My Grand Refutation to the General Counter-Arguments Made Against Me
There are four main points that I would like to make that would refute most of the people’s arguments on this thread. These four points are, in no particular order: (1) Despite having strong walls, the Gondorians still have many overwhelming incentives to use the best artilleries; (2) Gondor can use light projectiles too, and can amazingly still create more damages than the Mordorians; (3) If Tolkien is to remain consistent, then there is nothing in Minas Tirith that would prevent the use and deployment of artilleries; (4) There are limits as to how bad the Gondorian artilleries can be and there are limits as to how good the Mordorian artilleries can be.
Due to the nature of the debate, I will provide multiple pictures. Because there are restrictions on how many pictures I can put down per post, my arguments will come in multiple posts.
Let us now begin. As you can see, the simplified picture below shows a trebuchet-like artillery firing a piece of projectile. The dotted lines represent the forward path of the projectile if it was to be fired from a ground level position. When the projectile crosses the dotted lines, that would have been its maximum range at ground level.
With the basic things - I hope - starting out clearly, let me show you a revised edition of my first drawing. In this revision, you can now clearly see that the parabola is not symmetrical, and the last half of the trajectory tend to drop down faster than the rise of the first half. The walls will not be exactly equal in height, since Professor Tolkien merely stated that each walls were “about 100 feet higher” than the other. This, in case you are wondering, is why the 1st wall is about 70 feet in height in my picture.
As can be seen from the dotted lines, each artilleries on the Gondorian sides are firing the same load. The most interesting question, then, is why are the Gondorians are outranging the Mordorians when the Gondorians have weaker artilleries. There are 2 answers and both should have been easily understood from the beginning. The first answer is that the Gondorians have a sheer advantage in height. Past the dotted lines, the projectiles fired from Minas Tirith was able to gain more range, even when they are going down faster than going forward. This is an advantage that the Mordorians do not have.
The second and more important answer is that the Gondorians are using lighter projectiles, even lighter than what the Mordorians are using. We know that a human head weigh around 8 to 12 lbs. So, assuming that the Mordorians did not fire multiple heads per round, 8 to 12 lbs are the smallest weight of projectile possible for certain Mordorian artilleries that are firing. The firebombs are a bit tricky, since Tolkien can simply invoke magic. However, just in case some people are curious, a mere gallon of “average” oil weigh from 6 to 8 lbs.
The Gondorians can simply respond to this threat by shooting stones weighing from 5 lbs to 4 lbs to 2 lbs. In other words, these stones would weigh- respectively speaking - twice, thrice and six times less than the heads thrown from the Mordorian lines. The Gondorians should have no problem reaching the baddies.
But this begs a question. How can a mere 5 lb - much less a 2lb - stone do great damages? The answer to the interesting question is very clear: please look at the blue lines on the above drawing. The Gondorians have extra help from friendly gravity, something that the Mordorians do not. Of course, lines might be confusing to some people here, so I decided to call for help. The people that I just called are Saruman the White and Mr. Grima, who are now good guys. They will teleport here to the Pelennor Fields, and the Orthanc will come with them. Hi Ho!!!!!! They are here now, in the middle of the Mordorian forces, throwing 5 lb stones from the various heights of the Orthanc.
The picture below shows the Gondorian artilleries from the bottom 3 levels firing 5 lb stones, while Grima, at the same heights, redeems himself by throwing 5 lb stones at another piece of Modorian artilleries.
