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0 pointsspywaregorilla4y ago0 comments

How would you unethically test ancient combat tactics? Unless you mean have people try it until it seems to work, in which case, I'm sure you would find many willing LARPers

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kbenson4y ago

I think the issue is that LARPing battle is a poor substitute for what the body can take and how people respond to real pain and damage. We might be getting to the point that we can get somewhat of a foot take on the damage with VR eventually.

jay_kyburz4y ago

You also have to grow up in a society that is completely alien to ours, your entire outlook on life, how long you might live, and how willing you are to give up your life is different.

Imagine living in a world where how tough you are, how well you can fight determines everything about your status in the world.

Apocryphon4y ago

VR? What if we just tried it out in a Mount and Blade mod.

willcipriano4y ago

Do you find that your behavior in Mount and Blade is close to real life?

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cdot24y ago

The conjecture is that people will not willingly throw themselves on a line of spears and so the phalanxes would stop short of actually hitting each other. I don't think larpers would be able to test that well. I'm not sure how you would test that unethically

spywaregorillaOP4y ago

I feel like a great deal of melee warfare involved group A smashing itself upon group B. Phalanxes, as I understand it, were effective because they were particularly good at this part. So given that we already had lots of other varieties of troops throwing themselves at the spears, why do we doubt that other phalanxes would specifically be unwilling to do the same?

boomboomsubban4y ago

The idea is that a phalanx trained under the assumption that their formation was nearly invincible as long as they were experienced enough and worked together well. Both the members of the phalanxes and the generals would be hesitant to risk that by sending them against another phalanx where they lose all their inherent advantage and would need to fight in a different way.

hutzlibu4y ago

Replaying something with toy weapons, is not really the same, as fighting for real. But it would probably make for some approximation.

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