Slitherine

Hi FOG team,

I keep coming across references to slingers outranging archers during the early period covered by FOG, that is at least up to the Principate Rome era. Out of interest is this not thought to be correct or should slingers have the same maximum range as Foot bows.

Examples of such references might be useful

That theory has cropped up long long ago and discounted in all rulesets I've seen. (There's a specific reference to it in discussion of shooting ranges in old WRG rulesets, for example.)

And don't forget in-game shooting ranges are likely to not be the maximum range that any individual person could shoot a particular weapon. Troops in all eras tend not to shoot often at maximum range, because ammunition supplies are limited and wasting when you are unlikely to hit anything, or damage it if you do get lucky, is usually not a good idea.

ShrubMiK wrote: And don't forget in-game shooting ranges are likely to not be the maximum range that any individual person could shoot a particular weapon. Troops in all eras tend not to shoot often at maximum range, because ammunition supplies are limited and wasting when you are unlikely to hit anything, or damage it if you do get lucky, is usually not a good idea.

Good point. That is why I find very accurate in FoG saying maximum effective shooting range. It does not exclude that some of your troops were shooting, but the effect is not important in the overall of the battle. The point is that bows could have some effect even shooting in an ineffective range. I think that most of it comes from the difference between an arrow and a stone. In fact we know that bows and slings had an effect on battles (that's why they were present) but we also know that rarely they were decisive. By changing those parameters we could give them more importance than they really had historically.

It was reading the Osprey book on Syracuse when this cropped up again. In this book when discussing "lightly armed troops" it states that "slingers......could not only out-range the bows but they could carry a larger supply of ammunition than archers". I have come across this before ( Xenophon ?) and a quick foray onto the internet seeems to support this - see Slingers.org amongst others. I am not an archer or slinger so I can not make a definative comment . It is an area of interest as I use a Pricipate Roman army whose Legionnaries it appears were all trained in the use of the sling and not the bow. As they are going up against a Parthian force on their next outing a a capability of Sling, impact foot,skilled swordsmen would be useful.

jonphilp wrote:It was reading the Osprey book on Syracuse when this cropped up again. In this book when discussing "lightly armed troops" it states that "slingers......could not only out-range the bows but they could carry a larger supply of ammunition than archers". I have come across this before ( Xenophon ?) and a quick foray onto the internet seeems to support this - see Slingers.org amongst others. I am not an archer or slinger so I can not make a definative comment . It is an area of interest as I use a Pricipate Roman army whose Legionnaries it appears were all trained in the use of the sling and not the bow. As they are going up against a Parthian force on their next outing a a capability of Sling, impact foot,skilled swordsmen would be useful.

A bit over powered I should think. Also there is a difference in having equipment to hunt a rabbit and expecting to use it in a battle situation. I would suspect that a legionary shield would be cumbersome with a sling in motion.

slingers.org eh? Are you having a laugh?

Roman legionaries 'all trained in the use of a sling'. Where on earth did you get that from?
I think the short answer is 'no they were not'.

Both slingers and archers didn't shoot at maximum range anyway, because it wasn't effective.
If you are a horses archer, why shoot from 100 metres away ineffectively when you can gallop past 5 metres away and shoot with effect but be equally invulnerable to retaliation?

Regarding Legionary training it is often mentioned in books dealing with the Roman Army such as by Adrain Goldsworthy etc, that they were trained to use a sling. I have no difficulty with this, the legions and auxilliaries were full time professional's, they would have cross trained in different weapons, it is only wargames rulesets that typecast the legions. After all a modern infantryman is not only trained to use a rifle. It may be that they used missle weapons more in a seige situation as the legion based armies appear to have minimal missle capability under wargame rule sets and a seige is a different situation. The ranges interest me , if I remember when they tested the longbows from the Mary Rose the ranges achieved were a lot less than they anticipated. In the field they could ground a shield to use a sling then pick it up for close combat, they are drilled after all. Mind you I am not calling for a change in the designation in Legions triumphant.

jonphilp wrote:Regarding Legionary training it is often mentioned in books dealing with the Roman Army such as by Adrain Goldsworthy etc, that they were trained to use a sling. I have no difficulty with this, the legions and auxilliaries were full time professional's, they would have cross trained in different weapons, it is only wargames rulesets that typecast the legions. After all a modern infantryman is not only trained to use a rifle. It may be that they used missle weapons more in a seige situation as the legion based armies appear to have minimal missle capability under wargame rule sets and a seige is a different situation. The ranges interest me , if I remember when they tested the longbows from the Mary Rose the ranges achieved were a lot less than they anticipated. In the field they could ground a shield to use a sling then pick it up for close combat, they are drilled after all. Mind you I am not calling for a change in thr designation in Legions triumphant.

All very interesting in theory, but the reason that wargames rules don't give legionaries long range sling shooting ability is that is isn't mentioned in the large number of available historical battle accounts. Adding it to the "narrative" of wargames battles would therefore be unhistorical, whatever the training manuals say.

If the Romans all used slings, and slings outranged bows, why did they lose the battle of Carrhae. In fact, why were they unable to reply at all to the Parthian horse archery?

Try giving Romans sling capability and then refight the battle of Carrhae. I have little doubt that the Romans would win handily.

It is very easy to lose touch with historical reality when one uses a bottom-up approach based on training manuals and modern reconstructions.

Aha...I assume he means slinging.org...slingers.org is something completely different!

Interesting feats listed there, but also interesting assumptions - on the one hand disparaging modern archery distance records on the basis of using arrows designed for distance not combat effect, on the other hand claiming that the ancients used "biconical lead projectiles" which are much more effective than projectiles used in tests detailed in modern literature. That may be true, but I can't help wondering if ancient projectiles really were quite as sophisticated as what can be dreamed up and manufactured nowadays, possibly after extensive computer modelling and wind tunnel testing!

Just from a naive physics point of view, I would expect the slingshot to be less efficient in flight than an arrow. If it is not spherical, wouldn't it suffer from tumbling, greatly increasing effective air resistance and decreasing accuracy?

ShrubMiK wrote: - on the one hand disparaging modern archery distance records on the basis of using arrows designed for distance not combat effect... can't help wondering if ancient projectiles really were quite as sophisticated as what can be dreamed up and manufactured nowadays, possibly after extensive computer modelling and wind tunnel testing!

Just from a naive physics point of view, I would expect the slingshot to be less efficient in flight than an arrow. If it is not spherical, wouldn't it suffer from tumbling, greatly increasing effective air resistance and decreasing accuracy?

Well we know there are many people who did not starve to death becaue they hunted with slings. We also know that ancient development of missile weapons was pretty darn sophisticated, the compound bow of horse archers was a lengthy manufacturering process by a skilled person taught by several generations of skilled people. So I wouldn't underrate ancients too much.

Now distances are interesting point. In our modern age we like to think of great distances and snipers killing at 1 mile. But the truth of most combat then and now is closer than we like to think in training.

jonphilp wrote:Regarding Legionary training it is often mentioned in books dealing with the Roman Army such as by Adrain Goldsworthy etc, that they were trained to use a sling. I have no difficulty with this, the legions and auxilliaries were full time professional's, they would have cross trained in different weapons, it is only wargames rulesets that typecast the legions. After all a modern infantryman is not only trained to use a rifle. It may be that they used missle weapons more in a seige situation as the legion based armies appear to have minimal missle capability under wargame rule sets and a seige is a different situation. The ranges interest me , if I remember when they tested the longbows from the Mary Rose the ranges achieved were a lot less than they anticipated. In the field they could ground a shield to use a sling then pick it up for close combat, they are drilled after all. Mind you I am not calling for a change in the designation in Legions triumphant.

If it was worth representing this in the army lists, it would probably best be done by allowing the Romans some additional LF with sling representing legionaries deployed as slingers rather than in their more usual role. I guess adding an option for something like more average protected drilled LF slingers might be a useful for the Principate or Dominate lists but I don't think they would make much difference in the army effectiveness overall.

Chris

Surely average ARMOURED LF sling. Everybody would see the points value in those.

hazelbark wrote: Well we know there are many people who did not starve to death becaue they hunted with slings. We also know that ancient development of missile weapons was pretty darn sophisticated, the compound bow of horse archers was a lengthy manufacturering process by a skilled person taught by several generations of skilled people. So I wouldn't underrate ancients too much.

The first point is irrelevant. Plenty of people hunted with bow and arrow as well. So I don't get how it has any relevance in determining whether slings or bows had greater range when used in combat. It also has little relevance in arguing that Roman legionaries, or indeed any other troop type, used slings in combat.

I wouldn't underrate ancients, but I also wouldn't overrate them either. It would be interesting to see comparisons of performance of composite bows and their arrows from say Hunnic times compared to what could be built nowadays using cutting edge materials and engineering techniques. (And the same for slings and their shot of course). But again, it fails the test of relevance. I don't think anybody is trying to argue that slings were more effective than bows in that sort of era. Many people OTOH would argue (and you yourself perhaps are?) that bow technology moved on a lot from earlier times and that that was a big part of what made steppe nomads much more threatening opponents than previously. The OP specifically asks about whether slings should outrange bows in the earlier part of the period covered by FoG.

If we assume that technology moved on a lot between say 500bc and 500ad, it is also quite logical to assume that we can't draw many conclusions about 500bc from what is possible two millennia later - except by trying to build accurate reproductions of the old weapons using only materials and techniques available at the time, and test them using the tactical doctrines and training of the time. And that still leaves room for lots of assumptions.

Or as Richard says, we can tackle it the other way around. Assume that ancient accounts provide a reasonably realistic picture of how ancient battles were fought and how effective different troop types were, and juggle the different accounts against one another to come to some sort of consensus were they contradict. One author saying slings outranged bows in a particualr confrontation between a particualr set of slingers and a particualr set of archers is interesting and food for thought. Many authors saying the same across a wide variety of situations would be compeeling evidence that the sling outranged the bow in general, and that rules should be changed.

philqw78 wrote:Surely average ARMOURED LF sling. Everybody would see the points value in those.

Why stop there? LF superior armoured sling skilled-swordsman - should be a real bargain.

Isn't it the case that Greek psiloi used bows with a short draw, so their bows may well have been outranged by slings, even taking effective range into account?

ShrubMiK wrote:Just from a naive physics point of view...

Means that whatever follows is fairly certain to be wrong when applied to anything in the real world.

Yeah, thanks for that

I offered that in the hope that somebody might be able to discuss it constructively. Ballistic properties of anti-tank guns and their projectiles is a context in which such considerations are important, maybe other factors are more important for lower velocity projectiles.

ShrubMiK wrote:Yeah, thanks for that

I offered that in the hope that somebody might be able to discuss it constructively. Ballistic properties of anti-tank guns and their projectiles is a context in which such considerations are important, maybe other factors are more important for lower velocity projectiles.

How long have you got?

Try searching for a physics, aerodynamics or ballistics forum. You should get some constructive discussion on one of those, once you have winnowed out all the gun fans and naive physics.

However, it should be obvious that not all non-spherical shapes are unstable in flight. Arrows are non-spherical. So are Rugby balls and people seem to kick those accurately enough.

Hmm. Strangely, I wasn't trying to claim that everything non-spherical is unstable! Spherical projectiles are also obviously not the most efficient, otherwise we would presumably still be using them for everything. They are merely an easy starting point, something that will behave reasonably in flight without the need for any cleverness.

Clearly fins are one way to achieve directional stability, well understood for thousands of years. Spinning around the long axis is another. Other clever shapes may do so too. and that's where we get back to...what are the ballistic properties of realistic copies of ancient sling shot? And when somebody sets a record in 2006 with a sling made from modern materials and using "biconic lead shot", how representative is that of what could be achieved 2000+ years ago? Maybe it is representative - I just don't know, and am suggesting conclusions should not be drawn based on modern tests without very careful consideration.

Rugby balls I don't think are a particularly good example, btw. When rugby balls (or american footballs) are thrown, they are spun around the long axis, which is aligned with the direction of flight. If you could do that when kicking them, I think you would!

I think that here, in my opinion, the whole point is about "effective" shooting range. I don't know, but I can easily imagine that slings could out range or perform better than bows in Ancient times, specially in shorter ranges. fter all slingers where very common at that time and it is certain there was a reason for that (besides the fact that their missiles were really cheap!). Do we know they were better for certain? Not really.

I think the best point regarding bows is their ability to hurt even if shot from a very long distance and I would consider that point more. Can you be hurt if shot from a very long distance with a stone losing speed? Is that the same for an arrow?

I think the reason slings were so popular was because they were so cheap. A bit of cloth and for ammunition lots lying around on the ground: points, flats, gravel.