A common conclusion when discussing fantasy creatures and modern warfare is that basically any of them would be worse than humans using modern technology. For example Dwarfs and Elves would probably fair worse at 20th century infantry combat than humans. Similar arguments are brought up for science fiction aliens.My question is thus; what sorts of differences from humans would be advantageous in technological warfare? Let's say a WW2 level of technology so we have a standard. How do you improve on mankind?
Make them run 40 mph
>>65224529How? What physical changes.
/tg/ you can wipe your own arse.
>>65224527Tieflings bring a flight speed and dark visionWood elves get dex for better AOE saves, can hide in light cover like fog or leaves abd get three dice on attacks with advantageWarforged has +1 armourDragonborn bring resistance to a damage type, much harder to burn or gas out and can sometimes flyAsimar bring their own healsPlasmids are plasmids
>>65224527Fantasy creatures are for rape
>>65224559>>65224542I'm asking what physical differences would realistically offer advantages. For example to the 40 mph run idea, I disagree. Making a human have longer legs and changing their respiratory/circulatory system to allow for much faster sprints probably would make an overall less fit for infantry combat being.
>>65224527>A common conclusion when discussing fantasy creatures and modern warfare is that basically any of them would be worse than humans using modern technologyThis is mostly cope from people who can't handle humans being outdone, or idiots drag-and-dropping other races into human tactics instead of trying to come up with their own.
>>65224586Just because you want to fuck an elf doesn't mean they're good at fighting
>>65224590>being with insane eyesight, unnatural endurance, extreme fine motor control, and can spend 20 years mastering techniques with zero physical or mental degradation from aging is bad because they're weak or somethingImagine if your NCOs didn't have blown out backs and knees, a brain damaged from age and alcohol, and so on. You run into meta-logistics like replacement races for elves being such that every one dying matters more then humans, but the same stories have them being adventurers and other dangerous professions so clearly they're breeding at an acceptable rate and no one actually thought that hard about the Empire's tax policies
>>65224596A lot of that damage isn't from age, but from the rough treatment that the armed forces put you through. If the biology of the species in question is remotely comparable to humans, they will suffer similar physical wear and tear when they have to do strenuous physical activity while lugging around a third of their body weight in random shit for hours at a time over a period of years.
>>65224625Young men handle that stress substantially better then middle aged men, but you can't teach an 18 year old to do an NCO's job before they end up an middle aged man, and hell even the relatively smarter officers coming in at 22 are still not allowed any real responsibility for a long while.
>>65224633Even soldiers who only serve for 4-8 years straight out of high school routinely suffer life long disability as a result.Being eternally 18 biologically might delay the accumulation of physical damage somewhat compared to a human who ages naturally, but that damage will still happen, and the state will be stuck with the consequences of that damage (i.e. lowered economic output and disability payments) for far longer than a regular human.
>>65224643Let's agree to disagree about physical damage, but mental aging 100% goes to the elves and given that we do have a healthy crop of NCOs who're able to perform in the field, much less for any role where they're not ruck marching regularly, any of them not getting old would be a significant advantage even before we talk about actual physical advantages in eyesight/perception and fine motor control which both of which matter heavily for modern combat for infantry, much less maintenance and other technical roles.
>>65224564The physical differences and their advantages are documented in the player's handbook in the "race" chapter. What more do you want?
>>65224590>elves were the first race to be able to be both fighter and wizard simultaneously>elves have a higher minimum CON than humans in 1e and 2e (and 2e has a higher requirement than 1e)>gain a to-hit bonus when using certain weapons>durr but -1 CON means they're worthless at fightingAre you retarded? You were already kind of stupid to immediately assume D&D low-CON elves when you could also be talking about Tolkeinian ubermensch elves, but are you completely retarded?
This thread did not improve. /tg/, wipe your own arse.
>>65224527>For example Dwarfs and Elves would probably fair worse at 20th century infantry combat than humans.There is no reason to assume that. Dwarves are commonly depicted as being able to effortlessly carry great loads for long distances without fatigue, so being able to wear full IOTV suite with limb protection and loaded ruck and still move normally would certainly have some advantage. Elves have historically been depicted as extremely agile and mobile, like I recall in LOTR Legolas was able to walk on top of snow even the hobbits sank into, so that would provide some advantage for infiltration and sabotage. Like one of the ways SOF fucked with Taliban in early GWOT was by attacking them from over tops of mountains that locals considered impassable and therefore had no defences facing; presumably all elven infantry would be able to casually perform similar feats. They're also old as shit, Tolkien and fantasy derived from his work depicted them as apathetic and disengaged from worldly politics; which is necessary because if they were Machiavellian then there would be no fighting them, they could plan and orchestrate your defeat before you're even born. And even in a strictly infantry context, you'd still have regular riflemen who have been shooting guns since they were first invented and have personal round counts higher than some militarys; and unlike humans with high round counts and extensive combat experience, none of them have busted knees or fused disks, nor will they for centuries after your death.
>>65224527Not sure how human has the confidence to survive in fantasiindustrial warfare.
>>65224527This is only the case in obvious human rah-rah power fantasies, or cope posts by people who can’t stand the notion that something else might be intrinsically better than them at something.
>>65224527>How do you improve on mankind?
>>65224527This isn't /tg/, but in the spirit of the discussion I'll give you a list of GURPS traits that would be incredibly useful for a non-human species to have in a modern warfare enviorment.Doesn't Sleep/Less Sleep: Self explanatory, allows more hours of operation.Doesn't Eat/Reduced Consumption: Allows you to operate with reduced supply.Rapid/Very Rapid Healing: Allows soldiers to more rapidly and consistently recover from crippling and serious injuries.Enhanced Time Sense: Allows for faster reaction times in a firefight or ambush scenario.Chameleon/Invisibility: Allows soldiers to operate in various enviroments without the need for specifically tailored uniforms.Dark Vision/Night Vision/Infravision/Hyperspectral: Built in NVGs/ThermalsUnliving/Homogenous/No Vitals/No Brain: All of these make you significantly more resistant to bullets by virtue of not really needing your meat to not have holes in it to function. Limited to more exotic races like undead or golems.Protected Sense (Vision/Hearing): Avoids flashbangs and explosions causing problems.Also included: Screenshot of a race specifically designed for modern/future combat, taking advantage of high base dexterity and catlike reflexes.
>a common conclusion no, it isn't. For example in some of the shadowrun games elves have a higher natural talent with firearms than humans. in my experience most game developers attempt to balance the races.
>>65224527The smaller the better, as long as they still have some way to meaningfully interact with the environment. Smaller = less parasitical mass, smaller crew space, more armor, better G-force resistance, smaller targets, better fuel economy. Their tanks, planes and ships will be paragons of effectiveness. The ideal combat race is a floating brain with telekinesis.
>>65224531big heart, big lung, strong muscle
>>65224527Yeah? It's also a common conclusion that elves have druid magic. You wanna fight the guy that has the fucking land and everything that crawls on it on his side? You try attacking him when every bird, bug, and other naimal is feeding him Intel, when every tree, bush and other plant is suddenly blocking your way and your shots.
>>65224527> WW2Angels.Hear me out.WW2 had the beginning of the AirLand battle concept, where the side with the air and armor superiority dominated the battlefield.What upset this balance in the 21st century? Drones.So if you have infantry with wings any time before Ukraine, 2021, you have:> A chance to upgrade any dumb munition to a PGM> If you have radios, you have a radio operator who can multiply your sqn's coverage in a whim, either in transmit, ranging, or jamming> Death from above, duh, way more precise than any plane before the advent of spammable PGMs> ISTAR, double points if you have NVGs.Disadvantages: Unlike a drone, a realistic angel would have a wingspan of around 4 m, and guaranteed magic metabolism (it's physically impossible for a biological creature with a similar mass than a human to consume and process calories fast enough to maintain powered flight.) So the angel would burn through MREs like hell, and be a HVT hunted by infantry depending on their maneuverability,
humans didnt come were they are because of intelligence, thumbs or strength.we got here because of our superior will.Many other hominids were exterminated because of their lesser wills
>>65226269Nah, academic consensus these days is leaning towards a complete genetic fluke. It appears based on the complete lack of neanderthal Y chromosome in modern humans that pairings between neanderthal men and ancient human women would not have produced fertile offspring, while the opposite would have. So they could have had all the superior will in the world, but it was all borrowed time because they were cucked by a random genetic diceroll and so their kids with us were all mules whereas when we fucked their women it produced lasting bloodlines.
Do you think an army of elves would be made better or worse in combat capability by everyone's desire to fuck them?
I think it comes down to fantasy races being exaggerated aspects of humans. This makes specific races better than humans only in specific environments/situations. Humans get the advantage of being the "jack of all trades" race which works out better in modern warfare. Elves might be the best snipers in the world, but they have fuck all mechanized units. dwarves might have the best mechanized units but have relatively shit infantry, etc. etc.
>>65229286>elves>shit mechanized infantry[Laughs in wave serpent]
>>65229320space elves from the future dont count as "modern warfare"
>>65224564ur dum
>>65229944They've been using that tank/ifv for longer than our species has existed.
>>65224542Lmao
>>65229286>Humans get the advantage of being the "jack of all trades" race which works out better in modern warfare.Honestly I think that while it isn't a disadvantage, it doesn't work much to their advantage at all. The biggest, baddest motherfucker on the planet isn't going to be able to tank shots from a handgun much less anything crew served or vehicle based. Modern technology amplifies man's, and in this scenario everyone else's, warfighting capabilities to the point that the meatbag operating the equipment, while important, isn't really going to significantly change how well that equipment works. The prime deciding factors far before how well the infantry does in what situations would probably be a matter of numbers, industry, and what kind of crazy machines the tree huggers and short kings under the mountain can pump out. Could be a cool videogame, maybe add some goblins or orcs in there and oh wait that's warhammer isn't it.
A big disadvantage of long lived species would be that leadership wouldn't be growing up as new technology develops, generals would be the same people from Napoleon to Vietnam. Imagine how much of a bitch refocusing to RADAR would be when you're still trying to wrap your head around trains and how to use them.
>>65224527Death to Elfrael
>>65224527Elves would 100% be superior at war to humans, quality beats quantity
>>65224529the problem with running fast is that it drains your energy fast.Thats why humans can outlast pretty much anything out there only by powerwalking them (or we are supposed to).
>>65229970I didnt elaborate as much as I could have and still cant completely now, but more examples would be like:Elves have long lives and may be stronger than humans, but reproduce very slowly, so they cant afford causalities or replace their loses the way other races can. Plus their culture probably would have alot of hang ups about the mass industry you need to support modern warfare. try mass producing a renewable ecofriendly tank you knife eared tree fuckers! Dwarves, Im not sure how fast dwarves reproduce in any canon, but probably closer to human rates. They probably be great at defensive warfare, but fucked at offensive warfare. Great tanks, artillery, bunkers, and massive industry etc. but their infantry would suck on foot compared to pretty much everyone else. Orcs/Goblins would basically be like Africans turned up to 11. Reproduce fast, very aggressive, infantry that can move quickly on foot, but fuck all industry and stupid compared to the other races just enough of a grasp on modern weapons to make them dangerous, but not enough to produce any.Humans kinda fall into the middle of those. Strong numbers, relatively quick reproduction/replacement of casualties, decently intelligent, decently athletic, competitive tech and industry and no cultural hang ups about using those advantages.
>>65230150That is not energy, but energy-waste and temperature-control related.
>>65230150In fact, humans moving are quite energy inefficient.
>>65231077You can't have river, rail and roads everywhere.
>>65231071>so they cant afford causalities or replace their loses the way other races can.The thing is, that just makes them the same as any other western nation. Nobody in NATO can afford to take heavy casualties, but we're still the masters of warfare because we make sure we don't suffer them.
I wonder how much scaling up of brain power you could do before becoming less effective in combat.Probably a lot more in 21st century warfare compared to 20th, though.
>>65231071>relatively quick reproduction/replacementDear sir, are you on drugs? Let's assume in an extremely degenerate environment, humans are ready to fight at 13 years old and ready for the foundries to make weaponry at 5. WW1 would be over before you've replaced your workers with literal toddlers, and WW2 has time for exactly one generation of neo-foundty toddlers to grow into neo-foundry preteens, and you're STILL not getting any more Volksturm than you started out with.Human reproduction is entirely geared towards preservation of life, because any long-term and extremely destructive conflict would result in extreme and rapid depopulation.The post-WW2 population boom only existed because of the end of the conflict and the subsequent relief and economy booms as nations rebuilt. If the war were to simply continue indefinitely, you're going to be dealing with actual population collapse, not what idiots call population collapse right now.
>>65224643>Being eternally 18 biologically might delay the accumulation of physical damage somewhat compared to a human who ages naturally, but that damage will still happen, and the state will be stuck with the consequences of that damage (i.e. lowered economic output and disability payments) for far longer than a regular human.This is assuming that Elves heal the same, and that they take lifelong injury as (not) seriously as the military and humans today.
>>65231471It's also assuming you can even actually damage elves the same way. Tolkien's incredible chad-elves don't seem to actually break down from casual wear and tear as an aspect of being "forever young".Hell, the only one we've seen with a wound (if we go by the movies at any rate), is Thranduil in the Hobbit movies, and that was literal dragonfire that did that.
>>65224527Any isekai bullshit magic system that has an effect on combat would be quickly studied by humans, formalized into scientific rules and minmaxed. Marines would enter the isekai battlefield at level 999 with their weapons crafted/grinded to their absolute limit.
>>65231458Are you retarded? He said relative to elves and dwarves. Your own quotation has "relatively". Can you actually not read?
>>65231539Are you? He demonstrated the point that human's breeding and development rate is slow enough that you're not going to grow any additional soldiers during the time period of any modern conflict. Now, that doesn't address the social concerns for elves taking causalities with a lower replacement rate, but acting as though humans would be able to drown elves in flesh in a modern war is as retarded as you.
>>65231458youre thinking too humanIt's all relative. A new human soldier can be born, raised, and trained to fight in 16-20 years. Elves that live for centuries would not be able to conceive of the idea of sending off an 18 year old elf to fight, or that soldiers can be trained and deployed as rapidly as humans do. In a 4 year war, maybe it wouldnt matter, but in a centuries long struggle for dominance of the planet, it would begin matter alot. Population booms during peace time would also probably be a foreign concept to elves, so thats an advantage humans would have in rebuilding and expanding their numbers in between wars.
>>65224527>A common conclusion when discussing fantasy creatures and modern warfare is that basically any of them would be worse than humans using modern technology. For example Dwarfs and Elves would probably fair worse at 20th century infantry combat than humans. Similar arguments are brought up for science fiction aliens.According to whom? That sounds retarded.
>>65224590Tolkien's elves are literally humans except better in every way.
>>65224625>If the biology of the species in question is remotely comparable to humans, they will suffer similar physical wear and tear when they have to do strenuous physical activity while lugging around a third of their body weight in random shit for hours at a time over a period of years.If their biology was that close to humans, they wouldn't life hundreds of years in the first place.
>>65231572I feel the need to point out that Tolkien elves might actually just plain be magic, and thus all this conversation about biology is completely pointless.No one's brought up that in a fantasy setting, magic overrules biology, unless that race doesn't have magic (most depictions of humans).
>>65231554Your position would only make sense if a nation of elves of similar number popped into existence suddenly, the difference in growth rates would mean after a short period then yes they'd be drowned in flesh.A 1% growth rate over a century is 2.7 times the population, a 2% is 7.2 times the population.
>>65231506Unless it's from one of the many settings that haveit as a rule that humans are biologically incapable of using magic. Xenonauts being an example I'm sure most of this board would be familiar with.
>>65231606Elves would actually likely have superior birth rates to humans. After all, if an elf has 3 children in a thousand years, that's still doing better than humans who have a below-replacement fertility rate. Humans don't even reproduce fast enough to sustain ourselves in peacetime.
>>65231624Then loopholes would be found. Do the alien fauna, mushrooms, insects, rodents etc. count as magical beings? They'll quickly be manufactured into some sort of exotic explosives or used as sources of magic bullshit powder. The biggest, baddest evil in town would die to the magical world equivalent of a roadside IED thrown together by towelheads.
>>65231628Yeah there isn't really a biological reason I am aware of that elves would HAVE to have lower birthrates. Contrary to what another anon said earlier, longer lifespans really wouldn't have a huge biological cost. I can imagine cultural/economic reasons for it, but biologically a roughly human sized and shaped being whose cells can replicate for longer on average or has some sort of repair mechanism we don't should reproduce on the same timescale. Actually I had a thought; As far as I can tell all mammals have a limited ovarian reserve. This means females have a limited fertile period. If elves also have an ovarian reserve it could mean that their fertile period is extremely short relative to their lifespan, and this could have societal knock-on effects because for example a large portion of land would be used by non-fertile populations. If this was not the case however and they had an infinite or at least similar in proportion of lifespan to a human fertile period then what you said would sort of hold, even if each female rarely had a child their death rate would be relatively low and death rate is a major factor in growth rate.That said your last sentence is retarded, humans throughout almost all of history have reproduced fast enough to sustain themselves. You're applying recent societal effects as if they're biological imperatives.
>>65231669>humans throughout almost all of history have reproduced fast enough to sustain themselvesWhich is irrelevant to modern humans and thus modern warfare
>>65231693The OP stated WW2 when TFRs were generally above replacement in the west, so you are again wrong and also kind of gay and retarded
if we are talking WWIIish tech level I'd also assume WWII level states and alliances I don't think you'd have purely mono racial divisions/regiments/battalions/brigadesif at all possible you'd try to integrate the various races that live in your nation or that make up your alliance structure to benefit from their particular strengthslike dwarf engineers or gun crews that can keep on going all day long without tiring but don't necessarily have to be quick on their feetelf snipers, spotters, scouts and even nco's where their better eyesight and long years of experience can get the best resultsgoblins and other fast breeders for the assault troops, they might not even be as good at it as us but damn are there a lot of them halfling/gnome pilots and tank crews, the machine is already doing all the work, you just make it less burdened by it's crew a nations army would still be primarily it's dominant race. but making use of the other races comparative advantages just makes senseyour dwarven infantry division would have elf scouts, halfling armored cars, gnomes in the motor pool, a human support staff and logistics and maybe even a hobgoblin or orc assault section but that division would also get deployed where it's dwarven core would be most usefulholding a section where you expect there to be a counter attack, getting stuck into urban fighting or anchoring the line on a mountain rangeit's (wood) elven counter part holding twice the frontage a human division could hold in a wood area a centaur cavalry division held in reserve along side a gnome armored division human formation would probably be the binder that keeps it all together as jacks of all trades
