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[helmacon]

Will post a design later. Congrats on the advance everyone.

[evictedSaint]

@waffles
1 yes
2 no
3 no, and three
4 not much. Protector usually broke down around Long Range, so it's moot point.

[andrea]

1 - AS-R2: Andres
2 - AS-LFV-2 "Titan": Chiefwaffles, Andrea

We can afford to do it.
we can fix it, and no price will make it not useful.

Plus, we can later outfit it with things like a portable crystalwork and a dogwood farm, making it a self contained habitat, a great achievement!

[helmacon]

Design: AS-ALV-2 "Manticore"

The protector was a suitable first step into land vehicles, but the many problems encountered in the field have given  us experience with the unique challenges of this new type of design.
The Manticore is the next generation of land vehicle. Built from an enlarged protector frame, it utilizes a system of treads for more reliable mobility. It has a refined transmission system, and a hatch in the bottom for easy access during repairs.
The space inside that was previously used for passengers is instead used to house a single HA1 replacing the HC1-E. The HAC-1 is still mounted beside it, accessible from a hatch. The crew consists of three apprentices to operate the main cannon, and a driver.
The manticore includes the atmospheric system that the protector was intended to have. It uses a few circuits to continuously summon fresh air near the top of the cabin, with a few micro vents around the bottom hatch to let CO2 drain out. This is ultimately very low priority on the vehicle.  It utilises an internal layer of the insulating Crystal we have recently developed for unparalleled protection from lightning, with traditional Crystal armor on the outside in generous amounts.

A stripped down version is available as well, dropping the HA1 armament to act as what is essentially a much more functional protector. This version is dubbed the AS-ALV-2 "T", and aims to carry at least 10 soldiers. Given the extra space as it will not have a main gun or ammo stored, nor a crew for the gun, this should be more than possible.

So, why choose the Manticore?
The Manticore makes our artillery mobile and heavily armored. If their airships are sitting out of range, we can drive up until we can hit them. Our battle lines become highly flexible. If they deploy behind our lines, we can just move our assets out of the way. It can also perform outside of the artillery role, simply acting as an armoured fighting vehicle.
The main reason though?
It is dead simple easy. We already make protectors and HA1s, this is just putting the two together. It is essentially a protector revision, with a big gun variant. As simple as it is, it can straight up revolutionise our military! APCs that actually function as APCs! And fricken tanks! It preempts an armored vehicle by the enemy, which is likely considering they had no good method of killing the protector last turn, and gives us a better method of pushing into highly fortified positions. (which will likely become more common as we enter the kegger heartlands.)
The titan will be NE for sure, which isn't terrible considering what it is, but the advantage of the Manticore is that it fixes our APCs at the same time, meaning we can use the revisions for other things. It's also a lot lower risk (a bad roll with the titan will get us nill) and has a cooler name.

[VoidSlayer]

Any land vehicle design needs the suspension, wheels and gears to be updated, as they are now they break more from poor design then being hit.

The enemy literally waits for one to break down on it's own before moving in for the kill.

[Chiefwaffles]

You should definitely name it;
AS-LFV-2-A
Land Fighting Vehicle 2 - Artillery.

And name the APC variant:
AS-LFV-2-T (or P)
With the T being for Transport (or P for personnel)


The APC variant should also have more personnel capability than the Protector as it doesn't use the HC1-E and require ammo storage. At least 10 people would be great. But since it's bigger maybe we can fit in even more?
The AS-HAC-1 should be big enough to facilitate combat armor and maybe have a limited crystal glass shield for some cover.
And you should probably include a sentence briefly describing the function of the atmosphere control system.

And just out of curiosity, do you think we could fit in crystal shell fabrication for the HA1? Would help in the future a lot and eliminate the need for large weighty amkunition. Probably not a reasonable thought, but it sure would be great if it was possible.


But other than that, I really like the manticore. Definitely seems like a viable alternative to the Titan.


@Void: Both vehicle designs address that though?

[helmacon]

My design does all of those that. (I suppose suspension is never specifically mentioned though. I'll update the description in a bit.)

[helmacon]

@CW
I'll tweak the description when I get back to WiFi. (I'm stuck on my phone right now.)

The AMA stood for "Armoured Mobile Artillery", but since it has an APC version I guess a more general name us in order.
I'll put in a few sentences about the APC variants carrying capacity, and the atmospheric control system too.

Automated Crystal shell fabrication would be completely unnecessary. The HA1 it's already crewed by wizards, who would be more than capable of summoning Crystal shells by hand if the need arose, but most of the ammo storage is for explosive or range shells that contain advanced components that can't be summoned on the fly. Shell fabrication is useful for rifles (or anything that is used be mundane troops), but our wizards don't need a machine to cast their spells for them.

[Chiefwaffles]

Well...
Our wizards can't summon ammo themselves. They need the shapes first and manually summoned crystal will get dispelled. We would have to include crystal fabricators in the design for anyone to use crysta ammunition fabrication.

[VoidSlayer]

I mean, really, replacing the infantry transport with shells should be more then enough to supply the thing.  I could see a larger vehicle like the Titan going for a shell fabricator but for a smaller one that is going to stay at a distance anyway it seems unnecessary.  We already have supply lines set up to deliver more shells.

[andrea]

The point would be to develop technolog yI believe

[Chiefwaffles]

A shell fabricator is something that will help immensely. It's what'll take our weaponry from the 20h century to the 21st century.

Our guns are still breech-loading. Between every single shot someone needs to open the hatch, load in a new shell all the way, then secure the hatch before aiming. This is regardless of whether the operators are mundanes or mages.

A crystal fabricator is essentially an easy, simple, self-loading system. Reloading at all is no longer an issue. Mages can fire without ever running out of ammunition or stopping to reload. Mundane men will be able to fire at much faster speeds as they only have to load a new Magegem, not a new shell, between shots.
A cannon will be able to fire forever as long as it has operators. Unending artillery barrages. Our tanks will be able to fire as much as they wish without ever worrying about ammo, at faster speeds than ever dreamed of.

And we're not replacing he infantry transport with shells. We're replacing it with a HA1. Which is big. With much bigger shells than a HC-E. Shell supply is still a problem. And even if we can fit a 10 shells (we won't), our tanks will still become useless as soon as they run out of shells.

A shell fabricator is fabricating the shell inside the barrel, eliminating the need for reloading.


And this would be great for future stuff, allowing us to invest in other things with the AS-R2, more flexibility with weapon locations in the Titan, the ability to remotely control weapons, and more.

[VoidSlayer]

The problem is, right now we use a whole factory (or several factories now) to create the things.  A shell fabricator seems like it should be a whole separate design project for the cannon, along with the fact we will NEED wizards to operate the things at all.  It just seems like backsliding when we could just have a system that auto loads presummoned shells.

[Chiefwaffles]

What? No. That's just silly.
We need a whole factory (one factory now) to make all of our Crystal designs.
We do not need Wizards to operate one at all. Heard of Magegems? That thing we developed specifically so we could use magitech without wizards? And Aethergems, the planned design to allow self-charging designs?

Design: Crystalworks [6, 5-2, 4]
...
Our apprentices have been reduced to little more than glorified powersources, charging arrays of magegems that in turn power gold-etched circuits strung together with thick crystal power conduits.  These circuits in turn produce a pre-inscribed crystal design written into the circuitry.  These circuits are interchangeable, able to be slotted in and out of the assembly line as needed.

The Crystalworks is a massive collection of these fabricator circuits. Note that since the Crystalworks was made, we have made significant advances in crystal, circuitry, and the Crystalworks itself.

We take one of these fabricator circuits, which can be pretty small individually (as long as the shape isn't too complicated. And even then, the Mk. 2 CW makes that easier). We stick them in/by the barrel of a cannon, and link it so it goes after the blastball fires.
We already have individual fabricator circuits. The aspect including putting them in the cannon is just "stick a fabricator circuit inside and maybe make it a little faster."


I don't even necessarily think this is the best idea to do right now as part of the Manticore, but I'm annoyed by the misinformation.

(Edit)
But anyways. I have an alternative plan:

We're short on apprentices right now. Our future designs are going to be more and more reliant on magic to work. We need to fix this now, because every new magitech design is going to directly take apprentices away from artillery. Every vehicle proposed so far is going to take more paprentices away from artillery and other places where they'd also be useful.
While you could argue that they're more useful when we have some apprentices in Manticores/Titans/Whatever instead of all of them in HA1s, we can't even crew all our HA1s right now. We don't have to compromise.

Design: Aethergem

Bjorn broke ground with his thesis regarding Aethergems. Sure, we didn't ultimately have a working prototype and maybe the hamster was slightly unnecessary, but the principle stands. Bjorn is on the cusp of something amazing.

The Aethergem is ultimately a variation of the Magegem. It mimics the connection a human mage has with the Aether, something we've studied for decades. It's thanks to Bjorn's thesis that we can reasonably create a proper version.
Scroll circuitry embedded into the Aethergem allows it to use its energy to create an artificial link to the Aether. Once this link is created, magical energy flows freely into the Aethergem, filling it. The Aethergem can store this power itself and distribute it to power consumers or other Magegems via crystal wiring.

The Aethergem is in a way a variation of the Magegem, and thus comes in three sizes and expense levels - the A, AA, and AAA, in order from most power to least. Larger Aethergems naturally recharge faster, but every Aethergem will take the same amount of time to go from 0% charge to 100% charge when taking the increased capacities into account.
The A-size Aethergem is aimed to have near if not the same charge capacity as the A-size Magegem, and will be the fastest recharging with the target expense of Very Expensive and be the same size as the A-size Magegem. The AA Aethergem will be roughly the same size and capacity as the AA Magegem at Expensive, and so on for the AAA Aethergem.
The charge capacity of the Aethergems is the least important aspect. If we must sacrifice a component of Magegems to ensure proper expense, then we can sacrifice the charge capacity for the charge rate and expense.

A near-critical aspect of this design is to incorporate the Aethergem into as many designs if possible. Of particular importance is the HA1 - we wish to fit Aethergems into the HA1 to allow for it to be operated by less, if any, apprentices. The Aethergems' charging rate will allow the HA1 to charge itself between shots, lessening or eliminating its reliance on external power sources (apprentices) to charge it.
In the Crystalclad, we hope to fit it with Aethergems allowing it to rely on less apprentices for operations. The Protector should have Aethergems fitted to decrease its reliance on apprentices for both its operation and its weaponry. The AS-R1, if possible, should have a permanent Aethergem core passively charging it as quickly as possible.


TL;DR: Make the Aethergem - a naturally self-charging Magegem - and fit it into as many things as possible, with high priority on the HA1. Expense should be made somewhat easier thanks to the Crystalworks Mk. 2 and the fact that we make Magegems out of Crystal Glass now. There are three sizes of Aethergems at the same expense+size+rough energy capacities as their respective Magegems, larger Aethergems charge faster but every size of Aethergem takes the same amount of time to go from 0% to 100%. While maintaining expense shouldn't be hard for aforementioned reasons, charge capacity should be the first thing to be sacrificed if necessary.

The two revisions can be anti-magic resistance and treads/transmission/suspension/whatever to the Protector, making it actually useful. From there, we can just throw on a HA1 in another revision if we want the Manticore.
The Aethergem will be great in the future, and we can use our two revisions here to still make progress elsewhere this turn so we don't "waste" it on a theoretical design.


EDIT: Added detail on three Aethergem sizes.

1 - AS-R2: Andres
2 - AS-LFV-2 "Titan": Chiefwaffles, Andrea
0 - Manticore:
1 - Aethergems: Chiefwaffles

[Kadzar]

While I like the idea of the Manticore, I don't see why it couldn't be done as a revision, and, meanwhile, we have a lot of things that need powering and only so many mages to go around. So I'm voting for Aethergems for now.

1 - AS-R2: Andres
2 - AS-LFV-2 "Titan": Chiefwaffles, Andrea
0 - Manticore:
2 - Aethergems: Chiefwaffles, Kadzar

Also, the "Manticore" designation made me think that we really need to come up with proper nicknames, or at least full descriptive names, for our various weapons and such. Whenever I see a write-up I get confused about what sort of gun is being used in each case.