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[Chiefwaffles]

HA1s are perfect for trains. Like Andres said, it'd greatly improve mobility. That and our train ideally shouldn't be even within range for HC1-Es to be effective.

Benefits:
1. Transport ammunition to front lines (more effective HA1s and HC1-Es)
2. Deliver goods, supplies, weapons, and other things to front line quickly and in bulk.
3. Quickly get large amounts of troops to different places. We'll still need a design to get our troops past their artillery, but the Relentless will allow our troops to quickly move from theatre to theatre, retreat, and to bring in new reinforcements from Arstotzka.
4. Mobile long range fire support with HA1s.


And regarding frost shells, they're more of a niche ammunition. Explosive shells are more or less just a straight upgrade to our current shells. Frost shells would still be useful, but we have less experience with that kind of thing and they're not as generally useful.

[FallacyofUrist]

Hm. Fair enough. I can see that. Though explosive shells may be less useful against their navy.

If a HA1 was properly braced in a Relentless car and the car itself was stationary and braced... okay, possibly... though even a Crystalclad can only hold one HA1. How big would the Relentless train cars be?

Again, totally voting for Relentless, unless Moskurg deploys a new military thing that(like the Sirocco) urgently needs countering.

[Andres]

GM, if we cancel their wind effects, will our fire wasps once more become effective? Also, if their wind magic needs to be used precisely and in small amounts for their flying carpets, doesn't that mean our wasps could attack them without being blown away?

[RAM]

GM, if we cancel their wind effects, will our fire wasps once more become effective? Also, if their wind magic needs to be used precisely and in small amounts for their flying carpets, doesn't that mean our wasps could attack them without being blown away?

Their carpets seem to remain stationary well enough without attention. It still ought ot make them vulnerable to firealls though. Then again, they can have two wizards and have one pilot and another fighting while a mook throws bombs. That is a big expense in terms of wizards thugh.

[VoidSlayer]

What if instead of the explosive fireball happening when the shell hits the ground it does it on the descending arc, throwing out crystal shards and steel shot in a wide cone that will hit a larger area?  It cant be countered except by long range anti magic and will still kill everything in an area with super heated metal and crystal falling at a high speed.

[Chiefwaffles]

Right now we need to focus on penetrating armor as well as AoE effects. Shrapnel would likely be blocked by their armor if it's also blocking our shells.

Also, can't we make an internal combustion engine? This is a bit more complicated and past what I know, so please feel free to correct me if I made any glaring errors.
Future Design: Hybrid Combustion Engine
The Hybrid Combustion Engine, or HCE, is an innovative type of engine designed to completely phase out the large, clunky, and inefficient steam engine we've been using.

The HCE takes full advantage of our circuits. Our steam engines had to be large, clunky, and designed specifically for a mage to be able to cast the correct spells in the correct places. They were inefficient machines to convert magical power into mechanical power. But with circuits, we can greatly miniaturize this process.
To sum up the process, we have four small "combustion chambers" wired with our circuits. The circuits in these chambers summon greatly reduced fireball like explosions. They're nowhere near the caliber of even a Streamlined Fireball, but they're big enough to power the rest of the engine. The explosions summoned by the circuits in the chambers will essentially push out a series of pistons that in turn rotate a crankshaft. The mechanical power from this crankshaft can be used for a number of applications such as moving our boats, creating land vehicles, and more.

The HCE can be connected to an external power source via crystal conduit, or can be powered by an 2x AA-size Magegem battery. The "mini fireball" spell used by the HCE's circuits is designed to be energy efficient and even disregarding increased efficiency, already uses extreme amounts of power less than even a flare due to its greatly reduced size. Therefore, the integrated battery can power the HCE for roughly 12 hours of continued operation before charging. The battery can be recharged via the crystal conduit or by a mage if the engine is disconnected from a power source.

The HCE is significantly smaller than our steam engines and produces a lot more power for the same magical energy costs.

TL;DR: We apply the concepts we've learned so far in magitech to make a mini fireball-powered internal combustion engine. The engine will be much more smaller and efficient than our steam engines and could be used in just about anything.

[VoidSlayer]

Please no more theoretical stuff for a bit until we actually start taking back territory.  We need combat relevant equipment now.  If it enhances the edges of our knowledge that is good, but we need things that are immediately useful to the theaters.

[Andres]

please feel free to correct me if I made any glaring errors.
Future Design: Hybrid Combustion Engine

Remove "Hybrid" from the title. It's unnecessary. Unseemly, even.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[Chiefwaffles]

I mean, sure. Okay.
Give me an alternative then that still fits it. I'm not naming it "combustion engine" or "internal combustion engine" because if it was just an ICE than it'd be using fuel to do the work instead of spells.

@Void:
It's actually not theoretical. It should be very possible to immediately get a working version that we can then put in new designs.
And not every design needs to be immediately combat-applicable. We did spend a lot of time with the Magegems and Crystalworks, yes, but that's already paying off. And it's not like we desperately need new designs. We are winning right now after all. With the Crystalclad this turn and our new stuff next turn, we should have more space for a design that'll be extremely useful for vehicles.

[FallacyofUrist]

Internal Detonation Engine. Sounds cooler anyhow.

The engine does actually have a use: it greatly increases the speed of our ships, and can give them more space for guns and ammo.

[Chiefwaffles]

Alright. Revised version.
It now has a crystal casing and has its name changed.

Future Design: Internal Detonation Engine
The Internal Detonation Engine, or IDE, is an innovative type of engine designed to completely phase out the large, clunky, and inefficient steam engine we've been using.

The IDE takes full advantage of our circuits. Our steam engines had to be large, clunky, and designed specifically for a mage to be able to cast the correct spells in the correct places. They were inefficient machines to convert magical power into mechanical power. But with circuits, we can greatly miniaturize this process.
To sum up the process, we have four small "combustion chambers" wired with our circuits. The circuits in these chambers summon greatly reduced fireball like explosions. They're nowhere near the caliber of even a Streamlined Fireball, but they're big enough to power the rest of the engine. The explosions summoned by the circuits in the chambers will essentially push out a series of pistons that in turn rotate a crankshaft. The mechanical power from this crankshaft can be used for a number of applications such as moving our boats, creating land vehicles, and more.

The IDE can be connected to an external power source via crystal conduit, or can be powered by an 2x AA-size Magegem battery. The "mini fireball" spell used by the IDE's circuits is designed to be energy efficient and even disregarding increased efficiency, already uses extreme amounts of power less than even a flare due to its greatly reduced size. Therefore, the integrated battery can power the IDE for roughly 12 hours of continued operation before charging. The battery can be recharged via the crystal conduit or by a mage if the engine is disconnected from a power source.

The IDE is significantly smaller than our steam engines and produces a lot more power for the same magical energy costs.
The engine is also built using crystal, making it easy to repair and much lighter than a metal-constructed engine of the same weight. Micro fractures are a problem, but with easy yet diligent maintenance, the problem won't ever manifest itself. The fact that it's made out of crystal lets it take advantage of our plentiful machine crystal as well.

TL;DR: We apply the concepts we've learned so far in magitech to make a mini fireball-powered internal combustion engine. The engine will be much more smaller and efficient than our steam engines and could be used in just about anything in the future as a replacement for the steam engine.

[RAM]

I think that we need better materials before building an internal combustion engine. Pistons and crankshafts go through a *lot* of wear. If only there was some way to make a powerful engine with minimal moving parts...

Pulse-jet
A crystal tube with two necks with cages on one side and a tightly-fitting cork loose within the cages. A repeating fireball spell is remotely detonated between the two necks. The fireball pushes the front cork into the neck and [atmospheric medium] out the back. The sudden absence of the firball pulls the rear cork into the nec and pulls [atmospheric medium] into the front. This produces a jet of [atmospheric medium] in one direction in frequent pulses.

This design was a fairly obvious attempt to produce fireball-based propulsion. it started with a one-sided tube, but the fireball would suck the tube backwards after pushing it forwards. Then we tried a mechanical cork system to close it, but the cork kept getting pushed out. At that point we realised that the cork would be pushed closed if we had the correct mechanisms to do so, which was pretty easy with summoned parts.

We can use this for rocket propulsion in any medium and it is dead simple and super plausible...

[Chiefwaffles]

We have cheap steel and cheap crystal. But I do think we need better Crystal at some point regardless of the IDE. Crystal is weird for engines, though. It's prone to micro fractures from stress, but we can easily fix them with routine + relatively easy maintenance.

This design is basically a bundle of improvements that could be individually made in revisions. It's just a straight-up upgrade to crystal.
Future Design: Polymer Crystal
Our Crystal is harder, lighter, and sharper than steel. But its brittleness hurts us, and we could make it better.

The core design principle behind this new generation of crystal is influencing the spells we use to create crystal items to tweak the fundamental structure of crystal. By doing this, we can make Crystal out of "polymers", almost as if it was woven together as a fabric. Of course, the resultant product is certainly not a fabric, but it's superior to our current crystal in every way.

Polymer crystal has two main improvements over crystal: It's much more flexible, and is stronger. The flexibility isn't comparable at all to textiles or similar items, but it completely does away with the former brittleness of the crystal and makes it more versatile. The strength is simple - the Crystal withstands greater punishment before sustaining any damage. These two new elements of Crystal make it much better in its uses. It could effortlessly shrug off any known Moskurger projectiles and weapons without any damage whatsoever. It can be used in our steam engines and machinery without suffering the micro fractures that our current crystal endures.

All this and polymer crystal manages to even be notably lighter than the crystal it's replacing! The change isn't particularly huge, but it's most certainly noticeable when crystal is used in anything bigger than an axe.

Polymer Crystal can be used to immediately replace the machine crystal in all our designs, thanks to the Crystalworks. We can simply "upload" this change to the circuits in the Crystalworks, having them all use polymer crystal instead of regular machine crystal.So, what in terms of vehicles, we can form a pretty reliable roadmap. Of course, it's a good idea to not focus entirely on one thing for such a long time, but disregarding years where we do other things...

Design: Explosive Shells. (We're winning in the artillery game; let's build on this advantage.)
Revision: Bigger(/better) Falcons. (If we don't keep up in the air game, their air units could counter our artillery.)

Design: AS-STV-1 "Relentless" OR Internal Detonation Engine. (The IDE can be used for any vehicle in the future and is a very notable improvement, but the Relentless can improve steam engine tech to a point where we can use it in smaller vehicles)
Revision: Better Magegems? Better Crystal? Improve Crystalclad? Fix last design?

Design: AS-APC-1 "Pursuer" (With either the IDE or improved steam engine from the Relentless, we can use it to make a basic APC for our troops)
Revision: See last revision, or fixing the APC-1.

... (We should probably branch out into other, non vehicle things, for 1-4 years.)

Design: AS-DC-1 ("Devastation Cannon" - Shorter range than HC1-E, but much more destructive, breech loading, and much higher RoF.)

Design: (Primitive?) Tank. (We basically make a more armored APC-1 then stick the AS-DC-1 in it.)

So..
Possible Vehicles: (In order of most to least possible.)

• Train (AS-STV-1 Relentless)
• APC (AS-APC-1 Pursuer)
• Tank (No design yet)
• Submarine (SPB2 "Hunter")
• Walker (AS-HMW1 "Walker" - basically a kind of mech.)

[RAM]

Is there some compelling reason to believe that we know about polymers? I feel as though elemental structure should be a design of its own, or at least a revision of the academy...

[Chiefwaffles]

We're already manipulating crysta on a fine level. This design is just "change the base structure into something better." And it is a design of its own.
It's not really polymers but it's as close as a magical-industrial age society is going to get.