Can someone explain to me how the fuck 100...

I am not a romeboo faggot, I am just a "hey retard, a single weapon or war factor does not guarantee victory, just look at Publius Ventidius Bassus in comparison to Crassus" faggot.

In giant meme ships.

The proposed size of those things is based on nothing but extrapolation from a single rudder found in a river.

In reality, they were likely only a quarter of that size, which would still make them enormous.

t. Chang

if they did, roman would just rise another legion

Crossbows are over sold, the real meat of the Han empire was it's heavy cavalry spam

Rome has better DEF

Chinese has better OFF

> the real meat of the Han empire was it's heavy cavalry spam

No, there is actually nothing implying that their heavy cav was good either.

The uncomfortable reality is that their power was just numbers.

Unlike Rome who fielded entire armies of professional soldiery, the Han would just draft a fucccload of conscripts and march them against a numerically far inferior enemy.

At least the Romans, regardless of advantage of manpower, had to often deal with enemies with similar numbers, something the Chinese never had an issue with.

Real heavy cavalry showed up later in the Han Dynasty, largely after they rekt'd the Xiongnu.

At the time they were mostly either light or horse archers.

>han heavy cavalry conscripts

>muh crossbows

can someone who isn't using bullshit sources provide a realistic estimate of what their pull weight and effective range would be? because if they were so devastating it is a massive connundrum why they never made their way westward until the middle ages.

i don't believe they were particularly more powerful than the bows of the time, mostly due to materials, and i have no reason to believe otherwise unless the chinese had insanely good and plentiful metalworking yet somehow couldn't mass produce metal armors like Romans did.

would crossbows provide an advantage? certainly, due to their ease of use and speedy reloading they would provide a harsh obstacle to overcome, but Romans made a habit out of going against showers of projectiles.

He was obviously talking about the army in general, and it was indeed mostly just conscripts.

Not to mention that the battles of Tigranocerta, Cilician Gates, Amanus Pass, Mount Gindarus etc. shows us that Romans had no issue dealing with heavy cavalry superior to anything the Han had.

So, you have a Roman professional army, that can deal with the Han heavy cavalry and that can virtually oliveoilrape their infantry if the crossbows do not succeed.

Not saying it would be a clear victory for the Romans, but it would not be exactly a fun time for the Chinese either.

slips muhfugga

>Romans post-Marian legionaries were professional soldiers.
This is a meme. 95% of Roman "veterans" just sat in garrisons drinking wine.

they spent a lot more time building shit and doing town guard shit.

>Han China goes to war against Rome
>Send 100k troops to fight it
>Have to pass through the steppes of Central Asia and the mountains that make up either the Caucasus or the Persian homeland
>Mass deaths and desertion due to attrition alone
All the Romans would have to do is wait. An optimistic number would be a 40k strong force making it to Roman borders

> 95% of Roman "veterans" just sat in garrisons drinking wine.

No, they protected borders and waged war fairly regularly, even after Hadrian did the whole "lets turtle behind garrison lines instead of further expanding" thing.

Hell, they saw more fighting during the crisis of the third century or even after that than they did during the massive expansions of the 1st century BC.

Just because your knowledge is limited to shitty documentaries on youtube does not mean you have to shit on your balls this way.

if both were to meet in approximately an equally distant point between them, it'd come down to whose food goes bad first.

>no spanning devise and limited power stroke
I'd say comparable to a rather heavy bow, but nowhere near the late medieval crossbows
Range wouldn't be too different either

Can someone explain to me why someone would think these irrelevant Chink fucks who were NEVER a superpower would defeat the fucking Romans? Muh mysterious oriental east. Seriously fucking look at the Romans and then Chinks from the same era and tell me with a straight face the gooks had better military.

The gooks WERE NOT a superpower.

this but unironically

What does superpower even mean in the ancient world? If it means a dominant power in its region then you couldn't argue that the Han weren't a super power, just not as strong as Rome

>Muh Rome vs Han
>muh Japanese war crimes

Chink shill thread everyone

start shit; get nuked

u mad nip?

>being surprised that the same threads get spammed on Veeky Forums
its literally a lottery between
>nord/med spamming
>turk spamming
>jap/chink spamming
>anglo/germ spamming

the board is basically poland incarnate, split between int and pol shitposters rn

t. Kisaragi Matsuhito

Most of those Rome vs muh Han threads were created by chinks though.

Enjoyable

gooks are korean, not chinese

Gee I wonder

>Hurls tiny bolls.
K.

>man powered

Precisely why it can hurl something heavier than what an Onager can throw: just add more guys on the ropes.

Meanwhile the Onager can just throw tiny balls.

The biggest stone thrower in Classical Europe was the 3-Talent Lithoboloi. Now that was high tech. Unfortunately it was pretty rare, meanwhile the Chinks can assemble Crouching Tigers easily and have heavy artillery on the go.

>can someone who isn't using bullshit sources provide a realistic estimate of what their pull weight and effective range would be?
Juyan slips. And before anyone screeches about Chinese propaganda these slips were excavated by Westerners.
historum.com/asian-history/131303-han-dynasty-crossbow-ii.html

>because if they were so devastating it is a massive connundrum why they never made their way westward until the middle ages.
The rest of the world lacked the bronzework technology to mass produce the trigger mechanism.

Furthermore sinew and horn are far from optimal for certain climates.

>somehow couldn't mass produce metal armors like Romans did.
Nnot only does the Han have an iron monopoly there are accounting records detailing massive stockpiles of armaments.
historum.com/asian-history/45323-han-dynasty-donghai-military-inventory.html

>just add more guys on the ropes.
diminishing returns retard.
You know nothing about physics if you think "lol just add more guys"
I bet you think two guys running means they will have double the speed of a normal human.

>all these stockpiles
>still had shit armor
chink pls

Their using their fucking weight retard.

Either way it could still hurl something that's heavier than a clay coated rock. (yes that is what an Onager throws.)

>still had shit armor
Where's the source of your information?

That's pretty elite tier by that point.

Average Han soldiery had either leather lamellar or steel lamellar that covered only their torsos and maybe their upper arms.

No different coverage than what R*mans got.

>Average Han soldiery had either leather lamellar or steel lamellar that covered only their torsos and maybe their upper arms.
My point was to show that the Chinese had some fairly advanced armors as well.

By the mid Western Han armors that covered the shoulders and lamellar helmets were all commonplace.

I never understood Ancient China's fetish for Lamellar Helmets.

Its not as if they were not making solid skull helmets, what with the shit they came up with in the Zhou period.

>I never understood Ancient China's fetish for Lamellar Helmets.
I don't know either,though the practice really only died out after the Tang.

>Its not as if they were not making solid skull helmets, what with the shit they came up with in the Zhou period.
The solid Zhou helmets are made from bronze not iron.

>The rest of the world lacked the bronzework technology to mass produce the trigger mechanism.

somehow i doubt this, you ever seen a manuballista? it's practically the same mechanism.

youtube.com/watch?v=ipik__ief4w

>Juyan slips.

i don't know what that is. We have archers and slingers playing a part in warfare during Rome's period but javelins and hand-launched darts dominated, were crossbows significantly better to the point of being tactically decisive?

>it's practically the same mechanism.
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. It's not the trigger itself but the unique piece mold process that the Han utilized for these triggers.

>i don't know what that is.
Han dynasty wooden administrative records from 102 BC- 98 AD detailing day to day operations in Juyan prefecture. The fragments included in the link I've mentioned dealt with crossbow maintenance.

The site itself was excavated around the Edsen-gol region under a Sino-Swedish expedition(1927-1934) while the records were found at other nearby subsidiary sites. See Records of Han Administration by Michael Loewe.

>were crossbows significantly better to the point of being tactically decisive?
The short answer is yes,proving highly effective against infantry and cavalry based armies alike.

The author of this forum post goes into a much more thorough description.
historum.com/asian-history/131303-han-dynasty-crossbow-ii.html

Where are they getting this infinite ammo? besides Shields don't just fall apart. Roman testeudo would basically nullify it, at the very least it would render crossbow reliant formations ineffective

underrated

> Meanwhile the Onager can just throw tiny balls.

Haha what lmao?

They were able to throw 150+ kg stones, far heavier than other machinery at the time.

In fact, Polybius states that the machines used in the engagement of Marcus Claudius Marcellus at Syracuse were throwing 262(!!!) kg stones.

This.

People heavily underestimate the potential of frame supported torsion devices

>Polybius
Was most likely referring to Lithoboloi/Stone-Throwing Ballista.

Not Onagers. Which were small as fuck.

Honey, an Onager was a budget-saving artillery. It needed only one skein of sinew as opposed to the two large ones that Lithoboloi have, which wasn't cheap to make.

And again, it was fucking small.

>muh super duper 1337 trigger mechanism
You do realise basic triggers are extremely easy to produce, right? They might not be as durable and ergonomic as proper ones but claiming they're the bottleneck in crossbow production is ridiculous.
I'd be far more concerned in getting the crossbow limbs right desu senpaitachi.

The issue is that the guy assumes that the heavy crossbow had the same draw length, which was obviously not the case.

The heavies had shorter draw and a shorter prod, otherwise the bow would break under such stress, which is why European crossbows went with steel prods the moment their metallurgy advanced enough, because hand made composite was simply not reliable with such heavy draws.

Not to mention that there is absolutely no evidence of any mechanical reload mechanisms in China for the crossbows, making the highest estimate draw weights themselves dubious.

>You do realise basic triggers are extremely easy to produce, right?
Piece-mold is much more economical than the lost wax process.

it's really hard to say, discipline was really important in ancient battles. the legions where also very well equipped. It is hard to say if roman legions would rout from (primitive) crossbowfire. The romans probably also adopt the technology pretty easily.

also, it is universally accepted that the chinese numbers are enormously inflated. the population pools were kinda the same

And? Trigger mechanisms exist that don't even need casting or any complex parts like, at all
Claiming that the Chinks were the only ones able to make trillions of crossbows because of some super secret asian casting techniques is fucking retarded.

>also, it is universally accepted that the chinese numbers are enormously inflated. the population pools were kinda the same
Between Rome and China? Sure.

But the retarded part is not believing in Chinese numbers because a Medieval European Feudal Shitheap can only furnish 5000 men for war. And that happens on Veeky Forums a lot.

how do they compare on a technological and scientific level. Did the Han have any Alexandria-tier knowledge center? i heard they still believed the earth was flat and that they lagged behind on math

and on top of that, engineering

Simply not true

I never said anything about medieval times, we're comparing rome to the Han empire here

>The issue is that the guy assumes that the heavy crossbow had the same draw length, which was obviously not the case.
Irrelevant. We are discussing average 6 dan crossbows while heavier crossbows made up less than 10.96% of total crossbows.

European crossbows had higher draw weights but Han crossbows had longer powerstrokes and composite prods resulting in increased efficiency.

>Not to mention that there is absolutely no evidence of any mechanical reload mechanisms in China for the crossbows,
There's an Eastern Han mural that may show evidence of a winched mechanism.

>making the highest estimate draw weights themselves dubious.
Bullshit. There are multiple sources from different dynasties that corroborate high draw weights. Some surviving triggers have the tensile strength directly engraved.

It wasn't just the Chinese that feared their crossbows the Persians had first hand accounts of their destructive power under Mongol siege engineers i.e. Tarikh-i Jahangushay.

>Claiming that the Chinks were the only ones able to make trillions of crossbows because of some super secret asian casting techniques is fucking retarded.
Are you daft? All I did was give an example of why the lack of piece mold expertise made it harder for neighboring polities to transfer or mass produce crossbows.

The Mongols are the perfect intermediaries as the ancient Chinese never really ventured past the Tarim Basin.

>also, it is universally accepted that the chinese numbers are enormously inflated.
They are inflated but universal conscription and records of state owned armories prove that the Han had the ability to churn out large armies.

and see

With what? Bamboo arrows?

What was the draw weight of Roman manuballistas?

Greek gastraphetes on the other hand were inferior to Chinese crossbows due to the way they were drawn.

>duuur who would win rome or han???

>It wasn't just the Chinese that feared their crossbows the Persians had first hand accounts of their destructive power under Mongol siege engineers i.e. Tarikh-i Jahangushay

That is more than a thousand years after the time period you guys where talking about

>They are inflated but universal conscription and records of state owned armories prove that the Han had the ability to churn out large armies.

Large but not as huge as those numbers imply

> prove that the Han had the ability to churn out large armies.

Oh, nobody is doubting that.

The issue is merely that that churnout would be a mass blob of conscripts, not a professional army, apart from most of the cavalry of course.

> What was the draw weight of Roman manuballistas?

Probably very high, some historians argue as much as 1400lbs with the larger pieces.

> Greek gastraphetes on the other hand were inferior to Chinese crossbows due to the way they were drawn.

Could you explain this?

It is basically the same thing, just a push mechanism instead of a draw one.

Little to do with military capability.

>The gooks WERE NOT a superpower

You're objectively wrong. China has been a superpower for the majority of recorded history.

Its people like you who are too busy jerking off to muh rome and muh glorious west to see a looming threat on the horizon that are going to be the downfall of Western civilization

>>What was the draw weight of Roman manuballistas?

there are several dozen finds of Ballistas of every size you can imagine and not a standard one so i cannot tell you a number and expect it to hold up, but the average scorpio you'd see mounted on a tripod would be firing bolts at least to 100 meters, capable of piercing infantry armor of the day as they're described to be used in emplacements like modern day machineguns. Ballistas fell into two categories: stone throwers and bolt throwers, with their own uses.

romanarmy.net/artillery.shtml
dagr.univ-tlse2.fr/consulter/391/ARCUBALLISTA

for the smaller ones, you could expect a compromise between the power of a mounted one and a standard bow, because by any logic, if they weren't significantly stronger, they would have never been tried at all.

youtube.com/watch?v=qGzYumLxYSI

Why do people still post this shitty chart seriously?

If you take the statistics for ferrous metallurgy for example they are made by different authors who use divergent methodologies to come to their conclusions.

>That is more than a thousand years after the time period you guys where talking about
Yes,but the technology for these types of siege crossbows from that medieval account date back to the Warring States. I just wanted to provide a non-Chinese source for comparison.

>The issue is merely that that churnout would be a mass blob of conscripts, not a professional army, apart from most of the cavalry of course.
These conscripts were far from untrained and made it easier to replace losses incurred on campaigns.

>Probably very high, some historians argue as much as 1400lbs with the larger pieces.
Then the larger variants would be comparable to Chinese arcuballistas instead of foot drawn crosbows.

How common was the smaller variant?

>It is basically the same thing, just a push mechanism instead of a draw one.
Gastraphetes relies on the total body weight while the Han crossbow relied on arm and leg strength.

In the video it is obvious that the torsion mechanism allows the arms of the "bow" to move backwards more during draw, this increases the draw length and thus makes it more powerful because this increases the end velocity of the projectile.

>Ferrous metallurgy
Seems like both estimates are unreliable,one is built out of thin air while the other is drastically underestimated. see post 18
twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?733453-The-Rise-of-Ming-and-the-Conquest-of-China

Are you daft? All I did was give an example of why the lack of piece mold expertise wouldn't make a difference for neighboring polities to transfer or mass produce crossbows.

I don't see why you are sperging over piece mold technology. I merely provided one potential roadblock that impeded the technological diffusion of Chinese crossbows.

>GDP%
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

wrong again, retard.

When other nations don't copy your weapons it's usually because they weren't that great to begin with and not because of some obscure technological gap that's easily circumvented

This fucking thread again.
Who fucking cares? They were differently situated empires on opposite sides of the continent who had different economies, administrations, and militaries that were built around their environment and their geopolitical enemies. Who is to say they would not have adapted to each other upon hostile contact like the vast majority of successful civilizations do? Instead, we have a thread that baits chinkshills and stormniggers into incoherent, unproductive spergouts. All of you need to get a fucking grip.

pretty sure they're all started by the same delusional chink so he can spout 'muh crossbow' memes

Good post.

Rome and China is like the civilizational equivalent of Knights vs. Samurai

>When other nations don't copy your weapons it's usually because they weren't that great to begin with and not because of some obscure technological gap that's easily circumvented
The parsimonious explanation is simply geography,nomads didn't have the infrastructure to produce such weapons while the Chinese rarely interacted with the Tarim Basin polities.

If the Chinese crossbow was so useless to begin with the Chinese wouldn't have adopted them from Southern China.

t. brainlet

Just because the OP exaggerates the armor piercing capabilities of the crossbow doesn't mean that the Chinese crossbow had its advantages.

>The parsimonious explanation is simply geography,nomads didn't have the infrastructure to produce such weapons while the Chinese rarely interacted with the Tarim Basin polities.

how about India and other Persian empires? it's not THAT far away, if tons of silk could make it's way west, then why not a single specimen of a functioning crossbow?

Daily reminder that people should ignore Chink shill threads like this one

>When other nations don't copy your weapons it's usually because they weren't that great to begin with and not because of some obscure technological gap that's easily circumvented
>Nobody copied Chinese weapons.
Literally what the fuck.

For starters: Koreans, Viets, Tibetans, swam in Chink gear. Japan may have had their own ideas in armor but they also took Chinese weaponry. Tang swords famously.

Steppenigs took pointers from Chinese armor and in turn the Chinese got armor ideas from them (Cataphracts famously.). The Nomadic Saber descended from the Chinese Dao and evidence of this being many of the Proto-Sabers of 500s-700s Central Asian Nomads were straight single edgers with ring pommels. Which is typical of Early Imperial Chinese Dao swords.

As for Crossbows there's also some evidence that the Crossbow came to the Middle East via Turkics bringing Chinese style crossbows in the ME because Turkic depictions of Crossbows. Except we don't know for sure because Turkics who got Islamised called the Crossbow with the Arabic word for Crossbow: qaws ferenggi ("Frankish Bow,") since the Arabs were more familiar of the European version of the weapon. But the evidence there being that Turkics depicted crossbows as recurve bows on stocks. Which is a very Chinese thing.

>if tons of silk could make it's way west, then why not a single specimen of a functioning crossbow?
Silk is a luxury good,a banned military grade crossbow isn't.

You also have to consider whether someone would be willing to skirt the weapon ban(see paper),whether the Chinese composite crossbow prod would even function in those environments and the economic factors needed to mass produce such contraptions.

Rome would win every pitched battle. China would win every siege.

why would traders defending their own routes care about local bans of items that would drastically help their protection?

During the Qin til the Song period, military Crossbows were made in state factories. You can't buy em off a weapons dealer like other weapons.

They became civilian accessible during the Yuan...because firearms became the new state-sanctioned weapon.