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[Devastator]

That is how our crystal works.
And automated large scale 3D printing may not be the best  thing ever, but it sure beats medieval hand forging, flow or no flow.

Does it?  It isn't like the latter can't create enough to equip an army.  I'd probably expect a bugs bonus due to better quality control, but not a cost bonus because you're mandating a huge pile of support equipment and going to a batch process where work can't be divided between different stages.  ;-p

"It's automated" is a big advantage when labor costs are expensive, but that only applies when said costs are expensive..

[RAM]

Umm, yeah, no mages required to make crystal. Although it would require a magical scholar to tweak the fabricators to a new shape. If you actually need to use mages to make adamantine then it is way less practical than crystal. Also, crystal, like, it is basically permanent. So a crystal city won't really need any maintenance. Crystal cookwear might be a problem with crystal being insulated, except.. Temperature-controlled heat-circuits. You could probably set it up to have a dial that adjusts it of or to a range of precise temperatures. It would be somewhat expensive, at least until the crystal fabrication industry expands, but a much better produce that a perpetually-scalding plate of adamantine.

Also, mind-reading really isn't that good for legal matters. You have the issue of mind-readers being bribed, lying for personal gain, getting stuck in a casual peer-conspiracy(see the medical industry and deliberately killing people as a matter of convenience or catharsis with a general awareness that it goes on and nobody willing to do anything about it because whislteblowers are several orders of magnitude more offensive than murderers.), or just lying for the fun of it. Then you have genuine insanity where someone honestly believe something incorrect, any study into variation in witness testimony will highlight that this is pretty much constant and ubiquitous. Throw in the threat of religious laws and invasion of privacy and I would much prefer Arstotzkan law.

I would say that it is a fair way for crystal to work. Consider that it is grown from magic, and policed by magic. Crystal is perfectly capable of growing around something, we just use magic to have it grow spontaneously and simultaneously in specific places and not in others. Realistically it would have some sort of ideal shape according to its internal structure, and would be more stable in that shape, but it is not restricted to it.

I am not really clear on what is meant by "batch" and "flow" but if we are talking about individual units then... Well. it is magic, it is capable of making a whole object instantly to exact specifications. What better than that?

[Taricus]

You worship allah or you DIE! That's non-negotiable. Besides, we just mind read the mind readers to ensure general objectivity. And Adamantium is no less permanent than crystal; it still exists within an anti-magic field. And more to the point, trying to make cookware out of crystal when a perfectly viable alternative exists already is basically economic folly. That, and it's Moskurg that has all the electrical experience

And while yes, Adamatium does need mages, even an apprentice can conjure the stuff, and it does tend to be malleable in how the temperature of the material. Heck, there's practically no limit as to what properties of adamantium could be changed or how. The stuff practically is what you want to make of it. All of which requires prayers to allah, since I don't think there's any other way to actively change it. Better than crystal; since once crystal is made into an object, it can't be changed. But Adamatium? The only limit is what you can dream of.

[Egan_BW]

Adamantium is superior merely due to the very fact that it requires prayers to God. remove heathen crystal

[Kadzar]

You worship allah or you DIE!

Adamantium is superior merely due to the very fact that it requires prayers to God. remove heathen crystal

I'm pretty sure we can just make a machine to do that for us. We got one of your spells to work with only token praise of Allah, no actual belief required, and with some more work we could eliminate that bug entirely.

[Madman198237]

Too bad you never put the work in, isn't it?

Also too bad that we never got to my proposed redesign/revision of the Hammer of Allah for "SMITE THE HEATHENS!".

That would've been...messy, on your end.

[Taricus]

Well, okay shortened is fine (Because more complex changes might be a bitch to do in a hour long prayer), but without faith behind it? HERESY. We'll burn you for that!

[Iituem]

I'd like to take a moment to appreciate that an Arms Race game has come to a proper conclusion, despite the clearly-evident salt.

I stopped posting in this after eS took over, out of respect for the new GM and the fact that I didn't want to sway either side, but I've been following both threads for the entirety of this game and I just want to give massive props to eS for bringing this to such a satisfying conclusion (well, almost there!).  It has been a pleasure to read and I've been ecstatic at how the game has progressed over 39 turns and nearly half a century of combat, not to mention six real life months of play.  Well done!

[VoidSlayer]

To be honest, I was the one pushing for stealing the lucky strike spell and learning more about it.  I really think much earlier and wide spread adoption of it would have been helpful.

Also I have decided to wall over the biomancy underground research lab since its products were never really used.  The prototype monsters will just have to fend for themselves down there.

Also there were never any underground monsters and I never did any such research...

I never proposed making a giant invisible assassin wolf instead of the fear wand.

Honestly the super long descriptions and in fighting really made me skim over a lot of the thread myself.

Crystal though is undoubtedly cheaper then your metal and can be made into many different forms.  The labor costs involved in magic metal production is the mages, and crystal fabrication does not require mages anymore.  Realistically if everyone stopped being able to use magic suddenly crystal could still be made into many different forms by making printed metal circuits and automated production of every level of crystal fabrication.  Only reason houses and such were never made out of it was it was a state military secret so was deliberately reduced only to what the military needs.

The metal has very specific and useful properties and is good as actual armor though.  Nothing I saw showed it's properties could be changed after forging though?  That was the strength, it seemed to resist changes to it's temperature and structure.  It also offered infinite free energy by forging something at a very high temperature then using the heat generated to do stuff.

[Taricus]

It could actually be changed in regards to the temperature after we revised the initial, constant temperature metal. Though we could only get the temperature to be changed in a certain range.

[VoidSlayer]

Honestly haven't read through it all and that is such a  minor change I could have easily missed it.

I think a real trap we fell into was not expanding on some of the other spell types we had and concentrating way too much in crystal and fire once we understood them.

Also not making a spell to summon crystal directly into the brains of enemy soldiers across the battlefield.

[RAM]

Yeah, we were way too focused. It really became apparent once Keggers made a metal that constantly and cheaply made itself and anything nearby completely immune to all direct forms of temperature magic, which was basically half of our ability to do damage.

[Madman198237]

Sad, wasn't it?

The metal actually just will never change temperature, it doesn't actually have any radiating component per say.

But in general, yes. Though we never developed a cloth version (People just don't listen to good ideas around here!), it was enough to keep our soldiers from freezing to death. Mostly.

Probably should've been investing in other things by that point, but frankly we should have been as well.

[RAM]

Umm, no, it definitely protected everyone nearby. At the very least it served as bar-heaters and made anything behind it completely immune to the radiant heat of a fireball. It basically worked as a temperature-immune and impermeable barrier to all temperature fluctuations and a radiating temperature source. Someone wearing the stuff as armour was completely immune to fireballs regardless of what sanity has to say about blistered lungs. It was very clear that "the entire environment is well below freezing" and "a huge ball of flames engulfs it" was completely negated by the metal. And there was enough of it to put it over everything. We tried using temperature magic, all effects were completely negated in every instance.

So it did most definitely have a radiating component. I actually requested that it specifically have no radiating component and that request was denied.

[Madman198237]

It doesn't magically protect anything nearby, though. You can't change the laws of physics---by being a static temperature, it changes the temperature around it by heating the air touching it. However, it does NOT actively and magically change the temperature around it, and we lost infantrymen to fireballs before AND after the creation of adamantine.

However, it DOES work well enough that our infantrymen, though uncomfortable, had no issues with the cold.

Honestly, you can't complain, since temperatures dropped so far we were losing men like a sieve, yet your guys weren't even SLIGHTLY affected. "Of the North" or not, you really ought not to complain.