[Waterluvian]

I love reading about these designs but I find the Wikipedia articles don’t do a great job explaining the logic behind the geometry. I assume it has to do with maximizing what your cannons can see while minimizing flat-on surfaces for their cannons to strike?

But then there’s probably some tactical reasons too like how the emplacements on the points of the star forces enemy engagement to take place a certain way.

All guesswork. Any good links or videos that really do a good job explaining the why?

[andrenotgiant]

There's a good history stackexchange answer on the topic. https://history.stackexchange.com/a/35726

> Bastion forts are designed to enable enfilade (or flanking) fire: shooting on the line of attackers from the side, significantly increasing firing efficiency of the defender.

[082349872349872]

The bit about the offensive strategy reminds me of the old city of Jerusalem. We visited the wall, and on the way passed though a new condo development, where I joked that the zig-zag streets would limit flanking fire. My hosts said the architects knew what they were doing, and pointed out various bullet holes around the rest of (their quarter of) J'lem the rest of the day.

[Waterluvian]

Thanks. Now that I’m thinking about it from the perspective of maximizing flanking fire... geez these are nasty nasty citadels to attack...

[bob1029]

If you think about it abstractly, all of these approaches are effectively increasing the surface area of the fortification without substantially increasing its internal area. This increases the number of positions from which defenders can operate, while simultaneously decreasing the effectiveness of any particular attack.

[Someone]

If you build a round tower or a circular fort (which is optimal in both area/wall ratio and strength) (edit: or use any other ‘locally convex’ layout), attackers who manage to sneak up to the wall at a location where there isn’t any opening in the wall (i.e. most places) can hack away at the wall relatively (they may still be hit from above, but even that may be limited, depending on the design of the wall) unimpeded, as nobody shooting projectiles out of the fort can hit them. So, such attackers could work for days or even weeks to bring down part of the wall.

These designs are such that, wherever attackers are standing near the wall, there’s a position inside the fort from where one can hit them, often from both sides.

You also don’t want you projectiles, aimed at attackers, to hit and damage your own wall.

Projectile range and rate of fire mean one cannot simple scale up a smaller design to make a larger one.

[tgb]

After clicking a few linkd deep, I too would like a video link showing not just this fort design but the development through history of these. I couldn't figure out the distinctions between this and star forts and polygonal forts and the differences of Vauban's attack plan versus what is used against polygonal, etc. Any video recommendations?