[40k] designing massive bastion walls

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madd0ct0r
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[40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by madd0ct0r »

Hey all,

I'm modelling up some giant bastion walls for epic, and I'm thinking about the rear of them: Image

Practically, the back has to be vertical or concave, since I want to be able to place two walls back to back for mega fortifications.

Fluffily, what might the backs look like? Vast concrete blocks? Fort Boyard style window and door holes?
Given the amount of heat based weaponry in 40k, it kind of makes sense to me to include a massive thermal resivoir of 'cold' within the walls, so maybe radiators on the back?
Another truly silly idea was vast pneumatic jacks to absorb incoming macro shells.

thoughts?
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Re: [40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by Sea Skimmer »

Image
Image

Something like this would be illogical but reality based enough. Casemated barracks and ammunition storage built into the wall. You can ignore the steel fence and distant flanking position; the Germans stopped bothering with those features before the (first) world war anyway.

As for wall composition, for the core dry sand works stupid well against just about any possible threat. The rear wall would just be a revetment really, though the work above is one giant mass of stone covered in concrete buried into the backside of a hill and held the better part of a thousand men.

Block walls would be bad, that means they can be dislodged from each other by heavy impacts, though the use of blocks as permanent formwork is not impossible. Better to have a reinforced concrete wall, or something else solid like that which can be tied directly into the ground and the front wall, distances allowing. Otherwise even heavy caliber near miss blasts might lead to the wall blocks simply falling into a crater.

Of course its all about how much money you want to spend in reality, both making the model and in how the fortification is 'supposed' to be built. 40K seems too diverse for specific details to be critical. The need to place these back to back is a slight issue, since for example it'd be nice to have stairways to reach the top of the wall from ground level doors in the barracks. Though perhaps those could be recessed so that when back to back you'd have a slot? You would really want to avoid holes for access in the roof, since that creates a major vulnerability to high angle fire. The German casemate above was connected to other fighting positions and lengths of concrete trench via tunnels, so the doors which existed were mainly for resupply, not rushing out to fight. That's a HUGE issue with any kind of frontline shelter. Not letting it become a tomb.

If you wanted a really rugged look, a pain in the ass (it seems to me) thing to do would be a rear wall make of rock gabions in steel cages. Yes this has issues like blocks of being possible to knock loose, but its a little different. Functionally its scaling up a sand bag. They create a lot of spall when hit, but as long as the rock diameter is equal to the diameter of the impacting bombs or shells they are highly effective at deflecting projectiles, not just stopping them outright, and since you have some voids between the rocks you have a blast disspiating effect that is compounded by the immense strength of the steel cages which tends to hold them in place. You wire one cage to another of course, and the wire may be rather absurdly thick, and made of elastic steel.

The Israelis used such construction over 20ft thick on the Bar Lev Line as shown below. Heavy aircraft bombs and sustained artillery fire up to and including 240mm mortar rounds could not crack them. Hard to find good pictures online though. Under the piles of rock gabions were steel tubes for the actual shelters, with looted railroad rails used to form roof reinforcements. They fall somewhere in between permanent fortifications and field works. Depends I guess on how/where you think such a wall might be built. Afterall you might have no rear wall what so ever in any reality, just a slope of earth, but that back to back requirement rules against it.

Image
Image
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Re: [40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by bilateralrope »

madd0ct0r wrote:Another truly silly idea was vast pneumatic jacks to absorb incoming macro shells.

thoughts?
Silly. But I'm not sure it would be completely out of place in 40k.
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Re: [40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by madd0ct0r »

ooh thanks skimmer. I'll probably roll with something similar +gubbins
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Re: [40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by Sea Skimmer »

Alternating might be interesting, a chunk of concrete barrack casemate, with rock gabions on each side.
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Re: [40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by Connor MacLeod »

madd0ct0r wrote:Another truly silly idea was vast pneumatic jacks to absorb incoming macro shells.
Whilst I'm not sure 'pneumatic' jacks might work int hat regard, you could probably work up some sort of analogue. some of the scifi I've read (like Alistair Reynolds) had similar technologies, although I'm expecting the 'absorbption' rate would be pretty poor.

It might work better if you figure some sort of built in forcefield element to 'cushion' the impact in conjunction with solid materials perhaps. Its not unknonw for powerfields to augment physical structures on fortresses or starships. Especially since the 2013 Armageddon supplement has macrocannons flinging hypersonic shells which probably are (unless you interpret it differently) weighing several tons apiece.

If you want truly ludicrous ideas for 'siege defenses' you can look at the HH novel Betrayer where they had self-healing (semisentient? lol) stone walls and gravity generators and shit.
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Re: [40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by Black Admiral »

Connor MacLeod wrote:If you want truly ludicrous ideas for 'siege defenses' you can look at the HH novel Betrayer where they had self-healing (semisentient? lol) stone walls and gravity generators and shit.
Actually, it was Angel Exterminatus, but yes, that includes such concepts (including the walls being able to grow spikes to impale people climbing them, eat those same people, or grow overhangs to force them to climb into the defenders' firing arcs).
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Re: [40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by Cykeisme »

Even leaving powerfield structural reinforcement and void shield integration aside, when you've got superstrong materials but are limited to burying foundations into the ground (that can be of varying density and rigidity depending on where you are), having supports on the other side propping the wall up sound like a good idea, to help transfer momentum into the ground.. instead of a still-intact wall toppling over.
Might as well use some kind hydraulic shock-absorbing jacks as supports, then!

It could be a removable feature as well, so your walls can fit back-to-back if need be.
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Re: [40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by Dr. Trainwreck »

Black Admiral wrote:Actually, it was Angel Exterminatus, but yes, that includes such concepts (including the walls being able to grow spikes to impale people climbing them, eat those same people, or grow overhangs to force them to climb into the defenders' firing arcs).
Fucking insanity, man. What kind of walls were these anyway?
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Re: [40k] designing massive bastion walls

Post by Black Admiral »

Dr. Trainwreck wrote:
Black Admiral wrote:Actually, it was Angel Exterminatus, but yes, that includes such concepts (including the walls being able to grow spikes to impale people climbing them, eat those same people, or grow overhangs to force them to climb into the defenders' firing arcs).
Fucking insanity, man. What kind of walls were these anyway?
Stone walls, but stone that wasn't from the planet they were raised on, and modified before the Imperial Fists turned up with technology nobody Imperial could make any sense of.
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