The frost towers were noted as being fixed fortifications.
Semantics. The towers are not of any use for defensive purposes.
Because they are too slow and lack range. Their fortifications are weaker than the titan's, but they still function as a strongpoint, so no, not semantics, they are defensive structures, literally and practically. Yet, as you said, they are not of any use. It is not that they are not defensive structures, because they quite clearly are, and they function in that capacity, it is that defensive structures, such as the Titan, are not of any use. So you yourself are saying that that the Titan is useless unless it is at least moderately fast, and a multiple-deck tank is not going to be fast. It is somewhat unlikely that it could cover a single terrain section in the span of a year. And almost certain that it will take years to get to the desert from the crystalworks in our homeland. No doubt the G.M. will not be that strict, but we really wouldn't have any avenue to complain if they deemed that it can only be deployed to a territory if it is adjacent to that territory and has spent a full year in its current territory. It is basically a Ratte, with inferior transmission, suspension, engines, and tracks. We have better fuel, but that won't get us the same speed and the ratte's claim of 40kph is a bit ambitious for something that was never made...
We cannot shoot down their long-ranged artillery.
We don't need to if we can just make things on the land (which decides who wins) that can just ignore their artillery.
They are pretty certain to attempt something that can penetrate armour. Land doesn't "decide who wins" any more than air does. It is the lines, and they CAN stop the Titan. Firstly, the Titan will never meet specifications. It is asking for at least two new technologies along with completely unprecedented scale and enough minor details on top of that for another design. Secondly, they can just pile broken shells on top of it. Bursting shells will kill anyone who tries to clear it. Our range has been reduced to the extent that they are very much able to shell us at present. with complete immunity. Or they could sneak up to the thing and use an antimagic spell to turn it off...
If we can annihilate them when they get close and their long-range stuff does nothing against them, we win. For example, see this combat phase where we just won everywhere except the jungle and where we won at sea even though their airships outrange our Crystalclads.
We took massive losses at sea, that was just a zerg-rush, the sea proves that they can mess us up as it stands. The desert was a coin-toss, and assuming that the Titan can even get there, AND prove more effective than the Protector even though the latter was less of a prototype, then it will still lose because it is just more of the same and they will counter it. Far more likely one of those things will not be true and assuming the enemy does nothing then it will be another coin toss.
Their airships seems to be plenty fast. And I would not say that the air filtration is any more likely on the Ttan than Protector.
"This is a stupid design because I'm deciding that it's stupid."
You can't just pick and choose what parts of the design you want.
Well now you are being wilfully ignorant. I am sorry to be so blunt, but that is the simple truth of it. I am very clearly pointing out that it factually did not happen the last time that it was attempted. It WAS tried and it DID fail. It has been said that insanity it doing the same thing and expecting a different result...
Here, let me do it:
"This is a great design because everything will go exactly as I say it will"
You can't just pick and choose what a design action can achieve and how it will turn out!
See? It is silly when I do it and it is silly when you do it. If you want your arguments to look credible, try actually addressing the argument.
The air filtration didn't happen on the previous design, because it is close to a design of its own. We were lucky that the G.M. chose to just skip it entirely rather than say "Well yes, you have an air-filtration system, but you still die of CO2 poisoning, You have wheels that don't turn because they are overloads, guns that can't aim because the armour gets in the way, and doors that sometimes don't open, killing the crew from CO2 poisoning, because your design was too ambitious". We got a working design because the G.M. is waaaaay too kind to us. If we are EXTREMELY LUCKY we would be skipping air filtration on this design too. Or we could get our completely new technologies in magic and construction and transmission and tracks and everything else but have a design that can not, in fact, perform any function at all, and a bunch of partial researches that still take a full design action to uncover so all we got was a few small bonuses that are not worth a full design action even if we did bother to explore all of them.
Now, if it were made the first priority, then I might concede that air filtration might prevent fire from being effective.
There's also the part where we don't even need air filtration to make their fire largely useless. They would have to uniformly cover every inch of the Titan with fire, even the sides, to start asphyxiation. And then the fire would run out before the air supply inside the Titan runs out.
... really?
That is simply untrue. The fire sucks the air into itself. It could potentially suffocate the vehicle just with a fire on top or to the sides. With both the top and to the sides it is basically certain. If it were actually ON the sides, like, occasionally, here and there, then it is so utterly doomed that the words don't exist to express it. Every inch would just be a ludicrous frenzy of doom that would spell instant death to the entire populations of both nations just by being associated with such a magnificent behemoth of irrevocable doom which would be promptly ripped from the planet and cast to the depths to prevent the malignant doom infection from spreading. And don't forget that their fire is specifically noted as being extremely persistent...
You do realize that we still outrange their ballistae, right?
Also switching to lead is a revision they'd have to explicitly do.
It i lead balls, that does not take much revision, they could mix it with armour penetrating rounds if they liked, and they probably will.
As for the range, they do, rather explicitly, outrange us right now. You seem to have skipped over the bit where they invented a spell to reduce our range.
Thankyou, this confirms quite nicely that it will shatter into a mound of heavy material that cannot be easily expelled. That is quite exactly as I predicted. Thankyou for comprehensively confirming my point. Not also that this is against protectors, with more of a "deflect" philosophy. The Titan has "decks". It is basically a giant landing strip for enemy munitions. They can probably land boarders and infiltrate the thing and use it against us for a turn before game balance destroys it if they are so inclined...
They are faster than it and have more range. Our lack of speed and range has us at a technical disadvantage and if we don't address it then we are fighting n uphill battle to upgrade our thick, slow armour to the point that we can somehow deal with being unable to engage their best forces at all.
They outrange us with two weapons:
1.) Lightning. Useless against the Titan.
2.) Tornadoes. Useless against the Titan.
Their airships have zero weapons useful against the Titan and are in the air. If they get close to the Titan, they're dead. So we can easily capture things uncontested.
1.) Lightning. Causes surface damage OR penetrates straight through the hull and fries the crew. Choose one.
2.) Whirlwinds. Causes extremely low pressure, can be revised to suck the air out. We need the Celestedemorte to counter these with a high-pressure effect. Also they probably render the artiller unusable for their duration.
3.) Ballista. with enough shelling they can get through. They totally have the range since the enemy invented a range-reduction spell.
The titan is not invulnerable, and even if it were, it can only be in one place at a time, it is hardly capable of single-handedly quashing an entire country. Especially not one with enough air-ships to put its government into orbit...
Aethergems are without doubt a Design.
And suddenly you talk sense! Yes, adding a new mechanism of magic generation to our army is, indeed, a design of its own. If we could also recognise that "building a super-massive object is most of a design, putting it on land instead of the sea is most of a design, transmission is a revision, tank tracks are probably a full design, Air filtration is definitely a design... Although it would be better if they were based on antimagic charms and not on magems though. Adding a battery capacity can only serve to weaken the power gathering aspect. It is easy enough to put magems on a charging circuit or to put a power generator directly onto a dedicated circuit. Making them as powerful as possible serves our purposes much better than compromising them by incorporating a storage function.
Plagiarism HO!
Gemerators
Based upon Bjorn's thesis.
Gemerators are ultimately a variation of the Magegem antimagic charm, which already largely performs this function. Gemerators mimic the connection a human mage has with the World Tree, something we've studied for decades.
Scroll circuitry embedded into gemerators allows them to use this energy to create an artificial link to Yggdrasil. Once this link is created, magical energy flows freely into the Gemerator and from there, into any attached circuitry, powering it. Gemerators can thus distribute magic to magic devices such as cannons or Magems via circuits or similar devices.
Gemerators aim purely to be able to accumulate magic at as fast a rate as possible while being stable enough for use.
We hope to incorporate these into all larger devices, prioritising those that will free up the most wizards. Additional powering grids for magemes will be constructed to provide gems for lighter users such as small-arms where a gemerator in the device itself would be cumbersome.Yes, Mind of Madness benefits from conjuration, as it is a conjured entity, and Hawk taming, which is a mental effect. It is ambitious, no doubt, but not to an extreme degree. I could certainly see it failing, but in the absence of anything else I want to support...
Author
Topic: Wands Race - [Arstotzka] {COMPLETED} (Read 392981 times)