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[Devastator]

The classic one, though, two revisions from being useful.  One to make it malleable or to come in the form of our choice, and one to make it strong enough to be a gamechanger.

Still, that doesn't take the next design phases out of play, so we can do a new boat and a new ballista, or whatever else we go with.

[Madman198237]

Here's the thing: As of right now, we have a metal that can be summoned in arbitrary (EVICTED! Is it actually arbitrary or is it always ingots?) shapes and sizes.

We can basically make pavise shields. Infinite pavise shields, sort of. Out of a metal that can't catch fire, and won't burn.
Also, it IS immune to fireballs---it doesn't heat up, therefore it cannot transfer heat.

I really want to work that wind, but it's going to have to wait while we work this into an excellent format. Next turn, we redesign adamantine into two forms: one, a similar material, retaining the whole nigh-indestructible always-constant-temperature stuff (Although a slightly higher temperature'd be nice. As in, about, say, 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit. We're from the desert. Ought to be comfortable.), but is in the form of a thread or fiber. The other is the metal, but this metal can be worked into shape using the same magics that summon it.

[Taricus]

We probably want to develop a way of magically working the material first.

[Devastator]

I'm still in favor of using designs to do very new things, such as ships suitable to be plated by adamantine.  We then revise adamantine so that we can either work it or make it in the desired forms.  The turn after that, we design something else new, which might well fail, and then follow that up by going super-hard with adamantine.  Because right now, 'slightly stronger than steel' clearly isn't as good as we can do, having come out of a 1 on revision.

[Madman198237]

Sometimes though, you use the design for its designing "power" instead of being ridiculously ADHD.

Oh, and also, that design does mention how to work the metal.

[Devastator]

Yeah, but there's so many more easy improvements we can make to a boat, and it's something that's useful even if we manage to 1 the revision a second time.

(sharper keels for greater speed, different rig as we always have the wind in the correct direction, (greater speed), the soft adamantine plating for greater speed and better turns and additional toughness.  (due to having a cleaner bottom and being stronger than wood.)

I also don't want to roll a 1 for expense and getting nothing, or a 1 on effectiveness and being back at square one, or a 1 on glitches, and it murders everyone who touches it.  With a design, there's three chances to make something useless.

[Madman198237]

With a revision, you're more likely to get screwed over.

Plus, using a design, the material itself is already Really Cheap^TM, so it will not get utterly ridiculous. After all, we're literally summoning this crap from the aether.

Speaking of which, it's about to be time for a spell that creates largish mounds of the stuff buried in the earth. Because we can summon it in small quantities now, we ought to be able to summon it in larger quantities. Just imagine, a material capable of suddenly appearing in front of wherever they launch their flares.

[Devastator]

With a revision, you're more likely to get screwed over.

Plus, using a design, the material itself is already Really Cheap^TM, so it will not get utterly ridiculous. After all, we're literally summoning this crap from the aether.

Speaking of which, it's about to be time for a spell that creates largish mounds of the stuff buried in the earth. Because we can summon it in small quantities now, we ought to be able to summon it in larger quantities. Just imagine, a material capable of suddenly appearing in front of wherever they launch their flares.

Nah.  You roll bad on the cost, the improved design is more expensive than the previous one.  Same for effectiveness and for glitches.  On average, you get an improvement, but it's hardly more guaranteed than a revision.  You're rolling three dice looking for that one, after all, and a single one can mean a worse design than the decent rolls on the one you're replacing.

In this case, we roll a one on expense or glitches, and we're behind where we were before.  A one on effectiveness and we make up no ground.  Lets get a new boat instead.

[Madman198237]

Well, yes and no. Remember that evicted uses his common (?) sense on these, as well as subjective (!) judgement. In other words, if we use a design to assign new characteristics as I propose, we might get something in the Expensive range (Depending on how complex it is from his balance-y, GM position), but it won't go National Effort because the material, evidently, is ludicrously cheap. And it won't kill our soldiers, we have an advantage in our foreknowledge of the properties of magically summoned materials.

In other words, don't worry about nothing. Not meant to be a double negative, but it's the best way of saying it. The design will improve things more than a revision because that's what a design is: The most powerful choice we make every turn. Except, sometimes, where to send the hero.

[Devastator]

What are you suggesting anyway?  Because it sounds like 'we can summon small amounts of this stuff, enough to equip some of our troops with it, over hours', therefore we can materialize great slabs of it at will at long distances from our casters.

It's also not really cheap.  It's expensive.

We did a design, just on the previous turn, about something Expensive.  We ended up with something Very Expensive that was no better than what it was replacing, because we rolled a 1.  I don't want to do that because something like 40% of all design rolls will have a one, and thus be useless at replacing a flawed design with some already-decent rolls.

If you're suggesting that we just build more experience with summoning it, and trying for a summon form + something we'd want, but have trouble making, like pavise shields I could understand that.  But for the life of me I don't understand why you would want to summon the metal underground.

[Madman198237]

Here's the thing: That was a "little bit later" sort of thing. Like, in three to five turns, consider using our newfound conjuring power to conjure assorted barricades.

Also, a revision is ONE ROLL that can screw up ALL THREE ASPECTS of a design. A design gives you three times the redundancy and also more sheer power. Something that is relatively easy in a design (Roll a 2, get an OK result) might be relatively hard in a revision (Roll a 2, get a negative/lack of result and the cost increases).

[Devastator]

Here's the thing: That was a "little bit later" sort of thing. Like, in three to five turns, consider using our newfound conjuring power to conjure assorted barricades.

Also, a revision is ONE ROLL that can screw up ALL THREE ASPECTS of a design. A design gives you three times the redundancy and also more sheer power. Something that is relatively easy in a design (Roll a 2, get an OK result) might be relatively hard in a revision (Roll a 2, get a negative/lack of result and the cost increases).

I still want the boat, because the copper-hard plating would still be of a huge benefit to it, and a crack at making the metal shapeable or to be summonable in the desired shape would upgrade that again while replacing all our steel items, rendering it nigh-invincible.

Really, it can't screw up all aspects of a design, because if the revision is flopped, we keep the original design before the revision, so it can never make stuff worse.  A design-as-revision can do the exact same thing, except it gets three chances to roll a one, rather than only one.  The 'upside' is the ability to fix more than one problem, should you miss the 40% chance of rolling a one.

[Madman198237]

I'm saying that a 1 on a design is better than a 1 on a revision. We can keep the original spell with a design and then revise the supermetal plates on the ships. That way, we can make the two different versions I suggested while also getting the ships. If you think that my modifications are more of a revision, then your idea is certainly nothing more than a small revision.

[Devastator]

I'm saying that a 1 on a design is better than a 1 on a revision.

We got a 1 on a design the previous turn.  In fact, it was a 1+2 for a three, and we got two of them, and it was worthless.  Ones on designs are just as crappy as ones on revisions.

No, I think we need to design the ships and revise the spell that makes the supermetal.  Because revisions to the supermetal  apply to everything made of it.  (which is everything made of metal.)  Designs for specific purposes, such as making chunks of ship armour or floating shields, however useful, will not apply to everything else.

Plus there's a lot of improvements we can make to our ships, and we have made nothing, so even botched ones will still make ships better than the ones we've spent nothing and no time on.

If you want to double-down on adamantium by using both, I think that's a mistake, as we have little to gain next turn (following our losses on three fronts, which seems likely for this turn), but it's the turn after that that really counts.  If we do hold the jungle, we pretty much have to get the boats as we'll be losing the jungle bonus in a turn, and we're still making mostly wooden boats for an additonal bonus.

I can totally see a design spell on adamantium rolling 3, 1, 5, being slightly-better than steel and Very Expensive, leaving us in exactly the same position as we are right now.

Or.. 1, 3, 5, being an easier to work copper at expensive with no glitches, also leaving us in the same position as we are right now.

Or.. 3, 5, 1, being cheap, slightly better than steel, but still bricks, leaving us in the same position as we are in right now.

Or.. 5, 3, 1, where we have a wonderful, invincible metal, but are only able to use it as ballista rocks, where it fails due to not being heavy enough.

If we roll really great, we want the new design anyway, as it replaces nothing and we add a lot of power.  If we roll terribly, we won't get anything either way.  If we roll okay, we might get something with a boat or a new design, but we won't get anything by replacing something else also sorta okay.

I mostly think the reason we're doing bad right now is because we had a bunch of stuff nerfed and have rolled 3,3,3, 3, 1,1,3, 3, 3,4,5, 1.  Mathwise, it's about 5th percentile for an expected total, and there's a 90% chance of getting at least one six.

[NUKE9.13]

The War Pegasi was not useless. It wasn't as good as we hoped, but it put us out of range of their archers.

Anyway, whatever. Let's design a new ship next turn, one that comes clad in copper-soft Adamantium.
...or a new airship. Eh? Alsamma Safina? Anybody? No? I'll see myself out.