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[Happerry]

Firestorm Shells sounds good to me. We might not be winning as much in the artillary duel, but we are still winning, and the addition of explosive ammo should make our own siege weapons more effective, given they can effect a whole lot more enemies per shot, and should swing the naval fight solidly in our direction from setting their stuff on fire.

If we want to block the enemy shots we should probably just go full up and try to make a Wall of Force spell, I think.

[Devastator]

Precognitive Rings.  These slim metal bands grant a short precognitive warning of incoming flying objects, and give feedback based on a weak shock.  It can then be used to take a few steps out of the way of the fire.  One ring will be on each hand, and the ring that's tingling is the side to step away from.  If time is sufficient and there are not enough of these rings, hand signals may tell the formation which way to step on the attack.  It may also provide last-second warning of an incoming arrow.

Precognitive Rings: (1) Devastator.  {Although Nuke 13's idea sounds similar}
Blast of Wind: (1) Taricus.
Zapstones: (1) Egan_BW.

(If this is pulled off, we'll trump their great new weapon in one turn, and do so in an immensely demoralizing manner.  They're firing cannonballs all at our troops?  We'll just keep marching forwards, and the balls will just keep missing..  Why just win when you can break them forever?)

[Egan_BW]

Nah, obviously the answer is more firepower! Not literal fire though, not energetic enough.

[Happerry]

Precognitive Rings: (1) Devastator.  {Although Nuke 13's idea sounds similar}
Blast of Wind: (1) Taricus.
Zapstones: (2) Egan_BW, Happerry.

The Precognitive Rings sounds useful, but I doubt that on the scale of armies it will be enough to make us immune to enemy artillary fire and I suspect that it'll also mess our formations up. Given that our big advantages in large scale melee are teamwork and numbers that doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I also highly doubt we'll be able to counter the enemy cannonballs with wind, if nothing else from targeting and casting speed issues (given they seem to shoot said cannonballs pretty fast). As such I'm going to vote for Zapstones and hope the electricity will be able to set the enemy ships on fire.

Edit : Also, if we can make an Unlucky Strike spell with enough range, or make it into a ritual/tower cast thing like their 'drop the temperature' spell to try cursing whole enemy armies with it, we might be able to sidestep their cannons through making them be really bad at aiming.

Or maybe we can make a defensive Mirage spell that keeps them from being able to accurately target us?

[NUKE9.13]

Nah, obviously the answer is more firepower! Not literal fire though, not energetic enough.

Our naval theatre commander has asked pretty clearly for fire. Much as I would like to be more original than that, at some point we magengineers must bow to the needs of the common soldier.

[Devastator]

The bonuses to formation is kind of why I wrote it up that way, as we'd be using the formation bonuses to improve it's effectiveness should we not get enough for every soldier.

[Taricus]

Precognitive Rings: (1) Devastator.  {Although Nuke 13's idea sounds similar}
Blast of Wind: (0)
Zapstones: (2) Egan_BW, Happerry.
Firestorm Shells (1): Taricus

I don't think the zapstones will be as effective as the firestorms. And if we're lucky we can revise those to be throwable by our soldiers, meaning our cavalry charges just got more deadly.

[Happerry]

Precognitive Rings: (1) Devastator.  {Although Nuke 13's idea sounds similar}
Blast of Wind: (0)
Zapstones: (1) Egan_BW.
Firestorm Shells (2): Taricus, Happerry.

Switched to Firestorm Shells.

[Madman198237]

OK. Let's be done screwing ourselves over. Wind will NEVER do as much damage as flames, not for the same amount of power. Most you MIGHT hope for is a perfect roll with the flaming projectiles, which would allow you to not spend a revision and then spend it on the gale stones. Maybe. But probably not. So, here's my plan:
Design Phase: Make the simple, mechanical, utterly non-magical pottery, well, bombs, I guess.
Revision: Retroactively add the magic. This splits the difficulty up. We'll make progress into incendiaries (Not that much should be needed. As I pointed out, everything suggested is common-knowledge oh-hey-this-lights-on-fire sort of stuff), THEN add an enchantment. Also, if we get screwed, again, on the roll, we can just fix the flammable part. We'll be using Lucky Strike, of course. So we'll hit with large numbers of these things.
Also, it will absolutely require no revision, once they're working, to grab one of these bad-boys and chuck it over the walls of a fort. So we do NOT need to redesign ballistae. Because logic says if you can blow it up one way, you can blow it up another. Heck, perhaps as an order we could have soldiers construct wooden troughs on the walls of the fort, so they can merely push these off the walls, without needing protection from the flaming casing.


TO SUMMARIZE:
Is everyone voting for the firestorm shells OK with splitting the design between revision and design phases? And possibly sacrificing the expense part as well, in order to get these things out in greater numbers really fast?

Precognitive Rings: (1) Devastator.  {Although Nuke 13's idea sounds similar}
Blast of Wind: (0)
Zapstones: (1) Egan_BW.
Firestorm Shells (3): Taricus, Happerry, Madman198237

[Taricus]

It's more a revision so we can easily through them, like hand grenade size. That way we now have horse grenadiers

[Madman198237]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NON ONONONONONONONO OH PLEASE NO

Sorry, had to get that out.

Let's get them MADE, first, alright? A hand-grenade-size piece of pottery is not going to contain hardly enough flammable material to kill a man. Now, if we get the wind enchanting working this term, we might consider pulling a fast one and revising some rocks/solid pieces of pottery/pottery filled with shards of metal to explode on hard contact. Allowing soldiers to throw relatively lightweight killing devices over the heads of friendlies so they come down in the middle of the enemy lines. Our light cav is OK right now, but with our bows being largely ineffective, we need to change that. NEXT TURN, we make a skirmish cav armed with baskets/saddlebags/double handfuls-of-chew-on-this full of grenades, but for now, NO.
Save our revision. Make it simple. We need an advantage, not a game-endingly powerful piece of artillery. If they manage to turn their knowledge of fire magic into incendiary cannon projectiles, we'll be in trouble.

evictedSaint, quick question: Would modifying the ballista substantially, into a catapult, require a full design phase? I assume so, but I am wondering if we could get away with a possible revision. That'd be really awesome.w

[NUKE9.13]

The features of the Firestorm Shells, in order of priority:
-The flammable payload.
-The increased range
-The 'wind explosion'
I feel like any one of those would be a revision. It stands to reason that we can manage at least two, if not all three with a design.

[Madman198237]

No, the firestorm shells do NOT have increased range.
Attributes:
Made of pottery, will shatter on impact AFTER FIRING. Pottery must be able to take strain of firing, bumps of travel.
Filled with flammable liquids. I don't care if you have to round up a bunch of Arstotzkans and make them press oil out of almonds or olives or whatever, something flammable goes here.
Covered in oil-soaked rags. If THIS gets screwed up, then this country has no future, and I'm defecting. Actually, if it does, I might actually do that....Anyway. No screwing around with fuses, no finicky timing, nothing. Just like a Molotov cocktail---the bursting glass lets the rag catch the alcohol on fire. In this case, the bursting pottery catches our substantially-better-burning materials on fire.

So, design spent on giving it the above attributes.
Revision for the below:
Extra Bursting Effect (Wind-powered)
Extra Range (Also wind-based. Duh)
---both self-explanatory, don't you think?

Worst case here, the revision fails and we use the original instead, or the design fails and we revise it to be better. Anyone disagree?

[NUKE9.13]

Hmm. Well, I suppose only focusing on the flammable payload would make things easier. As you say, it should be pretty hard to screw up putting oil in a pot. I guess getting a +1 to a few of the rolls could be useful. And if we roll well, we might develop something closer to greek fire.
That, and you were right last turn. So, okay, I'll support just designing the flammable payload.

Firestorm Shells (Flammable Payload Only):Take the Galestones. Make them out of pottery instead, and fill them with flammable oil. Attach a burning rag to them. They still have the 'pointed helmet' shape, and we may as well leave the wind-explosion enchantment on them, for all the good it does. But our focus is on the flammable payload- our alchemists and potters will work round the clock designing pottery that is just the right strength, and a chemical compound that burns hot and unquenchable.

Though then we really should spend the revision increasing their range. We would really like to out-range their cannons.

Precognitive Rings: (1) Devastator.  {Although Nuke9.13's idea sounds similar}
Blast of Wind: (0)
Zapstones: (1) Egan_BW.
Firestorm Shells (2): Taricus, Happerry
  Flammable payload only: (2) NUKE9.13, Madman198237

[Madman198237]

I'd even leave out the "galestone" part. We don't want them giving away our secrets yet. We'll make a bunch of flammables WITHOUT enchantment (Reducing cost), THEN revise them to have the best enchantment we can get. We'll at least have plentiful numbers of the unenchanted ones. They'll give us a big advantage in the next year. We've gotta get moving on this. If they can now rival our artillery strength....we've gotta get another lead.

Next year, it's time for catapults. Bigger torsion artillery. Then we just size up the flammables and voila, instantaneous apocalypse.