Non-People/Country Things in AH that are wanked

The V-2. (Or any Nazi rocketry)

I've seen a few TL's where captured Nazi V-2's automatically lead to early human space flight or lunar missions that use nuclear rockets.
 
The V-2. (Or any Nazi rocketry)

I've seen a few TL's where captured Nazi V-2's automatically lead to early human space flight or lunar missions that use nuclear rockets.

The Nazis in general are lauded as scientific geniuses, when in reality they would've driven Germany's scientific tradition into the ground in a generation.
 

Thande

Donor
I think the truth is somewhere in between. In the short term, the Nazis probably did produce a lot of groundbreaking work on rocketry, just because Hitler was willing to throw unwise amounts of funds at anything that smacked of a superweapon. But it couldn't have been sustained in the long run.
 
Overused: "OMG General [Insert Name Here is Dead]! Suddenly the Army is Asplode!!!!one" I mean, killing the CO isnt always the end of the world, the guy whos next in line dosent always have to be a total incompitent that allows for the army to shatter after a skirmish:rolleyes:
 
Underused-Prehistoric creatures surviving their extinction and changing history.

Apart of course from the American horse! Overused or what?

Overused: The Roman Empire (they were good, but not that good), the Nazis or the Communists defeating the west, The Battle of Hastings
 
Steam powered tanks. Super battleships. Naval battles fought for no reason but to have a cool naval battle. Repeating crossbows. Nazi jet fighters. Lost orders at Antietam. Trent Affair. Ancient ships getting blown far far away in a storm and viola a viable colony is formed Ancient gunpowder. Germans take Moscow in summer 1941.

The Hitlercentric view of history where really early POD's often end up with something like WWII with history's most important man on display.
 
Overused: just about any fashionable 'hard' technology. Remember the stirrup? - some nomad comes to the Bosphorans and shows them stirrups and next thing you know, the entire continent speaks Greek with a funny accent. Same thing as Greek Fire, the horse collar, steam power (did you know there were primitive steam engines in use in the Middle Ages? Yes, OTL. They did pretty much exactly nothing useful). You name it.

Underused: soft technology. If the Romans had had stirrups or gunpowder, they'd probably have gone much the same way they did OTL. But if they had had giro banking or viable social statistics, things could have gone *very* differently indeed.
 
Overused: just about any fashionable 'hard' technology. Remember the stirrup? - some nomad comes to the Bosphorans and shows them stirrups and next thing you know, the entire continent speaks Greek with a funny accent. Same thing as Greek Fire, the horse collar, steam power (did you know there were primitive steam engines in use in the Middle Ages? Yes, OTL. They did pretty much exactly nothing useful). You name it.

Medieval Steam engines? Wha?

I think part of the reason you don't see more soft technology is that people bind it boring. (Well, I'd find a history of the Bank of Rome interesting, but...).
 
And it's harder to see how they influence history. With stirrups, it's easier: Country X has a better cavalry now, and conquers everything it can grab.
 
What things in AH are too overused, overrated, and overemphasized?

I'd say Greek Fire should be one. In OTL they certainly didn't stop the Ottomans from overrunning Byzantium. Yet in AH they're always thought of medieval Greece's ABM system.

This is understandable, since the Byzantines did defeat a fleet of 1,000 Russian boats with only 15 carrying Greek fire. The problem is that once the Arabs got it, it was not so big an advantage.

Greek fire couldn't have saved the Byzantines from the Ottomans, since by then we were in the gunpowder age.

I tend to think Greek fire pretty much did the maximum it could possibly have done. It's a bit of a dangerous weapon for the user, much like elephants - they can turn on you.
 
Airships.

People often think the Hindenburg destroyed comercial blimpry, the fact is, they're just not very efficient machines.


Bite your tongue, traitor!!!!!!!!

While it's true people probably overuse airships, they are one of the primary inspirations for AH, and they were a system that seemed to be hit by an astonishing run of bad luck - but as for inefficiency, that depends upon what your talking about. In many ways they are still more efficient than heavier-than-air craft.

Their crashes were more spectacular, but they actually had a better safety record than aircraft. Even in the Hindenburg disaster the death toll was slight. I often wonder why anyone bothers with the safety lecture on airlines since we all know everyone is going to a horrible flaming death if something goes wrong. How many people ever survive air accidents?
 
One of my favorites. One set in the 1700-1800s with alchemy and phlogiston, or one in the Victorian Age with Aether would be equally genius.
Here's some other ones.

Overused: Magical creatures-Dragons, vampires-showing up and changing history.
Underused-Prehistoric creatures surviving their extinction and changing history. Dinosaurs are at least as cool as vampires, and are real. Harry Turtledove's A Different Flesh was okay, but I want my dinos!

Am I missing something here? I can't recall any timelines including vampire dinosaurs - is this really in danger of becoming a cliche?
 
Bite your tongue, traitor!!!!!!!!

While it's true people probably overuse airships, they are one of the primary inspirations for AH, and they were a system that seemed to be hit by an astonishing run of bad luck - but as for inefficiency, that depends upon what your talking about. In many ways they are still more efficient than heavier-than-air craft.

Their crashes were more spectacular, but they actually had a better safety record than aircraft. Even in the Hindenburg disaster the death toll was slight. I often wonder why anyone bothers with the safety lecture on airlines since we all know everyone is going to a horrible flaming death if something goes wrong. How many people ever survive air accidents?

Unfortunately, he is probably right ultimately. Rigid airships were hit with an awful lot of early bad luck which never allowed them to become much more than "one-of" experiments. However, you have to come up with a pretty unlikely PoD to have airships survive much past the 1940's no matter what. I would also argue about the safety record. Out of all the rigid airships built or used in the post WWI period at least half crashed in a few years or were severely damaged in crashes so badly that they were never repaired (R-34, R-38, R-101, ZR-1, ZRS4, ZRS5, Dixmude). Many others flew so infrequently that it is hard to say what would have happened to them over the long haul. Arguably, of all the zeppelins ever built after WW1, only Graf Zeppelin and Los Angeles could really be considered unqualified successes.

My suggested over-used cliche is one word: GERMANY. As in nazi supeweapons, wiemar survival, wilhelmine victory, and....zeppelins:)
 
I really can't recall any vampire TLs...
The only dragon one being that novel I forget the name of

Gurkhas. Elite troops are nice, but now that they've been hurrah'd over by Stirling in The Peshawar Lancers, it's time to move on to another type of colorful ethnic elite warrior.
Nah they aren't used too much.
Sikhs now. They are very over used.
Both in military and elsewhere.
You want a Indian to be first man on the moon? Its Mr.Singh!
 
I said prehistoric creatures are UNDERused, not overused.

Overused: Trent Affair
Underused: XYZ Affair
Overused: Ninjas (They were even in the Peshawar Lancers!)
Underused: Pirates (Name one good ATL with lots of pirates)
Overused: Third World Wars
Underused: World War 1 happening earlier
 
Underused: Pirates (Name one good ATL with lots of pirates)
Good AHs with pirates, no I can not think of one. However, they are not underused. At various times on this site we have had debates on how to get pirate states surviving being cleaned out by civilised powers.

Other overused AHs: Vikings conquer North America and Islamic occupation of England.
 
I have Socialist British pirates who hunt eeevil monetarist (=capitalist) ships in the second half of the 19th century in my Chaos TL. :)
 

Thande

Donor
Other overused AHs: Vikings conquer North America and Islamic occupation of England.
Islamic occupation of England? :confused: I could understand if you said France or Spain, but England? I can only name two timelines offhand that have that. In fact I can't even name them, I just remember there were two.
 
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