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>because at least one guide is required for each donkey,

Why? Can you not assemble them in groups like other pack animals?




If you're sending them back one by one you need a guide for each.

If you send them in groups then you're not as optimal (first donkey is unladen in 3 days singly, but two donkeys are unladen in 5 days, say, meaning you need to keep feeding the first until the second is done, or equivalent via load balancing).

You could have trained donkeys that might self-navigate but that's moderately unlikely. Probably better to eat them or give them away free to the countryside.


Sure, if you're unloading from the donkey serially. But if you unloaded in parallel, no one donkey would be unloaded before the others.


That still delays when you can send the first donkey back - and it continues to eat.

If you unload from one and send back immediately, it eats 3 days, goes back.

If you unload in parallel, you cannot be sending a donkey back in 3 days, so you must be feeding extra donkey.

It still may get you an advantage overall, but it's not the maximum advantage.


very analogous to airplanes running on fuel vs batteries


I was actually thinking it was like the Falklands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck

The British were able to fly bombers from tremendously far away, with a chain re-fuel strategy where the re-fuelling tanker planes are themselves re-fuelled by other tankers which then turn back. Later iterations were optimised by thinking more carefully about who should transfer fuel, to who, and when, as in this example.

Arguably Black Buck was pointless, it was certainly not pivotal in the outcome of the war, but the actual process was fascinating.




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