Kataphract Mumakil / Mumakil Innovation

[Evan MF]

No. There's using the existing history of our own world, and then there's creating a herd of animals to stampede towards an enemy. Too "Age of Empires" for me.

What the hell are you talking about! Since when weren't elephnts used in melee?

[Vaz]

Show me one picture of a War Elephant that didn't have at least an archer on its back. While they were employed as Heavy Cavalry, or even better, shock troops, their primary use was as a Terror Weapon, and a relatively sturdy platform to shoot from.

The Dwarves should at least have a new weapon to counter them.

Flaming Dwarf Women.

At the Megara during the Diachoi wars, for example, the Megarians reportedly poured oil on a herd of pigs, set them alight, and drove them towards the enemy's massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror from the flaming squealing pigs.[57]

[Evan MF]

Show me one picture of a War Elephant that didn't have at least an archer on its back. While they were employed as Heavy Cavalry, or even better, shock troops, their primary use was as a Terror Weapon, and a relatively sturdy platform to shoot from.

The Dwarves should at least have a new weapon to counter them.

Flaming Dwarf Women.

Why did they heavily armour the elephants then?

[Vaz]

Arrow Defence.

[tallstark]

To say that they can't support the weight of extra armor is absurd...

[tallstark]

I voted no because Mumakil already own everything except for ballistas.

Also, whoever said you could use mithril armour well..

I don't think Harad has a lot of mithril mines laying around, and they certainly don't ahve the skill to make giant elephant armour.

Haha wow! Using the amount of mithril to cover a Mumakil?!?!? If Frodos shirt was a princely amount, why would you use that much on a Mumakil? You could just buy Minas from Gondor...

[Evan MF]

Haha wow! Using the amount of mithril to cover a Mumakil?!?!? If Frodos shirt was a princely amount, why would you use that much on a Mumakil? You could just buy Minas from Gondor...

That wasn't someones serious comment!

[Beregond]

Show me one picture of a War Elephant that didn't have at least an archer on its back.

to be perecise Carthage most likely hasn't used archers on elephants, but that's off- topic...



even if mumakil could stand the weight of armour (well, I believe they could), Harad wasn't very prosperous land to find that much expensive iron

[sirfiggin]

point of compromise; the tower that standard mumakil have on their backs, even if made from light wicker material, plus riders, must be really heavy. So, let us say that the stronger, more aggressive bulls were trained to wear light chainmail over their flanks and legs, as well as a more impressive helm, that may have been decorated to add to it's frightening appearance. To compromise, they have less, if no, riders, and since the armour is pretty heavy they are basically just shock troops where as the towered mumakil are more an anchor for other forces (if this is the case mumakil will need higher defence against missile fire, slightly more than trolls, in fact.

[Kassandros]

To say that they can't support the weight of extra armor is absurd...

Rep

[tallstark]

Rep

LOL, thanks bro! I can't believe nobody commented on that one!

[Inarus]

To say that they can't support the weight of extra armor is absurd...

What can I say...?

[sirfiggin]

well.... the bull is standing on his back legs, and the sow isn't really moving much, is she?

[Saladin]

i agree that harad could use a little more variety but i think there are other options to go to before an armored mumakil.

[Twist of Cain]

The elephant is probably the only animal for whom mating can be dangerous due to size and weight. Because joint strength of mammals can't keep up as well as size increases, it sometimes happens that the legs of female elephants are injured while mating. Note that they don't need to be moving, either, just bracing themselves. It's a concern for animal caretakers in zoos. For instance, just browsing the net, a fast search found a report from a zoo in Mumbai, Africa, with the complaint,

"The uneducated zoo officials tried to mate a male elephant with female elephants in the last month, [...] the male elephant injured both females [...] both females collapsed & several leg injuries occurred."

The picture shows it does happen successfully very often, obviously, but unfortunately that doesn't mean there is no problem.

Edit: A little math exercise for anyone interested in "scaling" and why exactly size causes odd problems in nature.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The problem is primarily that some things increase in 3 dimensions but others only increase in 2. How can this be, you ask? We don't exist in 2 dimensions, every part of us exists in 3 dimensions. Very true, indeed. However, some things that have an effect on us exist in just 2 dimensions. Now, stress on joints is a bit of a complex matter, but I have a really simple example anyone with a pencil and paper can work out themselves, and is related. (Just simpler.) After we go through this one, I think the joint problem will be simple to understand.

There was a show on a while back about some human ancestor living in a region of the world that became hotter over time. This particular branch of the human ancestry tree died out over time. even though this ancestor was bigger and likely stronger. One of the theories why included ineffective heat dissipation: As that part of the world grew warmer, they weren't able to keep their "engines" cooled as well as their smaller counterparts. I'm not sure if that was the reason for their demise, but the math behind the theory was sound. Let's work it out.

For sake of simplicity, let's pretend creatures are all square. Let's say the smaller specimen were 2 feet wide, 1 foot deep and 6 feet tall. The "weight" (technically volume) of the smaller ones would be 2 x 1 x 6 = 12 units, let's call them pounds. Each pound of meat, though, needs to be cooled. How much surface is there to sweat off the heat? Well, on a 2x1x6 creature, there would be front and back, 12+12, the sides, 6+6, and the top and bottom, 2+2. That's a total of 40 squares. The ratio of pound units to skin units is 12:40. That's 1:3.33

Now, let's make a larger one. We'll say they're at least twice as big in every way, so they're 4 x 2 x 24. Huge buggers. Sparing you all the math, they end up being 192 "pound units" and 304 "skin units." As you can see, that's a ratio of 1:1.58. Making this thing much larger means that the cooling ability has been cut in less than half. In other words, to stay functional and competitive, this creature would need to develop a cooling mechanism that is somehow more than twice as effective as that of it's smaller counterparts. (Or go someplace colder!)

Similar to the skin's 2d vs 3d problem, to simplify the joint issue - the material has to resist a force vector that is two dimensional, yet is powered by a force that expands in three dimensions, with the creature's size. In other words, like skin, the material of a supporting joint only matters in terms of it's resistance in 2 dimensions. And thus, like sweat evaporation on skin, (even though joints can increase in 3 dimensions, remember, only 2 of those matter) joints lose out in the battle of increasing size. They would need to be made of increasingly stronger material in order to be able to keep up, and at some point cartilage and tendons will hit a limit.

It's similar to the opposite end of the scale, this is partly why ants can carry 50 times their own body weight, but the further up you go, the less can be carried in addition to one's own weight.

Hope that was interesting to someone out there.

[Muffer Nl]

And that´s my main argument.

[Twist of Cain]

Incidentally, there already are "Royal Mumakil," the most battle-hardy and strongest of them all. They look just the same as the other Mumakil, except they have little gold chevrons on their unit card.

[Muffer Nl]

+ rep.

[Devils_Advocate]

Your analogy, guys, from mating elephants to a 'royal (armoured) mumakil' is really feeble-minded.

Don´t know weather this is an excursion into zoology or an 'argument' against any advanced (i.e. 'heavier') version of a mumak.

The elephant is probably the only animal for whom mating can be dangerous due to size and weight. Because joint strength of mammals can't keep up as well as size increases, it sometimes happens that the legs of female elephants are injured while mating. Note that they don't need to be moving, either, just bracing themselves. It's a concern for animal caretakers in zoos. For instance, just browsing the net, a fast search found a report from a zoo in Mumbai, Africa, with the complaint,




The picture shows it does happen successfully very often, obviously, but unfortunately that doesn't mean there is no problem.

Edit: A little math exercise for anyone interested in "scaling" and why exactly size causes odd problems in nature.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The problem is primarily that some things increase in 3 dimensions but others only increase in 2. How can this be, you ask? We don't exist in 2 dimensions, every part of us exists in 3 dimensions. Very true, indeed. However, some things that have an effect on us exist in just 2 dimensions. Now, stress on joints is a bit of a complex matter, but I have a really simple example anyone with a pencil and paper can work out themselves, and is related. (Just simpler.) After we go through this one, I think the joint problem will be simple to understand.

There was a show on a while back about some human ancestor living in a region of the world that became hotter over time. This particular branch of the human ancestry tree died out over time. even though this ancestor was bigger and likely stronger. One of the theories why included ineffective heat dissipation: As that part of the world grew warmer, they weren't able to keep their "engines" cooled as well as their smaller counterparts. I'm not sure if that was the reason for their demise, but the math behind the theory was sound. Let's work it out.

For sake of simplicity, let's pretend creatures are all square. Let's say the smaller specimen were 2 feet wide, 1 foot deep and 6 feet tall. The "weight" (technically volume) of the smaller ones would be 2 x 1 x 6 = 12 units, let's call them pounds. Each pound of meat, though, needs to be cooled. How much surface is there to sweat off the heat? Well, on a 2x1x6 creature, there would be front and back, 12+12, the sides, 6+6, and the top and bottom, 2+2. That's a total of 40 squares. The ratio of pound units to skin units is 12:40. That's 1:3.33

Now, let's make a larger one. We'll say they're at least twice as big in every way, so they're 4 x 2 x 24. Huge buggers. Sparing you all the math, they end up being 192 "pound units" and 304 "skin units." As you can see, that's a ratio of 1:1.58. Making this thing much larger means that the cooling ability has been cut in less than half. In other words, to stay functional and competitive, this creature would need to develop a cooling mechanism that is somehow more than twice as effective as that of it's smaller counterparts. (Or go someplace colder!)

Similar to the skin's 2d vs 3d problem, to simplify the joint issue - the material has to resist a force vector that is two dimensional, yet is powered by a force that expands in three dimensions, with the creature's size. In other words, like skin, the material of a supporting joint only matters in terms of it's resistance in 2 dimensions. And thus, like sweat evaporation on skin, (even though joints can increase in 3 dimensions, remember, only 2 of those matter) joints lose out in the battle of increasing size. They would need to be made of increasingly stronger material in order to be able to keep up, and at some point cartilage and tendons will hit a limit.

It's similar to the opposite end of the scale, this is partly why ants can carry 50 times their own body weight, but the further up you go, the less can be carried in addition to one's own weight.

Hope that was interesting to someone out there.

Your behavior of some among of you shows your maturity; laughing about mating elephants, how funny...

Starting to calculate creatures of middle earth is pointless. The creatures pretty much stick to the physics of our 'world' but there are still fantastic things that are pure fantasy, so accept that mumaks must not necessarily correlate with elephants of our 'world', rather think how such inovations match with the lore and especially the gameplay and atmoshpere of the mod.

[Twist of Cain]

Heh. I'm not trying to calculate any creatures of ME, it was just an illustration of how increasing size affects things. It seemed from the posts that some people might be interested to learn why, or see some concrete evidence that this is indeed the case.

The comparison between a mating (ie load-bearing) elephant to an armored (ie loadbearing) oliphaunt is really not that bad. It's unfortunate for the people who brought it up that occasionally mating elephants injure each other due to weight issues and size, since they had hoped it would "support" their argument...

The creatures pretty much stick to the physics of our 'world' but there are still fantastic things that are pure fantasy, so accept that mumaks must not necessarily correlate with elephants of our 'world', rather think how such inovations match with the lore and especially the gameplay and atmoshpere of the mod.

Anyway, good point, I was just assuming the mumakil weren't magical. From the gameplay point of view, there's no need to make a heavy shock version of... a heavy shock unit. Or? Are they not powerful enough as they stand? From the atmosphere point of view, I don't really disagree that the models might look nice with some additional "glamour," headplates or such.