>Medieval weapons made with modern materials How much better

>>45078533
>>How much better would they be?
What criteria are you going by?
>20%?
What the fuck does that number even represent?

>>45078795
>What criteria are you going by?

Performance?

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>>45078533
This is just my uneducated opinion, but I think in pure effectiveness the difference would be minimal. Where we'd see the biggest difference is probably durability (things like stainless steel) as well as ability to mass produce (meaning that instead of only the knights, pretty much every soldier would have full plate, which would mean handbows and swords would be abandoned in favor of crossbows and maces or axes).

>>45078795
It seems to me that OP is going by the characteristic of "I'm a fucking moron who doesn't understand that weapons, or indeed most devices more complex than an unshaped rock, can't actually be properly defined by a single stat line"

>>45078533
Better how?
Stronger?
Lighter?
More flexible?
More durable?
Cheaper?

"Better" is a hard thing to figure, since bronze is better at surviving serious abuse than iron, but iron is better at holding an edge.

If I had give an answer, it would probably be best to figure on there being some swords that are sharper (Ceramic), some that are more durable (Carbon Fiber), and of course cheaper and lighter (Plastic).

That said, I can't give a hard percentage because of the differences in workmanship, but I might say anywhere between -10% to +50% depending on how you optimize your weapon.

>>45078533
Making them of modern materials wouldn't make them sharper or more killy or anything like that.

At best they'd probably be slightly more durable but that's about all. Most things in the 'medieval' period were actually made of steel anyways, so it's not like the amount of improvement that could be made to say... bronze age weapons.

"Futuristic" materials like vibro-blades, power fields, mono-molecular w/e, nanomachines might make them slightly more killy, but even then it's doubtful, because that shit DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST.

>>45078533
If you mean literally than they are more durable.
If you mean with gadgets and gimmicks that geniuses today can make then we'll yeah of course it will be better.

>>45078533
They would function the same as always, they would just be more durable or corrosion thanks to modern steel alloys.

>>45078899
>slightly more durable
actually modern day steel is almost insanely more durable than medieval era steel
this includes even the fabled damascus steel

>>45078826
>Where we'd see the biggest difference is probably durability (things like stainless steel)
Stainless steel is brittle as fuck and not suitable for weapons or armor.

>>45078836
Fucking This.

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>Full-Plate
>Made with oxidized carbon nano-fiber ceramic alloys

>>45078826
>meaning that instead of only the knights, pretty much every soldier would have full plate
Like when they started fielding armies of professional soldiers? Around 1400 or so?

Even the Japanese had cheap footsoldier armor, so that should tell you something.

>>45079026
>Japanese had cheap footsoldier armor

You mean wood with carpet glued on it?

>>45078533
Spring Steel is pretty much the definitive perfect blade material. There's really nowhere to go from here.

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>>45079051
Munitions plate, fuckwit.

>>45079026
And what that should tell you is that the idea that Japan had little to no metal and that what they did have was complete, unfixable shit is a meme.
Japan had plenty of metal, and the "problems" with it required an extra step between mining and turning it into a functional item. Once a smith got his hands on an iron or steel bar, it had already had the impurities removed and was no different than a bit of iron or steel from anywhere else on Earth. The starting point was worse than the starting points of many other metalworking societies, but the end products were not (From a metallurgical point of view).
Also, they imported metal from Korea and China anyway, so even if their domestic iron was magically worse, they were using mainland iron anyway.

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>>45078533
Where did you find this picture?

we could make weapons with really bright colors so they are more visible in an emergency

>>45079021
Great, now I've got a hardware halfie

>>45078533

You need to rephrase your question, OP
I can tell you that metallurgy has gotten better by leaps and bounds and people can tailor alloys for a wide variety of applications. Perfection and effectiveness is going to be kind of subjective as well.
A bit of perspective, the Winchester Model 1893 shotgun was revised to the 1897 with reinforcement to the receiver in order to deal with new fangled smokeless powder. The 1893 model receiver has returned these days thanks to better metallurgy in the form of a hybrid 93/97, though with a very slightly thicker receiver.

At the end of the day the question of material quality might form a fair part of the bottom line, because you can always get crap quality materials. The potential of getting a superior quality blade is there, however. It's probably not going to be cutting through tanks any time soon though.

>>45078533
take a look at arrows and bolts, they're really the only thing still in use for killing things on a regular basis.

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Is modern armor more resistant against stuff like swords and arrows?

>>45079094
>carrying two swords in the Edo period
>a footsoldier

choose one and only one. Weren't Samurais the only ones allowed to carry two swords?

>>45079422
Not really.
Kevlar doesn't do well against knives unless it has special inserts, which would logically mean swords could also beat it.
Arrows might also cut right into it, depending on the arrowhead.

>>45079422
Poison arrows and flame arrows.
We aren't allowed to make bullets like that.
And yeah swords work still, just treat anyone wearing body armour as if they were wearing plate mail. Aim for the weak points.

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>>45079398
>It's probably not going to be cutting through tanks any time soon though.

We can still dream.

>>45079522
Kevlar is like plate armor if plate armor was made of cloth. It's good at stopping bullets, not blades.

>>45079422
Kevlar is absolute shit against cutting mediums and modern plates cover far too little for far too much weight. Arrows would be stopped by ballistic plates, but kevlar against a bodkin tip from a 175lbs bow... Let's say I have my doubts it would work effectively.
IIIa ballistic helmets are effective against pistol caliber rounds up to .44mag, so I'd guess they could stop a sword from slicing your head open. Once or twice, then they would be completely trashed.

The main problem with modern armor is the coverage: since ballistic plates commonly available are far too heavy to have a fully plated body, most of the operator is covered in kevlar, that while heavy and rigid as a fabric is still flexible and light enough to offer a moderate degree of protection. Plus, modern helmets are meant to protect from falling shrapnel rather than from gunshots.

Basically, if I were an operator with a modern gun going into combat with medievally-armed foes, I would still be dressed in medieval plate, only made out of titanium if it was an option. Appropriately painted in a matte camouflage scheme in order to use my environment to my advantage.

>>45079422
A stab vest is resistant to stabbing and slashing, but aren't as good against bullets as other modern armor. Some suits can be worn underneath or inside of better armor, but they still only protect the torso, which means a sword to the arm would fuck someone up good.

>>45079613
derped out, sorry, it's 3am and I was thinking of flak jackets with rigid inserts rather than something from the 21st century.
Most of the operator is covered in regular cloth. Nowadays, armor is limited to a maybe-kevlar plate carrier with ballistic plates and an appropriate helmet.

>>45079422
Absolutely not. A sharp sword would go through everything except the ceramic plating in modern combat armor, which is relatively easy to go around in melee.
Against arrows it would fare somewhat better if only because not hitting the plates is difficult at range, where everyone aims for center mass.
Oh, and nothing would protect against maces.

>>45079026
Plate armor became extremely common in the early modern period (the 16th century) and by the 17th century reached it's peak, with plate armored pikemen being the core of contentnal armies.

Always makes me laugh about people that think that plate armor was made obsolete by the very first guns.

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>mfw someone was willing to believe that the big titted chick in gate defeating a bunch of not romans was realistically possible because of magic modern metallurgy going into the bayonet
>mfw his pal claimed that it may have been thanks to martial arts

I practice martial arts and I don't even

>>45079676
Man, modern bayonets get bent out of shape just stabbing into completely unarmored targets. Using one against people wearing metal armor of any sort should render it useless after the first guy, even if it gets through to his squishy bits.

Watch the ulfberht documentary on netflix. It does a good job explaining how much materials effect the blade. Basically it comes down to how much carbon you can but in it without making it lumpy.

>>45079422
Problem is that any fuckwit that tries to get close enough to stab them with a sword will have 12 rifle bullets neatly inserted into their torso.

>>45079422
Kind of. Good nylon plate carriers are very diffcult to drive a blade though and the vast majority of historical arrows could not defeat them past point blank range.

Kevlar isn't optimized to stop cutting, but it's very strong and slashing though 28 ply Kevlar and resin would be a real challenge.

Modern 'stab vest' use kevlar with a layer of very fine chain or wire mesh. It's far lighter and more flexible then any pre-modern armor, and provides excellent protection. Some early modern armor harness would provide better protection, but that's just because they accepted quite high weight to do so.

>>45079756
The heaviest plate harnesses that were actually used in combat weigh less than the total weight of the gear that modern soldiers tromp around with. And they have a greater range of movement in their joints than the humans wearing them. And the weight is distributed better than modern suits due to having the entire body available (Rather than just the shoulders and torso).
Basically, I'd rather wear a plate harness than a suit of IIIa armor, given that they are equally useful in the upcoming situation. Of course, they'll never actually be equally useful, but still.

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>>45079724
What terrible country are you in that your bayonets bend? I've seen grunts break an M9 before, but it's made to be used by Neanderthals to smash open ammo cans and stubborn juice boxes.

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I guess it also depends on what you want them for.

Ceremony? We can certainly make really cool laser cut/engraved shit that puts even the most dedicated medieval artisan to shame.

Killin' 'umies: I haven't researched what modern military knives are made out of, but I'd guess the interlaced carbon lattices of modern metallurgy are more evenly distributed than in older alloying techniques and... tl;dr 'shit's stronger, harder, holds it's edge longer, stabs gooder'.

Hunting Monsters: So let's contrive some imaginary sci-fi threat that for whatever reason gets more efficiently rekt by blades than by guns. Maybe they're like Starship Troopers bugs or Dead Space necronomicomorphenomicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiositarians or whatever and after careful consideration the brightest and most practical minds of our age decide that the sensible and reasonable thing to do is to have XBOXHUEG powered armored dude(ette)s choppin' off xenomorphic appendages like it's Karmic Punishment Tuesday in a hentai tentacle-monster's private Hell administered by Loli-LuciferSama. Or maybe they're drones with choppy bits and inexplicably fleshed out butts I don't care; whatever your imagination wants to sexualize, I don't judge. (except I am. silently. Like a Briton watching someone drink Iced Tea And Use Too Many Capital Letters In Their Run-On Sentences That End In Prepositional Phrases.)

In that edge-case our advances in metallurgy would become readily apparent. Decades of Oil&Gas industrial application engineering have given us much insight into materials that can sustain their shape or edge under super high impact (for your Axe-like, Mace-like, or Hammery bitz), possess superior torsional strength and lattice hardness (for your more 'slicy and dicey' toys), and can maintain their properties under super high temperatures (because of course you have rocket-boosted flaming axes, why wouldn't you?)

I'm sorry, what were we talking about? I got distracted by... things.

>>45079613
There's a lot you can do with plastic technology these days. Lexan riot shields are vastly superior to anything made out of whicker or plywood in terms of weight and durability.

>>45079856

They are made for different threats. A stab vest is made to protect you from a knife thrust at close quarters, while early modern plate harness was made to protect from pikes, halbraids, gunshots and longswords.

>>45079878
The kind where you've got 250lbs of man, gear, and gun behind the bayonet that's moving at charging speed into some schmuck's chest.
With those kinds of forces in play, it makes much more sense for the blade to be designed to give out before the mounting (Which is part of a gun that you probably still need to be able to use) does.

>>45079975
The blade on an M9 won't bend when mounted on a rifle. The socket might, but what the fuck are you doing with a bayonet mounted anyway?

>>45080241
What the fuck are you doing with a bayonet not mounted?
The entire point of a bayonet is to turn your rifle into a melee weapon.

>>45080438

Indeed! Why, without a bayonet how will we hold off a cavalry charge by the Prussians?

A bayonet is mountable on a rifle, but it's primary use now, today, is to be used as a utility knife, wirecutter and paperweight.

>>45079914
Quality post

>>45078533
Undefinable but certainly better. Access to lighter, harder, more flexible, improved alloys and forging techniques will make better weapons.

The craftsmanship in a weapon matters too. A katana made by a master craftsman will be better than any mass production POS that murica could make.

>>45078533

In the combat end of things? Marginally more effective. Modern survival tools and weapons are still using well-known ancient principles(though they don't have to play the time-old metagame of predicting what melee weapons the enemy is using, and one-upping that).

On the utility end of the spectrum, we've got a lot better materials that allow us to make weapons that are collapsible, concealable, and durable enough to do REAL work with, meaning that digging trenches and latrines and otherwise doing adventurer shit is leaps and bounds more convenient since you've got miraculously durable and light tools that have coatings that make maintenance a non-issue.


I suppose that if we don't have to deal with guns........medieval soldiers would probably massively appreciate collapsible trench tools that could operate as swords, knives, and picks, and would basically adopt them en masse, if you came up with a system to attach them to a pole(possibly also collapsible) to turn them into full-on reconfigurable polearms that could act as billhooks, halberds, and spears on the fly.

If cost of manufacture isn't an option, it would be the kind of legendary tool you'd give conscripts.

>>45078533
Every design's value is relative to the people using it and the environment it's used in. In a world with modern technology, you could probably make a sword that was lighter or stronger or held an edge better, but that sword would not be more useful than its medieval ancestors because it would no longer be a tool solving a particular problem in a particular time and place.

>>45079436
Depends on the period. The Japanese did get their hands on guns before wearing a daisho was banned for non-samurai. And I don't even know if wearing to swords of the same length even counts as a daisho; that's weird.

>>45078808
>Performance?
What?

>Our study shows that modern forged medieval weapons make the target 20% deader.

>>45082291
A daisho is any combination of two swords. Usually it's two swords of different length and purpose, and usually one of them is a tachi, katana or other sword of similar length.

>>45078998
>Stainless is brittle as fuck
Some grades can be, same as how various regular steels can be useless for having any heat treating worth speaking of. Some alloys like say 440c are amazing-it's a high carbon tool steel with amazing stainless properties, can be hardened to a higher rockwell hardness than carbon steels that can be hand forged. 1050 carbon steel has a yield strength of 580MPa. 440c tops out at 1900 MPa yield strength-slightly more than three times the strength. Saying all stainless steels are brittle is outdated, incorrect and a hallmark of someone unfamiliar with alloys or unwilling to attain any knowledge on newer metals and metalworking.

>>45082405
>>Our study shows that modern forged medieval weapons make the target 20% deader.
Well, yeah, you don't want to go and try to kill a guy and have it turn out he's only 10% dead.
Half dead is still half alive.

>>45078533
Alright, actually a kind of complicated question.

First thing first, modern materials are way, way better. That shit about katanas being folded whatever many times was so all the slag, and there's a lot of slag in katana metal, would be distributed evenly through the sword, instead of one easy break weak spot. Modern steels? No slag.

However! We're past the point of breaking in combat, but the blade isn't going to be much sharper. Modern materials will HOLD an edge better, so, you won't need to resharpen them or bend them back into shape as much, and will be less likely to be damaged.

It also might be worth noting that though the materials we're using are more durable, not many people actually bother to remember all the different tricks to making combat swords. Again, in japan, smiths are still fucking arguing over how many pins a hilt should have. Recently they've been using 2 or more, but some masterworks from the feudal period only used one.

The main traits you need in a sword is tensile/compressive strength (ability to resist breaking), elasticity (ability to return to original shape-very important for absorbing shock), and hardness (ability to hold an edge and cut into objects). Modern alloys are SO much better in all of these, partially due to the new alloys, but also partially due to our ability to consistently create these alloys. Metal composition is a precise science, and if you're forge is fueled by wood and has a high variance temperature and whatever other variables, you're not going to be sure if your piece is good until it breaks.

In gameplay terms, I don't know. I'd give a solid nonmagical damage bonus, maybe by using stats for an item of a higher size category, and probably a bonus to sundering due to the increased hardness.

>>45082426
But it literally means big-little

>>45082528
What you should go by is the the weapons >strength and flexibility (how much can punishment can it take before breaking)
>material quality and composition (steel purity and all that shit)
>forging techniques (nanomolecular tubes)

Amazingly a lot of people back then were created high-quality and steel even though they had no idea what they are doing.

>>45082595
Because the swords are different sizes.
The meaning has changed from any long sword and small sword worn together to a tanto with anything longer than that to any two swords that have matching furniture and are worn together.
Under the modern use of the word, a european dagger and a rapier would qualify as a daisho as long as they have matching handles.

>>45079055
Imagination. Exercise it.

>>45082535
I don't think the difference is enough to give a stats bonus.

>>45082604
They knew what they were doing, they just didn't have reliable means of producing it.

>>45082535
Honestly, at that point it sounds more like a mass-produced masterwork quality steel weapon with an extra point or two of hardness and hp.

>>45080529
You do know there have been bayonet charges as recently as 2011, right?

>>45078985
The crucible method reliably yields modern-quality springsteel two or three pounds at a time, using clay, raw ore, sand, and charcoal.
And not shitty Chinese modern steel, it passes QA inspection at German foundries.

>>45081349
No.

No mention of shark suits? I am disappoint.

Materials engineer here

I want to fucking kill myself after reading 99% of the posts in this thread.

>>45082960
I mean scientifically.

They had no idea what makes the steel so good. All they know is that they can do it.

>>45084011
Just like ancient Egyptians didn't know advanced maths, right?

>>45084011
Well they know what mechanical properties the steel has, knowing its molecular properties doesn't have much of an impact on weaponsmithing.

>>45083555
>Bayonets were used in close combat once in 2011

There's millions of soldiers. One funny anticdote about Brits doesn't change the fact that no, we don't fight with fixed bayonets anymore.

The biggest advantage we have in the modern era is mass production.

Sure we could make a sword to more exacting specifications, a little bit sharper, slightly more durable/bendy 14% lighter, etc. But when it comes to melee weapons the person holding the weapon is 90% of the effectiveness. A trained fighter with a stick will beat a novice with the world's best sword 100% of the time.

Now arming an army, that we could do. We could with in a day with a factory and a team of journeymen what a smithy full of master blacksmiths would do in a year.

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>>45078899
Vibro blades exist, they're just not quite what we wanted.

Also mono-molecular edges exist. They are again, really disappointing.

>>45083838
You mean mass produced chainmail?

>>45084011
When you're hacking your paws away at your computer do you really know exactly what you're doing? Like precisely how your keyboard sends signals to your box that sends signals both to 4chan and your monitor, how those things interperet those signals, and then how they use them? Probably not, yet your posting continues, and you could even be pretty good at it.

If you in fact do have a Masters in computer science, and you answered yes, can you say the same about what, exactly and precisely, in scientific terms, you are doing when you cook and eat an egg or beat off? Probably not, but I bet you're a master of at least the second one.

>>45083667
No it doesn't. Before the modern period people couldn't reliably produce decent steel and sure as fuck couldn't produce manganese containing alloys, much less tungsten alloys that make much better blades.

>>45084432
Look, can we just agree that the guy who answered 'Performance?' is an idiot and move on?

>>45084309
You should post the material that monomolecular blades are mad of.
It's obsidian. We've likely had monomolecular blades before, but just didn't know it

>>45079746
Interestingly enough Vikings were transporting the metal for those all the way from Persia. I guess that's how metallurgy worked back then. You found a working combination and then tried to replicate the process.

>>45082884
I agree, in real world terms.

In a game, I'd exaggerate the differences though.

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>>45079266
Completely unrelated, but I've always fancied Judith paintings.

Neat to see such a regal one.

I'm mostly familiar with the one by Artemesia followed by Caravaggio.

>>45079266
Those gloves look cool as hell.

>>45083847
Hah ha, this thread wasn't a thread at all, but MURDER.

>>45079724
To be fair, modern bayonets are not specifically intended for stabbing. they're for utility.

>>45079613
>only made out of titanium if it was an option.

I for one am willing to bankrupt an entire nation to see that suit happen (because that's what it'll cost to make it)

>>45084432
Actually i do.

Considering that the people of 1200AD managed to begin construction of a cathedral that was not finished by 1600 or so, and that modern buildings need refurbishment every ten years, and that the Aztecs had developed a technology to place stones onto unprepared mountain sides and have them fit without mortar, a technology we knowbnothing about/didn't manage to copy to this date and that there are fucking pyramids we have no clue how they were build...
I don't think that a modern medival weapon would be THAT much better.

>>45083847
Describe your pain.

>>45085211
Sonny, just because you don't know shit doesn't mean it's a total world mystery.

>>45085226
Can you go into more detail?

>>45078836
>>45078808
Not OP, but you could test how deeply one person could swing it into a variety of materials. That could be scientifically measured in percentages.

>>45078533

I think the strongest advantage of modern techniques applies to medieval designs would be the weight reduction. Hard to qualify, but a huge benefit to combat endurance. I don't think the weapons themselves would be any more lethal, really. We still make knives out of metals as we've always done.

>>45085211
Yeah those Aztecs were pretty advanced eh. I'm really glad their civilization wasn't decimated by a few thousand spanish

>>45085509
To be fair, if they were less of shitheads, the Spanish wouldn't have had piles upon piles of other native cities to give them troops.

>>45085509
Spaniards were just part of a massive rebellion of other natives.

It's not "a thousand of supersoldiers with invulnerable armour and uberguns defeats massive empire".

>>45085211
>Old buildings are better because they last longer

This is a very common misconception. Because engineering and materials science was primitive these buildings were seriously overbuilt, using more resources and materials to make sure they would last. That made them quite durable.

But mostly? They have been maintained, at tremendous cost. The great cathedrals of the early modern period are giant sinks of wealth that, without maintenance, would collapse.

>>45085267
tl;dr The ancient Egyptians knew, but you don't. Not a big mystery.
Now if there is a structure that its supposed builders doesn't even know how they built it, now that's a mystery.

>>45085192
Titanium alloys cost like $15 per kilogram. They won't exactly break the bank.

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>>45085211
They just needed to built a ramp to pull the rocks for the pyramid up.

>>45085211
There's a dozen ways to build pyramids without anything but stone tools and lots of labor. We don't know exactly how a given pyramid was built, but building a new one would be a tiny technical challenge.

>>45085627
You don't need to build the ramp that way, which uses up a gigantic amount of earth, you can just wrap it around the pyramid. You end up with a pyramid 'inside' a giant mound, and as you complete the pyramid top down, you unbuild the ramp.

So basically you need to ask "What is the utility of the weapon/armor now." Basically all armor and weapons are tuned to be used against the other weapons and armor of their time. We started out fighting each other in shitty leather armor with rocks, and discovered that bronze is better at slicing leather than rocks and bronze armor can stop bronze blades. Ditto with iron and steel.

In modern times, there is little real melee combat, as even in CQC a gun is generally more lethal than a sword (generally). So what are we using these medieval designs for?

If its fighting monsters with a modern military, something like full plate or breastplate/pauldrons backed by Kevlar is probably a good starting point. Car companies are doing interesting things with blends of carbon fiber and titanium, I suspect that could be adapted to new armor as well.

As far as weapons go, you are not going to get much improvement on the basic Katana/Longsword/estoc design ideas. Its basically a question of "what kind of armor do i need to get through." Slashing for lightly armored mooks, piercing or crushing for heavier armor, or a bit of both if you are seeing a bit of both. A hammer, axe, or spear is probably better for any given situation than a sword however. There might be room to make mixed weapons, like the ballistic knife, but I dont know if those would ever go beyond one shot hope for the best kind of designs.

>>45085634
A tiny technical challenge, but a massive financial one. Even if we cheap out and only keep the outer layer the original material, stone is god awful expensive.

>>45085696
The Romans at Masada showed that 'fuck it, just build a giant fucking ramp' is a perfectly valid way to handle this kind of thing if you have lots of people. It's not like you are going to run out of dirt.

>>45085813
That doesn't mean that our ability to make it is lesser, only that the economy is different than ancient Egypt. That's completely off-topic.

>>45078533

If you can swing it, you can fling it.

Ranged weaponry will always be better unless for some stupid reason a material can't be used for a projectile, yet it's strong enough to make armor that stops all projectiles and it's weakness is said element.

>>45085869
Well, modern nations build vastly larger projects like the interstate highway program. (77 thousand kilometers of paved road is slightly more impressive and practical then a pile of rocks).

>>45085178
You realise that the British Army still trains bayonet drills and uses charges with them to surprising effect in Iraq and Afghanistan, right?

>>45086301
And they're by no means exceptions. There's a reason why bayonets are still in production and standard gear in most modern armies. Sometimes you just need to stab a fucker and you don't have the time to switch weapons.

Seriously, if you're using an appropriate rifle there's literally no reason not to have a bayonet on it.

>>45079856
>The heaviest plate harnesses that were actually used in combat weigh less than the total weight of the gear that modern soldiers tromp around with.
You're full of shit. You're comparing a guy wearing backpack & Co with somebody lugging all his shit on a horse.

>>45086422
>You're full of shit.
Not him, but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour#Late_Middle_Ages

>A complete suit of plate armour made from well-tempered steel would weigh around 15–25 kg(33-55 pounds).[2] The wearer remained highly agile and could jump, run and otherwise move freely as the weight of the armor was spread evenly throughout the body.

Even if you disregard the horse (as many men at arms did), plate armor gives you a high degree of mobility despite giving you a lot of protection.

I posted once on a worldbuilding thread, about how to get rid of guns and make the world go all medieval combat with modern tech, but it'd be hard as hell to justify it
Any ideas? Since gunpower and propellants can be made easily, why the fuck would be go back to melee?

>>45086633
Have you read Dune?

>>45079613
>>45085192
>>45085600
Someone people actually tried this in those big reenactment full force combat type deals they got over in europe.
The armor was only about 3 times the amount modern steel was in price.
The problems started rolling in quick though as the people wearing it were getting seriously injured and they couldn't figure out why. They'd be coming in with serious bruising and broken bones almost like they weren't wearing armor at all and the batons made contact with flesh even though the area were wholly covered.
Turns out that the plate flexed extremely when the blow landed transfering all force to the wearer them flexed back to its original position without a scratch. The guy with full suit got broken shins and his left arm was fucked cause his shield was also titanium.
So now they got armor that weighed half as much as the average steel armor cost three times as much and did a worse job at protecting.
On guy actually tried a lot of stuff on the field to try and make it work from backing it with wood or steel making it bulky, heavy, and hard to move in all the way to layer cloth. Best he had was a sandwich of cloth, mail, cloth, mail. Which almost entirely padded the blow but was heavy as all hell and way to bulky it also almost defeated the purpose as the mail would stop any of the swords and at that point only piercing weapons like picks, spears, tucks, and arrows would be what the titanium would stop and modern steel can cover all the bases above and more with just the average cloth, mail, plate combo.
Best bet would be thinner steel plates backed by carbon fiber and kevlar perhaps. Wouldn't be great but this just shows that for medieval combat they had that shit down to a science thats hard to top even now.

>>45081349
Really not, mass produced swords are going to be of a more consistent quality. I blame school for this, people think that the amount of work put in factors in to the end quality, working hard for the same result someone else gets easily doesn't make your product better

>>45079510
Pretty sure the insert is also kevlar. It's just that blades and bullets aren't exactly the same and the weave reacts to them differently. Bullet stopping materials rely on the quick impact to resist it, while a slower stab would go through. Like those non-newtonian liquids that are all runny normally, but if you hit them they behave like solids.

Or so I've understood it.

>>45086829
Nah. Inserts are steel coated in a material to catch bullets that hit them rather than let them bounce off or ceramic plates that are lighter but also covered in the bullet catching material but tend to fracture after being hit. The catching material is a weave of kevlar infused with resins and covered in something like military strength bedliner.

>>45085834
Alexander the Great at Tyre too.

Though that was a causeway, and an example of the sort of military engineering you need to be called "great" - making an island not an island any more

>>45081349
>>45086789
modern machining methods alone can produce much better products and in much larger quantities, hell modern nails in a modern bat could become a weapon of legend back then.


but while we're talking about mass production, lets talk about aluminum, which of course has been done to death, but aluminum is cheaper and lighter than steel as long as electricity is viable to use, though it doesn't hold a great edge, could still be used for armor or semi-blunt weaponry such as flanged maces

so assuming the setting is a modern setting, but with the chemical combinations for anything suitable to be made into a gunpowder, simply do not exist, the battles would be fought likely with high density plastics and aluminum, though it's also quite possible that even magnesium alloyed metals would be in use.
the plastics are a given for face shields due to visibility, but modern armor is designed with bullets in mind, which have a long history of getting better and better at penetrating things relatively easily, with war being fought for wounds not kills.
so with non-firearms in mind most armors would likely be stab vests and other forms of riot gear, but likely with designs similar to some types of sports equipment, which are designed for mobility and protection.

it's quite likely that some sort of variation of the crossbow to be the dominant force without gunpowders around, so the steel would quite likely be going into the mechanisms for those, with many of the tech advances heading towards things like, pump action crossbows (similar to cho ko nu), and quite likely automatic ones similar to ww1 machine gun emplacements, powered by electric motors.

Tank warfare would be quite interesting in this setting as well but I think I'm rambling too much at this point now

>>45085509
I thought it was mostly due to a combination of disease and rebellion.
That or i'm terribly drunk

>>45079026
>Like when they started fielding armies of professional soldiers? Around 1400 or so?

Try the 16th century. We got shitloads of munitions armour and weapons from the long wars against the Ottomans.

>>45087471
>Tank warfare
Tanks wouldn't exist and even if they did, it would have a huge club or and oversized sword attached to the turret.

>>45087712
please explain why they would not exist

tanks were designed in ww1 with the idea of troop support

if a crossbow could not kill the troops inside of an armored vehicle, and an automatic weapon took even more space than they did in ww1, then it seems quite likely to me that there would be significant effort in that direction.
its strikes to reason that prods would make a return too

tanks having anti tank guys was a response to people needing to disable eachothers troop supports, so it stands to reason that you'd even get bigger and bigger ballistas mounted on tanks

the setting has gasoline and electricity, just not gunpowder.

>>45086547
>citing wikipedia

Utterly rubbish. Knights had to be lifted into the saddle with cranes, and if they fell over, they'd get tramped into the mud because they couldn't get up. All that steel is fucking heavy, and it's not it was all THAT protective, since arrows could go right through it. Shit, for that matter, when was the last movie you saw when plate armor actually helped somebody?

Modern soldiers don't have that problem. IBAs and SAPI plates stop bullets. A bullet's got a lot more power than a sword, so naturally it'll stop a sword too.

>>45085509
>Indoor plumbing, rubber, sports arenas, solar calendar, hot chocolate

This all seems pretty advanced

>this thread
>2016
>no based reactive armor applied to full plate

>>45088050
Not this crap again. You're thinking of jousting armor. Field armor weighed no more than sixty pounds on average and the equipment loadout a warrior carried was much less than the backbreaking load modern soldiers carry in the field.

>>45088150
Exploding armor half an inch from your skin seems like a bad idea, anon.

>>45079436
that's not Edo. that's Warring States.

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>>45084309
>vibroblades
yup. the most disappointing scifi technology.

>>45078808
It's not a fucking racing auto, it's a sword.

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>>45078795
That it'd be about 20% cooler.

>>45078533
Swords and shit don't change much as people have already mentioned.
Bows and crossbows would see pretty significant improvements though, especially if you can consider compound bows "medieval" weapons.

>>45088050
I'm just going to leave this here for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCvOC2VwDc

>>45087471
So, aluminum, and a lot of other light metals, are actually kinda bad for bludgeoning weapons and armor. The main reason is that they are light.

This is going to take a bit of explanation. When building armor designed to take low speed, high energy impact damage you want a metal that is dense and heavy because it can absorb more kinetic energy into itself. In short, you want armor that is as heavy as possible while taking up as little space as possible, deforming as little as possible and still allowing the person to move mostly freely.

If you want modern armor that deals with that sort of situation well, you should look at something like the bear-proof suits people have designed, and then just put metal plating over that.

As for weapons, heavier is not always better as different concentrate energy in different ways. However, for a bludgeoning or crushing weapon, you generally want a heavier material simply because it allows you to concentrate more force in a blow. A human arm can only accelerate a lever so fast, no matter how light the material. So the key there is getting a material that is at the right balance of weight that you can swing it fast while still putting as much weight behind the blow as possible.

This is not always true for other similar weapons however. Axes may basically be a sharpened hammer, but holding an edge is still important for them. As long as you have that edge you are concentrating a lot of force into a very small area, so you can get away with having a different mix of weights. The physics of axes is also a bit different but I wont bore you with that.

Long story short, we could do interesting things with armor, but light isnt always better.

>>45088050
>A bullet's got a lot more power than a sword, so naturally it'll stop a sword too.

A 7.62x51 bullet has a kinetic energy 3.3kJ. That's equivalent to a 1kg object moving at 7 kph. A melee weapon has no problem delivering that kind of energy, especially considering there's a guy putting his weight behind the blow.

The killing power of a bullet comes from it being light enough to transfer its energy to the tissue and damage organs with the shockwave created (which a blade doesn't do). It being "stronger" than a blade doesn't matter, they don't work the same way.

Incidentally, it's also why maces were good against plate then, and why high powered small arms are good against ballistic armor now. They can damage organs through protections.

>>45085509
The word I wish /tg/ would look up the most is "decimate." Second place is "glaive," because somehow people still think it's that thing from Krull.

>>45090799
Decimate is almost universally used as a synonym for "devastate" nowadays instead of the original definition. It's not a /tg/ only problem.

>>45085113
why does the face at the top look photoshopped

Melee weapons are less about make up and more about the wielder. Musashi fucked up his opponent with a wooden sword. Cant kill what you cant hit mentality, really. Can put the worlds strongest sword with the best shield in the hands of a toddler and it wont mean jack shit.

>>45090746
Uh, you're failing at high school physics. Bullets have a high impulse to generate a high pressure due to their surface area being small and a high force from the impulse. This lets it punch through most things and deliver a huge shockwave, since the human body is mostly water.
Also keep in mind that it's how you apply the force, not the size of the vector that matters.

>>45078826
Durability is important for attempting to sunder weapons. Even if weapons are sunder proff if forger of higher quality steel.

Now, function is more important. Good steel allows for better shape than super bronze. Etc.

>>45078985
High grade modern is slightly better than high grade 1400
Super high grade modern is leagues over their super.
Our "normal" grade is a little over their normal.
Their normal is still better than our shitty, and their super is better than our normal.

Biggest metallurgy improvements is stuff like Titanium and metal fibers(+ a method to weave it) anyhow.

>>45084309
>>45084837
No. Even with obsidian, making "true" monomolecular blades is impossible to get as of today. The closest we've been to this is a few hundreds molecules, and it's still a huge improvement

>>45090941
The energy bit was to adress that "stronger" bullshit.

The combination of small impact point and high force is hardly specific to bullets. That's why people bothered with making edges and flanges. Also, energy doesn't do shit if it isn't transferred to the target (i.e overpenetration, roughly).

So, of course it's how you apply the force that matters. That was the point.

>>45079422
Ceramic plates still work against arrows and stabs.
Kevlar isn't weaved to stop blades. If it where, it would be better than Linen and Wool.

>>45088050
Rifle bullets are in the 1500 to 3000N range, since going higher increases the risks of overpenetration, and makes shooting them very uncomfortable.
Karate chops already reach 2000N range. Weapon usage should have no problem reaching 3000 or 4000N.
Inb4 somebody forgets resistance is measure per square area. Bullets still hit harder because they have a small cross section and a very small impact point

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>>45090576
steel will typically out perform aluminum yes, but the difference in cost would be more than enough to be utilized
armored cars for example use aluminum, and aluminum itself is quite durable, and a chunk of aluminum is quite heavy enough to be dangerous
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_armour#Aluminium

aluminum if I remember correctly is roughly a third the weight of steel, while also being able to be made into more intricate shapes more easily during production, so as long as you're not fighting in 400c weather you should be quite fine to not bend it, and you could always have an inset edge of steel should you truly need the sharpness, would probably perform better than those stupid plastic axes on the market.

as far as armor goes however, ranged combat tends to not be using low speed high energy impacts, unless we're talking about a seige weapon, but if you get hit by a model-t being flung from a trebuchet, you're probably not going to survive regardless of if your armor does.
an 8th inch aluminum plate can stop a lower calibre bullet, and would quite likely stop a crossbow bolt in much the same way, though given that it's a 3rd the weight of steel, I'd probably opt to make armor a bit thicker than that, should it be made only of and entirely of the aluminum, but composite constructions would of course be what dominates.

>>45090746
when it becomes up to the math melee does typically come out on top, in a situation where you use a piercing object, and a swing.
>the era of dwarf fortress pick axes being positively ridiculous in combat
mind you that patch also made the crossbows ridiculously strong too

but the reason bullets became real contenders was due to low training requirements and low health requirements, even a starving african child could use a musket given instruction, little less a modern fire arm with how simple they are now.

>>45086739
More like the guy failed basic metallurgy.
If a material has wast different properties, it might not be good for a piece of equipment in a different material.
Might as well go for thicker armor, thats lighter, by shaping the material in honeycomb or something.

That said: Titanium don't really flex. But its sturdy enough to not be obviously brittle.
A brittle material. Brittle as in not flexible, not as in breaks fast

>>45090576
>deforming as little as possible
Deforming, or flexing? Because you don't make it clear.
For armor, you want something that flexes because it distributes the blow, and you have padding under the armor.
You don't want it to deform permanently however, since it could end with being hard to breath or lock joints.

>>45088050
>shits on someone for citing wikipedia
>proceeds to use hollywood movies to back up his arguments

This has to be one really poor troll

>>45079436
That's not Edo period, that's a Sengoku period ashigaru, shown with a contemperaneous conquistador.

Arquebuses were in Japanese use by the 1400s-1500s and the Japanese have a long history of gunpowder warfare employing pike and shot tactics.

Alright, important quedtion. I am playing a M&M game where my character can teleport. Does this sufficiently justify using a sword in a modern (usually superpowerless) setting? Would a different weapon be better?

>>45088837
These do a great job of carving a turkey, though. Hardly disappointing.

>>45092562
Use a fucking gun

>>45090215
fake and gay

>>45091196
no, single molecule thickness has been sucessful in graphene.
newb.

>>45093621
Obsidian edges get close to 1 molecule in thickness.

>>45086379
>>45086301
Bayonet drills are aggression training, nobody ever fixes a bayonet on a rifle in the field because it adds weight and bulk to the barrel of the rifle, throwing off the balance for no benefit.

The 'fix bayonets' incident was one squad, once, that was chasing people running away.

>>45086379
>Why bayonets are still used..

Bayonets are utility knives that can, at no extra cost, bulk or weight, be fitted with a socket to be put on a gun. They are issued because soliders do need a utility knife.

>>45093650
Also used for ''fuck this we're outta here"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/9571522/Soldier-who-led-Afghanistan-bayonet-charge-into-hail-of-bullets-honoured.html

>>45088087
They were a heterosexual people though, so their balls were massive rather than inflated. The thing was heavy enough to rek anyone trying to play with it with their hands, which is probably why rubber production became a lost technology for a few hundred years.

>>45089764
Go back to your ghetto

>>45088837
Are you kidding? A scimitar, saber, a katana, or pretty much anything that uses a draw cut could be made EXPONENTIALLY killier against soft targets with that sort of tech. That said, they were pretty damn killy on soft targets to begin with, so it's sort of silly.

I could see it being a way to make slashing weapons like that more effective against larger creatures in a fantasy/scifi setting, so that dervish types could still do considerable damage to big monsters as long as they aren't covered in plates.

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>>45090215

Sure, you can move around a little bit in a modern suit of reproduction armor made with modern techniques. BFD.

Get somebody the size,weight, and health of a historical knight (5'6", 160-ish, suffering from disease from 4 months on campaign) and put them in one of the actual 80-100 lb fullplate suits from a museum, and if they could do cartwheels and shit then you'd have a legitimate argument. Of course, that won't happen, because "reasons". All those videos showing how European knights could "move around real well" all have modern armor and guys who are 6'+ and who aren't malnourished and/or disease-ridden. And yet somehow that's supposed to be a relevant depiction of history.

That video proves nothing about actual history, so I stand by my post >>45088050.

>>45095070
>knights
>actual minor nobility
>malnourished and disease ridden
Wew.

>>45095070
I just came here to say this same thing >>45095253
and to laugh at you.

>>45092562
if you're allowed to teleport objects inside of people when you teleport, a hollow steel tube.

otherwise, take a regular gun, and if noise is an issue use chloroform on a rag, or some wire and strangle.


>>45095070
the only disease knights had was chlamydia from all the wench pussy they got
well that and gout

>>45079436
No. The law, like most laws in real-life, was much more anal and specific.
It was could not carry two swords of a SPECIFIC LENGTH (they still had shorter weapons for civilians), and even then it was thrust through your obi sash.
You could carry a weapon of any other length as long as it wasn't in your belt.

Furthermore, it was nearly impossible to prove someone who wasn't carrying a weapon WASN'T samurai because almost as soon as the Edo Period started you had a shitload of ronin wandering around without jobs who's only proof of their status was their swords.

>>45085553
>But mostly? They have been maintained, at tremendous cost. The great cathedrals of the early modern period are giant sinks of wealth that, without maintenance, would collapse.

Fun fact: you know the famous Hunchback of Norte Dame story?
It was written during a period where the French government was thinking of no longer bothering to spend money on maintaining the incredibly costly Notre Dame Cathedral anymore and not restore it any longer as the government had severe debt problems at the time.
The author felt that this was a terrible thing and wanted to write a story to emphasize it's importance to French heritage using the Cathedral as an important set piece.

>>45092562
Bring a gun and an icepick for when you need to scramble a man's egg quietly.

>>45082509
>440c
You have good taste, anon.

>>45079510
>>45079522
>>45079613
>>45079667
While I too like to find reasons to melee in the modern day, the idea that stabbing is the magic bullet around ballistic armor is a myth.

This hasn't been true since we've stopped using pure kevlar for our vests, even thin undercover vests would still be woven with steel fibers among other materials to prevent cutting through.

The reason why stabbing through body armor effortlessly hasn't been possible for a while is because before we had ballistic armor we had fragmentation protection; which are the flak jackets you see on Nam era soldiers.

Fragmentation is closer to stabs or slashes in terms of the damage you expect to do to armor; so to say we''re not prepared for it would be very wrong.

>>45085399
But if it goes deeply but breaks when torqued afterward, you have a shitty weapon, and ability to hold an edge (hardness) often means that the material is brittle and will do just that. So that test doesn't really work as a be all end all test

>>45079724
Screwdriver style bayonets are designed to penetrate through helmets and thick clothing; at the expense of lesser slashing ability.

>>45079676
Bayonets are powerful weapons, regardless of the metallurgy behind it. Its a clubspear that has a handy grip and plenty of weight to bash in a helmet.

>>45084591
>Nuh-uh.
Ok.

>>45088050
Oh, bugger it sideways, who let the middle schoolers out again?

>>45095070
>80-100 lb fullplate
Uuuh no. There was never any combat armor that weighed 100lb.

The only people carrying that much weight are modern infantrymen.

You a dumb ass motherfucker.

>>45095070
>malnourished

My sides.

You owe me a new screen from the Tang I just spat across the desk.

First, young 'un, you need to disabuse yourself of your post-Enlightment biases. Just because the medieval period somewhat less organized and somewhat more tribal does not mean it was completely a place of filth, barbarity, and disease.

Knights, and men-at-arms, especially if they were of nobility or royalty, would have been the /fit/ elite of their day. That bit of their afternoons not taken up by politicking or wenching would have been devoted to sword craft, exercise, and condition, of both horse and man. The ideal man of the medieval period was a man who could fight. A fat man, or a maimed man, or a weak man, could not fight

Hell, you think the consistent hunting was /just/ for fun? The skills necessary for killing a male boar or a bear are the same as those needed for killing a man (to a degree). And, usually, a man doesn't try to keep killing you after he realizes he's fucking dead. Hogs do.

Plus, the nobility would be eating the best food, getting the best necessary protein and vitamins from their stocks, maybe not quite getting the right food to keep their kidneys in line (Henry VIII's gout comes to mind) , but generally an ale-and-meat diet can provide the necessary nutrients to support a strong male well-used to strenuous physical activity. You ever wonder why a 190-pound Marine can pound back a twelve rack and then chomp down on a deep dish pizza regularly? And still remain healthy? The physical activity outdistances the amount of caloric intake. Same principle, and with better-tasting food.

>>45083555
>fixed bayonets aren't used in urban or desert combat
>they must not be useful at all

>>45090941
You also fail at high school physics. Bullets have rather low impulse, as the time during which they act upon the body is low. Impulse = force * time.

>>45084591
>>45084591
Snerk. And yet wootz blades of the medieval period contain manganese and iridium alloys...

>>45084198
Yeah, and fighter planes don't need guns either.
While we're at it, let's stop putting cannons on ships too.

Okay, huge faggot here to ask a question I've always been curious about
would a sword made of diamonds be conventional?

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>>45096498
So you need the swords to prove your status and you need the status to have the swords?

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>>45100921
That's a very good question!
The answer is yes.

>>45100908
Diamonds are far too brittle.

>>45100958
Is it?
I don't know much about materials. But I think black smiting is neat. An art, even.

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>>45096682
In the same idea, see pic related? It's supposed to be in Notre Dame.
No it's not the painter, the whole building was dressed up in flashy cardboard because Gothic is old and ugly. Who want to see cathedral vaults anyway?

>>45100295
Fixed bayonets aren't used ever. They literally are used for training and by desperate or crazy people playing Charge of the Light Brigade.

>>45100486

Nope. That's just wrong, not to mention iridium and manganese weren't understood as a thing in before the 19th century.

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Holy shit, the amount of bullshit, heresay, misinformation, and made up facts in this thread is staggering. Seriously /tg/, I'm disappointed.

>>45078533
wasn't the thing that really changed things based on metal quality artillery?

like yeah you can get a slightly choppier sword or slightly tougher armor but if your cannons shoot 10% further then that's just an obvious gamechanger.

>>45100908

Sort of, yeah.

If you could get a synthetic diamond (or similar crystalline compound) edge on a carbon/ceramic blade, then, baby, you got a ded killy stew going.

Hard edge, soft core.

>>45103494
No, it wouldn't.
The carbon core would flex, the ceramic core would crack, and the crystalline edge would shatter.
It'd be a great slicer, but break on the first strike.

Great scalpel, really shitty sword.

>>45096498
Birth registers were a thing.

>>45105914
And a birth registration stored in a dank basement on the far side of the country (Which is where a fraud would be claiming theirs is) isn't going to be helping you figure out if the wandering hobo with swords is supposed to actually have them or not.

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>>45102956
7 grams @ 7 kilometers per second, into solid aluminium.

>>45101198
Ah, that's fucking hideous. Most people don't realize how austere and understated modern taste are though. The aesthetics we seek in old shit mostly isn't remotely close to how it looked new.

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>>45105939
>>45105914
Japs carried personal seals. If you didn't have one that matched a Samurai (every checkpoint had a copy of the list of everyone's samurai and their stamp) then you weren't a fucking samurai.

If you had someone's stamp you could say you are them.

>>45105989
I blame the price of paint falling to cheap.
Its hard to have extravagant taste when all the colors are super cheap, and special materials don't stand out at all.

>>45078533
Back in the day, when they wanted a badass sword, they went to great lengths to get a good steel, shape it well, and put a good edge on it.

Nowadays we would get a premade bar of good steel, shape it well, and we'd put a good edge on it.

Materials technology for something as basic as a blade hasn't come that far.

That said, plastics and rubber might help some bits of armor.

>>45106409
>Back in the day, when they wanted a badass sword, they went to great lengths to get a good steel, shape it well, and put a good edge on it.

Depends on the day, quite a bit. In general though, they'd get ignots of mild steel that would be forged into a single component and shape. The quality of steel was generally out of the hands of the swordmaker, he'd be dependent on what was around, but low sulfur iron ore is common enough that mostly the raw materials were of acceptable qualities. Without a blast furnace only small amounts of steel could be made at a time, and was quite expensive. A swordsmith might add some tin, but tin wasn't very cheap and made the blade more fragile.

That's just a sword shaped object though. It has to be heat treated to make a durable and sturdy blade that will take an edge. Carefully heated, then cooled slowly, then heated again, then quickly cooled, then heated one last time and cooled in air.

If you fuck up any part of that the sword will be shit, even if you had decent steel.

All that to make something of mild steel with a hard edge suited to cutting.

In the now, you'd take a big plate of steel about the thickness of your sword. This would have been made with materials people didn't used to know existed, making it far, far more durable, harder and more ductile then a sword from the middle ages. A sword made out of good quality tool steel could literally be used to cut though 11th century swords.

With that plate of far better metal, you'd punch out a sword shape with a big fucking press. Then you'd grind away material to get it shaped right. In Ye Olden Days such a method would seem exceptionally wasteful, given how much steel ends up on the floor, but these days it's no big deal.

Heat treatment, polish and sharpening later you have a blade with 4 to 5 times the yield strength, twice the hardness and better flexibility then an 11th century blade.

>>45078533
Not much better, since we'd still use steel, but our production methods have improved (e.g. we've figured out that "Damascus steel" is actually steel with carbon nanotubes), and mass production would ensure that there'd be far more weapons available.

>>45105939
This is one of those moments in which you are clearly out of your depths, but you keep on trying anyway.

Japan was a caste society at that point, so calling a birth registry an irrelevant document is like calling race irrelevant to US citizens or ethno-nationality irrelevant in EU nations. It's the fundament of their polity, not some chance event with little relevance to people's lifes, so it was policed pretty hard. And officials could inqire two ways: Towards whichever home provice the dude claimed to hail from and towards Tokyo, where a good portion of the households of his province would be present. They had the right to detain the dude as long as required and they also had the right to torture him if they felt that it was neccessary.

>>45100446
A low time means more force exerted anon, since Impulse is also equal to the change in momentum. That's why we use seatbelts to extend the time it takes for people to stop in car crashes, decreasing the force transferred to them by their momentum.

>>45078533
Modern steel holds an edge better and is far less brittle than the alloys used in the medieval era.

This isn't exactly...news.

>How much better would they be? 20%?

"Better"

you cant really put a number on it. Dead is dead, whatever. A cut that goes 10cm into the chest, instead of 9.5cm still kills you.

Breakages? significant reduction, but without about 1000 medieval swords to try to destroy, we simply dont have a benchmark figure to say that its X% less likely to fail.

The main differences are in ease of manufacture - not the design, but the processes to make it.

>>45078533
GURPS covers that. Extensively.

>>45108597
>Modern steel holds an edge better and is far less brittle than the alloys used in the medieval era.

Actually, medieval steels are generally a lot more ductile than modern alloys.
heat-treatment on medieval steel tends to be relatively slack - variable hardnesses that vary between 35 and 52 HrC, but are most commonly in the 40's, compared to modern steels which are almost universally HT'd to a consistent 50-52Hrc.

as a result, they generally have softer edges which are less susceptible to chipping.


you are right about modern alloys holding a better edge, though. that is a consequence of the harder tempering done to them.

>>45078533
I think it depends on the weapon. Blades would be much better for example, with modern materials would come sharper edges for better cutting, thinner points for better piercing, and a more durable blade overall.
Armor would be much much lighter and more flexible.
Blunt weapons would barely improve.
I'm unsure about polearms tho. On one handyou could have mich lighter and sturdy poles, but how much is that going to fuck with the balance?

>>45084309
>Vibro blades exist, they're just not quite what we wanted.
>Also mono-molecular edges exist. They are again, really disappointing.
It's more like, the good ones are far too expensive for mundane use, and the amount of cutting power required for such uses is easily provided by old means.
Vibro stuff and extremely thin edges are used a lot in high precision industry, many products would be impossible to create without thin enough blades. So maybe it's disappointing tech if you were expecting to shave with that, but it certainly doesn't disappoint those who wanted it for industrial uses.

>>45109178
>with modern materials would come sharper edges for better cutting

Not so much, no, as "sharpness" isn't determined so much as by materials as it is sharpening techniques and the materials ability to hold an edge.
The increased durability of modern steel would allow it to hold an edge longer then before but it wouldn't actually be any sharper in practice then a sword from back when since literal razor sharpness is as good as sharp can get and that almost almost instantly even with modern materials.
Interestingly you can get an edge even finer that holds it even longer with simple obsidian, though that also has the downside of being extremely a very brittle material otherwise.

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>>45078533
>modern materials
>Literal plastic sword

>>45109261
I'm pretty sure that nowadays we can make much sharper blades than back then. It's a question of tools really, I doubt you can sharpen something just as fine with a sharpening stone as you can with a superabrasive.
Aside with obsidian, yeah, but it's not really a material used "back then", aside from the mesoamericans who didn't make blades with it anyway, so does it really count?

>>45109178
>I think it depends on the weapon. Blades would be much better for example, with modern materials would come sharper edges for better cutting, thinner points for better piercing, and a more durable blade overall.
Armor would be much much lighter and more flexible.

Cutting is a factor of edge geometry and blade cross-section, not sharpness. An exceptionally sharp edge, like a scalpel, is a liability as it is rapidly chipped and blunted in general use, compared to a blunter, slightly more obtuse edge geometry that is slightly lesser, but performs better overall.

Thin points are actually inferior in piercing - you want a thick, diamond-section blade to pierce, so you get the cross-sectional thickness for stiffness. a thin blade tends to bend and distort where a thicker one will go through without much force.

Flexibility of armour is dictated by articulation and biomechanics, not the metallurgy of the manufacture.

>>45109426
>I'm pretty sure that nowadays we can make much sharper blades than back then.

You don't even need that hard a material to put a razor edge on it. It simply won't last.

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>>45109745
>You don't even need that hard a material to put a razor edge on it

have a Roman folding razor
made in bronze.

>>45087599
Germ warfare.