Loroi abilities, and Loroi Judo

[Hālian]

i have always said, 'real martial arts begin where fighting sports stop', and so far nothing i have seen or heard..or for that matter someone tried to convince me has managed to change that view.

Truth. Most martial arts are combat systems. You can make a sport out of them (what can't be a sport, honestly?), but ultimately, they are meant to turn a person into a weapon.

Teidar Pallan Leinnol vs. Junior dos Santos — I have Fireblade as the favourite by 18 1/2.

Only 18.5 to 1? You're being very generous.

To Junior, that is.

I have to give him some vestige of a fighting chance… ;3

[saint of m]

i have always said, 'real martial arts begin where fighting sports stop', and so far nothing i have seen or heard..or for that matter someone tried to convince me has managed to change that view.

Truth. Most martial arts are combat systems. You can make a sport out of them (what can't be a sport, honestly?), but ultimately, they are meant to turn a person into a weapon.

Teidar Pallan Leinnol vs. Junior dos Santos — I have Fireblade as the favourite by 18 1/2.

Only 18.5 to 1? You're being very generous.

To Junior, that is.

I have to give him some vestige of a fighting chance… ;3

Still probably not going to make it.

SO about the sports and martial arts: More of less.

Back when most of them were conceived, they had much more practacle use. Be it Wrestling or fencing, Karate or Long Fist, at one point they were developed for a time when learning them meant life or death, and in a situation where the only rule was to not get killed yourself. Now adays most of them have been neutered comparatively to just sports. Yes there are some self defense aspects that are still real world, but for the most part, I don't think most people who take up the martial arts use them on a regular bases for life or death situations (parents or siblings chasing daughter's boyfriend down the street with a long sword to defend her honor aside).

[Mr Bojangles]

i have always said, 'real martial arts begin where fighting sports stop', and so far nothing i have seen or heard..or for that matter someone tried to convince me has managed to change that view.

Truth. Most martial arts are combat systems. You can make a sport out of them (what can't be a sport, honestly?), but ultimately, they are meant to turn a person into a weapon.

Teidar Pallan Leinnol vs. Junior dos Santos — I have Fireblade as the favourite by 18 1/2.

Only 18.5 to 1? You're being very generous.

To Junior, that is.

I have to give him some vestige of a fighting chance… ;3

Sure, give the man hope. Then watch as Fireblade does horrible, horrible TK things to him. So cruel, man!

Still probably not going to make it.

SO about the sports and martial arts: More of less.

Back when most of them were conceived, they had much more practacle use. Be it Wrestling or fencing, Karate or Long Fist, at one point they were developed for a time when learning them meant life or death, and in a situation where the only rule was to not get killed yourself. Now adays most of them have been neutered comparatively to just sports. Yes there are some self defense aspects that are still real world, but for the most part, I don't think most people who take up the martial arts use them on a regular bases for life or death situations (parents or siblings chasing daughter's boyfriend down the street with a long sword to defend her honor aside).

At least in developed nations, there are police forces and volunteer armies to enforce the law and preserve the peace. Such societies are relatively stable, resources not as scarce. Most people don't feel learning actual combat-oriented martial arts are necessary in such a situation.

This is all without mentioning modern firearms. Who needs to be able use an opponent's momentum against them when you can both put holes in one another at range?

(Note: I'm not putting down martial arts. I thoroughly enjoy Muay Thai and jiujitsu. And train with them in their original sense; I do not compete. Just pointing out modern thought processes).

[saint of m]

@Mr Bojangles

That's the case with most armaments. Up until riffling became commonplace, past 75 yards (a little over 64 meters, not an exact measurement, I suck at converting English to metric) and you're lucky to hit the broad side of a barn with your long gun (which is why they had gun lines back in the day, to ensure you'd hit something). this was so much the case in all reality, Knights became extinct simply out of coast (all things considering, a tooled up knight with horse would be tens of millions in today's dollar).

Now, add riffling and you now have guns that are more accurate at longer ranges, including handguns.

[fredgiblet]

Right. You can make a couple dozen arquebus wielders for the price of a knight. Plus you don't have to deal with giving him property or anything like that, you can jsut grab some peasants, hand them their guns and send them on their way. When they get back they go back to work.

[Mr Bojangles]

@Mr Bojangles

That's the case with most armaments. Up until riffling became commonplace, past 75 yards (a little over 64 meters, not an exact measurement, I suck at converting English to metric) and you're lucky to hit the broad side of a barn with your long gun (which is why they had gun lines back in the day, to ensure you'd hit something). this was so much the case in all reality, Knights became extinct simply out of coast (all things considering, a tooled up knight with horse would be tens of millions in today's dollar).

Now, add riffling and you now have guns that are more accurate at longer ranges, including handguns.

Um, yes? I'm not sure what else to say, other than that your history is accurate, and yes, knights were very expensive and lines of peasants with cheap rifles were more cost effective. The invention of the firearm fundamentally changed warfare and personal self-defense. I think this means we are in agreement?

Right. You can make a couple dozen arquebus wielders for the price of a knight. Plus you don't have to deal with giving him property or anything like that, you can jsut grab some peasants, hand them their guns and send them on their way. When they get back they go back to work.

Also yes! We seem to be in agreement as well.

[discord]

daelyte: two points, first being you can fight with only one arm but not with only one leg.
second, LACK of space can also work to your advantage, if for instance you are on a small rope bridge you will only face one at a time, or a small alley same thing, two can move side by side but in a fight they would get in each others way.

saint of m: tens of millions in current currency is quite an exaggeration more along the lines of half a million TO ten or so million, if you take training time to make a 'proper' knight into account it ups the cost a few million, but as fred mentioned, you can arm dozens of riflemen(or arquebus wielders, whichever.) for the cost of a single knight, yes....however.

taking training time and expenses for a modern soldier, each and every grunt army soldier costs....well if it were not for the extremely efficient mass production it would be well over a million USD a pop, as it is...i'd guess at a ballpark figure of around 200k just to get the soldier out of basic, although given how damn many they push through it the cost just might be as low as 100k, after that you have more advanced courses and trust me, the cost just keeps going up, a navy seal operator costs over a million USD in just 'basic' training after that you have continuous training that keeps the cost going up, that is not counting how damn few can TAKE that kind of training.

soldiers aint cheap, you can get fighters or warriors pretty cheaply, but those are generally just mercs you can't really trust, soldiers have never been cheap, but now that i think about it the first era of the gun was probably the closest...

[javcs]

daelyte: two points, first being you can fight with only one arm but not with only one leg.
second, LACK of space can also work to your advantage, if for instance you are on a small rope bridge you will only face one at a time, or a small alley same thing, two can move side by side but in a fight they would get in each others way.

saint of m: tens of millions in current currency is quite an exaggeration more along the lines of half a million TO ten or so million, if you take training time to make a 'proper' knight into account it ups the cost a few million, but as fred mentioned, you can arm dozens of riflemen(or arquebus wielders, whichever.) for the cost of a single knight, yes....however.

taking training time and expenses for a modern soldier, each and every grunt army soldier costs....well if it were not for the extremely efficient mass production it would be well over a million USD a pop, as it is...i'd guess at a ballpark figure of around 200k just to get the soldier out of basic, although given how damn many they push through it the cost just might be as low as 100k, after that you have more advanced courses and trust me, the cost just keeps going up, a navy seal operator costs over a million USD in just 'basic' training after that you have continuous training that keeps the cost going up, that is not counting how damn few can TAKE that kind of training.

soldiers aint cheap, you can get fighters or warriors pretty cheaply, but those are generally just mercs you can't really trust, soldiers have never been cheap, but now that i think about it the first era of the gun was probably the closest...

Not exactly. Early guns were expensive. And, to be fair ... you could probably achieve similar results on the battlefield with a line of men armed with crossbows as you could if you armed them with early man-portable firearms (cannons don't count).

Guns grew popular because they were easy to train on and deadly, while at the same time, you weren't permanently arming runaway troops - that is, if they ran off, they would only have a limited number of shots before they'd run out of ammo, and the average grunt wouldn't be able to make new ammo they way they could new quarrels.

I think that the 'cheapest, most effective' soldier, for their time, might well be pike infantry.

[discord]

jav: much longer training time to make them effective, all the muscle powered weapon systems take a long time to get good at since you need to build muscle mass and grind in muscle memory.

[fredgiblet]

Not exactly. Early guns were expensive.

More expensive than armor, warhorse, sword, shield, mace, lance and bow?

[Suederwind]

Well, an early gun was nothing more than a iron pipe mounted on a long stick:

They were cheap to make and easy to use: ram that stick in the ground, point the other end on the enemy and fire it.
Even the most stupid peasant could do that and it did not take a life long training to master this weapon.
Also: even the most expensive armor and shields could be penetrated by such a thing and that well trained warhorse of yours
would run for its life after hearing one or two shots.

[javcs]

Early guns were relatively simple, mechanically speaking, true. However ... the actual process of making one required a relatively rare specialist - gunsmiths were less common than armorers. Making one was very much not cheap, though I'll concede the raw materials wouldn't have been extraordinarily expensive. Personal ownership was, for a fairly lengthy period of time, restricted to the extremely wealthy.

The efficacy of early firearms in penetrating armor (higher quality plates, anyways) has been vastly overstated. Armor would be 'proofed', by testing it against a gunshot, leaving a dent where the ball had hit, but not penetrated. They could penetrate armor, but so could longbow, or, to a lesser extent, crossbows(depending on type).

What guns did do, was vastly reduce the amount of training required. A longbowman, in order to be decent, needed years of training, and to be good, needed to have started training as a child - the amount of training to build up the strength to draw a longbow's draw weight isn't something you can do in a short period of time. Most of the training time with early guns would have been for proper care of the weapon, and required vastly less time to achieve relative mediocrity. To become good with an early gun would have required years, and would have been more of an art than a science, plus at that point, you'd be making your own gunpowder and shot.
A gun-armed soldier, requires a relatively small amount of training time to achieve mediocrity, but you need to be able to field largish numbers and play to their strengths.


Once you get to the point where your manufacturing base is sufficient to produce large (relatively speaking) numbers of guns in a short period of time, though, things start to change.

Anyways ... the original point was that an early gun-armed soldier would have been more expensive (for his time) than a pike infantryman (for his time).
The shift to guns coincides with the shift to having larger professional central armies, rather than depending on feudal levies.

[Arioch]

It seems to me that the appeal of early gunpowder weapons was as much for their psychological impact (this is my BOOMSTICK!) as for their actual effectiveness as weapons.

[Suederwind]

@javcs:
Hello!

However ... the actual process of making one required a relatively rare specialist - gunsmiths were less common than armorers. Making one was very much not cheap, though I'll concede the raw materials wouldn't have been extraordinarily expensive.

Gunsmiths were rare specialists, thats true. But I think they emerged a little bit later. At first (in the 14. century) it was more important to have someone who knew the secret of how to make gunpowder. An alchemist so to speak. This knowledge was new a that time in Europe. As far as I know such an alchemist would know how to make your gunpowder, build you a gun (or more) and operate it or instruct others to do so. Some kind of "all inclusive package" if you will. An early handheld gun could possibly be made by any skilled blacksmith: melt some iron rods together, secure them with some iron rings and leave a hole in the middle for the bullet.

The efficacy of early firearms in penetrating armor (higher quality plates, anyways) has been vastly overstated. Armor would be 'proofed', by testing it against a gunshot, leaving a dent where the ball had hit, but not penetrated. They could penetrate armor, but so could longbow, or, to a lesser extent, crossbows(depending on type).

Early firearms would in fact be very inefficient. Think of a bazooka sized weapon (that could be fired like one) that has a effective range of about 40-60m. Everything beyond that was a lucky hit. They could penetrate the armor of that time because the full plate armor was a response to the thread of the increased penetration power of firearms, longbows and crossbows. But they had a strong psychological impact, I will come back to that later.

What guns did do, was vastly reduce the amount of training required.

I fully agree to that. A knight needed a life long training, expensive weapons, armor, horses and a castle. For that money you could buy a lot of guns and the people to use them. Or (back to topic) buy some pikes and teach them some basic infantry tactics. That is cheaper and you wont risk an exploding gun on your side.

@Arioch:
Hello!

It seems to me that the appeal of early gunpowder weapons was as much for their psychological impact (this is my BOOMSTICK!) as for their actual effectiveness as weapons.

The people at that time strongly believed in magic and other supernatural things like daemons, ghosts, remnants of the old pagan religions, etc... And then imagine the impact of an army with some early firearms. It would be like an evil wizard throwing thunder (boom!) and lightning (muzzle flash) at his enemies. Such an army would put up quite a show I would guess and an enemy would think twice to attack them, especially when one of their bullets actually hit something or far better: someone.

[fredgiblet]

Anyways ... the original point was that an early gun-armed soldier would have been more expensive (for his time) than a pike infantryman (for his time).

Pikemen are not replacements for arquebusiers and vice versa. Arequebusiers are replacements for longbow/crossbowmen primarily, the guns might be more expensive than a bow or crossbow, but the training is far cheaper.

ETA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_and_shot

[javcs]

Anyways ... the original point was that an early gun-armed soldier would have been more expensive (for his time) than a pike infantryman (for his time).

Pikemen are not replacements for arquebusiers and vice versa. Arequebusiers are replacements for longbow/crossbowmen primarily, the guns might be more expensive than a bow or crossbow, but the training is far cheaper.

Eh ... basic crossbow training wouldn't be that much more than basic gun training.
On the flip side, crossbows were generally aimed at a specific target, rather than a general area.

[saint of m]

Pikemen have never really been replaced (I know the only army in the world still armed with them is the 200 strong Swis guard, but my point still stands).

The military chanel did a list on some of the greatest weapons ever made, and the Pike was in the top ten for a number of reasons. '

One in a short time (in the shows case, two hours with a rowdy rugby team) you could train someone to effectivly use them.

And it's no wonder why. You have a mass of men coming at you with very long spears, several ranks deep able to skewer you like a fish over a fire, and unless you get their sides or their back, you are you have to deal with several angrrye pikemen and their 20 foot long spears.

They also had reach, so sailors used them in navel battles on the high seas for ship to ship battle.

And spears in general do great against horsmen (horse running at you 45 miles an hour, it does all the work for the foot soldier, ala brave heart.).

The problem they faced is it sucks when there is only a handful of men, it;s better to drop it for a smaller sword of dagger.

[Suederwind]

Hello!

The military chanel

There really is something like this in the US? Very interesting, but please tell me that they are a little bit more historically accurate than, for example, the history channel.

One in a short time (in the shows case, two hours with a rowdy rugby team) you could train someone to effectivly use them.

Using a pike or a halberd is not that difficult. But you needed very well trained soldiers to use them effectively. Things like formations, basic infantry tactics and so on. More important: these guys needed to be brave. 20 feet (6.1 m) can be a very short distance if some hundred armed knights (their lances have been very long too for that reason) charge against your position. Think of the sound of their horses, the soil under your feet that starts shaking, their armor, etc... Definitely not a situation I want to be in.

[Arioch]

There really is something like this in the US? Very interesting, but please tell me that they are a little bit more historically accurate than, for example, the history channel.

I believe the Military Channel is created by the same people who did the History Channel.

[Suederwind]

Hello!

I believe the Military Channel is created by the same people who did the History Channel.

Oh no...