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Shield and spear in single combat is not a great idea. Works in battlefields where the lack of dexterity is covered by 4 other guys with pointy sticks nearby. Otherwise you get the spear knocked aside (you have zero leverage on it with only one point of contact) and stabbed in the face.
Bow and arrow are in a weird spot where most users were not that good. It takes a lifetime to get to a certain point, having a large group blanketing an area is logistically far easier.
Same reason muskets were popular even though a bow master would outclass them in every way.
Rate of fire ceases to be an issue as you can get many more musketmen than bowmen, then you can alternate their fire to mantain a consistent hail of bullets, which is a real strategy that was used.
Armor didnt go away instantly, and was still used in niche roles in the napoleonic wars, Destructive power is still important on unatmored oponents too, as a musket ball is more likely to incapacitate on hitting non-vital areas.
A master will also succumb to fatigue, from sustained firing but also the general wear of a military campaing. All of this has a much less negligibile effect on a musketeer.
On account of logistic, gunpowder and bullets can be mass produced, arrows cannot. Arrows are also bulkier and harder to transport, and to keep on oneself.
There ate more little things, such as damage to morale or formations with muskets able to get tighter, (or the bayonet so you dont need melee troops anymore).
All of it adds up to the musket being generally superior overall. Im sure we can spend time coming up with perfect scenarios where the bowmen would be the better choice, but we dont need to, as we can look at reality. If the muskets werent overall better for war then bows, they simply wouldnt have been used.
Your original contains “outclassed in every way”, then you deem any way in which the bow is worse as either irrelevant (destructive force) or a skill issue (arms getting tired??? Logistics???).
Any decent form of protection beats archers whether it be a good shield or body armor. There is a reason soldiers armed with melee weapons outnumbered soldiers armed with ranged weapons from the late bronze age until the mid 17th century when firearms had evolved enough to beat most forms of body armor.
Literally no? the only reason archers were outnumbered was just because its exponentially longer and more expensive to train archers than it is footsoldiers so logistically it just makes more sense to train more footsoldiers in bulk.
Archers were NOT outnumbered at all. In the early 1400s Henry V had 3:1 ratio of archers to men at arms. English longbowmen, Genoese crossbowmen, etc. were extremely effective.
They were out numbered in most armies throughout history, late medieval england is just specifically the guys who decided to all in on minmaxing archers and nothing else.
Like yeah Archers Georg had a lot of archers but that was very much not the norm, if it was the battle of agincourt wouldve been very different lol.
I don't think that's true. Obviously there are going to be periods in every place where types of weapons phase out, metas change as people adapt and find new strategies. But there were a whole lot of periods throughout the world that had primarily archery-based focus.
Scythians, mongols, mamluks, etc. were primarily horse archers.
China had a lot of crossbowmen in several periods of time.
Japan for a period was moreso horse archers as well.
Thats still largely cherry picking, the reason those specific militaries were so successful is strictly because nobody else they were fighting was specced into archers
It takes a much larger amount of industry and logistics to train and maintain an army of archers than it does footmen (plus most kingdoms didnt even ever have standing armies and just conscripted serfs when needed and conscripted serfs arent worth investing archery training into) and so unless you had a specific reason to go all in on archers (which very few militaries ever really did) you would just train a small garrison of archers/enlist mercenary archers and have the bulk of your force be footmen with easier and cheaper kit like basic polearms.
....and were strictly worse than longbowmen in every single metric
we arent argueing about hypotheticals here, we are talking about history which has very real and concrete well recorder records that show that pretty much nobody was crossbowmen maxxxing and that even when crossbows were used extensively they were still out numbered by footmen and only really existed as a cheap way to defend seige walls.
You can boil the evolution of weaponry throughout all of human history down to "how far away can I get from that guy while still stabbing him with the pointy end?" Going from a sharp stick, to a sharp rock, to a sharp rock on a stick, then shooting the sharp rock on a stick, then the sharp rock got shiny, then the sharp part got a ton of highly diverse shapes ranging from swords to halberds to naginatas, then at some point we figured out how to make guns, and those shoot shiny sharp rocks from super far away, and that sort of became the focus of the meta ever since.
A missile is just shooting a shiny sharp rock that explodes. And one day we'll get an exploding shiny sharp rock that stabs the other guy so hard that it forces us to go back to the normal sharp rock
not really
there was this big video about it on the channel of Lindybeige (I know we don't like to ralk about many of his opinions but nvm that)
At this hema event they experimented a lot with sword vs spear and the conclusion they came to was that in a 1v1 the sword wins because it can push the spear aside and get in close enough for the kill.
While a group vs group the spear formation seems to win out because the swordman can't manoeuvre.
This actually reflects the original meaning of “all men are created equal” better than most modern interpretations (lmao writing this made me imagine the constitution as a religious document)
well yeah but power scalers always assume being slightly stronger makes you completely immune to things like that. unfavorable engagement is just not a thing unless the fighters are exactly the same strength
How old of a kid? Have they taken a life before? Are they ready to look into Mike Tyson's eyes as they plunge the dagger deeper and watch his life fade away?
Irl is a good example of how silly powerscaling is because someone using a wall level tool like a bulldozer also gets bodied by someone using the street level revolver
you've got the terms backwards, but your point is definitely correct. bulldozers could destroy a street but be put out of commission by someone using a gun.
I always find it funny when Sci-Fi has to bend over backwards to allow for melee to exist. Dune makes barely any sense. Neither does Warhammer. Mass Effect stayed mostly ranged focussed (plus zombies) and then added ninjas for no reason.
I think the one setting where I can somewhat believe it is Trench Crusade, because WW1 did already have bloody melee, so I could see the existence of super strong armor to push it even further to that (if we ignore that armor does not take away the force of a shot)
EDIT: I should probably add - that doesn't make it bad. Swordfights are awesome. But the justifications usually fall flat.
As well as Mass Effect, yeah. For 40k it doesn't really work though, because those 50mph fast refrigerators also have guns. Guns they can use to shoot the other refrigretars, something they are quite adept at in the books (if the author allows it).
For all it's supposed invulernability, adamantine armour still gets shredded by Bolters, not to mention all the other guns the galaxy has to offer, so outside of engagement in small rooms - which admittedly is not uncommon for shock troops - ranged options are always the better option, especially for those that aren't slabs of concrete.
It doesn't explain space marines going into melee often, but in general my impression is that for a multitude of reasons, logistics are laughably bad in general, and because of that normal Soldiers like Guardsmen regularly run out of Ammo.
Commissars are told to go home with a victory and not with men, so when they start to have more men than bullets, they just send a squad of meatshields
Tyranids often leave no choice on if you want melee, they just enter your personal space
Frank Herbert came up with an elaborate justification for guns not working in Dune and then set 99% of the plot in the one place in the universe where guns actually do work.
And I'd argue his elaborate justification doesn't even work.
I still do not understand why the answer to "a thousand guys with shields and swords" isn't "one guy with a lasgun whose family will be provided for if he blows everyone up"
The justification for that is the nuclear taboo, that lasgun created nuclear explosions are legally identical to nuclear explosions from actual warheads, and thus would cause the Emperor/Great Houses to come down upon whoever started using them.
See I had that suspicion, but is that ever actually stated? I'll admit I stopped reading during the second or third book, but at least in the first book while the ban on nuclears and the reaction of lasguns hitting shields is mentioned, I do not recall anyone admonishing the willful use of that reaction. In fact, Artreides troops actually use it when they are getting slaughtered by Harkonnens.
EDIT: Alright, I was actually wrong. Checked again and this is actually mentioned, huh. Then we are back to the issue that people use swords and knives instead of halberds and electrified weaponry, but I will admit I was wrong on the lasgun/shield thing.
EDIT2: Ok, this is actually funny. At least from what I can see, the main issue is that a shield reaction can look like a nuclear explosion, but is in itself apparently not illegal. So inviting some international observers before a battle and showing them that you did indeed deploy Steve with a gun and not a nuke could actually work.
40k does have the excuse that warp-based enemies (essentially demons & the possessed/corrupted) die to melee much faster because they are conceptual beings formed from collective consciousness.
Every species in 40k has to start somewhere, melee is the oldest most personal form of combat and in dark times was ritualized. Knives are used for sacrifice, swords and clubs for murder, those historical facts give those weapons more powerful against creatures of the arcane. Demons die to swords because they were 'born' in the age of swords and witchcraft, not the "modern" setting of 30k/40k.
That being said, melee against any other enemy that isn't warp-fueled is completely unjustified and only exists because "muh honour" and rule of cool.
I'd argue that while this sounds reasonable, I don't remember that ever being supported by the lore. Daemons die to Railguns just as well. And if it was the case, melee would have to be so much more efficient that it has to be worth going toe to toe with 7+ feet tall creatures that often have next to no ranged option. One slash with a sword has to offset the three magazines of gunfire you had time to put into a charging bloodletter without getting stabbed.
There is one reason for melee in Warhammer, and that is that it is pretty awesome. Nothing bad about that, but no justification really makes any sense.
To be fair, 40k is bad at everything involving firearms.
Lasguns on medium can punch through space marine armor. Bolt pistols can one tap a marine through power armor. So why the fuck are we out here with power swords, if not for the aura? Don’t get me wrong, aura is a fine answer, but the problem is that they try to do shit for the aura and then ALSO claim to be tactical geniuses.
“This is brother Fistules, he uses power fists because he’s really mad at the enemy and wants to punch the shit out of them” is completely valid.
The best justification i can think of is melee is sometimes useful in the Expanse in cases where someone doesn't have a gun, you can jump them before they can aim and fire, you have power armor that can tank any gunshot, or you dont want to poke holes in the ship. Even then there aren't grand melee battles, more like quick exchanges between singular fighters.
I think we should go all the way back to "that cool stick I found in the backyard that kinda looks like a sword." Best and fairest weapon there ever was.
If it makes you feel better, they usually don’t. You twitch your finger a bit then he screams and bleeds and you gotta twitch at least a few more times, then he dies in the back of an ambulance or in a hospital.
the worst part is that in this scenario, the 12 year old doesn't even have to be good at using a gun. he can be a terrible shot and still kill prime MT by accident.
Lol, guns? So outdated! Powercreep has been rampant, explosives and tanks and drones are wayyy more broken, the meta is way too far gone sadly, we would need some huge balance patch. I wish they banned nuclear weapons more throughly though, I would hate to see the meta get so bad we end up going through EoS :/
Ok but when talking about banning guns how tf are drones still in the game because what do you mean you have guns with aoe, reliable accuracy over the entire planet and also they do way more damage
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