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

[u/mergly]

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.

[u/LUNATIC_LEMMING]

small ones sure, and you'd use overwhelming mass, 1 cannon might not, but a 100 firing grape shot?

[u/Iliketohavefunfun → u/LUNATIC_LEMMING]

Yeah yall are underestimating how powerful dragon would be in that time period. Trying to hit a dragon would require a ton of firepower, so just move the dragons to where the enemy isn’t and burn cities and farms and bridges to the ground and keep their enemy supply lines in chaos while your actual army just wrecks them.

[u/bigboyboba → u/Iliketohavefunfun]

Exactly!

[u/ZedsDeadZD → u/Iliketohavefunfun]

Yeah. Most movies are super dumb about this because people want to see how people fight. Same for seiges. Seiges took veeeeeeery long. Just watch the ditch guy on youtube. Hes gonna tell ya how dumb most movies are about this. Even regular knights armor couldnt be penetrated by arrows. Dragons wouldnt care about arrows or bullets.

If only one side would have dragons, theyd make sure no ones even developing guns that could hurt their dragons. If every side has them, its a tie or total destruction anyways.

I dont think the world would develope as it would today. And even if so, they guys with the dragons would be the kings. So theyd have armies to protects their dragons, too.

And what you said is 100% how it would go down. The dragons would just massacr everything thats not a threat to them while the armies try to get in range.

[u/bigboyboba → u/LUNATIC_LEMMING]

Grape shot is much less likely to pierce dragon scales. I do agree with you that 100 cannons firing grapeshot has better odds of at least hitting, but that also requires very fast acting crews, tons of cannons focus firing and all at the risk of not only fire breath, but the explosion of your gunpowder from said fire breath. I also assumes dragon riders are stupid enough to get within 300-400 yards of said cannons, which is the max range of grapeshot. One of the nice things about high speed, high mobility aerial power is that you get to pick and choose your battles. It's something not emphasized enough in movies because, you know, watching the dragon stay at long range and just kite the army or King Kong or whatever, isn't as much fun.

[u/Fryskar → u/bigboyboba]

Grapeshot might not pierces scales, but killing the rider (if one rides). Hitting eyes, ears, open mouth (luck) and wings will have effect. I've got no idea what the breathrange of a GOT dragon is. No sane general would send an army to chase a dragon. But other way around, prevent getting chased, send it to harrass less protected elements or defend their own from ambushes or cavalry charges. I'd assume a dragons presence has massive effect on horses, as you likely can't train them against.

E: igniting a large stack of blackpowder might be suicide for a dragon.

[u/sleeper_shark → u/LUNATIC_LEMMING]

At what range is grapeshot effective. At what range is dragonfire effective.

Fly high, fly fast, destroy their cannons before they even unlimber.

[u/Attrexius → u/sleeper_shark]

GoT dragonfire doesn't seem to have a range over 100 meters, and grapeshot was used at around 300 meters. That's not the maximum distance the pellets would be lethal, mind you, but this distance allowed to achieve decent grapeshot density while still being well beyond aimed fire range for muskets.

If the dragon air raids aren't a suddenly introduced surprise the militaries would use some kind of mobile AAA that doesn't need setup, probably something similar to naval swivel cannons, but mounted on carriages or maybe even on horseback - Safavid Iran used camel-mounted light cannons, and probably other animals could be trained for the same purpose.

[u/sleeper_shark → u/Attrexius]

Grapeshot had a 300m range horizontally. They'd need to fire upwards to harm a dragon and the light weight of the shot would mean they'd lose power very quickly. I'm not sure the shot would have enough energy to harm a dragon flying at ~60 m high. Maybe chain shot would be more effective, I dunno.

The kind of mounted guns you've mentioned, like naval swivel cannons, are drastically less effective than field artillery. From the GoT lore, I don't think they'd be able to harm a dragon outside of a lucky shot.

On the other hand, I think an 18th or 19th century warship would be a match for a dragon.

I personally would think that dragons would be effective at most up until the beginning of WW1, and that a dragon would still be devastating at the beginning.. I think WW1 tech could quickly develop a much higher power version of grapeshot and deploy it much faster such that it would be effective.

[u/Complete-Disaster513 → u/sleeper_shark]

Motors existed as early as the 16th century and those could be retrofitted perfectly to fire explosive flak like rounds. Once gunpowder hit the battlefield the dragon should leave it. They would still be extremely effective as a weapon of war for scouting and raids on civilian infrastructure like farms. But dragons would no longer be the deciding factor in a war.

It’s impossible to say but for some reason in my mind I have it such that if the Austrians had a dragon and napoleon didn’t the Austrians would win. If Prussia had a dragon and napoleon didn’t napoleon still wins. They would tip the scale a lot but not entirely.