Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[FallacyofUrist]

Mainly because of spotting duties.

HEIR TRAINING
0 RAM's Plan:
3 Bjorn's Journey (Chief's plan): Chiefwaffles, FallacyofUrist, Andres
- 1 Don't make the heir act as a spotter, leave plan otherwise intact: FallacyofUrist
MYARK
2 Help train the heir: Andres, RAM
ORDERS
3 Do not deploy our R1. Let it not appear at all in the next battle report: Andres, RAM, FallacyofUrist

[Chiefwaffles]

He's not spotting. That'd be pretty dumb.
It's in the mountains, accompanied by Myark and an elite unit. Thats as safe as one can get. They're just going to be hunting down the stragglers and small raiding parties that haven't given up on the Mountains yet.

EDIT

The idea here is to bundle a ton of small improvements into one design instead of wasting a revision on each.
Future Revision: AS-R2
The AS-R2 is a straightforward improvement to the AS-R1.

This iteration includes further tweaking to its custom SPSF spell. The SPSF is modified to distribute the majority of its energy via expansion and pressure instead of heat. This leads directly to a much higher muzzle velocity. The transfer of magical energy to kinetic is leaps and bounds higher than before, making the bullet exponentially faster.
The practical result here is very obvious. The AS-R2 will gain a huge increase in stopping + piercing power, perhaps even matching that of the AS-R2. In addition to this, its range should be drastically increased as well.


This is, in my opinion, a better idea than cheaper Magegems because cheaper Magegems doesn't change size and won't affect AAA gems as they're already cheap. This makes all gems better.
Future Revision: Better Magegems
Really, the premise of this project is simple: We stuff more power into our Magegems.

We have plenty of experience storing magical energy in Magegems, but we never really looked past the simplest implementation of this. A Magegem stores energy inefficiently. The structure of a Magegem isn't optimized for storing energy. There's a lot of wasted space in each gem that could be used for storing much more energy.
And as always, we can fix this. By making some careful tweaks to the process we use for creating Magegems, we can optimize their structures. Magical Energy will flow much more easily inside the new and improved Magegems. We can think of it like a tank for some kind of liquid - if your tank has lots of unnecessary mass on the inside, it'll have a smaller capacity. By removing this waste inside the tank and reorganizing its insides, you can store much more inside the tank. It's the same thing for Magegems.

The end goal is also simple - better Magegems. We don't know how much, but each Magegem should be able to store a lot more energy in it and Magegems should actually be useful for once.

...
Or we can use our design on Magegems then our revision on the rifle. Much better Magegems would really help the rifle and future efforts. Maybe. Or the other way around, perhaps. Some way to make the rifle just Expensive for mundane troops would be really nice.

[Andres]

Future Revision: AS-R2
The AS-R2 is a straightforward improvement to the AS-R1.

This iteration includes further tweaking to its custom SPSF spell. The SPSF is modified to distribute the majority of its energy via expansion and pressure instead of heat. This leads directly to a much higher muzzle velocity. The transfer of magical energy to kinetic is leaps and bounds higher than before, making the bullet exponentially faster.
The practical result here is very obvious. The AS-R2 will gain a huge increase in stopping + piercing power, perhaps even matching that of the AS-R2. In addition to this, its range should be drastically increased as well.

It should not be an R2. It shall continue to be an R1 because the R1 isn't being changed at all, it's the spell powering it that's being changed.

To that effect, you are coming at the solution from the wrong angle. While it reaches a sufficient conclusion, it does not reach an optimal conclusion.
Instead of revising the SPSF, which is what you're essentially doing, you revise the fireball family of spells, which means the Streamlined Fireball and the Powerful Streamlined Fireball, not just the Small Streamlined Fireball. It still gives us an SPSF that's beneficial to our R1, but it also gives our mages an SF and PSF that produce great amounts of pressure instead of great amounts of heat, which will be useful.
In the case of the PSF, for example, not only would our mages have better ability to destroy fire-resistant targets, it will open the way for our artillery pieces to no longer require water, simplifying logistics, lightening the artillery piece, and increasing rate of fire.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[Chiefwaffles]

Without revising the other cannons to remove the boiler, I feel like doing the revision for the whole family of Fireballs would hurt our cannons. Decreasing the heat and increasing the pressure in the boilers of our current cannons is a straight-up downgrade. An increase in pressure increases the boiling point, and a decrease in heat has very obvious penalties when it comes to boiling water.
I do think we should at some point revise all our cannons to skip the boiler, but I don't think it's feasible to do both that and fix the [SPSF/Fireball spells] in one revision. Personaly, I think a better idea is to revise the SPSF to use mostly pressure instead of heat, then in a later revision extend that modification to the rest of our fireball spells (extremely easy since we already did the legwork) then remove the boiler in our cannons (the actual meat of the revision).

Maybe we could revise pressure variants of all our fireballs now, instead of just doing it for the SPSF. But even though it is a straightforward and singular change, that'd be creating three new variants in just one revision, and I'm not sure how Evicted would react to that.


And yeah, sure, keep it the AS-R1. The name's mostly because I was originally trying to make it a design, but couldn't think of enough immediate improvements at the time to make it a design instead of a revision.

[VoidSlayer]

We can apply the old fireball to the cannons and the new one to the hand cannons.

On the other hand, since we can make a fireball inside a tube usable by non mages, why not just shoot the fireball out.

[Chiefwaffles]

Fun fact: That was actually my original HC1 design. It was going to use steam in order to propel a fireball. It got chosen for our design and became the HC1, but Evicted had it shoot carved stone(/iron?) instead of fireballs.

But yeah - applying the old fireballs to the cannons and the revised variant to the rifle would work. Like I said in my last post, the best ways I see of doing it are either just revising the SPSF then using that experience to very easily make variants of the rest of our fireballs when upgrading our cannons to remove boilers. Or we could revise variants for each fireball now, but also like I said, Evicted may not like making three variant spells in one revision despite how much reasoning it has.

[RAM]

Explosive fireballs:
Redirect energy from heat to increase the explosive radius and force at its destination.

gives our mages an SF and PSF that produce great amounts of pressure instead of great amounts of heat, which will be useful.

Just dropping by to leave an "I told you so" because I can. No offense meant, it is just that the spirits of ideas past would haint me if I didn't.

[Andres]

Without revising the other cannons to remove the boiler, I feel like doing the revision for the whole family of Fireballs would hurt our cannons.

I said it "opens the way" to artillery pieces that don't need water, not "removes water necessity from our current artillery pieces".

Personaly, I think a better idea is to revise the SPSF to use mostly pressure instead of heat, then in a later revision extend that modification to the rest of our fireball spells (extremely easy since we already did the legwork)

This is underambitious and very inefficient. The fireball spells are all practically the same, so it can be expected that making a change to one of them can very easily be applied to all of them. A revision for something as utterly small as giving one fireball's modification to a near-identical variant of that fireball is utterly wasteful.

If you fear it being too ambitious so much, phrase it as "we create a modification of our fireballs that swap heat for pressure/expansion, the first of the ones we work on being the SPSF". Then, if for some reason we need a high die roll for the modification to apply to SPSF, SF, and PSF, we'll at least get it for SPSF and then the others if we get lucky.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[Chiefwaffles]

What about this?

Future Revision: Blastball
Magic is, of course, a science. Things can be tweaked and adjusted with ease. But some things come easier than others.

Like the Fireball.
We've had the Fireball since the very beginning. We've experimented with it, and utilized it to its fullest potential. The Fireball forms the basis of nearly all Arstotzkan technology and society today.
We have experience with the Fireball. Our Mathemagicians know it inside and out; they know every detail of it and how exactly we utilize magic to create the various types of Fireballs.

We can utilize our extensive knowledge with the Fireball to make some simple changes to it. Today, the Fireball isn't as relevant as it once was. Moskurg's armor threatens to make fire practically obsolete, and our new methods of projectile propulsion require a new type of Fireball.
Enter the Blastball. It's merely a variant of our Fireball, but with the extreme majority of its magical energy going towards pressure and a general "explosion" instead of simply heat. This has multiple uses - when a large-enough Blastball is detonated in an uncontrolled explosion, it'll do much better against Moskurg's armor than anything that came before. When detonated in a controlled environment, it creates muuuch more pressure than ever before, making Blastball-propelled bullets extraordinarily fast, with great piercing capabilities, muzzle velocity, and range.

The Blastball is a variant of the Fireball, and the goal by the end of the year is to have a Blastball variant for each Fireball type - SPSF, PSF, and the SF. The SPSF Blastball variant is the most critical one, followed by the PSF and SF.

TL;DR: Revise the Fireball to use mostly pressure instead of heat. SPSF Blastball variant is the most important, with the PSF and SF variants being the second most and least important respectively (but preferably all are done via this revision). The Blastball should be effective against Moskurg armor, and extremely effective as a magical propellant for bullets/shells whatnot. The AS-R1 immediately benefits from this, with a greatly increased muzzle velocity increasing stopping power and range by potentially huge amounts.
With our extreme amounts of experience with Fireballs and the tweaking thereof, this revision should be easier than normal.


And before you say anything: DAMNIT, ANDRES; IT'S A GOOD NAME.

[Andres]

And before you say anything: DAMNIT, ANDRES; IT'S A GOOD NAME.

I agree. It's a good name.

It's just that applying that name to the spell you're proposing is a bad choice.

The acronyms would have to match the spells they're based on. For SPSF and PSF it's fine (SPB and PB), but what about SF? SF would be B, which is no acronym. It must have two names and Blast Ball is silly (unless it's for some kind of ball that blasts things, then it would be appropriate).

Acronyms are important.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[Chiefwaffles]

Right, for classification I was thinking:

Blastball-R (Regular - SF)
Blastball-SP (Small Powerful - SPSF)
Blastball-P (Powerful - PSF)

Or BB-R, BB-SP, and BB-P

Or something like that. Getting a legible naming system for fireballs should probably be a priority at this point, honestly.

 

[RAM]

Or, y'know, we could have voted for this just now...

Furrybooms
We implement a timed detonation on our powerful streamlined fireballs and tweak their effect to be less fire and more ball, resulting in a greater displacement effect but causing less burning.

But hey, we got a minor buff to our cannons and boilers so that they explode after two easy shots instead of one. WoooOOO!

It would have let us revise all our cannons next time. Getting it to work with all of our cannons and all of our spells seems a bit ambitious for a single revision. It involves a lot of minor tweaks to a lote of varied spells. Meh, it'd probably work, but still, we could really use a tune-up of our fireballs and, ergh, kind of feel that we mostly wasted a turn here... But once we have the groundwork for less fire more ball then we can apply it to all fires. Then we can do explosive cannons, forceballs, hyperjump firewalls and wasps with exploding venom...

Then again, maybe it would be better to have a full design sort it out in preparation for the universal revision to all our fire spells...

Erection of Everywhere Explosions
A Tower of frost tuned to an explosive variant of the streamlined fireball that sacrifices all of the heat of the fireball to maximuse the force that spreads it around. This crystalline tower includes a lightning rod and a covered plafrom which acts as the focal point of its magical energy. This allows a skilled wizard to wield a massive volume of balls that travel a fixed distance and then explode into a burst of force, flinging anything nearby around, and easily crushing anyone who is near to the centre and toppling any flying vehicles. Also features a lightning rod.

There are a lot of tweaks here, but it should all be familiar ground, and should make for a defensive intallation that can capsize anything that they put in the air. The trick after that would be to put it onto a boat...

You just sometimes have to wish that one could foresee the value in these sorts of things before they bite us...

forceball

[andrea]

From that description, I am not even sure of what the furryboom should do.

Anyway, if we master concussive spells, internal blastball engines are a possibility that could be far more compact for applications such as gyrocopters.
edit: mind you, it would take a long time to get it working right, better steam engines may still be better at least for some things like ships and trains. And we have better things to do first like magegems and rifles.

[Chiefwaffles]

@RAM: It's almost like the effectiveness roll matters.

Oh yeah, that's a thing too, Andrea! We get closer to internal combustion engines with Blastball. An Interlnal Detonation Engine would be perfect for a gyrocopter, too.
Just something for the future. I don't really want another steam engine where we have to spend multiple actions making the engine then put it in our stuff. But if we were to get enough experience to be able to do a proper one in just a single action, thad'e be great.

[RAM]

From that description, I am not even sure of what the furryboom should do.

We implement a timed detonation on our powerful streamlined fireballs and tweak their effect to be less fire and more ball, resulting in a greater displacement effect but causing less burning.

I am really not seeing a problem. "Timed detonation" seems pretty self evident. It detonates based upon timing, exploding after a period of time.
 "Less fire and more ball" separates the "fireball" into its heat effect from beign a fire and its ball element which illustrates that it explands into a large shape, thus insinuating that there is an expansion element to the normal spell. If the spell possesses an expansion element, then focusing on that element oughtto be plausible. IT is justifying how the spell would be plausible as an extension of current theory rather than being a completely new element of the spells.
"greater displacement" indicates that it displaces more, specifically air, unless it detonates underwater... Given that an explosion is just rapid explansion that displaces the surroundings, this seems pretty self-explanatory.
"Less burning" points out where the power for the increase displacement will be coming from. Thus not trying to create a greater spell than currently exists, just a readjustment to make it more useful.

It is just that this one seems unusually succinct for my fare and I really honstly don't see how it fails to indicate the intention. Does it need more illustration of why this effect would be useful?

@RAM: It's almost like the effectiveness roll matters.

It does matter, but so does the design. We could have ended up with mediocre stuff instead, and on a good roll we could have had somethign that was useful by itself, rather than needing an additional technology to get it to an angle at which it would be useful. Rifles are not going to help with enemy airships unless we can increase their armour-pentration by a lot and they won't work against anything if the enemy increases their altitude. We are already pushing the limits of usefulness from our cannons interms of range and penetration, smaller guns are the popposite of what we need unless we are chasing some dream of infantry standing in trenches with rifles. They could be grand if we can ground the enemy forces, and the pillar of unmagic and the various convection towers could potentially do that if anyone cared to try them, but without the ability to get an indivicual infantryman into the air there is no value to having an individual infantryman rifle. We could have gotten three sixes and they still would have failed against a single mediocre-rolled revision for more altitufe.

The crystals have never been immune to lightning or heat. A six on a revision would not have made them immune to lightning or heat when making them immune to lighting and heat wasn't even mentioned. This was never going to be more than retardant armour. It got an average of +1 hits to kill. That is double. It went about as well as one could expect. Certainly, rolling 6 and getting, let's say, a dozen hits to kill, would have been much nicer, but it isn't exactly a paradigm shift.

We got exactly what we asked for, smaller, less powerful guns and a geometric increase in resiliency of some of our equipment. Bad rolls really didn't change that much. If we had gained insane success with the design then it is possible that we could have gotten something equal in power to our existing guns, and ended up with a more effective force, proviede that the enemy remained within range.

Unless my assumptions are wrong? How would this turn have gone if we had rolled 4 sixes?