Does this offer an advantage compared to a sling or atlatl?
Probably not as they only really stuck around for a few centuries of use before being replaced by just basic slings, hand thrown darts, javelins and pilum Course, if you can actually hit someone with a big fucking dart compared to a sling bullet- its going to cause very dangerous stab wounds compared to just getting your shit smashed by a rock or lump of lead. Neither is going to be much fun but you might walk off a sling bullet a little easier than half a foot of arrow sticking in you.
>mom I want archers>we have archers at home
>>65494363>Grug no into bendy stick and string
>>65494363>>65494373These are supposed to be small, heavy darts, not arrows. >The dart would typically consist of a heavy metal point approximately 23 cm (9.1 in) long, attached to a shaft of wood, typically 30 cm (12 in) long, and fletched with feathers or similar materials to provide stability of flight.
>>65494390It's a JOKE you autist
>>65494322it does seem like an uncomfortable middle ground between a bow and a sling>be bow>doesn't require a massive amount of proficiency>can be used in tight formation>ammunition is time consuming and expensive to produce >sling>requires more practice to become proficient >users need space to prevent friendly fire incidents>ammunition can be found basically anywhere>that fucking thing>requires additional proficiency>requires specific ammo (although you can probably slug rocks like a regular sling)>troops cannot be in a tight formation while operating
>>65494437>ammunition can be found basically anywhereNTA, but slinger ammo was more than 'just rocks'. We know that they sometime sused lead shot, and we also know they shaped their stone ammo. Without this tehy cannot achieve teh ranges required to be effective on a battlefield like the Balearic slingers of Punic Wars fame.>yfw you will never be a Punic officer marrying a Balearic princess
>>65494437Was it the Heckler and Koch G11 of the bronze age?
>>65494445yeah, there's a lot of 'umm actually's you could throw at those generalizations. but if you can't get the right timber, you can't have bows. and if you don't have arrows, you can't can't fling random crap (yeah sticks and broom handles, but but that's an act of desperation)whereas if you have something to make cordage and some rocks. you can sling rocks all day.
>>65494457na, it's more like pinfire weapons. or one of those other 'oops all our guns are obsolete' inventions
>>65494437>uncomfortable middle ground between a bow and a slingBest I can tell it seems they were only used against Sulla's legions marching into Macedonia and the Roman's complaining it hurt quite a lot. Course, it didn't stop them conquering the place because Mithridates was being a bit of a cunt murdering heaps of Romans. So maybe its one of those ad-hoc weapons people picked up, figured out it would be good for light skirmish infantry and keep them out off revenge-fire from troops throwing things back at them.Sort of the pipe shotgun of its time!Its going to do something but hardly ideal
>mesoamerican weapons sperg bait thread
>>65494304
>>65494437>>requires specific ammo (although you can probably slug rocks like a regular sling)This has to be true. Even if not the same dart-sling but a regular type that they had on them. Ain't no way there was going to be slingers that ran out of darts and then charged into battle with just a sword or whatever.
>>65494322Sounds like some skilled dudes made it look so good once that people tried copying them for ages until they moved back to more convenient methods.
