Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-26553378-20160724223320/@comment-26347028-20160727143754

Forten wrote: Maltalidenta Kwuitidherali wrote:

RyderofArios wrote:

Maltalidenta Kwuitidherali wrote:

Minecraftmage113 wrote: um... its a mumakil, i get the point that it would be unreasonable for feeding but it is quite possible it just has a more efficient digestive system plus when the harad went to war there werent very large amount (im just going to have you yell at me about the movie stuff again now but...) and there werent any more than 20 in that battle scene if i recall correctly and that would undoubtedly be getting the mumakil any way possible so they are extremely rare, if you're woried about overpowered i guess i get that but they would be expensive as well as rare and they really were powerful (no it is nowhere near giant gold velociraptors) and it was never said they live in the savanah, by mods lore they live in jungle, by tolkiens lore he never really gave a native land they were just captured and used somehow by the haradrim And "Mûmak" is nothing more than a word in another language, likely being elephant in our own. Elephants themselves spend 80% of their time feeding, and there is no digestive system that is randomly quick. We'd be able to observe it in the animal kingdom, and have presumably larger animals because of it. But we can't, and so it's reasonable to call such an excuse rubbish.

Aye, I'll get at you for using the films as evidence. I could quote Shakespeare, but that doesn't mean Caeser actually said "Et tu, Brute."

By the mod's law, they live in the jungle, hmm? That's near enough impossible for them to even get through a jungle without some very major drawbacks, so we can presume they aren't natives. And if they are, then they'll in all likelihood eat large parts of the trees, which would have extreme difficulty growing back, and so major deforestation would have taken place and the elephants would therefore have killed themselves mostly out. So, we've established they aren't native to the jungle. Where, then, the Savannah? Well, there's even less food there. To put it very simply, it's just unreasonable to say they could exist there in the dimensions you place them at. And if they were rare, how do you propose the Haradhrim saw the potential as war machines? With normal African elephants, which were rare in themselves, few were used in war. With these, if they were rarer still, it's fairly likely they wouldn't even be used in war.

There are limits on when their size becomes unreasonable. Anything over about 1.2-1.5 times the size of an African elephant is wholly unreasonable, and six would also be an umreasonable amount of tusks for something of that size too. I thought elephants lived in many different environments...including jungles. Now I'm no expert at this, and I get what you mean in saying that they can bring major forest deforestation with them being a keystone speceies and all... But that would be the case that their number is beyond what the jungle can sustain...

And saying that it is nearly impossible for them to get through jungles is a huge underestimation of their brute strength.

In the jungles of Southeast Asia, they are not too common but they do live in jungles... They make these elephant trails in the jungles, tear down trees....they are native in these jungles. Savannah?? African Elephants??? Or if not totally savannah dependent...just partly...Other animals mostly avoid them too....with a few exceptions...

So to say it simply, (i don't agree with you but no offense) you cannot say it is unreasonable for them to exist in those places.. And even with them being uncommon,  Asian elephants were used if not extensively, by many civilizations both small and great throughout history. Thus it is likely even for the Haradrim, to see their potential as war machines...

If a two-tusked, asian elephant was used as a war-beast (I am referring to non-wartower elephants)...how much more, say a four-tusked, or even six-tusked immense elephants were not seen as potentially war-profitable?? (now I sound like a slave trader)

If you disagree with High King Ithilion's suggestion of 6 blocks high, what height would you suggest besides the normal size of African Elephants???

(Also, how do you pronounce your name?) Aye, but if they're even bigger then it's a little silly in terms of damage they bring.

And the number the jungle can sustain anyway if few enough in Asian Elephants. There's a reason they're smaller, even now. A situation like that (jungles, etc.) breeds smaller elephants, not larger. Hence, there's no evolutionary reason for these to exist at all.

Well, yes, but if you consider the area then these, rather small, elephants still cause massive damage, and if you consider them being bigger they'd be even rarer. Even then, the civilisations that used them took a fair bit of knowledge each from the first, so it's just whether the first existed or not, and if the Tauredain held them sacred, we can presume they allowed extremely few, if any, to tame them.

They spend 80% of their time eating. With a bigger animal, it would need to be even more. By that logic, mating would probably near starve them. That's not a good evolutionary feature.

I was saying that it's unreasonable in any sort of major numbers without either requiring immense amounts of food or simply having immense amounts of destruction. These would be rarer still, and hoarded by an Empire that doesn't want them tamed, so the Haradhrim need to have learned it either from the stupidly small amount that they can find themselves, steal something right now useless, or have learned off of others. But up until that point from the history explained we can presume that they didn't have much knowledge on riding them.

Aye, it's profitable, and scary, but impractical to train, to feed, and to even really control. Having them bigger would increase each of those.

Four, or five blocks, at most. Although that is the normal size of African Elephants, and I don't really have an opinion beyond that.

Maltalid-enta is, well, like Malta the country, a lid, and then an Ent from LotR with a short a on the end. The Kw sounds a little like Qu, so Kwuitid is not much better to say. Seperate the rest off, therefore, so -uitid. The 'ui' is like in French 'oui'. Then 'tid' is simple enough. Herali is 'her' and 'Ali' which should be simple enough. Hope I cleared it up a little. 1. Is it possible that the Mumakil had other, more high-energy food sources? Perhaps cocoa beans or meat.

2. Rather than live in the tree-packed jungle, or the sparse savanna, could they have simply grazed the edges of the forests?

3. Regarding obvious issues in controlling them, could the Mumakil be stupid and only very very rarely dangerous?

4. Regarding the issue of major deforestation when feeding, could they mostly eat some type of common, fast-growing bamboo, scaled up a bit? 1. They're not predators, so not meat. And cocoa isn't as nutritious as you'd think. There aren't many options in the jungle.

2. Which would contain much less variety of food. Unlikely for such a size.

3. Then they would be extremely hard to drive. Especially in war-time, they'd be near enough useless, and if stupid enough likely instead to kill your own men.

4. That's a rather fantastical solution. While, yes, possible, without such massive things to eat them they'd soon choke out other plants and I'm sure we're not creating a "starved by bamboo" biome. Aside from that, there's not really much reason to put forth conjecture about how it's possible, but no less unlikely, that they could be so large, which doesn't either justify or back up the proposed immense size.