2D War Tactics

[Rkyeun]

On the main page is given a description of warfare in planespace.
However, I would like to point out that this is quite possibly the least effective military formation, and a hideously silly way to conduct a war.

One boat is needed for all your men to cross a body of water. This boat has a rope attached to the rearward end of it. The other end of the rope is anchored to land. Once the boat is across, the rope is removed and then anchored into the ground on the other shore, and all the men can cross. Even a rope makes an excellent bridge, since the rope cannot sink beneath the water, and the men cannot fall off. When done, the rope can be cut or rolled back up. In fact, you may not even need a boat! A harpoon gun would work wonders!

Marching one-on-one into combat is only needed in a linespace war. The second dimension has been completely ignored! Indeed, now that the enemy has far less chance to dodge than in realmspace, the archer reigns supreme. You send a few soldiers forwards to claim ground, while the rest of your forces hastily raise a towering flagpole with platforms hanging off one side, and a pair of ropes hanging off it into each direction. The rear-facing rope is pulled taut and hammered into the ground to form a ramp to the top. From the top, they use the other rope to climb down into alcoves that face the front lines. Once the alcoves are manned, the rope must be pulled up out of the way so as not to obstruct vision. Each man has a bow and a shield. When raised, the shield will completely defend from all incoming fire, but the shield must be laid on the floor of the alcove in order to use the bow.

Another major oversight is jumping! One would have to assume that if you cannot pass around neighboring creatures, the ability to jump several times your own height would be a prerequisite for survival. When the wolf comes for the sheep, it is not effective to have the sheep simply run until it hits an obstruction and then die. No, in war your planespace men would be bounding around like mexican jumping beans, pouncing upon enemy lines and stabbing downwards vigorously.

Guided missiles can also be seriously considered due to the ease in hitting the target. Airplanes are much easier to design, the entire plane being a cross-section of a wing with an engine on back.

Please feel free to expand on this topic with tactics for wars in higher or lower dimensions. Though a war in linespace is -really- boring, and perhaps impossible if linemass cannot be created or destroyed.

[jinydu]

I'm not so sure archers would really be that powerful. They would have to fire far enough to reach enemy troops, and there's a risk of accidentally hitting their own troops. And enemy troops could presumably build helmets to protect themselves from arrows.

Since its difficult to dodge things in 2D, I think the most effective weapon would be a large object that knocks everything down. Imagine getting a very big boulder, and just rolling it at the enemy line!

You do have a point about jumping. It would provide a way to dodge things that would otherwise be impossible to dodge. But remember that, in our world, its very difficult for people to jump very high. When was the last time you actually jumped over a person who was standing upright? On the other hand, natural selection might cause organisms to be very good at jumping. For instance, a sheep being chased by a wolf could jump over a tall tree. If the wolf was unable to jump over the tree as well, the sheep would have gotten away. But then, climbing would also be a useful skill.

[elpenmaster]

In 2d, would people easily be very strong, in much the same way that ants can lift many times their own weight becuause they are small? 2d people could be strong because they are only 2d, or would this make them even weaker, because they take up twice as many dimensions as their muscles, or something like that?

In any advanced 2d society, a vast system of tunnels would have been built, so destroying your enemies tunnels and building your own would probably be a big part of war

[Rkyeun]

I'm not sure tunnels would work well unless they were held up by support 'doors'.

Tunnels are extremely unstable in 2D, because they aren't supported on the 'sides' that don't exist. You can't have a subway system because the upper level of the street would just fall and smash everyone.

You'd need some system of vertical pillars intricately linked together so that only a few doors per level can be open at the same time. If too many doors open at once, the support pillars would collapse and the upper levels would fall.

As for muscles, it seems to me that they would be weaker, since they only surround the bones in two dimensions instead of three, so the cross section has a higher ratio of bone to muscle, and more muscle is required to accomplish the same task. But I'm not sure on this. I haven't gone down to 2D chemistry yet. It probably won't be pretty. O.O

[elpenmaster]

i think that a system of doors that some would have to stay closed would easily work. or you could use some sort of magnets to keep it up. that would lead to magnetic war, though, probably, where one would shoot big magnets at your enemies to try to get their tunnels to collapse

[pat]

Well, if you're going to resort to magnets, why not keep the roof of the tunnel hovering above the floor using strong electromagnets. The fact that our inverse square laws would just be inverse laws in 2-D would give you some extra help.

[wendy]

i should find it rather difficult to imagine that countries would have standing armies. But that never stopped wars.

Firstly, an earth-sized planet might support something like a population of 60,000. A fairly large army would be, for example, 1,000, for the whole world and i suspect that any given nation would have some difficulty deploying say, 100 soldiers.

Most of the battle-tactics of war (eg fighting across rivers, dry-gulching soldiers etc) would not be available in 2d, since for all intent and purposes, everyone plays on the street. So it would pretty much be head-on, unless you can hide soldiers in tunnels somewhere, or do an aerial drop.

I surely doubt that a large tunnel network would exist, and i suspect that the creatures, like everything else in 4d, sleep out on the road, or in small burrows. Still, a small burrow in 2d is a lot weaker than the corresponding 3d one. We should imagine that the animal's breathing is more easily shut down, since once you close the doors, there isn't a lot of room for air!

I think the river is something to more avoid than wars. But what of it anyway, You're talking of creatures that are robust enough to allow others to walk all over them (even in peace), so i don't think that the rigours of war are going to be much for them!

Part of the tactics probably would be to damage structures (like gills) before they have the room to close. I can't think of what weapons one might use: they would be multifunctional, though: a whip becomming a blanket, the sword a bridge or shield or something.

W

[PWrong]

Tunnelling might not require much technology, depending on how physics works in 2D. Maybe if you dig a tunnel, the dirt simply sticks together for a long time, despite gravity. An ant farm might be a good analogy in this case.

I think electromagnetism is pretty much dependent on having three dimensions. If there is a 2D analogue, it might not bear much resemblance to magnetism.

[Rkyeun]

Tunnels in an ant farm stick together because they're still held up on the sides by the glass.
However the magnetic solution works, and it works neatly. A downward-curved surface with a thin layer of magnet will levitate an opposing magnet in place above it, since it can't fall to either non-existant side.
Pretty sweet, actually.

[zoralink]

I am guessing that in a 2 dimensional world, gravity won't be so prevailent in the lives of the beings there. At least not since life depends on mobility. Suppose you had a race that can deftly move through space as a bird in a children's drawing. War might even be like a chess board with an aerial view. Since chess pieces can't move up and down, that might be a good template.

the beings, at least the fighting ones, will ram around like paramecia in a petri dish, with the rangers in the back, lobbing whatever bullets they have made at the time. But I guess that would require the evolutional flying ability similar to a dragonfly.

[jinydu]

I am guessing that in a 2 dimensional world, gravity won't be so prevailent in the lives of the beings there. At least not since life depends on mobility. Suppose you had a race that can deftly move through space as a bird in a children's drawing. War might even be like a chess board with an aerial view. Since chess pieces can't move up and down, that might be a good template.

the beings, at least the fighting ones, will ram around like paramecia in a petri dish, with the rangers in the back, lobbing whatever bullets they have made at the time. But I guess that would require the evolutional flying ability similar to a dragonfly.

That depends on whether your 2D world is horizontal (think of a floor, ceiling or tabletop) or vertical (think of a wall).

[zoralink]

well, I don't think that it could be like a floor. Gravity would be everywhere, which would require a third dimension. I guess gravity would apply itself to a world that is a circle, instead of a sphere. Gravity would pull all the creatures toward the center of the circle. What I thought is that the creatures would be either resistant enough to the effects of gravity that it's not too applicable, or the atomephere would allow for simple "aerial" travel. but I also guess that dead flying beings or the slain would eventually fall in the one direction of gravity.

so I am basically thinking of a wall like you said.

[jinydu]

If you think about the 2D universe as a wall, some interesting things happen. For instance, its not possible to walk around obstacles, you have to jump over them (think about those really old 2D video games, but with no background)!

[zoralink]

well, that's pretty much what I was thinking to begin with, but it's not to say the 2nd dimension is boring, heh heh, just not as colorful as the third.

But I was just offering an alternative to creatures that are just as bound to their ground as we are, especially since that would make their world depressingly cramped, it seems logical to me that the flying creatures would inherit any circular world.