Is there any way mounted horsemen could defeat a battery of these without the advantage of gross numerical advantage?

Is there any way mounted horsemen could defeat a battery of these without the advantage of gross numerical advantage?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Danny_Boy
youtube.com/watch?v=K7TCFkdFr6g
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Using their own guns to shoot back

Flanking and surprise?

Or a marksman support keeping pressure on the operators by picking off the ones firing?

Taking advantage of terrain and having ranged weaponry.

Assuming 10 horsemen for each gun (not a ridiculously proportion considering it's artillery piece vs cavalry units), if they can get into range without being exposed to the machinegun fire they could kill enough gunners to disable them.

Also, firing a bow in an arch over a hill or some other obstacles that bullets cant pierce. Arrows arch puts machinegun in range of bows but horse archers out of the machineguns line of fire.

Attack them battery on the march, attack the supply column and foaragers and starve out the battery position, pose as friendly cavalry and chop them up once you're close, dismount and sneak up to them.

Probably not on an open battlefield. But ambushing, encirclement etc might work

Arcane Horseriders. They use a protection spell to get close enough to cast fireball on the gatlings.

Hills

only in certain conditions.

Have your own cannons fire smoke canisters at them.

Cheating Swedish style by bringing artillery with their horsemen.

[Loud HONHONHONs drowned out by artillery fire]

I find that in Total War Fall of the Samurai Horses are the most deadly unit against Gatling guns, as they can get through the fire cone with only losing a quarter of their men and then overrun the battery.

>Fots
>bringing gatlings

I know they're fun, and i love them to death, but they're pretty bad man.

Clarifications.

> The mounted horsemen are all armored with various pieces of iron plate and are well disciplined. They are equipped with sabers and other basic cavalry weapons. They do not have the advantage of gunpowder weaponry.

> The gatling battery is already deployed. There are five guns with large stocks of magazines in nearby crates. Each gun is operated by three people (two gunners, an ammo handler) with a single commander. Each artilleryman is equipped with a short sabre and a revolver (think the Single Action Army).

Magic does exist in this setting but these horsemen are not trained for it.

The current battle region is an eastern frontier of an empire currently expanding into a region inhabited by indigenous peoples (a little Scandinavian and Mongol here and there, fairly varied regions but a wide flatland in the center of the land, where this gun battery is).

The indigenous people do not have artillery or firearms, but are good horsemen. Their main footman force (spears and bows) is currently tying up the riflemen that were moving alongside the Gatling battery. Because the battery is now isolated, a unit of horsemen has moved in to attack it.

Basically, how do they manage to attack it without being mulched? I'm thinking they might try to circle around the back and flank, but what hills there are are relatively flat and the Gatlings are equipped with limited rotating mounts on their artillery carriages, letting them swivel to a degree to intercept moving enemies.

Alone or combined arms? In reality Gatling guns were targeted by artillery or suppressed by sniper fire.

Well, if you're doing it like that...
...face it, they're aren't going to reach the Gatling guns without taking casualties. A LOT of casualties. Some user stated a quarter in his Total War game, but I'd say you should be taking into account losing at least half. It can be worth it, but keep that in mind.

The best you can hope for is to minimize the damage, both in casualties and in morale. I'd say as follows:
>Casualties
Try to take advantage of the terrain. The hills are relatively flat, but it's better than nothing. Simply circling around them from a long distance may also help, as well as spreading out a lot.
>Morale
Just keep going. For some reason these brave fools need both the motivation and the guts to just keep going on even if 3/4 of their men are down. Unless they're being guarded, the gunners will probably be relatively lightly armed so if even a small number of cavalrymen makes it to them they're toast.

Very loose formation will probably help as well

Half the use of Gatlers is that you can't rush them.
So you either have to use combined arms in some forms, or a 2-3 layer of strategy or flanking.

Sniping is even more of a option to, since bullets only have so so much power.
So if Gatling is 9mm, it has less range than a sniper with the same caliber, due imprecision in aiming and cone of fire.
Like, half the reason they are so effective against lesser civilizations, is that they don't have artillery to counter fire. Meanwhile even the Ottomans would laugh, setup a canon, and outrange it by some means, and just shot it.

The flanking maneuver would be performed off the actual battlefield. Unless the imperial forces have their own cavalry then they really can't hamper the movement of the indigenous cavalry without screening forces or fortifications. Your real issue is that unless they're at a massive, massive numerical disparity your indigenous forces are going to get their shit wrecked by imperial forces, as your empire has already moved to cartridged firearms while they're stuck in pre-gunpowder.

But gattling guns fire .30 or .58 which is quite a lot punchier than 9mm. They have about the same range as a standard rifled musket, and cavalry are not going to be using anything bigger than a dragon or some kind of carbine.

There are cav.
Let them do what cavalry is meant for:
Use mobility.
Outmaneuver and outflank fuckers and attack from all sides.

Consider the fact that each horsemen is protected by a horse and horse is tough to kill with man killing bullets.
Horse can tank significant amount of ammunition before it dies, possibly enough to carry it's rider to a enemy.

For a gatling to work, it has to fire low caliber rounds.
For WW2 the situation is like
Pistol rounds -> Machine Gun
Rifle Rounds -> Entrenched Gatling gun, possible with questionable recoil and cooling
At some point they managed to make guns that could accept reasonable rounds, at a slow full auto, but that was basically far into the end of the war.

So if the Pre WW1 Gatling uses .58, nothing is stopping you from deploying snipers with .58, and outrange it.
There is a reason there is a lot of logistcs in warfare.

There's around a 2.5-3 to 1 man ratio (indigenous to imperial) in the engagement.

Two companies of line riflemen equipped with breechloading single-shot rifles (very similar to the Springfield 1873) are engaged in holding off a horde of spear and sword equipped indigenous footmen. The battery was originally preparing to deploy to support them, but it now faces the cavalry attack.

Both rifle and Gatling are chambered for a .45-70 equivalent metal-cased round, so they're punchy and have a pretty good range. Two Gatlings out of the battery have experimental feed systems that can be topped up while the magazine is draining, while the other three have standard 40-round top-mounted box magazines that can be quickly changed after emptying. Near each gun on the carriage is a crate of extra magazines and loose .45 ammunition.

Nice try, Tom Cruise

What? No.

The earliest Gatlings (using the same Minie-ball paper cartridges as the Springfield musket, just hidden in a metal tube) were .58. Later models reduced this to .45, and later .30.

Gatlings certainly don't have to be low-caliber to work properly. And if you think that crew-served WW2 machine guns were chambered in pistol-caliber ammo only than there's nothing to say other than that you're utterly wrong.

Swivelling a gatling (especially to the other side of the battery) isn't as easy as you'd think, manoeuvre should help, as should splitting forces for multi-pronged attacks

Each gun rides on a standard artillery carriage, but the actual firearm itself is supported by a large two-pronged base attached to the carriage. This base includes the ability to rotate as well as aim the gun up and down, or lock it in place (when firing for long periods of time). There is a handle on the rear of the weapon where the gunner grips with his left hand while cranking with the right, allowing him to steer the gun.

This arrangement allows it to correct its aim to a limited extent, but not very far to each side or vertically.

Why are you displaying that your knowledge of English is lacking?
What do you think a Machine Gun is user? And why do you think that
>At some point they managed to make guns that could accept reasonable rounds, at a slow full auto
is mentioned?
Could it have something to do with the difference between a crew used machine gun using rifle rounds, and a personal full auto firearm?

There are no good options here. This is one of those situations where the difference in military tech really matters.

At this point, its really a question of minimizing the damage.

My preferred way to take that hill is to wait for night and send in a bunch of dudes on their bellies, closing the distance for a sneak attack. The guns are fucking dangerous, but there are not a lot of men on them and a solid sneak attack could take the lot of them. Have men on horses in the wings ready to come at them from two different directions as soon as they hear gunfire. The night still gives you an advantage, because their aim will suffer if they cant see you until you get close. If the guns are arranged in a line, attack from the sides such that the emplacements are initially block each other's line of sight. They can redeploy, of course, but forcing them to redploy means costing them time before they can bring their full force against you, and every second counts.

Yeah, your indigenous army is going to get slaughtered. Springfield 1873s had an effective fire rate of 15 rounds per minute, and assuming your .45-70 equivalent reflects real world ballistics, your riflemen will be able to lay down effective harassing fire against a massed enemy at 1000 yards and accurate aimed fire at 300 yards. If your Gatling battery is already deployed to face the cavalry they're going to get shot up, if they weren't deployed or were deployed to face infantry and have to reorient then they can break through.

Given the failure rate? Sure, if they were willing to take the casualties. Of course, if the battery was on the move, itd be dead meat- Germans, with machine guns and semi-auto rifles, still managed to lose a bunch of infantry to polish cavalry charges in ww2 if said cavalry caught them with their pants down (and if it didn't it dismounted and fought the same way infantry in halftracks would of course)

>
Not my indigenous army to be exact- this is a background event in a setting me and my buddies are working on. It's basically the Indian Wars equivalent for this setting- the empire is pushing out into the frontiers, but suffers from military cutbacks in that region and hostile indigenous peoples.

The 1873's rate of fire was 8-15 rounds per minute (from rookies to most experienced). The riflemen here are from a little-experienced volunteer regiment, so I'd say their rate of fire is 9-10 rounds per minute at best. That's still a murderous volley of fire, but there's a large number of indigenous people, and they are driven by a religious frenzy (the arrival of the invading armies coincidentally lines up with a big "date of happening" in their teachings). .45 is a manstopper of a round but some of these people are fairly well-armored and can eat a few bullets before they crumple, not to mention the cavalry are just as well-armored and horses tend to soak up bullets.

That's a good idea. The emplacements are indeed in a line but there is no time to wait for night, because if the cavalry do not find a good way to attack now, the gatlings will simply clean up the footman blobs and the rifle infantry will be free to engage the cavalry or at least drive it away from the emplacements.

I think you have the wrong guy (You'd) there.

>Germans, with machine guns and semi-auto rifles, still managed to lose a bunch of infantry to polish cavalry charges in ww2 if said cavalry caught them with their pants down
I love this kind of mix of modern and old tactics, I read about the Japanese were training spear armed units for their last stand defense and I was thinking that with proper machinegun fire support they could actually be viable.

>I love this kind of mix of modern and old tactics
You know that by "cavalry" he meant "dudes on horseback with guns who'd usually dismount and fight like normal infantry and only charged with sabers when the stars aligned for a perfect cavalry charge", right?

If you really want your mind blown on "old" tactics: the most recent bayonet charge (at least to my knowledge) was in 2003.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Danny_Boy

Using tactics, speed and terrain to move in close combat before they can aim in their general direction

A 3x numerical superiority doesn't count for much, especially when the indigenous infantry can't even effectively harm imperial infantry for a significant portion of the combat distance and only a fraction of said infantry is able to attack at range. Even if some of them have armor that can eat several rounds, pretty fucking impressive when you look at .45-70's energy output, you're still talking about a lengthy charge by heavy infantry through steady fire. Best case scenario is an indigenous tactical victory where the cavalry break imperial lines and overrun the infantry but at an extreme cost in indigenous casualties. More than likely you'd be looking at an inconclusive battle or imperial victory.

I should add that not a single imperial soldier is equipped with a bayonet. These troops are basically the bottom-of-the-barrel infantry of the army, with basic training and little experience, out there to protect settlers from having their shit kicked in by indigenous raids.

Cut off their supply lines. You know the land, the invaders don't. Don't engage their superior forces, simply engage the supporting infantry from the rear until they rout and run them down. Then steal all their food and ammunition from the supply wagons. Wait for the gatling guns to pack up to move, and strike. Or better, attack at night from multiple angles.

The issue isn't a lack of bayonets, since they'd still have their rifles as clubs, shovels and entrenching tools, knives, and a smattering of pistols and swords, the issue is that your terrain and technological disparity puts the imperial forces at an extreme advantage. To put things into perspective the Battle of Rorke's Drift saw the British outnumbered almost 30:1 by the Zulu and the Brits still won.

Going back to the original question; yes, mounted horsemen can defeat a battery of undefended Gatling guns if they can charge the guns in a flanking maneuver before the battery has time to reposition or deploy effective screening forces.

This. The sad truth is that in warfare, the boring logistics stuff is often more important than the cool battles. What matters is how the soldiers get to the battle, how many of them can get there, how well fed they are, how many guns they have et cetera.

Napoopan excelled at this, finding ways to fight an enemy that vastly outnumbered them by planning setpiece battle after setpiece battle to keep them divided rather than allowing them to join up and Zerg him. This was also supposed to happen at Waterloo, except Grouchy was an incompetent fuck who couldn't even slightly delay the Prussians.

That's something that should be clarified first: are the imperial forces encamped, on the march, or are they in a fortified position?

Good point. They would be most vulnerable on the march, with their heavy weapons packed for transport and the troops fatigued from marching, not to mention being in an extended line formation (assuming there's some kind of path or road for them to follow). Native ambush would be potentially devastating if executed proficiently.

Encamped forces will be on watch for attackers, and weapons can be left at least partially deployed for service. Not an ideal position to attack, but at least some of the troops will be sleeping or otherwise away from their weapons during such a period, making an attack feasible.

A fortified position would pose a huge problem to any kind of primitive foe. Encirclement and starvation would be the best option, though a well-supplied force could hold out in even a relatively primitive bulwark for months. Siege camps are a danger to both parties, and primitive armies generally have part-time soldiers who won't be willing to sit around and risk disease for a year. Treachery is the most likely road to success for the attackers - communicating with the men in the fort, telling them that anyone who sets fire to the powder magazines will be guaranteed safe passage home (assuming they survive the blast).

Not that guy, but if the primitives have the homefield advantage remember that usually setpiece battles don't happen unless both sides believe they have a solid chance of winning and/or are desperate. Otherwise your options are retreating, fortifying, simply waiting things out et cetera (in Caesar's campaigns he could spend entire days waiting out an enemy until he deemed the odds to be in his favor. In those days it wasn't unusual for armies to deploy, just stare at eachother with maybe a skirmish here or there and then retreat to their camps).

>Encirclement and starvation would be the best option, though a well-supplied force could hold out in even a relatively primitive bulwark for months.
And how long would the primitives be able to hold out in their own homeland? Until their deaths probably, meaning they can and should play the long game. Like you said yourself, besieging a fort with incredibly inferior technology will be costly and highly likely to fail, so just keep the enemy locked up in their forts and wait them out. Sabotaging their supplies in one way or another also helps a lot. Canned food is nice, but even an industrial level society will need a fresh supply of water on an almost daily if not weekly basis, and dehydration becomes much more dangerous than starvation. Of course they could also be incredibly D E V I L I S H by having a local tribe feign rivalry with themselves and than have that other tribe sell secretly diseased cattle to the invaders. Now half the fortress is suffering from dysentry.

tl;dr: Battles only happen if you're really certain of your odds, retreating is always a viable option, supply lines are really important.
Then again, if this seems overpowered the imperials are basically weekend soldiers, right? If they get tied up too long, the real army might show up to see what's going on and that's something the primitives don't want either.

Imperials are not sitting in a fort. They've wheeled out some infantry and the battery to confront the indigenous here.

The indigenous people are fighting in defense of their settlement a few kilometers away. There lies their women and children; the idea is that if their settlements are burned they'll get a very strong idea of why they shouldn't fuck with the settlers. There is no waiting for nightfall here, because the soldiers will simply move forward and destroy the settlement.

The imperial infantry are attacking from a fort a little ways' away, and so far have managed to move essentially undetected (indigenous were busy raiding homesteads). The fort is well-stocked with canned goods and has a few wells, plus some actual artillery pieces and yet more soldiers, so the indigenous people have not attempted to attack it. These are just shitty frontier-enforcement troops, with cutback equipment (no bayonets, less training and marksmanship practice), but they're not shitty militia or conscripts either. They have plenty of ammo.

You are making the Empire too passive and static, if the primitives can't stand to them, they are going to occupy every relevant piece of terrain and important localities.

The main issue with the siege tactic is that it requires significantly more manpower and resource commitment by the besiegers than the besieged. Even if you're just waiting them out and not attacking you still need significant forces to prevent a breakout and forces to protect your encampments from other enemy forces. The mere presence of an enemy expedition, even if they're far away and not coming to break the siege, could be enough to force the siege to be lifted, due to the technological disparity trumping the numerical disparity.

Alright, yeah... that sounds like a situation where they'd want to fight in the open even if the odds are against them. NVM.

>The current battle region is an eastern frontier of an empire currently expanding into a region inhabited by indigenous peoples (a little Scandinavian and Mongol here and there, fairly varied regions but a wide flatland in the center of the land, where this gun battery is).
>The indigenous people do not have artillery or firearms, but are good horsemen. Their main footman force (spears and bows) is currently tying up the riflemen that were moving alongside the Gatling battery. Because the battery is now isolated, a unit of horsemen has moved in to attack it.
>Basically, how do they manage to attack it without being mulched? I'm thinking they might try to circle around the back and flank, but what hills there are are relatively flat and the Gatlings are equipped with limited rotating mounts on their artillery carriages, letting them swivel to a degree to intercept moving enemies
youtube.com/watch?v=K7TCFkdFr6g

>That Fall of the Samurai trailer
I remember that. Had a hearty kek.

okay I know that not everyone is /k/ but you all should at least no fucking more than this.

There's only one way to know for certain.

I need you tell me how many horsemen are there exactly, draw a crude map of the battlefield that includes major elevations, obstacles, etc, and distances.

And then I need you to give me a estimative of how well trained the horsemen are and the gunmen too.

Then I convert all of that to GURPS, which accurate simulates reality, and then we will see.

If you have a system in mind, you can instead do that yourself with your preferred system and test it.

On thing that's heavily dependent are the tactics the Empire is using versus the tactics of the indigenous people. How familiar with war are the indigenous? Could they dig foxholes and ambush the Imperials in order to negate their range advantage? Are the Imperials still operating along the lines of inflexible line infantry formations, or are the accustomed to trench and guerilla warfare to some degree?

>Indian Wars equivalent
Keep in mind what the general result of most engagements was when natives didn't have surprise/numbers working for them.

There's a reason why Automatic Weapons firing Pistol rounds are called "SUB-Machine Guns", user.

Also, the land forces didn't use Gatling Guns in WW2.

spread out as far as the terrain allows and envelop their formation, Gatling guns are both inaccurate and slow to reposition which means they are only really effective against massed frontal charges. Once you've gotten past the guns your surviving horsemen can regroup and massacre them

It depends a great deal on leadership. Given the array of battle, it's possible that a flanking charge from 2 angles could shatter the artillery. If it's situated behind the enemy ranks this ends the battle as those guns can now be turned on the infantry. If that's not possible, it's still a cavalry charge to the rear. These troops aren't trained to form square, have no bayonets, and are unlikely to be led by steady commanders so you can expect them to almost immediately rout in the charge.

One wing of the cavalry will be destroyed, as the gatling guns can simply mow them down. If the other wing doesn't have perfect coordination the artillery can wheel around to stop their charge as well. If the infantry can't keep pressure on the riflemen those units will be redeployed to support the guns and the cavalry will be unlikely to make a breakthrough without routing. Depending on how difficult it is to replace these cavalrymen the war will be eventually decided by the fact that shitty conscripts with snider rifles are still cheaper than knights.

Are you sure? I know some countries were still using muskets and muzzle-loaded cannon.

Yes, a number of battles were waged between Turkish gun emplacements and ANZAC cavalry in the First World War. The cavalry usually got the better of the static defense. Assuming no barbed wire (deserts made this hard), the cavalry could use its own horse-drawn artillery and machine guns to suppress and demoralize the position, while sweeping in multiple waves of cavalry in loose formation to deliver a shock action. Casualties were typically light, but the unexpected appearance of barbed wire or the inability to bring your own fire tilts the situation, though it is to be noted that the cavalry still carried the day sans fire, taking very heavy casualties.

Horse speed and the ability to approach loosely from multiple angles gives cavalry a decent chance of getting through enemy fire, and the force delivered by tons of horseflesh backing a saber or lance will kill a man dead, and terrify his comrades.

Litterally everthing you posted is wrong.

How easy it is to actually hit a person manning a machine gun position, though? Wouldn't the weapon itself be a potential hazard for the horse to trip on?

OP, you need to ask this question in the 'hwg' thread. The "answers" you're getting here are misinformed at best and retarded at worst. Also, /hwg/ lists various folder where you can find an Osprey concerning Gatlings, their abilities, and their tactical usage.

Because it's barrels are longer allowing propellant to "work" the bullet longer, Gatlings have a higher muzzle velocity and longer range than a rifle for a given cartridge. During the San Juan/Kettle Hill battles, US Gatlings using blackpowder rounds engaged Spanish trenches & blockhouses at over a kilometer. Because a Gatling can be aimed like artillery, it can more easily hold an elevation than a rifle allowing for even longer range. Also, thanks to near continuous fire, a Gatling can also "walk" it's fire onto enemy formations and follow them more easily when the move.

The massed horse formations of pre-gunpowder and even early modern armies are hideously vulnerable to automatic weapons as shown by Russian successes in Central Asia and British successes in the Sudan. Your massed "Viking/Mongol" cavalry will be chewed up by properly deployed Gatlings with ease because, the tighter the formations, the more likely a spooked, wounded, and/or killed horse will cause the others beside/behind it to stumble and fall. Check out any racing/steeplechasing vids to appreciate just how one horse going down can take several others with and then try to imagine what sort of carnage a hail of Gatling rounds would cause.

Allenby's use of cavalry during WW1 in Palestine saw cavalry units widely dispersed and using their own support weapons to overrun Turkish defenses, something your "Viking/Mongols" will not be able to do.

Your other issues include the battle itself. Your description of it is gibberish with both tactics and deployment of the forces involved bordering on idiocy. Neither your volunteers or horsemen would act as stupidly as suggested, especially when they've fought each other before.

You mean as a charge and/or trying to out-manouver the gunners?
Simply not possible. The moment the guns are set up, you are fucked. So you literally only stand a chance when the gun is not ready to fire.
And then there is also horse artillery, but that was already outdated in times when Gatling was in play and instead "tatschanka" was introduced - a Gatlin and then Maxim set on a two-horse carriage with a stabiliser. SUPER effective.

Jesus Christ, I'm no /k/, but even I can see how wrong your post is.

Banzai charges were good for one thing only - getting entire charging force gunned down in pointless suicide attack that was unable to harm anyone at all. It's same shit as kamikaze attacks - once the initial shock value of pure novelity of such absurd strategy worn off, dealing with such attacks was the easiest thing imaginable to do, rendering them completely ineffective.

Those troops are exactly the troops you want armed with bayonets.

For your infantry, you need ranged firepower plus some means of self-defense in close combat against cavalry.

In renaissance warfare, this was achieved using mixed pike-and-shot units; you had musketeers to provide firepower and pikemen to stop them being swept away by cavalry.

The pike went away because guns became light enough to have bayonets fixed to them when cavalry approached, basically making them makeshift spears.

If you don't have pike in your basic units and they're facing native cavalry, there's no reason whatsoever for them to not carry bayonets.

Normal infantry in this army do have bayonets, but these are backwater troops with rather poor equipment. It's a wonder they even have breechloaders; the Gatlings were hauled out from their fort, and that's the only ones they have.

Easy. They need to flank. Biggest disadvantage of wheel mounted Gatling guns is that they are bitches to move. Sure, they'll loose some people to finding the range, but a charging horse can close a 200m distance (the effective range) very easily. Also, they don't need to close to close combat, if they have any javelins or similar weapons. Each gun only needs 2 javelins to hit the crew to disable it. If the horsemen move at a diagonal to close, then throw javelins, then rush once the crews panic, the gatling crews die real fast. Bring javelins, throw them, win.

Also, best option the horsemen have is to stay outside the effective range, then make themselves visible. Split off and circle around, and keep the gatling guns in place. keep them there till night, then dismount and sneak closer off horseback. Either they sleep and get overwhelmed at night, or they are exhausted and die on the morning, when they are unable to operate their machinery due to fatigue

If the army are that incompetent they'll easily be overrun. If they can't even issue bayonets they probably won't have any ammunition either.

>The indigenous people do not have artillery or firearms, but are good horsemen
Then the empire is gonna be eating lots of tasty horse stakes, in the scenario you described there is just about nothing you could do to survive outside of charging the opposite direction

Background fluff: There was a fairly recent civil war/WW1 equivalent. There is SHITTONS of rifles and .45 ammo to go around, but because bayonet warfare was less important in that war (improved volley speed, gatling guns, etc.) bayonet production fell behind. Thus these backwater infantry are less critical to receive bayonets (combined with slow production owing to budget cuts) than the troops closer to home.

The spear units weren't for such charges and such charges weren't done with spearmen, though. The point of the suicide attack was a flashy suicide for minor nobles. Spears were the traditional household defense weapon being parceled out by a government with no tradition of civilian firearms and no intention even in defeat of handing them over to farmers, intended to be used in tactics much like the Viet Cong later use.

As someone who considers /k/ his home board, this post hurts me.

>Normal infantry in this army do have bayonets, but these are backwater troops with rather poor equipment. It's a wonder they even have breechloaders; the Gatlings were hauled out from their fort, and that's the only ones they have.

>Have Gatlings which required machined parts
>Don't have bayonets which only require a blacksmith
>Have Gatlings which require thousands of metal cartridges as ammunition plus a reloading capability
>Have infantry which are "lucky' to have breechloading rifles which use cartrideges

The setting you've described in this thread OP is nothing but a grab bag of special pleading and other types of pathetic douchebaggery. While the posters in this thread tried to answer your question honestly, it's apparent you only want excuses which can "explain" the idiocy you've crafted.

Your setting sucks and you deserve it to suck.

The thing with bayonet shortages is that they're vanishingly unlikely. Improvised spearfighting in trenches or no, every soldier's still going to be issued a utility knife or machete for things like opening supplies and gathering kindling, and making a bayonet has been as simple as molding its grip to socket over the gun's barrel or a lug on it.

The fuck, man? What drives you to shit yourself in rage at someone over the internet because they made a mistake regarding procurement of equipment?

>Gatling is... it has less range than a sniper with the same caliber
That's not how a beaten zone under sustained automatic fire works.

An example, a sniper rifle in 7.62x51 (eg M40) has an effective range against point targets of approximately 800 meters, after that, you might score hits via unusual skill or luck, but you'd really be considered harassing fire.

On the other hand, a machine gun in 7.62x51 (eg M60), in a fixed position, has an effective range of 1200 meters against point targets and longer against area targets.

This is despite the fact that the machinegun is shooting standard ball ammo and the sniper rifle is shooting match ammo with better ballistic coefficient, which reduces dispersion compared to the ball ammo.

Good cover might let a sniper attack a machine gun nest from within its own range and avoid being killed by return fire, but if it's,more than one machine gun nest, you'll have trouble finding cover that protects you from both.

>These are just shitty frontier-enforcement troops, with cutback equipment (no bayonets, less training and marksmanship practice), but they're not shitty militia or conscripts either. They have plenty of ammo.
If they are only outnumbered 3 to 1, and there's no close terrain (eg they can't get ambushed), these militiamen are going to win with few to no causualties.

You need to step back and era in firearms development or get the natives some guns of their own of they are to survive.

And no, unless their armor is extremely heavy, it's not going to protect them from .45/70 unless they stay a couple hundred yards away. This isn't the kind of arbequs round that proofed armor was tested against.

With the responses in mind I'm thinking of placing some captured firearms in the hands of some native cavalry or perhaps even some of their footmen.

What marks of gun (muzzleloaders? breechloading single-shot rifles? or repeating lever-guns?) /quantities would mix things up without giving either side too great of a victory chance?

>a 200m distance (the effective range)

You're as stupid as the OP. In Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, UK forces routinely engaged Zulu impis at ranges of 600m and greater and the Russian Empire during roughly the same period used successfully hundreds of Gatlings against various Turkmenic horse people during their expansion into Central Asia. While that latter example is exactly what the OP is presenting, the OP is too busy "cooking the books" with various excuses and other bits of douchebaggery so their Viking/Mongols can somehow win. I guess Russia succeeded where the OP's empire will fail because Russia didn't forget to supply their troops with bayonets.

And you're as stupid as the OP too. During the Red River War, the US 6th Cavalry defending the Darlington Agency used a pair of Gatlings to keep Cheyenne riflemen beyond sniping distance.

Because a Gatling has a longer barrel than a rifle, a cartridge fired from a Gatling will have a higher muzzle velocity and longer range than the same cartridge fired from a rifle.

>I'm thinking

Please don't use the word "thinking" to describe what you've been doing, OP. It's insulting to everyone who tried to honestly answer your questions.

You're not "thinking", you're simply "excusing", hand-waving, and searching for loopholes as your absolutely pathetic "explanations" regarding the lack of bayonet amply illustrates.

While I appreciate the technical knowledge, you can take your douchebaggery right out the metaphorical door.

I've received responses from people that seem to believe I'm obsessing over the native army here. Really, I'm not. I just want to avoid this being an absolute wipe on either side's part.

One of your most murderously enraged points has been over the bayonets. The previous war this empire has gone through was one in which breechloading weaponry with fire rates of 8-15 rpm and Gatling guns were used on a wide scale. Bayonet charges were routinely repulsed and often nearly wiped. As a result troops started to use their bayonets less, and production fell off in favor of using the iron for more immediately productive things.

This, combined with budget and size cuts post-war, mean that the imperial army has a bayonet shortage, and production has been slow owing to the poor showing of bayonets last war. Their home-front infantry and regulars have access to them, but small volunteer brigades sent out to protect settlers from raids are not the highest people on the picking list for issuing bayonets.

The firepower of the imperial infantry is certainly high, as is their range (especially backed up by that battery), but they are outnumbered by frenzied enemy infantry (who I may or may not give limited numbers of firearms), and there is a large and well-equipped melee cavalry contingent that was the subject of the first post. That's what I'm trying to balance this engagement for- how to counterbalance the firepower of the troops without resorting to a 50:1 advantage or giving the natives weird ninja powers.

>giving the natives weird ninja powers.
They don't need ninja powers, just terrain that let's them approach out of sight to within 200 meters or so.

Or some guns of their own.

That's the thing. It's going to be an absolute wipe, it always has been throughout history. The empire doesn't lose unless it loses its technological edge (Egypt as iron developed), there's a lateral technological shift in tactics that's often accompanied by the tribals rolling over less advanced tribals in turn before turning their newfound wealth on the empire (the Song Dynasty or the Caliphate into the Horde), or the empire just plain loses interest (internal dissent for America in Vietnam, internal dissent for China in their various shots at Vietnam over the past 2,000 years, American island hopping for Dainippon in the RoC.)

And I'm not sure why you're choosing your shitty bayonet idea as your hill to die on when several different anons have explained why it's so stupid AND why it wouldn't matter.

The balance to making the tribals win doesn't play out on the field of battle, or even in the torched remote farmhouses and sporadic highway robbery, it plays out in the Senate or House of Lords questioning the million-gp navy protecting the lines carrying 100,000gp a year of supplies to troops guarding a patch of mud with 10,000gp tax revenues.
Like Kipling wrote:
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.

Personal thought, those gatlings are not a strategic target. The cavalry is better spent getting in against the rifles. Once they're engaged, the gatlings can't fire on them, and if they're worried about their spears getting chewed up on the way, a light detachment can try to harass and draw the gatling's fire. Or if they're ignored, they can slip in and try to take it to one of the crews. The battle's won once the rifles are in melee, so the cavalry's number one target should be them. Drive the fleeing riflemen towards the emplacements to keep them from firing, then overrun them once the retreat reaches them. Men hold land, guns can't. Kill the men.

>While I appreciate...

You appreciate nothing, OP. As explains, your shitty bayonet "ideas" prove you're incapable of examining the situation with any honesty. You wrote about how a WW1 analog in your pathetically laughable setting somehow led to bayonets being dropped when WW1 trench fighting actually increased the need for melee weapons.

Your ideas don't work. Your explanations are pathetic. Your excuses are laughable. Your setting sucks and deservedly so. Your only hope is that your players are also as stupid, ill informed, and credulous as you are because that's the only way they won't call you on this shit.

Everyone with any appreciation of the tech and historical analogs is telling you it's going to be a wipe out, but you "know" better because you're going to torture the situation beyond plausibility as with your latest asinine excuse about bayonets somehow being too expensive while tens of thousands of cartridges are not.

The only way your Viking/Mongols can "win" is how attempted to explain to you - the empire will make a political decision that expansion isn't worth the cost.

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

PS: you're all dumb, OP is clearly describing the Charge of the Light Brigade, 25 October 1854 during the Crimean war. Lord Raglan, overall commander of the British forces, had intended to send the Light Brigade to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions, a task well-suited to light cavalry.

However, there was miscommunication in the chain of command, and the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. They reached the battery under withering direct fire and scattered some of the gunners, but they were forced to retreat immediately. Thus, the assault ended with very high British casualties and no decisive gains.

The events are best remembered as the subject of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's narrative poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854), published just six weeks after the event. Its lines emphasize the valour of the cavalry in bravely carrying out their orders, regardless of the obvious outcome. Blame for the miscommunication has remained controversial, as the original order itself was vague, and the officer who delivered the written orders with some verbal interpretation died in the first minute of the assault.

>OP asks about tactics to counter a weapon developed in 1862, later clarifying that he meant tactics for a primitive force
>user decides OP is clearly talking about the tactics used in 1854 by a technologically-superior force
Fampai, I appreciate the continued thread segue into Victorian poetry, but.

>OP is clearly describing the Charge of the Light Brigade

No, he isn't you incredibly stupid fuck.

The Russian armies in the Crimea had smoothbore cannon and smoothbore muskets, both muzzle loading. They did not have breech-loading, cartridge firing rifles and Gatlings.

You can help the OP out by joining his game. He needs all the morons he can find to swallow the bullshit he'll be presenting.

It sounds like this is a really instantaneous call with no preptime or anything with everyone in the midst of a fucking stupid situation, and in view of that, there's not really a good answer.

The only strategy I can think of is for the Cavalry to split up and charge over as wide an angle as possible to try and overstress the ability of the firing arcs of the (presumably less than a dozen) guns to coordinate or concentrate fire, zero in, etc. Being spaced widely also minimises the damage to the overall formation that a spooked or downed horse can inflict.

Like, there will be catastrophic casualties, but if as you say they are full of religious fervor then maybe they can continue to be an effective force in a very loose formation, and a loose formation is their only hope of penetrating the lines and hitting the gunners.

Mind you, I actually don't fancy their chances even once they get in close. A couple of horsemen can't take an artillery cart to pieces in seconds like they can an infantry formation.

Meanwhile the riflemen with their breachloaders will pick up the slack and keep up the rate of fire a sizable bunch of troops with trapdoors can achieve with some or most doing some precise and slow fire as the gatlings churn away with more and more of the riflemen focusing on different targets as more and more of the cav dies.
Seriously, breechloaders, whether it's a trapdoor, snider, rolling block, sharps or even a levergun with a seriously borked magazine tube can be loaded fast and the only way I could see the cav charge working despite the gatlings and the breachloaders is if they were critically low on ammunition from the getgo or the case constantly gets stuck after shooting on a stupid amount of the riflemen's guns.

mortar their base as they sleep

Again, you're confusing the use of bayonets.

Bayonets aren't just used for "bayonet charges", but rather in;
-any defense of a or attack upon a fortified location (where the attackers require boots on the ground to take it)
-any situation where ammunition could run low, reloading wouldn't be fast enough or similar situations in personal defence (urban skirmishing, for example)
-any situation where cavalry could be present (*specifically* useful for the volunteer brigades that you describe, and less useful for "home front infantry" if imperial warfare has moved beyond the use of cavalry charges).

I realise that you're trying to balance the encounter for your players and all, nothing wrong with that. But trying to balance it with "the settlers don't have a single bayonet among them but they do have gatling guns and the natives aren't going to massively outnumber them or have significant magical abilities" isn't going to work if you're not willing to sacrifice real-world factors.

Give the battery a position next to some piece of terrain which a) would cover approaching horsemen and b) is considered not passable by cavalry. Have the horsemen manage to cross this terrain (by virtue of local knowledge, superior training or whatnot) and charge from short distance.

Still would get gunned down.

Newsflash, bitch: once a machine gun is emplaced (and in case of modernish guns - just loaded) any sort of close quarters attack or charge is the easiest way of getting entire unit wiped out.
What are you? French during WW1 or something that you want to charge machine guns?

You can win this by artillery barrage on the machine guns, using explosives at "close" range, sneaking by or applying snipers. Other than that - good luck with your suicide.

Then you are fucked and should deal with it accordingly.
You are not going to win this one, unless you bring in sharpshooters outranging the guns (or hidden from them, but that's hard to come by in flatland) or using artillery to wipe them out. Just trying to get close is the death wish. And since it's a flatland, you can't use terrain on your advantage, as the terrain is your main DISadvantage. Moving any sort of cavalry in open terrain means making a LOT of noise and rising pretty big cloud. And I'm not talking about army of raiders counting in hundreds - just a dozen or so guys makes enough clamour to be heard before you can even see them and rise cloud despite traversing a fucking meadow.

If the poorly equipped frontier troops have trapdoors and Gatling guns then logically the regular army has switched to bolt actions and Maxims. Natives are going to get fucked nine ways from Sunday against anything other than an understaffed, underarmed frontier force. OP should change it from two companies of riflemen and five Gatlings to a company of militia with a Gatling, because about the only way the natives could actually win is if the imperial forces don't have the training or discipline to withstand an assault.

The only effective means of fighting machine guns and machine gun emplacements are
>Artillery barrage
And this one won't work if enemy is dug-in, since the first thing protected against artillery barrage are gun emplacements, precisely as a counter-measure
>Snipers
Works as long as enemy is visible, your sniper is not AND the enemy doesn't have own snipers for counter-sniper tactics. Considering its easier to get marksmen and sharpshooters than its to get machine guns, you can expect presence of at least one sniper per two gun emplacements
>Element of surprise
You would have to sneak-in very closely to the gun position and from there directly coordinate your artillery and/or attack from there, usually using automated firearms and hand-thrown explosives, since if you are sneaking, then there is already an emplacement to sneak to. As long as there is no minefield or barbed wire, this might work pretty well, if slow
>Aerial attack
Same as artillery barrage, but assuming you have any sort of air support, enemy emplacements are sitting ducks, unless they come with AA capabilities. Unlike common sentiment, it's extremely hard to hit even a relatively slow-moving airplane with machine guns, especially ones not positioned in the sky. But this assumes the air force is capable of locating the gun emplacement or the emplacement are incapable of stopping strifling

Any other option is a suicide that will get your men easily killed. All of them
There is a reason why cavalry became outdated the moment repeatitive firearms became common and utterly redundant once machine guns (Maxim design and going from there) became accessable even in small quantities. Cavalry is only useful in the modern sense, aka highly mobile infantry using horses for relocation, but that's literally it - a regular infantry with some extra mobility that is not tied to fuel supply and roads, capable of moving small amount of heavy firepower (light artillery, HMG and so on thanks to horse carriages)

Also, as long as enemy lacks heavy ordnance and AT capabilities, you can use tanks/IFVs/any other armoured vehicles to provide cover. This is a high-risk gamble, since you might end up lured into a trap designed for your mobile units, so apply with caution.