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Ok Version 2.0

From a Military perspective, which in your opinion is better

If you had to choose one or the other no Mix and match

A million men can do some serious damage, but if a weapon can decimate a million men then they are useless.

Quantity i guess...

If you have a few nukes, you are a threat.

If you have enough nukes to destroy the world many times over, you call the shots.

Quality every time.

"Quantity has a quality all of its own." - J. Stalin

There is no simple answer.

A thousand men should be able to overwhelm three. Give those three a machine gun, though, and now it depends on how smart or determined the thousand are to win. Give the three an unflankable position with a nice, long 'shooting gallery' approach, and they will almost certainly win... so long as the ammo holds out.

That's the trick. There are too many variables for a single answer.

Vulcan wrote:There is no simple answer.

A thousand men should be able to overwhelm three. Give those three a machine gun, though, and now it depends on how smart or determined the thousand are to win. Give the three an unflankable position with a nice, long 'shooting gallery' approach, and they will almost certainly win... so long as the ammo holds out.

That's the trick. There are too many variables for a single answer.

Out of ammo? Maybe you should have gone for more ammo rather than better ammo.

Vague OP is vague.

Depends on what you need your military for I suppose. If you need it to police the country, quell internal revolt, and generally suppress the hell out of people and scare your neighbors then you go with quantity.

If you want an army that deployable, mobile, and is generally more concerned with projecting force outside your own borders, you'll generally want quality. it helps if you have few if any credible threats or if you are closely aligned politically with several other nations in mutual defense pacts (NATO, Warsaw Pact etc.)

Quality in quantity.

Needs to be a balance rather than an extreme.

The 2500 men who died at Thermopolyae faced an army at least 50 to 100 times their number and managed to do enough damage that what they did became immortal (even if 300 of them are the only ones who ever get any credit). Quite a difference between an army of 9000 armed with bronze weapons with effective tactics for their terrain against an army with much lower quality equipment. Even though the Greek force that fought at Plataea was much more comparable, they were still outnumbered by the Persians, as was the Greek navy throughout the conflict.

The lesson? Quantity works to an extent. 1,000,000 men with pitch forks aren't really stacking well against 100,000 with guns. Europeans dominated the world for centuries despite being grossly outnumbered through superior technology and economic dominance.

Its a balance of the two really

It is impossible to decide without a scenario and knowledge of the two sides with information of the commanders

George Spiggott wrote:"Quantity has a quality all of its own." - J. Stalin

A lesson he taught to a Mr. Adolf Hitler of Germany from winter of '42 to spring of '45.

Khornholio wrote:

George Spiggott wrote:"Quantity has a quality all of its own." - J. Stalin

A lesson he taught to a Mr. Adolf Hitler of Germany from winter of '42 to spring of '45.

Well, that, and that Russia gets really fething cold during the winter.

Fafnir wrote:Well, that, and that Russia gets really fething cold during the winter.

It is true Russia has a greater quantity of cold weather.

George Spiggott wrote:

Vulcan wrote:There is no simple answer.

A thousand men should be able to overwhelm three. Give those three a machine gun, though, and now it depends on how smart or determined the thousand are to win. Give the three an unflankable position with a nice, long 'shooting gallery' approach, and they will almost certainly win... so long as the ammo holds out.

That's the trick. There are too many variables for a single answer.

Out of ammo? Maybe you should have gone for more ammo rather than better ammo.

If i have a modern day battleship and you attack me with a million wooden ships whose gonna be winning?

Extremes of both are absurd.
In some cases a few highly trained men can carry out an operation many couldn't but in other cases you need lot of people where few, no matter how well trained and equipped, would not do.

George Spiggott wrote:

Fafnir wrote:Well, that, and that Russia gets really fething cold during the winter.

It is true Russia has a greater quantity of cold weather.

There is something to be said also of the quality of those snowstorms as well. When it comes to winner they are truly blessed with both aspects.

purplefood wrote:If i have a modern day battleship and you attack me with a million wooden ships whose gonna be winning?

Then I shall bring a billlion of them.

This is a silly game.

George Spiggott wrote:

purplefood wrote:If i have a modern day battleship and you attack me with a million wooden ships whose gonna be winning?

Then I shall bring a billlion of them.

This is a silly game.

I'm still gonna win
It is silly because as others have said, extremes of either are pointless.
In WWII the Russians didn't just have numbers on their side.

purplefood wrote:If i have a modern day battleship and you attack me with a million wooden ships whose gonna be winning?

This seems relevant



That's leaving aside the fact that there really aren't any modern day battleships. The era of ships as seafaring artillery seems to have passed.

So what you're suggesting is we stack 1000 19th century shis of the line against a modern cruiser?

Pretty sure the Virginia and the Monitor showed how that would turn out as far as cannon balls go. I suppose the wood floaties might stand a chance once the cruiser is out of missiles and ammo.

LordofHats wrote:So what you're suggesting is we stack 1000 19th century shis of the line against a modern cruiser?

Pretty sure the Virginia and the Monitor showed how that would turn out as far as cannon balls go. I suppose the wood floaties might stand a chance once the cruiser is out of missiles and ammo.

Dunno...
Ramming would be fairly useful if you could get up to speed...

purplefood wrote:[
Dunno...
Ramming would be fairly useful if you could get up to speed...

Pretty sure a modern ship could get out of the way a lot faster than a sailing ship could hit them

LordofHats wrote:

purplefood wrote:[
Dunno...
Ramming would be fairly useful if you could get up to speed...

Pretty sure a modern ship could get out of the way a lot faster than a sailing ship could hit them

No as in, the modern ship ramming the wooden ones. Not sure how much damage it would do but i'd be saying a fair amount...

Anyone from Europe is going to go for "quality". Since the days of Alexander the Great the quality of the individual soldier has been far more important than how many men you can raise.
Not that numbers are irrelavent, obviously.
Just look at the opium war. 19,000 British soldiers beat millions of Chinese soldiers (who by and large had modern equipment) purely with discipline, tactics and organisation.

Edit: Just realised we have to choose 'one or the other'... but that's an unrealistic imposition so I'll arrogantly forge the middle-way anyway

Do it ala Soviet Union after World War 2:

Make complex 'n' relatively high tech machinery during peace time, then switch over to 'monkey models' (tanks without the trimmings) in times of war.

Viktor Suvorov (who I've nicked this whole monkey model thing from) also wrote that, in the opinion of the Soviet military, if you could construct four un-rifled mortars in the time it took NATO to produce one rifled mortar, then you had the firepower advantage Not entirely sure I buy into that... since I am sure that the American military has no doubt developed some kind of HOMING MORTAR... technology can be quite deadly after all.

But in times of war? You've got the chaos of having a limited supply infrastructure, the constant attrition of combat and constant shortages: Having simplified vehicles/equipment with as many interchangeable parts as possible is always going to be more advantageous than various vehicles, specialised in different ways with few interchangeable parts and over-engineered features. It's an over-used analogy but think T-34 versus Tiger tank here... Not only the huge disparity in production figures, but also how you're much more likely to get a T-34 back into action after it's knocked out than a Tiger.

Another WWII analogy that might be useful is that of the Panzer III and Panzer IV; the former made by Daimler-Benz and the latter by Krupp, both big producers. When the Panzer III becomes outmoded, thanks to the wonders of private factories with different methods of producting crap, the Daimler-Benz production line is no longer useful because they can't make parts for the Panzer IV. Of course, in the end the Panzer III chassis was salvaged by using it as the basis for the StuG III and whatnot, but my point is that ideally you want your vehicles to be as similar to one another as possible with swappable parts.

In other words: Both quantity and quality are good when the time is applicable. A tank with gun-stabilisers, wonderfully high-tech armour, infra-red sights, remote pintle-mounted machine guns, etc. is fantastic but if it's compromising your ability to put out another tank when you need it the most, trim the crap!

Simples.


(Apologies if the post above appears more informed than it actually is, I'm just an over-opinionated history student...)

This question still makes very little sense, do you mean quantity vs quality of troops or what?

corpsesarefun wrote:This question still makes very little sense, do you mean quantity vs quality of troops or what?

I suppose it means quality in all things over quantity in all things...
So quantity gets lots of ammo and supplies but because everything they have is of lower quality none of it gets there as the logistics division don't know how to drive or where to go and their vehicles don't work either.
Whereas quality get very little ammo and very little supplies but manage to fight well due to better training, weapons, morale, leadership and equipment.
So yeah that's that...

That's a point: Guess I'd go for quality with troops... every time.

They are differentiated from machines in that you can't create an abundance of them through industrial means

More importantly which is better, a six pack of Budweiser or a nice shot of 100 proof dark rum?