Best HFY Reddit Stories: "Proven" Tactics

[@mikkelnpetersen]

"They use 500 years old tactics, we're going to use 400 years old tactics to not make them find out that it's all completely obsolete"

[@davethompson3326]

I can't remember the author, but one book made me scream in rage. Space Battles in the successor war following the death of an Empire's founder race were suddenly being won by fighting in 3D, rather than using "traditional" 2D formations!!! One of only four books I have ever thrown away unfinished out of Thousands. (I've been reading SF since about 1969, when I started nicking my dads' library cards as I'd done the kids books.)

[@918guy]

​@@davethompson3326 Typically, in the current universe, everything happens in 3D😂

[@GenericfacelessNPC]

no gas, no trench raiders, no shotgun, and not to mention no diseases??? are we sure there not just playing airsoft with lovely aliens?

[@daiquylam3401]

No underground detonation?

[@The_Viscount]

I mean... It's a simulation. It basically is paintball.

[@alganhar1]

Shotguns? You mean those things US Troops issued with them discarded as soon as they possibly could to pick up a weapon that actually WORKED? Those shotguns? Sorry to inform you of this but the shotguns used by the US in WWI were an abject failure. The problem was not the guns, it was the ammunition. You see what most people do not realise about WWI shotgun ammunition is the cases were not made of plastic like they are today, they were made of stiffened PAPER. And that lay at the root of their hideous reliability issues. Ever been to North Western Europe? It rains, a lot, ever considered what would happen to paper shotgun cartridges in that rain? Thats right, they get wet, which causes misfires. Troops were also not issued with specialised ammunition pouches, instead carrying the shells loose in their pockets. Ever wonder what would happen to paper shotgun cartridges if the soldier carrying them hits the dirt to take cover? Thats right, they get bent up and distorted, which leads to misfires. It was so bad that a shotgunner could rarely guarantee his weapon would properly discharge after the first round. Next time you see some idiot 'slamfiring' a trench shotgun 'like they did in WWI' I suggest you keep in mind the fact the ammunition was literally made of PAPER. It works, just, with modern shotgun ammunition, but with the paper ammunition of WWI nine times out of ten the shotguns misfired. The entire myth stems from the report of one war correspondent looking for a unique story and essentially lying out the effectiveness of the shotguns.....

[@GenericfacelessNPC]

@@alganhar1 dang I got info dumped

[@avroarchitect1793]

Me a Canadian realising this is just paintball in WW1 cosplay "This is going to be so much fun"

[@Rawkit_Surgeon]

Grabs gasmask, E-tool, and Lucius pattern lasgun with murderous glee.

[@kdarkwynde]

Tanith! Straight silver! The Emperor Protects!

[@GoblinRaccoon]

*Happy gas mask noises!*

[@TristanLeslie-t8l]

FOR THE EMPORIUM OF MAN AND THE GOLDEN THRONE!!!

[@GeorgeOrwell-yz6zx]

5 bonus likes to your account

[@Crazael]

For the Emperor!

[@freakyskull516]

xixolonipolo how did you get ptsd? it was only a simulation. xixolonipolo: **thousand yard stare** the shelling. . . oh gods... they say you never hear the one thats meant for you...

[@ivorjawa]

PowerPoint existing 200+ years in the future is deep sci-fi horror.

[@ceu160193]

Wonder which version would it be.

[@Burningphynix]

It's peak Army in all honesty

[@ivorjawa]

@@Burningphynix that I don’t doubt one bit.

[@Burningphynix]

@ivorjawa they had some lower rank officer / nco give a powerpoint presentation on what a "naruto run" was when the whole Storm Area 51 think kicked off. Plus I have seen multiple Army vets attest to the fact that officers for some reason are obsessed with powerpoints. which makes sense as it gives a visual aid even the crayon munchers can understand. Edit: This is why I should wait before replying to stuff when I first wake up. I thought you said "I doubt that" instead of "I don't doubt that."

[@oh_snarf]

Ah yes the good old "enemy might adapt", so let's use the most stagnant form of warfare, the cost of an half an inch being 56 lives.

[@tomasdubravsky4851]

56! Where did you get a number so low!? Its at the very Least 5861 lives per inch!

[@ettibbet5493]

​@@tomasdubravsky4851paschendale?

[@tomasdubravsky4851]

​@@ettibbet5493yup, but not just those, but also Somme. And the Argonne

[@centurion7993]

@@tomasdubravsky4851 on the Somme it came out to about 80,000 KIA for every mile by the time that one was over

[@UmbralWaffle]

Know that many men will suffer Know that many men will die Half a million lives at stake Ask the fields of Passchendaele And as the night falls the general calls And the battle carries on and on How long? What is the purpose of it all What's the price of a mile? -Sabaton: Price of a Mile

[@davethompson3326]

Aliens: "We cannot regard this society as civilised. They may have Jump drives and Space Carriers, but the freaks still use Powerpoint!!"

[@ТурбоДиванТурбоДиван]

FUCKIIIIING WORD

[@davethompson3326]

@@ТурбоДиванТурбоДиван 🙀🙀🙀🙀

[@matthewsampson8565]

Hey, PowerPoint is vital to the function of the US Military. If it was possible to make it unusable, decision making would slow to a crawl...

[@davethompson3326]

@@matthewsampson8565 I highly suspect that next to no actual decision-making takes place where PowerPoint is in action. The real decisions are either made prior to the meetings, (in far smaller groups, often made up of non attenders to the presentation) or by those deft enough to avoid them. I personally believe the most effective use is to terminate a meeting in a way that those creatures who avidly lurk waiting for "any other points or questions" cannot act. Be like Dr Millar of the SCP, who includes his round up and final thanks as a part of the show. It stops those bastards who delight in extending meeting length in an effort to look "keen", cheerfully ignoring all the death stares they attract.

[@Alwindar1]

Well powerpoint is easy to use

[@paulbenbrook5542]

So many of these stories have a common central theme: they've been in space so long that competent ground combat is completely foreign to them. I love seeing forces that have conquered entire star systems ground to a halt by a few men with rifles and a tank or two to take cover behind as they advance.

[@satibel]

I recommend the novel "The Road Not Taken" where ftl was actually simple but we missed it so aliens who are on a conquering spree with conquistador era looking spaceships and muskets try to invade earth thinking that it'll be easy as at worse we'll have slings and bows.

[@darunealbane]

This story also says that space battles are done like clipper ship wood navy 1800s

[@andmos1001]

To be fair, orbit is the absolute air supremacy. Very few things can counter that.

[@Nempo13]

@@andmos1001 Orbital bombardment isn't very smart though. What would survive re-entry and still be a viable round of munition would be so big that it would take out city blocks. Now...if you go into low orbit for a short period (think Helldivers) you can use different kinds of munitions that won't be so massive. However, your ship is vulnerable in such an orbit.

[@chocolatechipcookies6320]

Sir can we build a laser guided trebuchet too? I promise it'll adhere to their so called proven tactics. *Approved*

[@corvididaecorax2991]

Hmm, with the right computer control over the release mechanisms this might be possible. Probably still not super accurate, just because of the uncertainty of the wood flexing, but you could likely get it pretty good.

[@RomanQrr]

You might get away with using modern materials. The biggest advantage with such weapons would be the fact that you don't need gunpowder or something equivalent. Just rocks.

[@ElainCorrine]

There is a youtube video out there I saw a LONG time ago, where some guy built one with something like a 1.2 ton draw force. I've been searching for 1/2 an hour now on vids and can't find it, but I know I saw it when I lived in Hawaii and that was 11 years ago so.. it's here somewhere... Also... when it unwound, it chucked a car body. I know that damn thing is on you tube.

[@Jason-sm4oc]

Hehehe ... Monkey throw rock!

[@papy9277]

next time humanity is gonna pretend they just discovered the nuke

[@ReptillianStrike]

"We went easy on you" God damn. That is not something you want to hear after getting thoroughly roflstomped lmao.

[@earlenriquez810]

They experienced only the TIP of that iceberg, they're lucky that there was no: Gas Attacks, Trench raiders or worse of all.... Underground Detonations

[@denisdrozdoff2926]

You forgot the worst weapon of ww1. Canadian infantry.

[@earlenriquez810]

@@denisdrozdoff2926 there's a reason why I didn't include THEM, the name alone bodes warcrime in itself

[@scottwasinger8266]

Or the American war crimes stick ie the trench sweeper

[@GeorgeOrwell-yz6zx]

​@earlenriquez810 Yes but they will be polite when they surrender

[@denisdrozdoff2926]

@@scottwasinger8266 German complaints about shotguns were skill issue.

[@ironwolfF1]

The main thing i noticed about this story...the humans kept their 'offensive air power' card snugly tucked away in their vest pocket. Never throw down your best trump card early on...

[@ceu160193]

Probably just didn't find any old WW1 biplanes to use.

[@achimkunisch8619]

as a mather of fact there are no WW1 Planes that have survived to this day, none.@@ceu160193

[@nathanielhill8156]

​@@ceu160193I'm just sad that poor USS Texas wasn't able to escape harbor. Imagine if she was able to resume WWII countersnipeing with her turrets.

[@jmurray1110]

Imagine if they also had naval simulations

[@davethompson3326]

Aliens: "We can't show them our real tactics! Is that weird guy still in IT? Ask him to come up to the bridge and bring any footage or pictures of his Re-enactment Group."

[@deathhog]

Ngl, i think I would have preferred a "Well, we just kept bringing in bigger and bigger artillery. Its not our fault they didn't have offensive airplanes to do anything about bertha."

[@zytherioszytherion7485]

and the Canadians were told to "stay out of this one, its just a game"

[@sethsilverwood3671]

*sad canadian noises*

[@ettibbet5493]

​@@sethsilverwood3671you know why you aren't allowed.

[@Xylric]

No one wants to play with us anymore. I wonder why?

[@agoddamnferret]

so glad my family isn't here to hear the sounds that this got out of me@@sethsilverwood3671

[@Spore9996]

:( sad

[@redeye3869]

Now imagine if someone brought mustard gas and flame throwers. Yea humanity definitely went easy on them.

[@medical-cyanide1526]

Flamenwerfers are fun. However dangerous for just everyone. Would still be fascinating to see them in use against the poor benos… also not sure how you could sim a flamethrower

[@hypocriticalrat3607]

​@@medical-cyanide1526well, you can probably use something like water or another safe but annoying liquid. I think it will get them idea of what flamenwerfer is and how dangerous it can be...

[@JosephKano]

It's all fun and games until someone brings out the FLAMMENWERFERS!!

[@ettibbet5493]

​@@JosephKanolet's slamfire some shottys while we are at it.

[@hypocriticalrat3607]

I love how in begin there is PowerPoint presentation and it was presented with little error

[@krimsonsun10]

LOL they are cosplaying WW1 for the aliens without any bi-planes and dreadnoughts. 😁😆😆

[@jmurray1110]

Such a shame they broke her up after the war

[@achimkunisch8619]

Space german empire vs space napoleon is amaizing

[@Primearch-GG]

I'd say the Sabaton song "The Future of Warfare" should be used as BGM for the last part of the story.😎

[@williamh6892]

That or steel commander

[@Primearch-GG]

@@williamh6892 i thought about using it, but it doesn't quite fit the joke of a military strategy and weapons the aliens have as much as "The Future of Warfare".

[@kylejohns2288]

When the trenches start speaking human

[@THECHEESELORD69]

When the dead horse has a rifle sticking out of it

[@lupaswolfshead9971]

lmao fighting napoleonic tactics with ww1 tactics to take the piss

[@firedirewolf]

Didn't even get the war crimes of WW1 in there, truly went as easy on them as possible while still using proven force applications that could have been done with their own gear ... Till the tanks rolled in lol

[@denisdrozdoff2926]

​@@firedirewolfthey figured spaceflight. Means they probably figured land transportation. The fact that they didn't figure out to put armor and guns on a vehicle is uhm... Skill issue. DaVinci had designs of (horse powered) IFVs.

[@firedirewolf]

@@denisdrozdoff2926 I was meaning that they were using the same gear that they were using till they pulled out the tanks >.< for the sounds of it, there was a few things that made the combat games non lethal or something to have the same effects as actual weapons since they fired actual cannon balls at the tanks as they approached. It seems they have more than plenty tech, but they don't have a grasp of using them lol

[@10mov63]

This is a dream come true for a Great War enthusiast

[@randomusernameCallin]

So the humans hold back the good stuff is smart.

[@EllenbergW]

Why do I get the feeling they raided Bovington to get their hands on those "poven" tanks?

[@Lupus_Indomitus]

I dont know. But i have a similar feeling.

[@Spore9996]

Glory to House Davion.

[@gabe8515]

Glory to Marik

[@Darkinu2]

Just like the Karchaksians from The Terran Incident. Only less enslavement 😂😂 Agro Squirrel did a great reading of it but I can't remember the author.

[@ryaniversen8653]

Gonna teach these aliens why angels are calling their names.

[@alexyukon0823]

The thought of a sci fi FT17 in simulated trench warfare makes me happy

[@y0ur_name_here]

Bring a toothpick to a nuclear fight......

[@jmoneyjoshkinion4576]

There are 3 kinds of war us humans do: #1 war games, where everyone agrees on the rules, and we play nice. Your rules. #2 real war, where only our rules keep us from becoming evil in our own eyes. We don't do anything on the document we sent over, the "Geneva Convention" war crimes list. #3 Total War. You know that "Geneva Convention" list we sent you? Yeah, that no longer applies in Total War, it becomes more of a... checklist. And if we are able to expand it in Total War, we probably will.

[@Zaluskowsky]

What kind of Reinforcements? Panzerbataillon 467. That gave me a good ole belly laugh. Greetings from Germany

[@kikipapuszka8880]

Tey just took humanity 1 step clouser to WH 40k death korp

[@dandruff2865]

Well, with that final statement, I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before some war-like race comes along to challenge us? XD

[@mattbrown5511]

No such thing as overkill. There is prepared or defeat. Let's hope we are prepared for that eventuality.

[@alexanderkeene4367]

There is a follow-up story.

[@Edmar_Thorn]

Shudanex: Your elite warriors are very impressive, we had our most highly skilled warriors giving everything they had and yet you still beat us! Terran Commander: Elite? Oh, no. They were just a few rookies out for some light R&R.

[@CJ-jo6do]

So... War crime stick time?

[@MrSirwolf2001]

It is not a war crime the first time.

[@CJ-jo6do]

@@MrSirwolf2001 Canada enter the chat...

[@medievalcatguy6776]

Anything can be a war crime if you try hard enought 😊😊😊

[@thatboy5751]

We went eazz on you. Flashing nom flashbacks. Pray

[@dj82020]

Xeno Commander: What do you mean 'easy'? Human Commander: That was our Cadet's Graduation project.

[@tomasdubravsky4851]

Does anyone know and remember the movie: "Treasure Plannet"? And also i would love to see MOAR!

[@Darkinu2]

Yes! A childhood classic of mine.

[@tomasdubravsky4851]

​@@Darkinu2happy to see there's more. It was legendary

[@ElFeN69WoLf]

Sad that the animation hit at the same time as another movie that had about 5x the promotion, it really was an amazing movie. Something a bit more sensible in tech progression, Titan AE.

[@Darkinu2]

@@ElFeN69WoLf Never saw that one, oddly enough.

[@tomasdubravsky4851]

​@@ElFeN69WoLfthe fuck is titan AE? I asked around reddit, Quora, twitter (god that place was horrid) and even fucking 4chan and no one ever heard of it. And to be fair, it looks shit. Good thing i still have the treasure planet not only in my memory but also on DVD

[@rasehorn]

What no human teenager with a warcrime stick... bit dissapointed

[@taitano12]

So... Not even the best tactics, strategies of the particular situation this game is based on? If this Assembly we've just joined gets attacked, how much do you wanna bet we arrive at the battlefield only to find a cloud of radioactive debris? The human commanders feigning ignorance and confusion while knowing full well about the half hour "battle" involving a dozen Terran Special Forces cadet troops and some guy simply known as The Mud Muncher.

[@jackmack4181]

*When Johnny comes marching home intensifies*

[@THECHEESELORD69]

Glory glory hallelujah!

[@dholmes3307]

"Why" buddy, you have no idea.

[@countryboy1635]

Meanwhile on the German and Canadian front. “Good news, they don’t have a Geneva Convention, have fun boys”

[@TheSolidSnakeOil]

Everybody thinks they're a badass until the Panzers show up.

[@jamesha175]

the first words out of those aliens' mouths were "we bid peace". but freakin uncle sam just had to teach them a lesson anyways. hey maybe the aliens have a lot of oil reserves.

[@fabianwood9457]

Bloody love that last line

[@RogueCove]

Standing in the line of fire Where will this lead? What's the price of a mile?

[@Amoth_oth_ras_shash]

cue a existential threat so severe the terrans is forced to have their U.n meet up and give the collective N.a.t.o military command blanket permision to not just reveal those 'initiation drills' where borderline theater for said terrans but to also reveal the actual modern war capabilities as said genocidal foe needs to be halted before as napoleon commented ''quantity can be a quality all of its own'' or gustavus or sun zu's examples demonstrating how the greatest strategists not only outthinks their opponents but also knows to think byond the horizon and when they need to avoid engagements

[@williamhealey1223]

Wait for the war crime sticks (shotguns).

[@cloud8813]

kinda sad we didn't see the trench gun getting used.

[@alganhar1]

An issue with the Trenchguns, did you know the ammunition was made of paper? Literally. Its why no one else bothered using Shotguns on the Western Front, because they had all experimented with them and found that the ammunition simply could not handle the abuse of normal day to day operations on the Western Front, let alone an actual attack. While a brass shotgun shell was developed it did not start production until after the war had ended. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the effectiveness of the Trenchgun in the actual trenches it was named for is a myth, it is literally made up. The reality was that damp and damage meant the misfire rate of the shells was through the roof, it was literally a fifty percent chance that the weapon would fail to fire when you pulled the trigger, worse in wet weather when the failure rate could reach over 90%, as someone familiar with North Western Europe I can inform you that it rains here a lot.....

[@samsignorelli]

Now that's soldiering....

[@Whisper555]

War is our business, and business if goooood!!!

[@norsehawk]

Do not ask why this new to space and recently discovered alien species completely roflstomped us in combat, you won't like the answer you discover.

[@ActJack]

I assume the mgs were 50 cal and so on lol

[@volatilesky]

Pretty much every guy I've known that's gone American or Canadian military, would be having an absolute blast in a scenario like this. And most of them would pretty quickly get into this. The best part would be that you'd quickly get different "campus" groups. "Okay recruits, things are a little different on the front. Over there we have the historical guys in what are the largest camps, they do things by the book from ww1 from their respective countries. American, German, Canadian, French, what have you. I think they even have a ghurka and West Indian detachment with the Brits. Anyways, further along the line we have... Their note to me says "death korp of kreig"...of course they spelled corp wrong, they are mostly marines - anyways if fighting with a bunch of weirdos who refuse to remove their gas masks sounds like your thing, they're your guys. Weirdly enough they get along with the Russian team, something about compatible tactics so we put them next to eachother...." "Sir, are the artillery teams playing...venga boys on three loudspeaker?" "Don't laugh son, they've conditioned the xenos to have an automatic panic and fear response by doing that."

[@thegoods1r694]

ah yes, introducing xeno scum to PTSD on an industrial scale

[@guacamoleman3253]

SIEGE, FORTIFY

[@WildArmACF]

we werent even trying yet

[@dimitardimitrov9482]

Good to know that 100 years from now Microsoft still exist and Trump finally got his Space force

[@jackreisewitz6632]

Couldn't help but wonder if the xenos weren't using such archaic technology because it was their version of the Geneva Convention constraints. But no, that's not how the story went....

[@obolisk0430]

There's no way this would work long term, tbh, the aliens would get access to human media eventually.

[@obsidian00]

WHAT??? No "Trench Sweeper"?!?! BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! 🤣

[@chialeux514]

They still use Power Point in 2232 ? And MP4's ???

[@greldikvaskupalah2009]

_happy Kreiger noises_

[@AJPDing]

I feel this loses a lot of the believability because of the absurdity. Noone in a spacefaring civilisation thought to put armour on a car just to transport troops? Nobody in that civilisation thought "what if we made artillery bigger and rifled?"? It just seems that part was written without thought. I could understand if the Xenos stopped at the tactics equivalent of The Great War because their equivalent war to "the war to end all wars" was so horrific that they cease near all military thought seeing it as such a stagnant roadblock and a waste of time that near anything would be better. Of course they would still upgrade their weapons with new technology having laser rifles and energy weapons built into this doctrine but due to not having any real warfare, they would have no meaningful field testing of these weapons and thus would not have the flow on effects of these on their tactics. I just cannot reasonably imagine a spacefaring civilisation still fielding line infantry and the equivalent of smoothbore cannons. I could imagine however, that tactics and strategy remain as they were at the end of ww1 due to that being the war to end all wars and technology advancing to spacefaring levels but the design for weaponry such as jetfighters, laserguns, aircraft carriers, tanks etc. still having ww1 dogfighting, trenchraiding, all big gun battleship doctrine and sponson mounted guns in mind. Absolute earliest I could think of the tactics and strategy stagnating is just prior to world war one where the aliens see machineguns and early ww1 artillery and agree "This would be a tragedy in the making, let us never use these against our own species." Taking this path, they would have purely pre-war notions of doctrine until they faced an enemy who did advance in their tactics and strategy. The horrors of ww1 would never be seen until an exercise with an enemy such as humanity leading to what is essentially the end of this story. Any of the late war great powers could have realistically stomped any of the early war great powers so while far fetched, I find this more believable than "aliens still use napoleonic warfare" TL;DR: I can't realistically see Napoleonic warfare being where warfare stagnates for too great a period of time. I could imagine aliens with very early to late ww1 style tactics fighting humans with WW2 style tactics and technology.

[@marcusaustralius2416]

I broadly agree, though it reminds me a lot of the short story "the road not taken", where it turns out that anti-gravity and faster than light travel is extremely simple, so much so that most civilisations invent it around the time they invent the crossbow, sometimes much earlier In our case however, some quirk of our technological evolution meant that we simply overlooked it early on, and invented computing, rifling, electricity and so much more as we followed different paths When an alien warship lands in California and opens up with a cannon volley and a line of musket troops, they're slaughtered The prisoners are interrogated but treated well, and left to talk to each other The last lines are of them realising that they just handed this technology to a race that had invented nuclear weapons and the horror of the situation becomes immediately clear to them

[@AJPDing]

@@marcusaustralius2416 I agree with this take but to me that works because it is absurd enough to suspemd your disbelief and there is justification in that story as to why warfare stagnated there. This story has no such explanation.

[@marcusaustralius2416]

@@AJPDing depends, military technology didn't stagnate in China, but for a very long time there was a significantly slower rate of technological advancement than elsewhere in the world due to having no real competitors after having beaten all their local rivals until Russia beat them in a border skirmish in the 1600s and became the first nation to have ever been recognised as an independent state by China, and two centuries later when Britain kicked the door down in the Opium Wars India had a similar situation however their caste-based society stopped innovation in its tracks, and they were left paralysed when the Mughals invaded In the islamic world, after surviving the Mongols with all of Khwarazm razed, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad destroyed, and 2/3 of their population being culled by the black death mere centuries afterward, Al Ghazali's works positing that God was all-powerful and can change reality on a whim, and thus cause and effect simply didn't exist made perfect sense given that they nearly died as a civilisation twice Sometimes history moves forwards rapidly, other times backward like during the bronze age collapse when Greece stopped being able to write and art all but disappeared for nearly 600 years. Sometimes it simply stagnates or moves glacially In The Road Not Taken, it's implied that most species the Roxolani had conquered had barely mastered the bow and crossbow, and thus they had zero competitors and no need to adapt to near peer adversaries All this assumes a human or human-like psychology as well

[@marcusaustralius2416]

@@AJPDing I think the main issue with this story is that it's too short, it takes about an hour or two to Read Road Not Taken, while this is barely a couple pages long, too much exposition might drag down the story tbh

[@AJPDing]

@@marcusaustralius2416 None of those civilizations were spacefaring and moreover, all of them had technology in warfare that reflected their technological progress in other fields. My point is that without justifying why there is such disparity between the technology of a spacefaring civilization and their military science/theory, the scenario is silly. Moreover, it is ridiculous for a civilisation to be using Napoleonic era tactics with laser weapons as shown in this story. If you take a second to think about what is implied in this story, namely that nobody in this civilisation realised that lasers will travel further than bullets so standing in a neat line/column is a bad idea because you will get torn apart from over a kilometer. This then begs the question, why did they even replace their black powder weapons with such technology? The obviously didn't do it for greater armour penetrations because these weapons in the story don't penetrate any better than tbeir black powder equivalents, obviously not for ease of manufacture either because the components of an energy weapon are far more delicate and complex than a simple muzzle loading musket and it could not be for energy/cost efficiency since such weapons are more expensive and will always be more expensive to use than simple black powder propellant weapons which simply use a metal tube, a charge and a projectile as opposed a laser emitting diode, a power source, intricate wiring and switches. While this does assume human psychology as you state, a civilisaion that has space travel would need to have the ability to reason and say "Hmm by putting explosives in a tube with a closed end we can make the tube move, could we use this to transport people, why not use it to transport more explosives in the military to the enemy?" They obviously do have this ability because they are shown to adapt to trench warfare incredibly quickly in the story. It is just a massive plothole because they did realise that their tactics were stupid with their technology, why they didn't before goes unjustified and thus becomes silly.

[@daviddavids2884]

cen-Tor-ee not igh centauri is not a plural. it derives from the Name of the constellation --- centaurus

[@THECHEESELORD69]

Wat?

[@alexanderrosario8569]

Someone say the purge pls 🙏 😂

[@alganhar1]

Sorry to burst a lot of peoples bubbles, but the Trench sweeper is a myth, its effectiveness was literally invented by a US reporter looking for a unique story. The issue was the ammunition, the shell casings were not made of plastic like they are today, they were made of stiffened paper. Yes, paper. Now ask yourselves a question, if you have paper ammunition loose in your pocket (these guys were not issued with bandoliers), in North Western Europe, what do you think is going to happen? A mixture of damp (it rains a lot in NW Europe) and damage caused by even day to day activities in the trenches (let alone an attack) led to misfire rates of up to 90% in wet weather. The pump action shotguns of WWI were an abject failure, not because of anything wrong with the weapon, but because the ammunition was not robust enough to deal with the conditions on the Western Front. While a brass shell was developed it did not enter production until after the Armistice so was never used in WWI. It was so bad troops issued with the things 'lost' them at the first available opportunity to pick up 1903's or Enfield 1917's, because though longer you could at least rely on the rifles to go bang when you pulled the trigger.....

[@maximilianhindenburg3168]

Shut up and take this BAR

[@THECHEESELORD69]

Damn, that sucks for the boys…

[@ElFeN69WoLf]

On the days they did work it was terrifying for the enemy, on a normal day it was terrifying for the wielder

[@darkiee69]

Why even use the army, just sent a bunch of reenactors instead.

[@michaelharris-iw9bk]

🦅🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣☠️👽☠️

[@kalkoner]

3rd