You lead Industrial Cats against Human Theocrats (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario, you are on a different world, it is divided into two civilizations: the Empire of Nekon and the Holy Dominion. You are in charge of the former.

The Nekon Empire is populated by semi anthropomorphic cats derived from housecats. They have hands in place of forepaws, longer limbs proportionate to their body and are reconfigured somewhat to be more humanoid figure. In total they stand 55-65 centimeters tall and weigh in at an average of 6.5 kilograms. Their throats are capable of human speech and they have been adjusted to have an average lifespan of about 70 years. They also have human level intelligence and are more social. Instead of giving birth to litters, the Mollys of this species usually give birth to a single kitten. They tend to wear garments that is remarkably similar to that of premodern Japan.

These felines inhabit a continent about 8,000,000 square kilometers in size divided into a number of feuding states before being united under the rule of the centralized Nekon Empire about 500 years ago and subsequently thrived and industrialized despite a civil war every century or so, which led the Emperor to create a constitution and eventually a parliament. It industrialized over the last century and in the past fifty years send expeditions out to chart the ocean, circumnavigating the world, finding three other continents. Unfortunately one of the continents that they found was the size of Eurasia which is largely dominated by the Holy Dominion.

The Holy Dominion is a body several dozen feudal kingdoms populated by about 300 million humans subordinated to a central Theocratic priestly hierarchy. The kingdoms are allowed a fair bit of independence and often fight with each other over territory, but to challenge the authority of the Eccesiarchy is heresy and usually ends up with a crusade being dropped onto them. A strict caste system is in place of nobles, warriors, artisans, merchants, peasants and untouchables. Priests are drawn from the noble, warrior and artisan caste, but only those of noble birth can rise high in the hierarchy. There are sumptuary laws and strict rules dictated for each caste, for example it is illegal for a peasant or untouchable to be taught to learn to read or write and the penalty for doing so is death for both teacher and student. The only mobility in the class system is military: peasants, artisans and merchants are used as cannon fodder by the kingdoms and sometimes get promoted to the warrior caste by high ranking priests and occasionally warriors are promoted to nobility to replace fallen noble houses by the priesthood. The religion is misogynistic, looks down on sex outside of marriage and "sexual deviancy", is perfectly fine with slavery, think the world is flat and the center of the universe, and heretics/aspotates are usually impaled and burned to death. Moreover, the Ecclesiarchy has decided to declare a crusade against Nekon after contact. They sent sailing ships to chart out the location and now they have decided to launch a crusade against you.

They sent a fleet of 2,000 ships carrying 400,000 people to your continent about a year ago, of which some 240,000 survived. Among these were 40,000 warriors and nobles. The landed in a minor argicultural province of your empire and set up a small city, killing the inhabitants wherever they went. Their technology is at a level comprable to that of 1500s Europe (and has been at that level for about three centuries) and their armies are made of a mixture arquebusiers, pikemen and halberdiers in helmets, breastplates and mail lead by noble heavy cavalry armed with lances, swords and muskets. Cannons exist, but are used as naval weapons and as siege weapons. More soldiers are being brought in steadily to reinforce this position and they are beginning to threaten the military.

You serve as an Aide for the Nekonian Military in this time of crisis of a similar nature to that in the Belasarius series. Your job is to help the cats defeat these hairless giants, drive them from the Empires shores and if possible, destroy the Dominion. The population of the Nekonian Empire is about 300 million cats. Its technology is at a level of that around 1850-1870 in most areas.

• 300,000 Riflecats armed with caplock rifled muskets with bayonets, 3mm caliber. Each of them gets a uniform and a conical steel helmet.
• 50,000 Imperial Catvalry mounted on the back of a breed of small quick footed 40 kilo antelope that is used for mounts, they are armed with lances, 2mm Kit Revolvers, 20cm long Catana swords and a few of them are armed with the experimental paper cartridge using Mouser breech loading rifle. They have Kabuto style helmets and samurai style curiasses.
• 5,000 artillery pieces ranging in caliber from 20mm light guns to 200mm siege guns. Mostly muzzle loading and about a quarter of them are rifled. Rockets to the effect of Hall rockets are also used.
• 150 wooden hulled warships in the 20 to 40 meter range with steam engines, armed with cannons ranging from 30mm to 75mm.
• The Black Tiger: an experimental 26 meter long warship with a 25mm of steel plating armed with 16 50mm cannons.

The Empire has 200 cities with populations greater than 100,000, among them 30 cities with more than 500,000 and 5 with more than 1,000,000. All of these are linked by railways in at a 80mm gauge. There are telegraphs. The Nekonian Empire is largely savanah and hilly regions, It has a few mountain ranges and about 10% of it is tropical rainforest. There are a few major rivers. The Holy Dominion is 3000 km to the west of the Nekonian Epire.

What do you do?

Zor

[Darth Nostril]

I hunt down and torture zor until it shows me the wormhole out of this fucked up furries wet dream back to the real world.

[Borgholio]

Cats? Really?

Ok...well the first problem I see is the size of the cat's ammunition. A pistol with a 2mm bullet? A 3mm rifled musket? That's less than the size of a BB! Their field artillery at 20mm is barely .78 caliber, and the largest guns they have are the size of an 8" shell. Sorry, but their small arms wouldn't even be able to pierce the bare skin of a human at range, and the ship-board weapons would bounce off a wooden hull.

The only way to defeat the humans would be to massively upsize everything. If the cats could focus on building field artillery in the 4 - 5 inch range, that would have longer range than the humans' cannons and do a reasonable amount of damage. The navy would have to focus on building monitor-type ships with the largest naval artillery possible. A 5 inch explosive shell would wreak havoc against a wooden warship, they just have to build enough of them.

Small arms that could be carried by a cat soldier would be useless unless they could greatly increase the muzzle velocity and penetrating power of the ammuniton. Get rid of the half-BB sized pistols and equip the infantry with weapons large enough to kill a human at range and preferably penetrate medium armor. Say, something on the order of .30 caliber at the minimum. These weapons might be too big to use as an individual rifle, so tactics might have to be adjusted so that the cats work in squads with a couple bipod mounted heavy rifles and a crew to carry ammunition for them. Think about our equivalent of a .50 cal anti-armor rifle or a recoil-less anti-tank gun.

So, victory would depend on the cats basically building weapons that can actually hurt humans and damage their ships, and mass-produce enough of them to make a difference. Tactics should revolve around "shooting and scooting" where mounted cats dismount, wipe out a group of humans with their heavy rifles, then re-mount and flee before the human cavalry can arrive. Same with their ships. Use the advantage of the steam engines to enter range, bombard human transports with 5 or 8 inch shells, then turn around and run before the humans can give chase.

[LaCroix]

You know what - This scenario basically calls for asymmetrical warfare.

Fuck guns. You are fucking cats! Tiny furry critters that are fast, pretty hard to spot, and probaly agile. Any gun big enough to hurt a human at some distance will be a cannon to you, and not cat-portable. You'd make something akin to .30 pistols, but those would only be ambush weapons against patrols. Use bombs, instead.

Cats do have night vision. Sneak them into their camp at night. Preferably into their ammunition stockpile. Plant a bomb. Or simply lay a fire. There is no way to deny intelligent cats entry to a town.

Lay fire to their crops.

Destroy their ships by sneaking bombs on board.

Use mortars to lob grenades. Make a nightly cavalry charge where you simply rush through their army's camps, dropping bombs with on your way through.

Harrass them day and night, deny them sleep by singing loudly all the time.

[Jub]

You know what - This scenario basically calls for asymmetrical warfare.

Fuck guns. You are fucking cats! Tiny furry critters that are fast, pretty hard to spot, and probaly agile. Any gun big enough to hurt a human at some distance will be a cannon to you, and not cat-portable. You'd make something akin to .30 pistols, but those would only be ambush weapons against patrols. Use bombs, instead.

Cats do have night vision. Sneak them into their camp at night. Preferably into their ammunition stockpile. Plant a bomb. Or simply lay a fire. There is no way to deny intelligent cats entry to a town.

Lay fire to their crops.

Destroy their ships by sneaking bombs on board.

Use mortars to lob grenades. Make a nightly cavalry charge where you simply rush through their army's camps, dropping bombs with on your way through.

Harrass them day and night, deny them sleep by singing loudly all the time.

You can also slip into spaces that their security is not trained to expect. Thus it would be easy to slip through a crack that they don't think needs to be guarded. Assassinations of ranking church officials will quickly cause strife among such a strictly religious society, after all what better proof that God doesn't shelter than the deaths of the ones most favored by said God?

[LaCroix]

I'm shuddering when I'm thinking about cats with intent of arson were to infiltrate my cities, when all I have are wooden buckets.

[Raw Shark]

Am I the only one here who, assuming no mental changes from ordinary house cats besides higher intelligence, is picturing a total shitshow in which the Cat Commander is pretty much utterly fucked? Yeah, I've got about a third of a million elite special forces troops with built-in night vision and superhuman agility, who are near-universally arrogant, entitled assholes who don't get along with each other very well. Fucking awesome. I'm picturing massive incidence of friendly fire, fragged officers, and generally low morale and cohesion despite hyper-competence on the individual level that only makes things worse.

[Raw Shark]

Ghetto Edit: I kind of want to write a military action / black comedy movie about this now. It'd be hilarious, and hold perverse appeal for cat-lovers and cat-haters at the same time. There could be bitchy banter, a Saving Private Ryan / D-Day parody with thousands of cats refusing to get in the water and/or throwing each other under the bus while storming a beach, a montage of cat officers getting fragged in the middle of a compelling pep talk, fan-service for people who lust after catgirls, etc.

[Purple]

Ghetto Edit: I kind of want to write a military action / black comedy movie about this now. It'd be hilarious, and hold perverse appeal for cat-lovers and cat-haters at the same time. There could be bitchy banter, a Saving Private Ryan / D-Day parody with thousands of cats refusing to get in the water and/or throwing each other under the bus while storming a beach, a montage of cat officers getting fragged in the middle of a compelling pep talk, fan-service for people who lust after catgirls, etc.

You! Go write! Now! This is genius. Seriously, you had me at catgirls.

[Raw Shark]

Ghetto Edit: I kind of want to write a military action / black comedy movie about this now. It'd be hilarious, and hold perverse appeal for cat-lovers and cat-haters at the same time. There could be bitchy banter, a Saving Private Ryan / D-Day parody with thousands of cats refusing to get in the water and/or throwing each other under the bus while storming a beach, a montage of cat officers getting fragged in the middle of a compelling pep talk, fan-service for people who lust after catgirls, etc.

You! Go write! Now! This is genius. Seriously, you had me at catgirls.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

[Purple]

Ghetto Edit: I kind of want to write a military action / black comedy movie about this now. It'd be hilarious, and hold perverse appeal for cat-lovers and cat-haters at the same time. There could be bitchy banter, a Saving Private Ryan / D-Day parody with thousands of cats refusing to get in the water and/or throwing each other under the bus while storming a beach, a montage of cat officers getting fragged in the middle of a compelling pep talk, fan-service for people who lust after catgirls, etc.

You! Go write! Now! This is genius. Seriously, you had me at catgirls.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

What might surprise you is that I am actually not that into catgirls and I only added that part in the end to fulfill peoples expectations of me. I actually like the story idea on its own.

[Raw Shark]

What might surprise you is that I am actually not that into catgirls and I only added that part in the end to fulfill peoples expectations of me. I actually like the story idea on its own.

Thanks!

20cm long Catana swords and a few of them are armed with the experimental paper cartridge using Mouser breech loading rifle.

How did I miss this before?

[Zor]

Am I the only one here who, assuming no mental changes from ordinary house cats besides higher intelligence, is picturing a total shitshow in which the Cat Commander is pretty much utterly fucked? Yeah, I've got about a third of a million elite special forces troops with built-in night vision and superhuman agility, who are near-universally arrogant, entitled assholes who don't get along with each other very well. Fucking awesome. I'm picturing massive incidence of friendly fire, fragged officers, and generally low morale and cohesion despite hyper-competence on the individual level that only makes things worse.

Well they did manage to to put together an Empire.

Zor

[madd0ct0r]

Maybe they're more pack animals, like lions?

Lessee, if I was facing down 18 foot tall monsters with hardened leather for skin and armour on that, bent on my eradication. I'd need the equivalent of big game bullets. So either big, slow heavy rifles (cats, mouseholes and snipers ) or somehow raising the speed of the teeny bullets in the guns I already have. Night time guerilla raids seem most likely to be favourable, although given I need to break their city, they can be supplied by ship and I have my own lands to protect from genocide...

I think I'd be strongly looking into poisons and disease. A few ripe rats let loose in the right place in camp, unnatural though it is.


The humans have a disadvantage:
Urban combat would be a terror for them - they couldn't even enter the building. Conclusion. The humans would set the building on fire, cat cities are useless to them, helpful to the enemy and thus should be destroyed. Cities need to be protected against destruction, not mere sieges.

[LaCroix]

Maybe they're more pack animals, like lions?

Lessee, if I was facing down 18 foot tall monsters with hardened leather for skin and armour on that, bent on my eradication. I'd need the equivalent of big game bullets. So either big, slow heavy rifles (cats, mouseholes and snipers ) or somehow raising the speed of the teeny bullets in the guns I already have.

They have breech loaders - there is no way to build an high speed rifle. Especially not with such small barrels (see below)

They could only increase caliber, but a .30 weapon would easily weight 4-5 kg and have a length of 5 feet. Remember - the cat weights around 6kg, and is 75 cm tall - this is the equivalent to a Punt gun (8 feet 4 inches (2.54 m) long, weighed 94 pounds (43 kg)). There is no sensible way to make a weapon like this, which would at most kill one enemy and has to be discarded afterwards for the shooter team to escape.

So why not make one with a smaller barrel - 20inches, so you can actually handle it?
Because you run into the short barrel problem. There is simply not enough time for the projectile to accelerate before it leaves the barrel, and BP is slow. You will be stuck with Blackpowder pistol ranges (20-30m max, if it's rifled and very well made). With a breechloader, against people with rifles or muskets, this is almost suicide, even considering you are a small target. Especially since the recoil (they only weigh 1/13th of an average person) would probably put them on their furry ass or worse.

Guns are no option for them.

Actually, using their tiny Catanas and simply Zerg-Rushing them (preferrably in small groups) in 10+ :1 numbers would probably be enought to win. They are small, fast (even bipedal, they should be at least as fast as humans) and their enemies have only one shot before they are in melee. even one 20cm knive is enough to ruin your day, unless you are in a full plate armor, which would make a fight against a small mobile target even worse.

Kill all their patrols this way, make them afraid to leave their city, while at the same time, use commando attacks to lay fires and boms in their city (for 240000 people, that city must be as big as London - impossible to keep the Cats to lay a dozen fires per day, or poison every well in range)

[bilateralrope]

Sorry, but their small arms wouldn't even be able to pierce the bare skin of a human at range

hardened leather for skin

Is smaller mammals having weaker skin something supported by real world biology ?

Sure, we have to assume the guns work on other cats, and weaker skin is one explanation. But is weaker skin on the cats the only explanation ?

I see two other possible explanations.

The first is that they don't use guns in the same way humans did in the comparable time period. Maybe they do something like firing the guns while charging at the opposing army, after they get close enough for the guns to be worth using.

The second is that their guns aren't scaled down versions of human guns. Maybe each shot uses more powder than a scaled down human gun, so the bullets travel fast enough to be useful.

[Purple]

Whilst we are on the topic of heavy weapons I think that the term you are looking for is wall gun. Some rudimentary fortifications lined with human killer rifles would pretty much render cities unconquerable. The cats do not need to take the recoil. All they need to do is brace the thing on a wall.

Also, Zor mentioned the cats were industrializing. Does this mean we can make some sort of vehicle? If so how difficult would it be to jury rig an armored car that can carry these things on a wall like mount? Or hell, just drive into the enemy and dismount a band of killer cats.

The second is that their guns aren't scaled down versions of human guns. Maybe each shot uses more powder than a scaled down human gun, so the bullets travel fast enough to be useful.

That probably won't work that well. You can't just take a super mega overcharged powder charge and fire a light bullet with it. The reasons for this are mechanical. Firstly, the larger the powder charge the more pressure builds up behind the bullet in the barrel and chamber. So scaling the charge up whilst having the same sized bullet basically forces you to build a heavier gun to compensate lest it blow it self apart. Secondly as speed rises friction of your projectile against the barrel walls rises with it. If you were to say fire a 7.62 bullet from a modified 12.7 BMG case you would probably end up shredding the projectile.

[Borgholio]

Sorry, but their small arms wouldn't even be able to pierce the bare skin of a human at range

hardened leather for skin

Is smaller mammals having weaker skin something supported by real world biology ?

Yes actually. Larger creatures tend to have thicker skin than smaller creatures. That's why you can shoot a bb-gun at a squirrel and kill it, while the same BB will just leave a welt on a human. There is also more fat, flesh, and muscle mass. That's why we're talking about heavier guns. A BB is 4.5mm in size and cannot kill a human. The cat rifles are 3mm...so yeah even less chance of dropping a human. They would need the equivalent of an elephant gun or a bipod mounted anti-vehicle rifle.

[Zeropoint]

First, we don't even try to face the humans on their own terms. That's suicide. Instead, we leverage our two main strengths: technological superiority and stealth.

We know how to make breechloading rifles, so I'll put the imperial artificers on a program to develop a mobile anti-human rifle platform; something like an antitank gun from our world, scaled down to cat size and light enough that two cats or an antelope can easily move it. A buffalo rifle on wheels would be about right. These will be equipped with the best sights we have and used for sniping outside their city. The standard antihuman gun team will consist of one antihuman gun carriage, an antelope to pull it, and antelopes for the crew. Antihuman gun teams will operate during the day, taking out officers and whoever is in front, then evacuating the position in classic shoot & scoot tactics. This will disrupt leadership and make their soldiers unwilling to lead a squad. Until the dedicated antihuman guns are ready, we'll use our artillery in a similar manner.

Next, we own the night. Between the humans' night blindness and our relatively small size and natural stealth talents, we can operate nearly unimpeded at night. That's how we sneak commando teams into their territory--they simply CANNOT keep us out. Once inside, we poison food, start fires, and assassinate leaders. Every morning they'll wake up to find another noble or three lying dead in bloody sheets. Don't forget to kill their horses, too.

Taking a page from Sun Tzu, we do NOT damage their ships--we make sure they retain the capacity to sail back to their dominion if they want to. Then we make them want to.

We'll also work up portable field telegraph sets, so that we can keep central command up to date on the movements and activities of the humans--this is a HUGE advantage. Between our stealthy spies, our instant communications, and our fast transport, we can put the full force of our army wherever it needs to be to blunt human advances out of their territory. Our rail and telegraph network means that we can bring troops and materiel to the front from all over our empire easily and quickly. We can probably afford, in the short term, to use a scorched earth policy and deny the humans the ability to live off the land, while we bring food to our troops by rail. We'll also work on developing chemical weapons.

We basically ensure that the humans never get a chance to die in glorious battle. Instead, they'll find themselves dying in a variety of disheartening ways that personal valor and skill are no defense against.

Unfortunately, all this may not be enough, given that the Dominion is driven by religious fervor. I'll establish an intelligence group dedicated to learning about their religious and social beliefs and working psy-ops against them. I'll also push for improvements in naval power--with steam power and rifled guns, we should be capable of forming a navy that will keep their ships away. Once again, operating at night will be a big advantage for us.

Once we've secured our homeland, we start inserting commando teams into their land. Rather than try to cause lots of casualties, we'll focus on intelligence gathering and undermining their religious beliefs. Perhaps we'll try to kill religious leaders and make it look like natural causes. Distributing propaganda won't work, because they can't read.

All the while, I'll be pushing for bigger R&D budgets.

[Purple]

Wait, we have trains? Than this is pretty much settled. All we need to do is set up some armored trains loaded with wall guns, artillery and everything else we can manufacture that can fit. An armored train can be made virtually impervious to anything they can throw at us. And engineering units can, even with rudimentary hand tools lay kilometers of track per day. Anywhere with a railway junction is pretty much an instant fortress in this scenario.

[Zeropoint]

Yep. Unless we manage to screw up consistently and systematically at every level, we can't really lose this war. I don't necessarily expect it to be easy, or accomplished without the loss of Nekonian lives, but I'm confident that we can prevail.

[bilateralrope]

Taking a page from Sun Tzu, we do NOT damage their ships--we make sure they retain the capacity to sail back to their dominion if they want to. Then we make them want to.

They lost 40% of their people on the trip over to found their city. I'd expect them to view going back home as too risky, even before considering the reception they would return to. Which could be unpleasant for the returning humans. Plus leaving their ships intact means those ships can be used to send more human soldiers into Nekon.

How big were historical fleets in 1500s Europe ?
Because 2,000 ships sounds like quite a lot.

It may be better to sink/capture the ships so the Dominion can't use them and offer the humans already in Nekon the opportunity to surrender and become part of the Nekon Empire. That has several advantages:
- Those humans will stop fighting a lot quicker than if they had to pack their things and go back to the Dominion. Especially if the ships aren't in port.
- The Dominion sound like they would be really angry about a surrender. Maybe even that the surrendered humans are a higher priority for the crusade than the Nekons.
- Those humans become a source of information about the Dominion.
- They might even become a source of humans willing to fight the Dominion.

[Purple]

Here is a thought I had yesterday. Machine guns. We can scale our rifles up easily enough, even if we can't shoot them. But if these cats can manufacture railroads they should be able to crank out enough quality parts to make a the very least rudimentary machine guns. And even if not, which I find unlikely we can still settle for a mitrailleuse or a volley gun. You can make these things breach loaded like our rifles and line them up as artillery to absolutely positively decimate your enemy from beyond their effective range. They take a lot less steel to make than proper artillery and will still be able to easily penetrate any armor our enemies have from beyond the range of their rifles. Not to mention be far more effective over said range due to rifling. And given the wheeled carriages you could just hitch them to a couple of pack animals for towing between positions. Not that you would need to with proper trench digging.

Seriously, that is another point. Trenches. Sure we do not have WW1 era technology but that does not mean we can not apply WW1 era lessons to this. Using nighttime scouts and raids like Zeropoint suggested we can track and even predict the enemies movement. A 15th century army is for all intents and purpose immobile during the night. Any pre modern army is. So what we can do is track them during the day from a distance and than when they camp out for the night use our knowledge of their positions to plant land mines and other obstacles in their main direction of advance as well as build and reinforce existing trench lines.

Another thing WW1 has taught us is just how easily narrow track railways can be built using nothing but hand tools and manual labor. If we know the enemy is heading for a strategic target like a village, bridge or anything else really we could effectively fortify it during the night by laying obstacles and track for armored trains. Come morning and we can have the place fortified by volley gun touting armored trains that they literally can't threaten at any range short of using some sort of artillery which we can easily avoid.

And as time passes we can extend this network of tracks to completely encircle them. After all, armies of their time are not exactly mobile. Especially not at that size. And end up in a basically perpetual siege of their city.


PS. Sink the ships as soon as possible. Ships are a major source of mobility for our enemies. As dangerous as the overseas trip was sailing around the coast will be much safer. And as long as they have a fleet of any considerable size they can relocate and strike at our coast with impunity.

[LaCroix]

Wait, we have trains? Than this is pretty much settled. All we need to do is set up some armored trains loaded with wall guns, artillery and everything else we can manufacture that can fit. An armored train can be made virtually impervious to anything they can throw at us. And engineering units can, even with rudimentary hand tools lay kilometers of track per day. Anywhere with a railway junction is pretty much an instant fortress in this scenario.

Armored trains in CAT size - not what you're thinking about. Humans could probably even topple them with enough dedication.

[Purple]

Wait, we have trains? Than this is pretty much settled. All we need to do is set up some armored trains loaded with wall guns, artillery and everything else we can manufacture that can fit. An armored train can be made virtually impervious to anything they can throw at us. And engineering units can, even with rudimentary hand tools lay kilometers of track per day. Anywhere with a railway junction is pretty much an instant fortress in this scenario.

Armored trains in CAT size - not what you're thinking about. Humans could probably even topple them with enough dedication.

That is assuming humans can catch up to a train that is shooting at them. I think it will be safe to say that our trains can run faster than a human. And there is a reason why I spoke of narrow track railways. You only really need the kind of small trains used to resupply the trenches in WW1 pulling flatbed carts with volley guns protected by rudimentary flat slab style gun shields. Even a cat sized locomotive (or several) should be capable of pulling one of those.