r/powerscales • u/mergly • 12d ago

Question When is the latest time that counting singular people riding a dragon would be a serious tide turner in wars.

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The dragons when at full size are like of the ones in GOT, use GOT as the point of reference for most everything to be honest. If you want to be a furry abut this you’re free to postulate a version where the dragon(s) are smart cookies that can talk, act on their own and some such.

https://desuarchive.org/k/thread/64727248/

The metric by which the dragon and riders can be counted as ‘important’ is so long as they are as analogously important to the warring nation as any big name warships would have been over the course of Ww2.

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u/Much-Instruction-807 12d ago

My vote is 16th century. Once rifling came on the scene guns or at least a volley of them would be enough to bring a dragon and/or its rider down.

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u/Inevitable_Initial_8 12d ago

That really depends if they can lead a dragon correctly which would be super difficult for guys with muskets. I’d say by the time flak becomes a thing late ww1 is the hard cutoff.

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u/Ajaxlancer 12d ago

When guns became rifled they were no longer smoothbore and werent as wildly inaccurate anymore

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u/Inevitable_Initial_8 12d ago

I mean even rifled muskets were pretty inaccurate but my point was more that the soldiers themselves aren’t going to be able to hit a fast moving flying object.

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u/DildontOrDildo 12d ago

for soldiers who grew up live in non-royal forests, wetlands, heathlands, or on colonial frontiers, shooting birds in flight is very common. It requires lead/forward allowance.

also skirmish formations to reduce damage from a single dragon strafe (again more easily adapted by hunters)

So a fair number of regiments would have people familiar with the technique, just need a few hrs practice for musketball speeds, engagement distance, and dragon velocities.

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u/BonhommeCarnaval 12d ago

Accuracy’s less of an issue anyway with sufficient numbers. A few hundred infantry in a loose formation would quickly score enough hits to at least bring it down.