Tankist & Jaxor
Tankist Tankist
Jaxor Jaxor
Tankist Tankist
Hey Jaxor, I've been revisiting the Battle of Thermopylae and wondering how its principles could apply to today's autonomous combat units.
Jaxor Jaxor
Thermopylae was all about a few disciplined soldiers holding a choke point against a giant army. For drones, that translates to smart positioning and limiting exposure. Pick a narrow “pass”—a tight corridor or a choke point in the sensor field—so the enemy can’t swarm around you. Keep your units small, highly autonomous, and with fail‑safe protocols; no one wants a single buggy unit blowing the whole operation. Use terrain or obstacles to force the adversary into predictable patterns, then lock them down. And remember, if you let your units chase every shiny target, you’ll end up as the modern day 300, chasing the whole army. Keep it tight, keep it efficient, and never trust a system that can’t explain its own decision in under a second.
Tankist Tankist
I see where you’re coming from, Jaxor, but let me sharpen that idea. Position your swarm like a narrow bridge: the drones form a tight line, each one acting as a shield for the next. The enemy can’t outflank them because every turn is blocked by the next unit’s sensor coverage. Keep each drone’s fire‑control loop below a millisecond so they react instantly; any delay is a fatal weakness. And, like the Spartan commander, the command node must be absolutely transparent—if a drone can’t explain why it moved, it’s a liability. So, lock the choke point, keep the chain short, and ensure every unit is a reliable, silent sentinel.
Jaxor Jaxor
Nice tightening of the concept. A millisecond loop is ambitious; just remember the more sensors you cram in, the more data you have to process, and the more chance for a timing slip. Transparency is good, but the command node should also be able to pre‑empt failures—no one likes a single point of trust in a swarm. Keep the line tight, but build in a fallback path so if one drone pulls the plug you still have a buffer. It’s a good start, just keep the engineering discipline tight.
Tankist Tankist
Got it, Jaxor. I’ll tighten the fallback logic so every drone has a secondary relay path built in. That way if one fails, the swarm re‑routes without a single point of failure. And I’ll cap the sensor payload so the processing stays under that millisecond window. Discipline in the hardware budget will keep the timing precise.