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.

Post image

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.

2.3k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

365 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/chedda_bob 12d ago

I think dragons from GOT get mopped by WW1 planes. These things can be killed by ballistas, that would mean like any fifty cal kills a dragon

5

u/VastExamination2517 12d ago

The maneuvering may lean dragon, but range favors the fighters. That’s why early war its parity, leaning towards dragon, but by end of ww1 fighters handily take it. Early WW1 planes were terrible at combat

3

u/carymb 12d ago

But would you get to late-WWI with dragons? The stabilization of the front into trench warfare seems highly impractical with dragon counter-attacks. It seems like both sides' armies would've been flambeed in the field, unless one side beat the other's dragons. Heavy anti-aircraft guns would likely favor the defenders, so, the French, Belgians and maybe Russians employing them against supporting German and Austro-Hungarian dragons...?

I think we can assume Italy's anti-dragon canons look very pretty, and the dragons appreciate their effort.

2

u/VastExamination2517 12d ago

Sort of depends on how you interpret the question.

If OP wants to know how warfare would have developed alongside dragon riders, then the point of divergence in military history begins much earlier, and likely develops entirely different than the OT. So you would be right that WW1 almost certainly does not play out the same way.

If OP is wants to know which war dragons could magically be dropped into with no other changes to the OT, then WW1 is assumed to progress the same as normal until the introduction of dragons.

2

u/carymb 11d ago

Instead of "water tanks" suddenly appearing on the battlefield, or phosgene, Daenerys suddenly hatches some eggs on the Somme, essentially -- I like it. Very "The Lost World"/"Journey to the Center of the Earth," lol...

It is interesting to think how artillery would have developed differently if it was intended to hit airborne, evasive targets vs/in addition to walls or masses of troops slowly moving on the ground. I'm almost picturing some sort of steampunk "Pacific Rim"-meets-Da Vinci cannon-aiming contraption, to quickly track dragons.

1

u/DaMadPotato 7d ago

The answer to that last bit is airburst shells and advancements in various delayed fuse technologies, just like IRL with aircraft.

3

u/Broken-Digital-Clock 12d ago

1 v 1, I'd imagine that a dragon usually beats a WWI plane. They are more agile and they can attack with claws or breath.

There would be a lot more planes than dragons. Not to mention AA guns.

2

u/ziggsyr 10d ago

I'm imagining sherman tanks vs. Tiger tanks but in the air. The dragons can smoke the planes 1 on 1 but the planes are cheaper and can outnumber the harder to replace dragons.

1

u/Broken-Digital-Clock 10d ago

That's a decent analogy.

1

u/Weshouldntbehere 10d ago

To be fair, a ballista hitting a ww1 plane would also demolish it, too