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[somemildmanneredidiot]

I'm like 80% sure they have literal tin foil hats that they joked about because it's the obvious answer.

[S34N1C]

Oh shit, nice to see you here SMMI

Storm of Wrath: (1) Madman198237
Accurate Wand of Thunderbolts: (3) SMMI, NUKE9.13,
 S34N1C

[Kashyyk]

You skipped some votes.

Storm of Wrath: (1) Madman198237
Accurate Wand of Thunderbolts: (3) SMMI, NUKE9.13, S34N1C
Passive Reverbramancy: (2) Kashyyk, crazyabe

[NUKE9.13]

Passive Antichronic Reverbramancy [...]
There's a lot of room for improvement with this spell. Lets not leave it half finished and waste a design.

Thing is, AR provides defence, but to defeat their cannons we also require offence. It is unfortunately probably true that if they continue to hammer us with the quantity of shells they have been in the past, AR will not be enough to save our troops. But if we can reliably take out large numbers of their cannons, the remaining sporadic bombardments will be avoidable.

(Or revise it to give several minutes warning. And even that might not be enough)

NUKE, the Hammer can be cast if Storm Strike can be cast. So, we revamp Storm Strike to be always useful.

An accurate Wand of Thunderbolts will NOT give us that kind of advantage. It doesn't have the number of strikes that Storm Strike brings. And their cannons are METAL!!!!! They're basically a bunch of lightning rods, waiting to be hit by our Hammer.

WoT already takes out some of their cannons. Making it more accurate is guaranteed to let it take out even more.
As it stands, we can't get our airships close enough to cast HoA.

Nuke, it's a lot more reasonable to call down death from the skies than it is to charge that into wand form. Plus if we spend just one extra revision we'll have targeted lightning again. We just have to fix Storm Strike. This allows UNLIMITED lightning strikes---otherwise we have to charge wands.

This would allow us to use our deadliest weapon again. The storm could be cast by a crack squad of mages who, sneaking along on War Pegasi, make it behind the enemy camps and call down the storm on their heads...every night.

Well, you say that, but WoT is cheap. Each mage can carry many wands. Yes, it isn't unlimited, but it lack of lightning has not been stated to be a problem.
If you could guarantee me that crack squad of stealth mages, I would vote for all-weather Storm Strike. But that's the thing, it isn't guaranteed. Whereas the effectiveness of WoT is.

Here's my thinking: barring anything more pressing, next turn we use a design to create propellers for the Alsamma Safina. Then we use our revision for all-weather Storm Strike, once we have a reliable way of getting mages into casting range. If we revise it this turn, we'd probably have to wait for the airship improvements before it becomes useful anyway (crack mage squads don't just happen automagically, they'd probably require an Order. A risky Order).

[Egan_BW]

Storm of Wrath: (1) Madman198237
Accurate Wand of Thunderbolts: (3) SMMI, NUKE9.13, S34N1C
Passive Reverbramancy: (3) Kashyyk, crazyabe, Egan_BW

Sounds to me like we already have all the firepower we need to destroy many cannons, we just need more defence to protect the airships and let them get close enough.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Based on the 6 Bolts of Lightning to kill 1 Falcon ratio, Accurate Wands of Thunderbolts should increase their effectiveness by up to 600%. Which means mass slaughter when they're deployed properly.

[Madman198237]

Ummmm....no, NUKE. Our airships sometimes stay back and shoot from outside their cannons' range (Height advantages are GREAT!) but they also will fly through the barrage and just hover over the enemies, dropping full-sized Firestorm shells everywhere.

Speaking of which, I want to spend the next few turns working on old designs. We NEED to revamp our weather spells to make them effective again, and fixing Cyclone Shield and our divination in the same bundle might just be an extremely good investment.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

I'm okay with that, but I want some sort of direct action accurate lightning right now as it will be intensely effective if our inaccurate lightning proves anything.

[Madman198237]

Well, yes. But tell me this: Would you rather a tremendous number of hideously powerful lightning bolts from the sky, or a few weaker ones possibly with more direction? Remember, their cannons are nothing but lightning rods with convenient apprentices targets nearby.


Oh hey, figured something out:
They use differently-colored flares to signal their artillery, right?
If we developed a simple yet powerful illusion spell, could we change the flares' color?

[NUKE9.13]

Madman, read the update again. Enough ships get shot down that standard practice is to hang back. It's complete bollocks that their slow tracking fixed elevation artillery can hit a moving airborne target, but apparently our airships are just that slow.

[Madman198237]

Hence why we need to spend the next design making them faster and strong enough to carry troops and/or other mages.

So, the flare coloring: Difficulty?

[NUKE9.13]

Hence why we need to spend the next design making them faster and strong enough to carry troops and/or other mages.

Agreed. This is what I'm saying, though. Casting HoA from airships is impractical/dangerous at the moment. WoT, on the other hand, is used by carpet riders, and we already have reports of it disabling cannons.
Rather than wait a turn to see our improved magic take effect, I would like to do something that helps us now. Besides, I have ideas that could really use more reliable WoTs.

Regarding the flare recolouring, that might be possible in a single design. But it might be costly/hard to actually pull off (we'd need mages constantly on the lookout for flares everywhere, who would need to react in a matter of seconds), and a single revision on their part could probably disable it. If we already knew illusion magic, we could do it in a revision, and then it might be worth it.

[Madman198237]

If instead the spell is simply targeted generally over the frontlines, or even cast from the deck of an Alsamma, we could probably manage to pull off some illusions on artillery crewmen. Nothing too obvious, so they don't wizen up to the trickery, but a simple "Red flare, don't shoot" when the apprentice signals a shot on our troops and "HEY LOOK GREEN FLARE" for an area with no friendly troops.

[evictedSaint]

Seems like a tie between accurate lightning and passive artillery detection

I'll flip a coin here in an hour, if the tie isnt broken

[Madman198237]

Hey, it's a tie, therefore we should just go in reverse votes and therefore my idea wins, by virtue of having the greatest number of votes that is still greater than 0.


But seriously, give an all-weather Storm Strike consideration, guys. One revision makes the Hammer useful again. Not to mention providing a potential source of cover for aerial operations (They can't hear you over the thunder, and they can't see you in the pouring rain.)