We can't "waste" the free engine bonus. It's always been the precedent that upgrades to components used in existing designs will be retroactive to their designs. It doesn't matter when or where we upgrade the engine; it'll always be applied to all our future and past engine-using design.
it tries to put something too big for trains onto something that doesn't go on tracks
Well, yeah. That's the point. This is without a doubt something that we would not get penalties for. We got a -1 to effectiveness on a
tracked APC when Evicted misinterpreted the Restless design. Now that we'll have a better engine and experience with engine-powered land vehicles, this part wouldn't be a problem.
But again, that form of the HA-2 was mostly just a brainstorm design. Not something I'm
sold on.
Future Design: AS-LFV-1Land Fighting VehicleThe AS-LFV-1 is an all-crystal enclosed land vehicle powered by a steam engine. It's equipped with an AS-HAC-1 and a single frontal HC1-E cannon. It seats 8 people along with a fairly large amount of ammunition.
Inside, the steam engine is placed horizontally along the center of the vehicle. The LFV-1's steam engine has made radical improvements over our old steam engines (using the free upgrade) via the use of the Concussive fireball "Blastball" variant. The Blastball allows for greatly increased efficiency in the steam engines, letting us make a much smaller steam engine providing much more power.
As the LFV-1 is lighter than a fully-loaded (or even partially-loaded) Restless and uses an improved steam engine, it should have much greater general power and speed. It'll be able to handle steeper inclines, it'll go much faster, and more. This steam engine upgrade should be applied to all designs using the steam engine as well.
The AS-LFV-1 is an entirely crystal design. It should be resistant to any kind of environmental hazard or threat posed by Moskurg thanks to its armor. Crystal Glass is used extensively here - the area near the driver's seat is made almost entirely out of crystal glass, allowing for great vision ahead of the vehicle. A large and fairly tall crystal glass "window" runs unending horizontally through the entire design, starting at one end of the crystal glass front viewing port, and ending at the other side. Visibility is not a problem.
The driver's seat is placed towards the left side of the front, with the HC1-E taking up the space on the right.
The HC1-E is surrounded by crystal glass, allowing the operator(s) to easily see where they're targeting. The HC1-E is built "halfway" between the inside and outside of the vehicle, with the barrel both starting and ending outside. A set of gears, based on the design of the AS-HAC-1, allow the inside operator to easily manipulate the orientation of the HC1-E barrel for simple aiming. The HC1-E is of course a very destructive weapon, and should prove
devastating up close.
The AS-HAC-1 is located on the top. The actual weapon is outside, but its aiming mechanics have been tweaked to allow a person in a small raised Crystal Glass portion on the top of the vehicle to control it from inside. The AS-HAC-1 has 360 degrees of firing angles horizontally and 180 degrees vertically. The raised crystal glass "firing seat" is just high enough to allow for the single operator to see anywhere it can aim without blocking areas from being shot at by the AS-HAC-1. This crystal glass enclosure completely protects the operator while giving them total visibility.
The AS-LFV-1 can fit a total of 10 people, including the driver and HC1-E operator, while the AS-HAC-1's ease of use allows for it to be easily powered by an apprentice while doing something else and easily controlled by any passenger. Seating is placed on the sides of the interior, facing the steam engine. All passengers can be wearing full Combat Armor while riding, and there's enough storage space for a very sizeable amount of ammunition for the cannons and weaponry (AS-R1s, Crystal Axes, or Broadswords) of the passengers.
Finally, the AS-LFV-1 is to be made anti-magic resistant. We believe we can "insulate" our circuits and Magegems to prevent anti-magic from "draining" them. The magical energy will be secured inside the circuits via magical insulation (based off of our insulating crystal) and thus safe from anti-magic. The top priority for anti-magic resistance is the steam engine first, and cannons second.
The AS-LFV-1 should be a devastating design. It can securely transport our troops to the front lines while under any amounts of enemy fire. It can roll through enemy fortifications, provide serious fire support at very close range, and more. It'll be a design to change the nature of the war. Due to the crystal construction, the Expensive steam engine, the Cheap HC1-E, and the Expensive AS-HAC-1, the AS-LFV-1 should very easily be an Expensive design.
TL;DR: A fighting vehicle designed to transport troops and provide serious fire support. I believe it shouldn't be
hard (but should be easy to make
Expensive) to do, but will save my reasoning for if/when I submit this as an actual design.
And now, an explosive shell
worthy of a design. Though I still probably think revising one using our experience with the Blastball and Equalizer is better.
Future Design: BlastshellThe Blastshell is a shell powered by a continuous concussive blast. The Blastball variant propelling it is powered by an AA Magegem; this may not be the optimum amount of power for a true Blastball, but the Blastball only needs to add to its velocity. Our Mathemagicians are calling this "rocket propulsion". We've made a rocket-propelled shell.
This method of propulsion should greatly increase the range of any cannons using it to levels we haven't ever seen before. HC1-Es will be able to fire at Beyond LoS range, HA1s will be able to fire
even further, and who knows about the AS-HAC-1s.
But that's not it. Another AA Magegem inside the shell powers an additional Blastball variant. On impact, a circuit connected to the AA Magegem will activate, activating the "stored' Blastball. The entire shell will detonate in a huge explosion that also includes lethal shrapnel from its broken-apart crystal exterior. The Blastball won't be "fully powered", but as this variant doesn't require its own propulsion and dedicates more magical energy to pressure rather than heat like the Fireball, the explosion from a landing Blastshell should be just as, if not more, devastating compared to a PSF.
The entire shell is made out of machine crystal, making it cheaper, and allowing for very effective fragmentation when it detonates. Finally, we're taking advantage of our Crystal's relative brittleness! The cheap crystal shell and our experience with similar special shells should make handling the Blastshell's expense fairly easy. We're aiming for a Cheap shell, but an Expensive one is...
acceptable.The Blastshell
does require two new variants of the Blastball, but they're both minor and at this point, making new variants in the Fireball family is as easy as breathing for Arstotzkan mathemagicians.
And another Gyrocopter!
AS-AFV-1 "Gyrocopter"Aerial Fighting VehicleThe AFV-1 is a remarkable design. Via the use of the Concussive fireball "Blastball" variant, we've made a greatly improved steam engine. The Blastball allows for greatly increased efficiency in the steam engines, letting us make a much smaller steam engine providing much more power. With this innovation in steam engines, the impossible is now possible: A flying steam-powered vehicle. A lighter and more powerful steam engine finally allows us to realize this dream.
The AFV-1 is a small design. The "cockpit" is almost entirely crystal glass, allowing for unrestricted vision in nearly any direction. Two hatches on the side allow for the single operator to get in and out easily.
Behind the cockpit is the steam engine which is encased in just enough crystal to allow for it to resist a direct Ballista bolt, but is still relatively exposed.
Directly above the steam engine and cockpit is the vertical rotor facing upwards, which is unpowered.
Behind the steam engine is the main rotor, facing away from the helicopter, powered by the steam engine. Of course, there's a lot of details for our Mathemagicians to handle, but the basic concept is that by spinning the main rotor, we can create forward thrust. This forward thrust will interact with the vertical rotor which will then create upwards thrust.
Located on the front of the cockpit are two fixed AS-HAC-1 cannons. These cannons are still breech-loaded, but can be both fired at once then loaded on the return run. A decent amount of ammunition is stored in the cockpit; not enough to allow long-term independent operation, but still fairly large amounts of ammo without compromising the weight.
The AFV-1 requires a small runway to take off. As a part of this design, we aim to also quickly jury-rig a runway on the side of each Crystalclads to allow for their own AFV-1(s).
TL;DR: A Gyrocopter equipped with two AS-HAC-1 cannons.
I don't think we should go for this yet. Let's wait until we have a better propulsion method or engine. Like the IDE!
And finally.
Future Revision: Internal Detonation EngineWe believe we can make the engine of the future.
The Internal Detonation Engine is an engine making full use of the Fireball Concussive Variant - the Blastball. We realized that our current method with the steam engine is simply inefficient. We could be doing so much more, especially with the blastball.
The IDE works off of a series of contained Blastball detonations - hence the name. At first, we tried using a series of pistons in the steam engine - having the steam push up the piston then gravity pulling it back down. But it turned out that this wouldn't work well with steam. So we made another change - the Blastball. Instead of using steam, we decided to cut out the middleman just like we did with our cannons. Very small Blastball variants detonate inside small chambers covered by pistons. The piston is pushed outwards by the detonation, applying torque to a ring ultimately connected to a crankshaft that will extend outwards from the engine to power other things.
Conduits on the crankshaft connect and disconnect circuits as it moves, allowing for the blastball detonation to occur in the right pattern based on load in an easy way, without the need for complex oversight or timer circuits. With this, we can use multiple engines all connected to the same crankshaft allowing for direct addition of more power. It would be nearly impossible for a human mage to be able to time his Blastballs correctly, so instead power is input into an AA Magegem connected to the Blastball circuits. Of course, the engine will be able to last zero seconds without power input, but the Magegem allows for a mage to simply "input" power into one place instead of summoning each spell manually.
The Blastballs used are specialized variants greatly reduced in scale. Their power is enough to push the pistons for maximum engine power output, but the smaller-scale compared to the squad-destroying PSF should mean we can greatly reduce the thickness of the crystal used in the construction of the engine, and it should reduce the power input requirement for mages and in the future, better magegems.
The result is
amazing. Groundbreaking, even. The IDE can output
massive amounts of power at a radically decreased size. Our vehicles will be able to be much lighter with much more power. Our trains and Crystalclads should go much faster, and new applications of the engine we never thought could happen before will become possible.
We hope to be able to incorporate the IDE in our current steam engine designs, as the IDE still outputs power in the same way. It's just smaller and more powerful.
Difficulty - The miniature Blastball variants should be
extremely easy to do - just scale down the blastball. Considering how easy we made the Blastball variant, something even simpler like scaling it down shouldn't even be worth factoring into the difficulty.
How is this possible in a revision? - Well, think of it this way; we have the "steam engine credit" that Evicted gave us, allowing us to upgrade our engine for free as a part of a relevant action. So really, we effectively have two revisions. So the first revision is making the steam engine piston-based (we made it turbine-based in a revision!), and the second revision is making the piston-based engine work on Blastballs instead of steam.
Expense - Well, the steam engine is Expensive and it's pretty complex. The internal detonation engine is more-so moving the complexity sideways which happens to greatly increase efficiency. Its crystal construction and our experience with mechanics should all help to hopefully make it Expensive.
Sidenote: I should make another Submarine design. Alternatively, instead of something like the Dreadnought design, we could make a new
Cheap boat equipped with a new steam engine, enclosed in crystal, and equipped with a single HC1-E. Has a small crew of maybe like 4. Should be pretty effective?
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Topic: Wands Race - [Arstotzka] {COMPLETED} (Read 393498 times)