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[evictedSaint]

I request a review if their material is completely immune to temperature changes. That sounds overpowered, at least as something that doesn't constantly consume large amounts of magic and can be overtaxed by applying a greater force to overcome it. It sounds very much like our own towers of forever frost that can be defeated by blowing hot air at them.

Alright. I will take this into consideration, and come to a decision in the next day or so.

[VoidSlayer]

Uh we never saw it completely immune to heat.  It just strong against fire and bludgeoning we have, a significantly powerful fireball could damage them.

[Chiefwaffles]

@Evicted: If you do think it's OP but don't want to completely remove it, maybe make the perma-chill effect removable by anti-magic? I don't particularly care about it since it's not like it protects its user/whatever from temperature changes, but it's an idea.


Anyways, let me just make a smaller general case for the AS-HAC-1 since the design post is a bit bloated.

Right now, our main advantage - artillery and cannons - is being significantly hurt by their air game. It's making us lose in two theatres and getting dangerously close to us losing in the other theatres. This is happening because of two reasons:
1.) They have more carpets, and that combined with their wands means our falcons are of little effectiveness because the number of carpets combined with their weapons make eliminating our falcons easy.
2.) They have an armored air vehicle, that falcons seem to not be useful against, and can really only be taken out by luck or HA1 shots at very certain and opportune moments that don't often happen.

So, what are some possible solutions?
1.) We can decrease the expense of falcons in a revision. This makes them more effective against carpets but even then, their carpets will still be a notable player and advantage for them. That, and in their current state, I doubt cheaper falcons could do anything against an airship.
2.) We can make our falcons better. Then they'd maybe be able to take on their airships. But their still-limited number would mean that carpets would still be fairly protected against falcons.
3.) We can do both of the above in a design. Sure, it may work but seems wasteful for a design, especially considering...
4.) We can make the AS-HAC-1 (or some similar design). The AS-HAC-1 (with AP shells or combined firepower can shoot down their airships, can shoot down carpets, and has other improvements compared to our cannons making it still useful in non-AA situations.

"But Chief," some may say, "They can still blow up our cannons and trains and crystalclads!"
Not if we shoot them down first. The AS-HAC-1 should still have considerable range and should be able to shoot down their carpets and airships before they get within lightning range. They can be put on every Crystalclad and used amongst our ground forces to defend critical sites/things from air attack (as well as being of use as a cannon with high RoF!) and can be used on the offense/move unlike any of our other cannons because of its portability.

"That sounds like a lot of stuff. Isn't this overambitious, Chief?" another may say. Well, I've covered this pretty extensively in the actual design post and have categorized every part. The AS-HAC-1 includes two main improvements:
1.) Breech-loading. The most ambitious part, and therefore the centerpiece of the design. It could almost definitely be fit in a revision and is about moderate difficulty, I'd say.
2.) Firing angles/swivel-aiming. This is pretty easy. We have a ton of experience with mechanical movement. We've made trains and steam boats; we can easily make some basic mechanisms to allow the AS-HAC-1 to be aimed in any direction.

The rest are tweaks.
The crosshair is pretty simple and pretty much just comes with the improvements in aiming/firing angles. It's a simple object that can be attached onto a part of the cannon. Considering our knowledge of ballistics and that kind of thing, making a basic sight for the AS-HAC-1 should be easy.
The caliber is a downscale. If something could have negative difficulty, this would be it. We're just decreasing the caliber of the cannon. The decrease in size means easier-to-transport shells (with or without a train), faster projectile speed (useful for anti-air!) and increased range.
The smaller construction is another easy tweak. It takes advantage of the decrease in caliber size in order to get the same range/power with a smaller construction. Also, we've been using our cannons for a while now. Making one smaller without a caliber change should be pretty easy, but this is easier and helps with the overall design goal.
The magegem operation is simple. We know how to use magegems. We just throw a magegem into the design.


Regarding the research credit: I think we should save it for a more ambitious/critical design. _{LIKE A TANK EHEHEHEHEHE.}

[RAM]

Much of the effect of a cannon is its hitting things. I could easily see a near-miss knocking someone around due to air-flow, but it is nothing compared to having a shell hit the ground in front of you. I think that the most important aspects of the cannon right now are
: Air angles: we need to be able to shoot at high angles to hit the enemy. You have this but it is not mentioned in your bullet-points or T.L.D.R. that I can find, which could cause it to be missed. but it is there which is good.
: Air coverage: single rounds do not do so much to a swarm of carpets or a ship that is kept aloft by numerous carpets and can probably survive losing a few. The latte r is less of an issue but some sort of air-burst proximity rounds or scatter-shot would be extremely helpful.
: Penetration: Their new ships are very scary, they can probably increase the armour without too much trouble, just by improving the efficiency of their carpets or adding shaped armour. Your design has smaller shots which could prove incapable of piercing the current generation of shyships, far less improved versions.

It is nice, don't get me wrong, but I worry that it misses some of the more important elements that would need to be addressed in a revision or two.

@Evicted: If you do think it's OP but don't want to completely remove it, maybe make the perma-chill effect removable by anti-magic? I don't particularly care about it since it's not like it protects its user/whatever from temperature changes, but it's an idea.

I believe that it should be better than perfect insulation. Perfect insulation will tend to cook people as they produce heat. Given that it cannot change temperature, it stands to reason that it cannot allow temperature through it, there is no mechanisms for thermal energy to penetrate without radiating by heating the surface or using infrared radiation. Certainly, people need to breath, ia suit of armour would have some weaknesses, but they could run it through a filter system to remove most of that by having grids of cool metal that the air would have to pass through. It would also mean that if we developed a shatter-shield that rapidly alternated objects between extreme hot and cold using the tower of forever frost's effect that projectiles made from this stuff would be not merely resistant, but completely immune. The same applies to a heat0shield that would vaporise incoming projectiles. And they could have completely sealed A.P.C.s that would be immune to fireballs until they opened them. It is just extremely scary to see things like "their antimagic completely erases all of your starting spells and everything derived from them" and "Their new metal is completely immune to your starting wand, and everything derived from it.".

another possiblechange is that it cannot absorb or radiate heat. So at least a filter would be useless, the heat still goes somewhere so it may not be able to penetrate but the surroundings become hot all the same. Still scary but not universal air conditioning scary.

But this does demonstrate that we should branch out a little. I would very much like to reiterate that my tower, amongst a long list of very greedy wants, makes a fireball with all of the bal and none of the fire. This would not care about temperature immunity. But I expect them to make virbranium next so there is that...

[Chiefwaffles]

Much of the effect of a cannon is its hitting things. I could easily see a near-miss knocking someone around due to air-flow, but it is nothing compared to having a shell hit the ground in front of you. I think that the most important aspects of the cannon right now are
: Air angles: we need to be able to shoot at high angles to hit the enemy. You have this but it is not mentioned in your bullet-points or T.L.D.R. that I can find, which could cause it to be missed. but it is there which is good.
: Air coverage: single rounds do not do so much to a swarm of carpets or a ship that is kept aloft by numerous carpets and can probably survive losing a few. The latte r is less of an issue but some sort of air-burst proximity rounds or scatter-shot would be extremely helpful.
: Penetration: Their new ships are very scary, they can probably increase the armour without too much trouble, just by improving the efficiency of their carpets or adding shaped armour. Your design has smaller shots which could prove incapable of piercing the current generation of shyships, far less improved versions.

Air Angles: I'm pretty sure it's already clear. It's a part of the "Swivel Mount" summary section and should be pretty obvious throughout the design. But yeah, its angles are (like I said) one of its most important aspects.

Air coverage: The current idea is that the AS-HAC-1 has a drastically improved RoF, and that combined with the easy aiming makes it able to effectively snipe carpets out of the sky. Missed shots matter less when you're able to reload a lot faster, after all. I do want to do flak shells and the like, but that's out of focus for this design.

Penetration: Well, this is why I mention the part about revising AP shells a lot when talking about the AS-HAC-1 and airships. But we know from experience that our HC1-E shots can pierce their armor at the right angles and whatnot, and the airship probably has less armor. That and smaller shot = higher speed + less penetration area. The super-improved rate of fire combined with this should make it somewhat effective against airships, but I still think we should revise AP shells regardless.

I believe that it should be better than perfect insulation. Perfect insulation will tend to cook people as they produce heat. Given that it cannot change temperature, it stands to reason that it cannot allow temperature through it, there is no mechanisms for thermal energy to penetrate without radiating by heating the surface or using infrared radiation. Certainly, people need to breath, ia suit of armour would have some weaknesses, but they could run it through a filter system to remove most of that by having grids of cool metal that the air would have to pass through. It would also mean that if we developed a shatter-shield that rapidly alternated objects between extreme hot and cold using the tower of forever frost's effect that projectiles made from this stuff would be not merely resistant, but completely immune. The same applies to a heat0shield that would vaporise incoming projectiles. And they could have completely sealed A.P.C.s that would be immune to fireballs until they opened them. It is just extremely scary to see things like "their antimagic completely erases all of your starting spells and everything derived from them" and "Their new metal is completely immune to your starting wand, and everything derived from it.".

This seems to just be your dislike of their metal's properties, which is fine, but I would like to point out that if their armor did indeed block all temperature changes through it that'd be one of the biggest nerfs ever to our stuff. It would make our towers of frost useless and our fireballs much less effective when all they need is a new design/revision to fix that problem.


I've made a new APC design based on what we learned from our little "theoretical experiment" last design and experience from the STV-1 Restless. I'm assuming that the Restless miniaturized the steam engine as that was explicitly stated to be a very high priority goal of the design.
I still prefer the AS-HAC-1, but this is something to consider. We need our own game changer.

(Future?) Design: AS-APC-1 "Guardian"

The Guardian is a natural evolution of the AS-STV-1 Restless. We've realized that our troops could be carried to the front lines in a matter similar to the Restless, but without needing rails and protected.
So thanks to our experience in land vehicles, we can now invest into a solution to get our troops to the front lines.

The design is, in a way, a combination of the engine and personnel wagons for the Restless. The Guardian has a hull made out of Crystal thick enough to deflect ballistae shots, lightning, and fire bombs. 10 troops can """comfortably""" sit inside in full combat gear, on """comfortable""" seats lining the walls facing the Guardian's steam engine that goes along the center of the vehicle's inside. The steam engine is developed to be a bit smaller than the Restless' steam engine, which is already our smallest yet. Extensive cooling circuits have been added to the steam engine, in addition to already-present cooling methods, to keep it and the cabin from overheating. Small ports are located on the front and are designed specifically to keep any Moskurger projectile, no matter how lucky, from entering the cabin. A driver's seat is placed near the port along with basic controls.

The steam engine controls two "caterpillar tracks" that use wheels to move connected strings of smaller crystal plates which contact the ground. These tracks are capable of allowing the APC great movement over any terrain. Any wear and tear on the tracks is solved by our crystal's regenerative abilities. The driver has control over each side's set of wheels - back and forward for each side. Combined, these controls allow them to completely steer the Guardian.

The Guardian is powered by a battery of AA magegems. Thanks to the continuous nature of the steam engine meaning it can mostly rely on non-energy-intensive circuits and the like, the Guardian is fairly energy efficient. A full battery should be enough to last for three hours completely independent from a wizard. Generally, it's advised that an apprentice accompanies a Guardian, but they can operate fine without one.

The result is a formidable vehicle that allows our troops to safely cross no man's land and ballistae-defended areas without harm. It can move over just about any terrain, holds 10 troops and completely protects them from any possible threats. Lightning has no exposed weak spots and no metal to damage. The crystal is nonflammable and any kind of oil just sits on top of the crystal hull, harmless; in fact, a Guardian on fire tends to be rather intimidating. Moskurger spells are useless against it, and arrows bounce harmlessly off the hull without so much as a scratch!
The vehicle is based heavily off of our experience with the Restless, and thus shouldn't be too difficult to design.

--
I think an APC is necessary before we start developing things like steam rifles. Sure, steam/magic rifles could be useful as snipers, but we should make sure they can be fully useful before spending a design on them. At the moment, our troops are barely, if at all, getting to the front lines. We need to fix that before we start developing things for close combat, I feel.
But this design should not be done this turn. For one, sea combat is important and this would be useless there. It'd be useful on land, but leaves their air advantage uncountered (and closer to completely nullifying our artillery advantage).

Also, we should really revise our steam engines to be more powerful at some point.
It'll increase the speed of our Crystalclad (outrunning airships?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!), increase the speed and capability (higher inclines) of the Restless, and make this APC faster.

[FallacyofUrist]

Well, that's bad. Flying ships? As much as our instinct may be to shoot them out of the air, I have some other ideas.

Magic Draining Ray: We've developed a staff-like contraption that absorbs large amounts of magic from something at a distance, and uses the magic to charge Magegems. Using this, we can knock their sky ships out of the sky. I mean, they clearly don't have much margin of error here.

Web Grapple: We've developed a spell that fires a very long cord of web at a target, then after impact, retracts the cord. Using these, we can pull the enemy ships out of the sky.

Stupid Idea: Hang Gliders: We figure it's about time we get some flying of our own. Using conjured spider silk, conjured in a manner that it won't dissipate(we've learned that from our Crystalworks), we can create a lightweight "glider". From high altitudes, our men can use one of these gliders, leaping off from the high altitude, and fly towards and board the enemy flying ships.

[Kadzar]

Nice job with the emblem, Kadzar!

As an Arstotzkan, I only did what my country required of me, inspired as I was by true patriotism. ((But thank you!))

Anyway, the way I see it, anti-air guns will eventually only be able to shoot up so high, and will only ever have defensive capabilities. What we really need is an airforce of our own.

Design: Giant Mutant Bird Cavalry

For a while now, Arstotzkan researchers have recognized a need to counter Moskurg's flying force, and ultimately decided they needed to beat fliers with fliers. So, using their knowledge of life magic, they devised an alchemical brew to make birds big enough to carry a man, and, with their experience mind-controlling birds, were easily able to make them into perfect flying mounts. In doing so, they could finally join battle with  Moskurgs in the skies.

Alternatively, if it helps, I could make the riders all-female and call them Valkyries.

1 - (Chiefwaffles)AS-HAC-1: Chiefwaffles
0 - (RAM)Phalling Glow:
0 - (RAM)Erection of Everywhere Explosions:
0 - (RAM)Heat Rays:
1 - (Kadzar) Giant Mutant Bird Cavalry: Kadzar

[FallacyofUrist]

Y'know what? Let's do that. We have the prerequisites.

For our revision, some sort of fog thing, I think. Or maybe a Restless upgrade. Or maybe a more efficient, less prone to failure, and more powerful steam engine.

Actually, we really need to protect our steam engines. So maybe we should make lightning resistant crystal. Seriously, we should do that for our revision.

1 - (Chiefwaffles)AS-HAC-1: Chiefwaffles
0 - (RAM)Phalling Glow:
0 - (RAM)Erection of Everywhere Explosions:
0 - (RAM)Heat Rays:
2 - (Kadzar) Giant Mutant Bird Cavalry: Kadzar, FallacyofUrist

[RAM]

Alternatively, if it helps, I could make the riders all-female and call them Valkyries.

That would help a lot.

A possible retaliation for temperature-immune metal.
Woogem
Wood has a great capacity to spread forces along its grain. Crystal has a great capacity to resist deformation. By imbuing a seed with a crystalline magic we caused it to grow into a combination of the two. The result is a crystalline structure that prevents the wood from breaking, and a grain that prevents the crystal from storing enough impact force to be broken. The effect of this is that all inertia that would cause this material to break is instead directed along the grain and into the air where the grain terminates. In this way we have produced a material that remains at a convenient inertia regardless of the forces that are applied to it.

[FallacyofUrist]

"Today, class, we will demonstrate the power of magic. Observe this chunk of crystalline wood. Wood anybody among you care to try to move it?"

A muscly looking apprentice trainee stepped forward, grabbed the wood chunk, and pulled and pushed, to no avail.

"The Woodgem is a magical structure that is completely immune to kinetic energy. Sadly, this means we can't move it. Its only real use is as a wall, though some of our mage scientists are considering using it to stop kickback in artillery via conjuring it in the battlefield. Class dismissed!"

[Kadzar]

Also, if anyone else wants to use it, I made a version of the emblem small enough to fit in a signature. (And I mean pretty much just fit. It's 80x50. I could probably make it still, though, if needed.)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[RAM]

"Today, class, we will demonstrate the power of magic. Observe this chunk of crystalline wood. Wood anybody among you care to try to move it?"

A muscly looking apprentice trainee stepped forward, grabbed the wood chunk, and pulled and pushed, to no avail.

"The Woodgem is a magical structure that is completely immune to kinetic energy. Sadly, this means we can't move it. Its only real use is as a wall, though some of our mage scientists are considering using it to stop kickback in artillery via conjuring it in the battlefield. Class dismissed!"

I did think of this. It only repels forces that would break it. Forces under that threshold can be applied. The cannonball that hits it still pushes it back, but only up to the point at which it would break, which is well within what a soldier can withstand. It does make them somewhat unsuitable for shield-bashing though.

[Chiefwaffles]

I would like to point out that the AS-HAC-1 also leads to steam rifles.
It miniaturizes the steam cannon by a large degree so we can much more easily make a steam rifle. It also introduces breech-loading, a concept very useful for steam rifles.


Also please for the love of god do NOT do the Valkyrie thing.

[Kadzar]

You're right,Chiefwaffles. We should really save that designation for air medics.

[Chiefwaffles]

Alright, I'm at my actual computer so now I can try making an actual point for why people should vote the AS-HAC-1.

Bird Cavalry is, first and foremost, somewhat overambitious in my opinion. While I still maintain that increasing the size of birds is something that could be done in a revision, here we're increasing the size and weight capacity of birds by massive amounts without any experience at all in size changing. At all. The revision to increase the size of our Falcons was minor, and a design doing the same could definitely do more, but to the point where a bird can carry riders? That is a huge size increase and we haven't done anything about size ever. Sure, we have enough tangential experience we could do some minor size-related thing, but something of this magnitude seems iffy.
This probably won't carry penalties, but I don't have too much confidence in it getting its intended results in a non-amazing roll.


Next, is potential for future improvement.
The AS-HAC-1 miniaturizes the steam cannon, operates on magegems, and introduces breech-loading. Like I said before, these two developments are crucial for a steam rifle. We'd likely be able to design a breech-loading rifle (not a musket) in a single design after the AS-HAC-1.
In addition to that, the AS-HAC-1 provides a perfect choice for vehicle weaponry if we ever decide to do that. If we want to make a tank, none of our current weapons work. You don't want a muzzle-loading tank cannon. The size also helps make it useful for a wide variety of things, not just dedicated vehicle platforms.
Hell, if we ever do bird cavalry in the future, the HAC-1 could significantly help towards equipping that bird with weaponry.

Bird Cavalry isn't really a dead-end, but it has less potential than the AS-HAC-1 in my opinion. Bird Cavalry requires significant investment to do more things (like additional riders or dedicated weapons) on, and we'd still need a weapon like the AS-HAC-1 for the things I mentioned before about the AS-HAC-1's uses.


And finally, effectiveness.
The AS-HAC-1 is based off of the HC1-E, a cheap cannon. And it miniaturizes it! And it has a resource bonus! Best-case scenario, it'll be Cheap, but otherwise it'll very likely by Expensive. Both expense levels are great and mean we can deploy the AS-HAC-1 everywhere to protect our soldiers, artilleries, boats, and more from air attacks, as well as use it on the offense.
Bird Cavalry is very likely going to be Very Expensive. Our regular-sized Falcons, just from the mind spell, are Very Expensive. Massively increasing the size of a bird to support a rider isn't exactly a cheapening move. That, and Bird Cavalry does not get any material bonuses like the AS-HAC-1. At Very Expensive, we'll have one bird for every airship. Their airships are filled with mages and ballistae, a counter to bird cavalry. So we'll have one bird for every airship, and an airship would likely be able to easily defeat a bird one-on-one. That, and we won't have enough birds to defend our stuff - our ships will still be harassed by their Expensive carpets, and so will our artillery and land forces.


I want to do bird cavalry at some point (maybe even with the AS-HAC-1 if we do that!) but I don't think it's the right option at the moment.