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[helmacon]

The whole point is that they are incorporial. Wind would not be a factor.

[RAM]

Yes, there are lots of things that we could do with summoning. We are kind of woefully under-experienced in summoning other than materials though. I would like to change that... Ugh, I still can't believe that we voted for finding and taming falcons rather than summoning giant death-vultures. To nobody-sane's surprise, it was actually difficult to acquire trained falcons when our only experience in the field was trained horses, and trained horses probably weren't even mentioned in the description. Meanwhile, giant death-vultures were basically just an upgrade of wasps, and could probably have flown over the current inclement weather to dive upon the enemy now. And the original vulture proposal even expanded summons into a permanent population. We could have had living A.P.C.s and dragon-riders by now if we had wanted. Instead we got infant mind-control magic that we never bother to use.

Oh, and hey, does nobody care how we vote at all? Because it is very clear that multiple voting is currently accepted, and that seems sort of odd to me. I am inclined to go back to my one-and-two-halves thing, probably with self-voting, as it is difficult to compete with people who don't understand the problem with everyone voting for their own things.

[Chiefwaffles]

As long as you don't give your votes values >1, I'm sure people will be fine with it.
We already discussed this and the consensus was that people can vote how they want, I believe.

[Andres]

1 - AS-R2: Andres
4 - The Mind of Madness: RAM, VoidSlayer, FallacyofUrist, helmacon
0 - Demondium:
1 - AS-LFV-2 "Titan": Chiefwaffles
0 - Weightite:
0 - Celestedemorte:
0 - Living magic:
0 - AS-AMA "Manticore":
4 - Aethergem: Chiefwaffles, Kadzar, Andrea, Andres
0 - RAM-MAP-943 "Pashmad" Mobile Artillery Position:

Trader:
1 - Just give him Crystal Lances, Crystal Axes, and one of our many squad-destroying Wands of Fireball, if he can learn to use it: FallacyofUrist

Glory to Arstotzka.

[helmacon]

Well, if we can do multiple votes could someone add me to the Manticore and AS-R2 please?

[RAM]

2 - AS-R2: Andres, helmacon
4 - The Mind of Madness: RAM, VoidSlayer, FallacyofUrist, helmacon
0 - Demondium:
1 - AS-LFV-2 "Titan": Chiefwaffles
1 - Weightite: RAM
1 - Celestedemorte: RAM
1 - Living magic: RAM
2 - AS-AMA "Manticore": helmacon, RAM
4 - Aethergem: Chiefwaffles, Kadzar, Andrea, Andres
1 - RAM-MAP-943 "Pashmad" Mobile Artillery Position: RAM
1 - Gemerators: RAM
1 - Summon large, dangerous plant: RAM

Trader:
1 - Just give him Crystal Lances, Crystal Axes, and one of our many squad-destroying Wands of Fireball, if he can learn to use it: FallacyofUrist

I still have doubts about the Manticore's speed, but you have convinced me that it might have potential to be fast enough.

A reminder:
: Gemerators are like Aethergems but are dedicated magical providers rather than compromising their accumulation ability to be both generators and batteries. They should be functionally the same but would rely on existing gems to operate like replaceable recharges, which we have already been doing, but better at accumulating magic when storage is not required. And we have batteries already, so why compromise?
: Summon lagre, dangerous plant summons a kaiju. Now, I do not actually expect to get a kaiju, but the G.M has been extremely generous with giving us working designs when we ask for the ridiculous, so I am hopeful...

[Chiefwaffles]

Here's why you should vote Aethergems:

1.) Right now if we dedicated every single one of our mages to only operating HA1s, we can only operate up to a third of all our HA1s.
2.) Creating new magic and spells won't be as effective as they could, because every new mage-requiring design means less mages devoted to anything else.
3.) Aethergems can solve this problem. We will be able to operate magitech without using up (as many) apprentices. If Aethergems work as planned, then we have a ton of free apprentices and we have 3x as many operating HA1s. If they don't work out as great as they could, we still greatly reduce the amount of strain on our apprentices. We could reduce the crew requirement of the HA1 from 3 people to just 1.
4.) Thus, designing Aethergems means we will be able to field more Protectors, much more HA1s, more Restless trains, and more of any magic-related design we have.
5.) Aethergems get a bonus to Effectiveness (+1) that only it will get.
6.) Aethergems will help for future designs - the Manticore, the Titan, new ships, a flying vehicle, the AS-R2, and much much more in addition to its immediate benefits.

[RAM]

Or vote for Gemerators to do the same thing, but better! Our engines and such run constantly, and thus do not need storage, and the more effective Gemerators will work just fine when combined with magems when storage is required. There are so many situation when we only require either a battery or a generator that a compromise would, well, compromise... Also, you are only just now having to deal with that pun. But the enemy will have to endure it just after the next turn, when they are trying to come up with new designs. Think of the distraction potential! Weaponised puns are the future!

[Chiefwaffles]

Aethergems aren't just for engines.
I'd like to point to this line in the Aethergem design:

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.

The thing is about Aethergems, is that I'm envisioning them as an end-all to magical storage. So we can just put an Aethergem in a design and call it a day. Understand it's not meant as a long-term battery. Of course not.
It's meant as more of a... capacitor. So we can put a single AA Aethergem inside a AS-R1 and have it be able to power a shot between self-charging instead of requiring both an AA Aethergem and an AA Magegem, taking up twice the space and ever so slightly increasing expense/complexity.

So we can have power armor fit with Aethergems and not be forced to take clunky measures, lining it with Magegems when we could have just kept this current design of Aethergem and use a single A/AA Aethergem inside the power armor.

So we can have artillery pieces each with a single AA Aethergem allowing it to fire by itself without requiring us to invest more into also putting in Magegems. So we can put Aethergems in artillery and magitech in the Aethergem design, because it'd be harder to do if we had to do both Aethergems and Magegems.


C'moon, RAM. Of course the priority of Aethergems is power generation. It's not a stretch to even say they can hold power. They're an upgrade of Magegems, after all. They're what happens if you take a Magegem and add self-charging capabilities to it. I included this for a reason.
Vote for Aethergems, RAM. C'mooon.

[VoidSlayer]

The Athergems are possible, that was the starting point in my research.  It all should have worked, the prince's theories were all sound, the mathmagics solid.  But why did it not?  Was it the hamster? 

What generates magic and why can we be conduits.  Is it the mind or the body or something else, something intangible.  I do not know if the madness I found is the answer or just another thing waiting in the dark, but without life can magic function?  What ARE these gems and crystals we make.

I.. in a fit of sanity thought maybe a compromise on the catgirl assassins?  Make it a feline transformation upgrade to our anti mage squad and note that the snipers have a higher percentage of women. 

Also instead of a Kaiju tree what about thousands of giant mushrooms to act as fortifications.  Fungus can grow underground and then spring up suddenly when it fills with water.  I had a working model that only ate two apprentices before it was put down.

[RAM]

Aethergems are the polar opposite of a capacitor... Capacitors store up a large charge to release it quickly. A pure magem would hold a larger charge than the equivalent magem because it is loaded down with enchantments to accumulate magic. A single Gemerator could run a larger engine than the equivalent Aethergem because it is not losing volume to storage capacity. If you have universal Aethergems then you are stuck with a certain ratio of generation to capacity. Even if you have a range, you will be limited to that range.

 For most projects you will have a very specific capacity requirement: Enough to fire however many shots you want before going into a recovery cycle or reloading; Enough to jump-start the engines. Enough to summon a single Biollante... The recharging, meanwhile, will be a constant "as much as you can get".
 A magem reload will hold more shots for a rifle than an Aethergem would have. The only advantage is that you can build it as a single unit without reloads and not have to meddle with it. Magems are better than Aethergems for rifle reloads. Gemerators are better than Aether gems for running an engine, you just need a small magem to hold a little extra juice for starting it up. The Biollante will require vast amounts of magic, you will want a big-old summoning formation with magems all over it. Once you have that, you will want as many Gemerators as possible. Using Aethergems instead, once you have enough to build the ritual, you then start accumulating extra storage capacity that you don't need and waste resources doing so. And it should be easy to have a charging station to recharge magems from a gemerator. The only situation in which separating them would be bad would be in extremely small situations where including both would be impractical and you are too isolated and minimally equipped to just bring a gemerator with you to recharge them.

Really, the only people who could conceivably be better off with Aethergems are the catgirl assassins...

[helmacon]

For aether gems to tripple HA1 counts we would need a system by which an HA1 can be automated by mage gems. This would likely require one of our revisions by itself.

[Chiefwaffles]

Part of the Aethergem design, helmacon.

I'm pretty baffled why you think the Manticore revision is possible and that you think an Aethergem revision is possible but you don't think we can fit Aethergems into existing devices in the design?

Worst case scenario we replace Magegems in existing Magegem-using designs with Aethergems, freeing up our mages.

[Draignean]

Actually, I think the worst case scenario is that our waste of designs on technology with practical applications allows Moskurg to develop catgirls before we do and we end up losing the war due to mass defection.

Anyhoo... While I like the mind of madness more on paper, I think it needs a wee bit of prepwork. I'm also not quite convinced it would make as large difference on the field.

2 - AS-R2: Andres, helmacon
4 - The Mind of Madness: RAM, VoidSlayer, FallacyofUrist, helmacon
0 - Demondium:
1 - AS-LFV-2 "Titan": Chiefwaffles
1 - Weightite: RAM
1 - Celestedemorte: RAM
1 - Living magic: RAM
2 - AS-AMA "Manticore": helmacon, RAM
5 - Aethergem: Chiefwaffles, Kadzar, Andrea, Andres, Draignean
1 - RAM-MAP-943 "Pashmad" Mobile Artillery Position: RAM
1 - Gemerators: RAM
1 - Summon large, dangerous plant: RAM

Trader:
1 - Just give him Crystal Lances, Crystal Axes, and one of our many squad-destroying Wands of Fireball, if he can learn to use it: FallacyofUrist

[evictedSaint]

Seems like aethergems are winning.  Votes locked in a couple hours or so.