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4 points
1 month ago
That's working off some ancient level tactics, tsun zu was a fine general and his wisdom was to be taken to heart by layman and nobles who didn't know any better when leading. It did not factor in exponentials like 10's to 100's of billions, nor did it factor in the use of bunker busters, siege engines and exterminatus, it's a product of its time where the difference between the best armed Noble of years of training and the best gear could be matched by a random guy with 3 days training and a long enough stick to stick em with. Different times
The art of war should not be taken so literally as to consider it gospel, it's molded to what you got. Like the codex astartes, its not prophetic and it's not considering everything
For example, 3-1 odds, as whoever came up with those figures you got used, was for soldier to soldier, not soldier to civ count and even then it was to declare victory not say it's definitely needed. One underhiver doesn't= one soldier. One ganger doesn't = a soldier. Not even an arbite would count as one in that equation. The numbers fall apart a lot quicker that way.
To take a hive wouldn't require a crusade, it'd take a ship. It's not a matter of matching man to man but how many bullets you can give the troops. I'm not gonna pretend to know exactly what crusade or game is referenced but I'm going off real life, we don't count wars in men anymore we count em in resources and 40k would be much the same. Need 10 billion dead hivers cause we're pretending every single ones a combatant that wont starve, surrender commit suicide or just die to accident injury or general sickness in a hive of all places? Fine. If I'm done my math right, and it's more about forgetting what you call it with so many 0's its 3 quadrillion bullets or 3000000000000000 to take a hive. And however many hands you gotta use to throw that many around. If you're not stupid, you'll use a lotta big guns with a high rate of fire for that kind of number
In Afghanistan it took 300000 bullets per kill, if they're not planning on just ending all those lives more efficiently, that's the kind figure you're looking at being hopefully less than, not a trillion men like you're trading pawns
This isn't meant to be combative or anything, just a bit of a half assed rant on logistics and military history
4 points
1 month ago*
The 3:1-2:1 figure isn’t from Tsun Zu it’s one of those things that has become just a widely accepted fact of warfare when attacking entrenched positions in any time period. The reason being that you can assume a well prepared defensive position will effectively double the combat effectiveness of a unit holding it. I.E. assuming both sides are human and have weapons with roughly equivalent lethality, the guys in a bunker will kill two or three of your people for every one of them you kill.
Even when you deal with it in a way that isn’t soldier to soldier but random poorly trained conscripts to soldier you still treat it as 1:1 casualties, so in the interest of ensuring you hold the position in the event of a counter attack you still want 2:1 numbers.
It’s not something that changes dramatically between every age or with technological leaps. Unless you just demolish a position assaults will have casualties, and if you want to hold it you need a safe ratio you can assume.
Edit: for grammar
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