Dune questions

[Adrian Laguna]

I stand corrected. The ribbed-for-your-pleasure motif on both devices made me thought they were the same. It clearly isn't in a visual comparison.

As a matter of fact, you don't. It doesn't stand to reason that just because they look different they are different things. Would we conclude that a man wasn't shot by a bullet because a movie calls this a "bullet" but he was shot by this instead?

[Thanas]

And eight years after the Battle of Seminara the Spaniards used sword and buckler armed troops in the Battle of Barletta to break a formation of pikemen, and Swiss pikemen at that. To quote Machiavelli's The Art of War, “When they came to engage, the Swiss pressed so hard on their enemy with their pikes, that they soon opened their ranks; but the Spaniards, under the cover of their bucklers, nimbly rushed in upon them with their swords, and laid about them so furiously, that they made a very great slaughter of the Swiss, and gained a complete victory.”

The Battle of Seminara made the Spain re-organize its armies around the tercio formation, yes. However they still used infantry armed with sword and buckler to great effect. This is precisely what I am arguing for the Dune verse, an army built around pike-blocks that also employs swordsmen as an elite striking arm.

Quite nice, however: The battle you mention only illustrates the vulnerabilities of disorganized pikemen, not troops presenting closed ranks. And no, that the mercenaries were swiss does not really mean they were particularly disciplined per se.

To my knowledge the spanish used integrated sword/pike formations early on before the tercios. Swordfighters were used to disrupt the enemy formation and score single kills, while receiving fire support by the arquebusiers (non-viable with the dune verse iirc), - kinda like the battle of ravenna. I must have them in a book somewhere, but I cannot find it at the moment.

And to my knowledge the rodoleros were dropped within the late 1530s with the reorganization into the tercios being complete. Do you have any figures at hand regarding the distribution of pikemen and sword fighters in the tercios? They clearly were not seperate units anymore, and the rodoleros seem to have disappered as a seperate troop type entirely.

Also, I would suggest that every unit train their swordmen themselves and not regard them as an elite unit like the sardaukar, because otherwise you would have a few sardauker being detached to permanent duty with grunts, which kinda defeats the purpose of a praetorian guard.

I would argue that the sardaukar most likely get reformed into elite tercio formations. (Kinda like the landsknechts/tercios in the army of Karl V. - the former being the standard grunts while the latter are the heavy, battle-deciding hitters).

[Vympel]

As a matter of fact, you don't. It doesn't stand to reason that just because they look different they are different things. Would we conclude that a man wasn't shot by a bullet because a movie calls this a "bullet" but he was shot by this instead?

It does if they also act different - the object that killed Duncan spun. The hunter seeker did not.

[Steel]

It does if they also act different - the object that killed Duncan spun. The hunter seeker did not.

So the hunter seeker could not?

We never see the hunterseeker try and attack a shielded target. The way it is designed there is nothing to suggest that it is incapable of spinning to penetrate a shield, given the fact that all noble persons own shields, and this is going to be used to assassinate them.

When paul grabs the hunter seeker it seems to writhe and twist to escape his grip, and in order to navigate properly it must have some capacity to control roll as well as pitch and yaw.

[JGregory32]

Pardon me for my ignorance but istn't it mentioned in the book that shields have a hard time passing oxygen to the fighters and moving CO2 away?

Would this not limit the amount of time a person could spend in shield combat?

Also if I remember correctly wasn't there a pit fighting sequence where a gladiator used a partial shield? Wouldn't partial shields be easier to produce, have a longer battery life (if they use batteries) and assuming poor gas transfer lead to longer engagement times?

Really the whole shield thing is a wonderful device that has some serious flaws that arn't pointed out.

Example: I understand the shield is generated by a small device worn on the belt, this device stores a tremendous amount of energy to overcome Kinetic energy (stopping fast moving objects), extends an energy field large enough to cover an adult human, all without computer technology.

BTW Wouldn't the "Weirding Way" be useless against a shield equiped opponet? Wouldn't shields simply block the fast attacks the same way they do for other fast moving objects? I could see a style that was based heavily on joint locks and redirecting your opponents movement being effective. (in other words Akiido might work)

One final thing, if knives work and can get past the shield then why not swords? They would give you better reach and using a sword breaker in the other hand would give you a good chance to disarm your opponet.

[Imperial Overlord]

They do use swords. Duncan Idaho's claim to fame was to be a Tenth level Ginaz Swordmaster and he was legendarily bad ass. IIRC he killed seventeen Sardukar during his last stand before they dropped him with projectile weapon.

[Gaidin]

Pardon me for my ignorance but istn't it mentioned in the book that shields have a hard time passing oxygen to the fighters and moving CO2 away?

Would this not limit the amount of time a person could spend in shield combat?

Not to that extent no. The air became what they described as stale. Sort of like sitting in a room without direct access to fresh air but still has ventilation.

Also if I remember correctly wasn't there a pit fighting sequence where a gladiator used a partial shield? Wouldn't partial shields be easier to produce, have a longer battery life (if they use batteries) and assuming poor gas transfer lead to longer engagement times?

That's for an arena. It's safe to assume the common layman didn't have access to a shield kind of like US citizens don't get access to full-auto weapons without jumping through a few hoops. Yet the government has no problem supplying high quality equipment to its military. There's not a leap in logic involved here.

Example: I understand the shield is generated by a small device worn on the belt, this device stores a tremendous amount of energy to overcome Kinetic energy (stopping fast moving objects), extends an energy field large enough to cover an adult human, all without computer technology.

Yes and they had dozens of other technologies that we don't understand how they worked because Herbert was more interested in the social and political developments than he was putting the technology together. He wanted a tech that created a political situation that he wanted so he put it there. Sloppy, yes. Gets his work done though, and the original series was great in spite of it. Or maybe because of it.

BTW Wouldn't the "Weirding Way" be useless against a shield equiped opponet? Wouldn't shields simply block the fast attacks the same way they do for other fast moving objects? I could see a style that was based heavily on joint locks and redirecting your opponents movement being effective. (in other words Akiido might work)

The wierding way is what the Fremen called Paul Atreides' fighting style. Mainly from his mom teaching him the Bene Gesserit skills involving their prana-bindu techniques(think thats what they're called), but also from the fact that he was trained by three of the best fighters in the known universe. As a teenager he killed one of the best fremen adult fighters without taking a single scratch. And since it was Paul teaching it, and given he was House Atreides and not born Fremen, it must have some use against shielded opponents.

One final thing, if knives work and can get past the shield then why not swords? They would give you better reach and using a sword breaker in the other hand would give you a good chance to disarm your opponet.

They probably considered that. They probably tried it. They probably decided knives were better. Anything that involved fine enough control that they could slow it to a few millimeters per second speed is what they were looking for.

[Vympel]

So the hunter seeker could not?

Why should we assume it does? Absent of any evidence it is capable of doing so, there is no reason to assume same. Especially when it looks nothing like a hunter seeker to begin with.

[andrewgpaul]

Yes and they had dozens of other technologies that we don't understand how they worked because Herbert was more interested in the social and political developments than he was putting the technology together. He wanted a tech that created a political situation that he wanted so he put it there. Sloppy, yes. Gets his work done though, and the original series was great in spite of it. Or maybe because of it.

Sloppy? No, stopping to explain every bit of equipment in unnecessary detail would be sloppy. The inner workings of the shields isn't necessary to the story, so why bother with it?

[Adrian Laguna]

Thanas, perhaps your knowledge on the subject is more in depth than mine, I tend know about a wide range of subjects but not that much about any single one. The way I understand it, swordsmen were dropped from the Spanish tercios due to the rise of the harquebus, and later musket, as an effective offensive arm of a formation. This is not an issue in the Dune verse, so the sword continues to be effective. The Battle of Ravenna, which you mention, was also cited by Machiavelli to support his argument in favour of sword armed infantry (he failed to see the coming rise of firearms). Sir Charles Oman also says of it, “This fight was typical of many more in which during the first quarter of the sixteenth century the sword and buckler were proved to be more than master of the pike.” (I note that I get this through secondary sources, again my knowledge tends to be superficial)

[Thanas]

Adrian, sorry for replying so late, work forced me to take a leave of abscence from the internet.

The way I understand it, swordsmen were dropped from the Spanish tercios due to the rise of the harquebus, and later musket, as an effective offensive arm of a formation. This is not an issue in the Dune verse, so the sword continues to be effective.

You're right, but that is not the whole story. They were also dropped due to their vulnerability to cavalry (see the battle of Ravenna, where the french gendarmes broke the spanish infantry - probably not an issue in the dune verse) and the fact that using them as seperate units did not make a lot of sense. They were also very expensive troops, both in training and equipment. (The reason being that you can easily train people in the use of the pike, so you can disband regiments and raise large armies fairly easily, however when you can't do the same with swordsmen, so you have to keep them as a standing army, which was ridiculous expensive back then). That would probably not be an issue with the dune verse.

The Battle of Ravenna, which you mention, was also cited by Machiavelli to support his argument in favour of sword armed infantry (he failed to see the coming rise of firearms). Sir Charles Oman also says of it, “This fight was typical of many more in which during the first quarter of the sixteenth century the sword and buckler were proved to be more than master of the pike.” (I note that I get this through secondary sources, again my knowledge tends to be superficial)

Well, I would argue that the battle of Ravenna more illustrates the superiority of a combined arms formation over a single pike formation (note that the spanish rodeleros rolled under the spanish pikes and then under the swiss infantry, where they then proceeded to wreck havoc - as Machiavelli writes "throwing themselves on the ground and slipping below the points, so that they darted in among the legs of the pikemen."). Obviously this only works when pike infantry of your own distracts the other pike infantry and prevents them from forming up/focusing on the swordsmen. When swordsmen where unsupported by pike infantry, they got rolled over, like at Seminara, where the swiss infantry deployed into a dispersed three-rank formation, which allowed them more mobility and better movement - something which is prevented by enemy pikemen, because that forces them to close ranks and move in dense blocks of men, thereby robbing them of the mobility to counter the quick movements of the pikemen. Rodoleros need dense masses of people to cut into.

And Machiavelli is not really an expert on warfare, he is copying vegetius and had quite a hard-on for the republican roman army. At one time he argued that the venetian army should be equipped with sword and shield only. (No question because he believed that was the way the romans fought and won). Of course, nothing more needs to be said of the value of such a suggestion.

The issue I had with your original argument was that it seemed to me you were arguing in favor of seperate units of swordsmen, when history seems to suggest that a combined pike/sword formation (I have not found the books, but I would suggest a pike/sword ratio of 9:1) seems best when disregarding such concepts as cavalry and firearms.

In the same manner, the sardaukar should be used as an elite combined arms formation and not as detached contingents of swordsmen. Also, artillery would most likely still play a role. Because even if it somehow does not do any damage to shielded soliders, the kinetic energy would still be perfect for breaking up pike formations. Eventually, that would get to the point where you could dispense with the dense pike formations (especially when you have rapid-fire artillery) entirely. The pike would probably still play a role, but using it in tercio-like formations would be - and I am abandoning my earlier view on the matter here - pretty stupid.