound with sack cloth and filled with various ingredients such as pitch, antimony, sulfur, saltpeter, tallow and venetian turpentine. It was ignited by the cannon's propellant charge, bursting on impact with the target and releasing noxious fumes while setting fire to its surroundings. It was effectively an early chemical weapon as well as an incendiary and area denial weapon. The name is possibly a reference to the medieval practice of hurling dead animals from trebuchet as a form of biological warfare,[4] or to the projectile's superficial resemblance to a human carcass.[5]

>>15761586
It's also, to add this on as a second thought, well within the technological capabilities of the period. Compared to guncotton and precision drilling, a wooden tramway would be incredibly easy to explain and delegate the construction of to locals.

>>15761554
Tthe wire-drawing process was industrialized in one of the Germanies in... I want to say the 1500's? Used drawing plates, but I don't know the exact specifics. If you can draw wire in sufficient quantities, you can make barbed wire.

Razor wire, I don't know. Barbed wire, yes.

>>15761622
having the best knights in the world is not a bad thing.

a fast cavalry force is also not a bad thing.

Guns didn't make cavalry obsolete until the machine gun. And it wasn't guns that threatened cavalry, its was pikes.

>>15761454
The rail thing we actually discussed, but mostly in terms of "it would be cool to do some horse-drawn railway if we manage to build up steel mills big enough". Would take a real big surplus though, rails are many things but tiny they ain't.

What does /tg/ think of our plans to introduce plate armor a century early as a side project? The conventional knights may not be crucial to our strategy, but they'll be there and making them more arrow-proof could pay off.

Another plan is trying for a couple of steam gunboats on the Vistula. Admittedly might be a waste of resources, but it's a wide river across the entire territory that the Mongols would have to cross at some point. And aside from military matters - even until the 20th century, most of the international trade in Poland went down the river and onto the Baltic Sea, terminating with the Hanseatic League trading city of Danzig (well, the Hanseatic league doesn't formally exist yet) - it would be nice to have some semblance of a navy on it, and they could serve as trading ships as well.

>>15761622
>The conventional knights may not be crucial to our stragegy

The knights themselves might not be, but one doesn't into knighthood without making friends in regionally high places. Showing off awesome new armor that just knights will be able to use effectively, thus feeding their superiority complexes, is probably not a bad thing in the short term.

>>15761643
>The rail thing we actually discussed, but mostly in terms of "it would be cool to do some horse-drawn railway if we manage to build up steel mills big enough". Would take a real big surplus though, rails are many things but tiny they ain't.

Your call. At the very least, you ought to experiment with macadam roads. You're going to be shipping overland as much or more than you are by river. You should have some decent roads to rely on.

>>15761646
>>15761637
Sorry for the post ninjutsu, but I derped out horrible spelling mistakes there.

>>15761643
The problem with plate armor was that it was big, heavy, and bulky. It offered protection, shit yeah it did, but the loss in mobility was terrible.

Rather than full on plate, maybe something like Moto Cross armor, but with metal plates instead?

A metal breast plate held on with leather straps. Plate shin guards. Plate arm guards. A metal helm. It leaves parts exposed still, yeah. But the armored parts are going to stop any arrow the mongols have.

>>15761689
>The problem with plate armor was that it was big, heavy, and bulky. It offered protection, shit yeah it did, but the loss in mobility was terrible.

Myth. A full set of plate armor weighted less than a modern soldier's combat gear. And they were on horses.

>>15761637
They weren't obsolete, but they didn't have the fucking run of the battle field either. They got relegated to flanking and chasing broken enemies.

That's actually part of why I suggested supporting the guns with foot. Any raggedy, half shot to hell cavalry that make it through all the death won't make it through the rain of projectiles and wall of pointy death.

You just cannot herp around in a big mass of cavalry and hope to have the same success if cannons can get canister shot anywhere near your formation. If you split up, you aren't concentrated anymore, and massed fire, inaccurate and not from foot can still kill you.

Any kind of cannons worth a damn in any amount can pretty much screw a cavalry charge too. Horse are big, and fleshy, and also do not like being shot at by cannons.

I mean, it's not like you couldn't still use cavalry, but you wouldn't be doing it the same way.

And either way, medieval footmen and levies are just going to get screwed by cannons, no matter what.

>>15761702
It's less the weight than the loss of vision from the helmets, and the loss in movement.

>>15761702
Quite.

Long shots probably wouldn't hurt them, nor glancing ones. but a decent gun would punch holes in that shit, and the horse will die or be wounded either way with any gun.

SO many people talking about firearms, why not go a lot simpler? The Welch longbow doesn't require a huge investment in materials or development. Bowyers already have the basic skills to make them and they are simple to use. You could even stick with your star forts.

For a slightly less useful development; if you have already got overshot water wheels, copper and lodestones then you can make a basic generator. Want to prove your skills to the local lord, do a bit of electroplating and tell him it's alchemy. Should earn you an impressive reputation and trust if nothing else.

I didn't read the first thread, so I apologise if these ideas have already been presented. If so just ignore me.

>>15761591

Hm, true. There's also the problem that it doesn't matter how tough your little fiefdom is, if all your neighbours fall to the horde you'll end up surrounded by Mongols and inevitably be defeated.

So, a process of regional unification seems to be in order. Short-term, work on stuff that'll make your lord filthy stinking rich. Upgrade transport and communication networks (optical telegraph towers, for instance), as this leads to improved efficiency and prosperity - the profits of which can be ploughed into working out how to hold back the invaders.

Make sure that every peasant capable of holding a pointy stick knows how to use it in concert with his fellows, so you have a good reserve of potential troops with at least basic training. Mandatory drill practice for all able-bodied men at least once a week; maybe after church on Sundays - it is the duty of all good Christians to defend their homeland from the foul infidel. Encourage neighbouring villages to drill with one another, to make sure their tactics are standardised - the aim is to train them such that any two groups of men from anywhere in your lord's lands will be able to work together right away - or even join into one unit to replace casualties.

Give them uniforms, or at least some standardised piece of garb that marks them as a defender of the homeland, to foster a sense of unity and belonging to something more than just their family or hometown.

>>15761742
>Generator
Here is my idea:
1. Build generator
2. Make aluminium
3. Get filthy rich

>>15761524

cortez was able to topple the aztecs for so many more importaint reasons beyond his piddly boom sticks, not the least of which were the *scores of vassal tribes that allied with him against the aztecs*

How hard would it be to arrange for a coil, some magnets, attach them to a watermill and start rocking electricity in feudal eastern europe?

>>15761801
and do what with it?

>>15761689

negative, if anything plate was more practical for combat mobility since it distributed weight, rathet then focus it on the shoulders like mail.

sorry, but plate is pretty much the big kahuna in terms of making you not die. you can use less metal then chain for even better protection.

>>15761801
That would be easy,
The problem is:
1. Getting enough magnets to be able to build the first generator
2. Getting enough cooper or similar material to build electrical grid(even it is just a few meters)
3. Finding something useful to build with it

We can make aluminium, and some weak cooking equipment.

>>15761643
Shit. If you have a river, you can have canals. Yes, they are harder to build than a horse-drawn rail system.

However, you also have the benefit of being able to load a barge down a hell of a lot heavier than you do a rail car. Also, no expensive tracks (just expensive digging and locks). Your call.

On plate armor, I'd just go for breast plates and helms. One, because you're protecting the really important shit, and two, because they don't have a whole crapload of articulation, so they are "easier" to make.

You've got water-powered trip hammers. The world is your oyster.

>>15761836
Getting rid of candles. An electrified mesh on the ground undoing fully-armored soldiers. Telegraphy!

>TRAIN SOILDERS LIKE ROMANS
>FIGHT LIKE ROMANS
>WIN LIKE ROMANS!!!

Segmented Roman plate armor, light pila, gladius, Large standardised shields, replace you heavy pila with a pike and give the auxillia welsh/english longbows and you'll conquer the world, not just the mongols

spend 10 years drilling in tactics and teamwork, read history books IRL and you'll kick ass

>>15761836
>mine area around fort/city.
>Mongols come to siege.
>Blow up mines
>no more mongols

>>15761862
Another thing: By building a electrical grid and adding permanent possible lumination you have made it possible to extend the amount of time you can use each day.

Now, if you can solve the food problems on the top of that: you can make 24 hours active factory with sane shifts.

>>15761862

Electrical lighting requires a considerably more advanced manufacturing base than is available in 13th century Poland, even with modern engineers bootstrapping the technology.

Developing basic steam engines would be a much more useful project - pump water out of mines, power industry, etc. More powerful and reliable than waterwheels, albeit harder to make and with a higher risk of explosions.

>>15761891
Crop rotations. Maybe inventing canned food, since we have aluminium, and stock up on supplies in case of a food surplus!

>>15761876

why stop at just longbows? compound pully flatbows with crossbow rails for ease of use, versitility of ammo, and greater range and power.

>>15761849
I don't think a grid is going to be the best idea for electricity in a medieval environment. Copper? You're already well past the bronze age, where you you think it comes from? Useful may not be the point here. We still have to get our lord on side and electricity is fucking impressive. Once you've got your first generator going with natural magnets you can build and electromagnet and manufacture ferro-magnets all you like (making the second generation more efficient).

It's going to be a toss up between practicality in the short term and resources in the longer term. I just threw it out there as an idea. Not necessarily a good one. I think the longbows are a much more solid basis for an armed conflict. Especially when so many ideas so far have focussed on trying to bring medieval peasants up to modern tech levels.

>>15761850
I'd leave the pauldrons. Shoulders are piss-easy to hit, even if the guy has a shield, and leave the combatant very nearly completely useless if hit with a heavy sharp article. Which is to say, practically anything.

>>15761918
We still need a presarvtive drug, but sure.

>>15761911
Glass, metal wire of a certain material, tons of copper for electrical grid, some fancy base.
What did we miss?

>>15761924
Compound bows require much stronger materials and precision engineering which we don't have access to. That was my first idea, but with modern metallurgy and plastics it isn't practical

another polack here
>pozdro brachu, kurwa

>>15761746
>So, a process of regional unification seems to be in order.

that's exactly the single goal driving the duke OP's group serve. a bit of boring history:
check out the >>15758058 map - the patch of land to the west marked "Śląsk" (Silesia) is the land their he inherited as a youngster, the rest is stuff he managed to integrate during his reign

during this time there's no "Poland" (there was one earlier), only several Polish dukedoms, with no king over them; the duke of silesia is nearing seventy and, while pulling all secular and church strings available to him, is grooming his son to become a King of United Poland.

...then the duke died, leaving his young son to lead an anti-mongol alliance and get his head impaled on a spear - the dukedom fell apart

>>15761964
Or *without* rather

SOMEONE NEEDS TO RUN A QUEST LIKE THIS!

>>15761876
FUCK longbows. Seiously.
Adopt the Mongolian composite double recurve bow. It's absolutely the same thing in terms of energy, except so compact you can fire it from horseback.
HORSEBACK
IN FULL ARMOR
BEFORE CHARGING WITH A LANCE.
To summarize, fuck longbows.

>>15761982
Nice, except we are talking about defence here. Also, Agincourt

Once you have enough funding, establish an engineering school and start training apprentice engineers, cramming as much useful knowledge into their brains as possible. Recruit as many skilled craftsmen as you can, working to foster cooperation between whatever guilds might exist.

If you can go from having four engineers with a modern education to dozens then your capacity to invent and innovate expands massively. Plus you can delegate the lower-grade tasks that still require some skill, freeing you up to focus on the more involved stuff.

>>15761643
checked the river out on wiki (pic related)

no way they're crossing that without bridges, so you've got surefire chokepoints

station your nuclear kayaks there, for great justice

>>15761924
pullys require more complex mechanisms, flatbows would work though

but still, pikes coupled with roman style shields would do wonders for anti cavarly tactics, a two shield high wall chucking out volleys of arrows, supported by catapulta and onagers

>>15762018
This, this, a thousand times this.

I think the plate armor thing is brilliant because it would pay for itself - the knights would fucking DIG that bling

hire people to polish it shiny

>>15762011
Well, you can't beat the Mongols with defense alone... They'll roam around the country and burn down the fields, and hello, famine.
Need to be able to mobilize more troops in one point and faster than a nearly completely cavalry army to actually respond to them, need to beat them in logistics. Hence, cavalry.

>>15761970
Ano strzała. Ciekawe ilu nas na /tg/.

>>15762018
We'll hoping to do that. On that note...

This may be a bit of cheating, but I have said that the equipment we took with us on the first session (which took place during a trip to the mountains) was the stuff we ended up with in-game when we traveled in time. This ties in with the "electricity" people, because while in general electricity wouldn't be that useful at the time...

We have a laptop with us. With pdf scans of many academic textbooks (also porn).

Only the battery is dead.

>>15762141
AC adapter for the charger, yes? Mmm. Not sure how to throw together that one.

>>15761862
>Telegraphy!

we're talking about poles here

copper wires left unattended would become attended to very quickly

>>15761891
Coal gas lamps are way more plausible.

>>15761964

its not too hard to make a strong bow thats difficult to draw, and even if not, a pully system would just make it that much easier to aim and fire quickly, it hardly takes more precision then a steady hand to build, anyone with experience could make it themselves.
would also be useful to look into ballista (maby even metal bowed if compound). field artillery without the hassle of industrialisation.

also, rectangular flatbow cross section with cable backing is best bow, add recurves or reflexes for greater energy density (mongols historicaly used reflexed bows), but it does add greater stress to the material and shortens operational lifespan. composit construction is an option, but i dont think its that feasible given the climate we are working with.
>also, the debacle at agincourt was heavily influenced by the fact that the french forces attacked peicemeal, along a relatively narrow axis, through slogging mud.

>>15762175

A network of optical telegraphs would work better - some means of sending messages visually, from hilltop to hilltop or tower to tower.

guys

the mongol thing is fun because it gives the players a tangible goal, but in general there are more interesting aspects to discuss that were somehow left untouched in the thread (unless I missed it):

never mind the ten years, how will history change in general? how will europe look like in twenty, fifty, hundred years?

>>15762141
>(also porn)

THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL WAS REAL

>>15762204
I don't think you get it. The stress which the pulleys in modern compound bows take is huge. With only wrought iron at your disposal, how are you even going to make the pins which keep the cams in place?

>>15762136
So your suggestion for taking on an experienced force of horse archers is... to use an inexperience force of horse archers?

>>15762204
definatly, field artillery firing shells full of distilled vodka would cause chaos

>>15762288
Not that I'm advocating this, but cast bronze?

>>15762296
*flaming

>>15762296
They most certainly would.
I'd be crying.
All that vodka, wasted.

Make gliders out of wood and sailcloth. Use them to throw explosives at your enemies and demoralize them!

>>15762307
I'm not that familiar with cast bronze so maybe. I'd say you'd want forged steel though so if you can get similar performance then at least you have a starting point. You still have to consider the time required to develop the manufacturing process and train soldiers in their usage. Crossbows are good because they require little training at all. Longbows are good because they work the same way as your current arsenal. I don't want to rule out more advanced weapons, but it seems like logistics is going to be a serious problem if you go that route.

>>15762318
fret not, the poles would drink it instead of shooting

>227 posts and 24 image replies omitted. Click Reply to view.
>original thread even longer
>my threads never get past 50 posts

>>15762318
isn't vodka made of potatos anyway? I don't think they ahve that

Are primitive aircraft out of the question?

>>15762616
you can make vodka from grain

is this getting archived? don't have the time to read it now and it might not be up when I will

>>15762741
>Scotfag
>Knows how alcohol is made
>Even knowledgeable in the consumption of alcohol
>No one is surprised


Unrelated but:
I am taking a trip to Scotland in a few months. Anything that a normal tourist/business-trip-with-too-much-free-time kind of visit would overlook, but still worth checking out? And/or advice?

>>15761046
>Derp, I heard about fuel air bombs and think they're cool but have no idea how they work. I'll just suggest them anyways!

The short of it is that they don't work as well as conventional explosives in an above ground detonation. Fuel-air bombs are primarily intended for enclosed spaces--they'll outperform conventional explosives in several ways if they're detonated inside a building or a cave. Without going into the full technical aspects, they have a different pressure wave speed than conventional explosives, causing the fuel-air bomb to be the less effective option against troops in an open field--actually having the oxygen mixed into the explosive is something you want when the oxygen isn't contained.

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon

If I were you, OP, I'd look for the reenactor people on your college campus. They might have some suggestions that we're overlooking here on /tg/.

>>15762728
In 10 years? Yes. Balloons, however, are quite feasible, though even those will take some work to develop.

Bumping.

Is it wrong I want to see Polish armies of musketeers and cannonades rolling over the Mongols, and then the rest of the world?

>>15763027
Given that /tg/ is herping when they should be derping and suggesting things that are 15+ years out, I quite agree.

Some people just don't get that for most famous technologies, you need to invent the prerequisite steps several generations back. Besides that, we might know how a particular device component is shaped and what it does, but even such things as the proper types of metals to work it from, or how long to heat it, can make a simple project take years of experimentation to turn out something that can be mass produced.

>>15758175
OP and his group can get by language-wise in Poland. Good luck convincing anyone of anything in the middle east when you can't speak Arabic.

Besides, Poland was meant to put those heathens in their proper place on its march to world supremacy.

>>15763235
Yes, because they won't be able to have an army of musketeers in time for the Mongol invasion.

>>15763293
I know that, but I can dream...

>>15763350
I mean, personally? In 1231 I'd rather to go Granada and help the Nasrid dynasty reverse the Reconquista. Not that I'm anywhere near fluent in Arabic, though. :/

>>15761876
If I remember correctly at the time of the Mongol invasions the Romans were taking it in the ass pretty hard.

>>15763369
>reverse the Reconquista

>>15762912
Watch out for junkies and try not to get stabbed? Apparently Scotland is like the most violent developed country.

>>15763409
Filthy Visigothic Spaniards don't deserve the respect of their Ostrogothic brethren, even if the Ostrogoths didn't linger nearly as long as them.

And Al-Andalus was a pretty cool place. The Caliphs there were a lot more chill than their Catholic counterparts.

>>15763235
It's not really "Poland" AFAIK, but a Silesian monarchy - basically what the Duchy of Burgundy was to France.

It would be the Empire of Silesia.

>>15763027
>>15763262
>implying reenactors know anything about technology

>>15763588
>implying they don't have a grasp on historical technologies, cultures, and attitudes at all

>>15763435

Catholic Spain has been a black tumor on Western civilization ever since the Reconquista; Moslem Spain literally could not have been any worse.

>>15764249
Arguable both ways. Choice of living under the Inqusition and hiding if you were a Jew, or paying a jizya if you weren't a Muslim.

Hey op rather than use copper pipe for plumbing you could use clay pipe it would save a lot of money and be almost as good while it lasted (especially if glazed) though that would not be as long.

Bamp?

>>15762141
Kolejny reporting in

How about you try to make a little generator by the water mill for personal use, just to recharge the battery? Not introducing the electric revolution, just a small modification to generate enough charge to reload the laptop and skim through the PDFs?

>>15762272
>>15763235
>>15763293
>still no joke about Polandball not being able into space and looking suspiciously like Voltorb

>>15767205
shit's hard, bro

just going gung-ho on the problem would leave them with a fried piece of hardware

>Basically, we're a team of techpriests sent to 1920s Poland, trying to use our prowess to turn the tide of the Nazi invasion to come in a decade.
>lol j/k AdMech don't share tech, history unchanged

>>15767583
>implying what Poland needed was more technology to defeat the Germans

Forge stronger anti-German alliances with France (is the Soviets a possibility at all?), work on efficient and rapid molbization of armed forces, plan for a 1939 (or even 1938) war with Germany instead of 1942, spend more on the airforce, enlarge the tank force, spend more on the airforce, spend more of the airforce.

>>never mind the ten years, how will history change in general? how will europe look like in twenty, fifty, hundred years?

without dramatic exposure to the outside world, europe remains in the dark ages and the Renaissance never occurs. Feudalism reigns

>>15767778
>without dramatic exposure to the outside world

They've already had the First through Fourth Crusades. If Mansa Musa is still born in 1312 and goes on a pilgramage to Mecca, there's still going to be a massive influx of gold into Italy via Egypt next century, too, which'll help kickstart the Renaissance here as it did in our own history.

>>15762912
depends on where you are

edinburgh: the castle, roslin chapel, aurthurs seat, museum, botanic gardens, pentland hills, east fortune airfield has a good variety of aircraft and a concorde if you're willing to make the trip (~20miles), it may seem quite cheezy bt the open top tour buses are quite good too, mary kings close too. Plays will porbably be on in the theatre if that's your thing. also the climbing center at ratho if you climb.

it's harder to think of things to do when you live there :P

Glasgow: don't step ot your hotel cause you'll get mugged

>>15767970
rather inaccurate portrayal of Glasgow, unless you're going to start yelling about football and catholics in public.
at which point the stabbing/kicking you're about to get is self-inflicted.

other places: Kelvingrove museum, and the Burrel collection for museums, plus the Scottish National Museum in edinburgh has just reopened fully, and is spectacular.

for the landscape, head over to Glencoe, and up the Great Glen, to Fort William, and then up the side of Loch ness. take an afternoon to head up from Loch Ness to Glen Affric and Cannich, for beutiful highlands scenery.

Not a lot in inverness, but you might like to see Cullodden Battlefield if you want to see a point of history.
If you're around there, a little further is Cawdor Castle, (as in hail macbeth, thane of cawdor) which is open to tourists and spectacular.

>picture of the Glorious Silesian Empire in 2000AD

>move back in time
>introduce standardized units
>basic unit of length is based on my wang

>>15768211
perfect for microelectronics and ultra-presicion components, but its not going to be much use for anything large, is it...?

>>15768267
Gigawangs

>look up OPs duchy
>see coat of arms

FUCKING ULTRAMARINES

>>15768292
speed is now measured in TPM Thrusts Per Minute

>>15768361

also bump

I'd say crossbows and the steam engine are your best bet.

Auto crossbows especially.

BUMPAN