Void, our problem right now is that we have
too much variety and not enough power.
See the AS-R1.
See the Protector.
See the Avenger.
Two out of the three are functional, but both the AS-R1 and Avenger have had multiple actions poured into them already and aren't
amazing. All three have great potential but still aren't extremely useful (we'll see about the Avenger) until more work is put into them.
The idea behind stealing wind magic is that we can basically just use it to upgrade the KPD. Take their extreme and easy control over wind and apply it to the KPD. So basically we get a much easier KPD upgrade when we do it.
We don't really need their greek fire or faux gunpowder since we have fireballs and Blastballs. And Lucky Strike would be nice, but it feels like it would be a waste of the credit when we can design guided ammunition more capable than Lucky Strike.
Lucky Strike is basically just "+1 to hit chance; +1 to critical hit". We're very close to having missiles, which are a whole another, better, story.
EDIT: Speaking of missiles...
Future Design: AS-GM-45 "Hunter" MissileThe Guided Munition-45 "Hunter" is a new type of weapon - the missile. A term coined to describe this evolution of the Blastshell.
The first and most obvious component of the GM-45 is the KPD with an integrated reactor. While the KPD in designs like the Avenger may require extreme amounts of power, the GM-45 is significantly lighter than the Avenger. The Avenger is a 2-person manned aircraft while the GM-45 is a guided KPD-driven Blastshell.
Because of this difference in required thrust, the KPD requires much less power to retain an adequate thrust. The Hunter is of course faster than the Avenger, but the power requirement is still drastically reduced. Ideally, the reactor will be quite small and consisting of either AA or A size Aethergems - hopefully the former.
Of course, the Reactor gems are overcharged to a very high level - way more than the Avenger's reactor. The gems are overcharged enough so that the missile should get plenty of flight time before it starts encountering problems. But since we don't need to worry about reusability, we can go with serious overcharging reducing the size and expense of the reactor.
The reactor of the GM-45 is actually in the front - as the "warhead" - instead of wasting space on extra Magegems and circuitry to cast a PSF-C upon impact, we can simply put the reactor in a thin crystal layer at the front of the missile. When the front hits the target, the result is a very violent explosion hopefully far greater than a +E blastshell without having to waste space on it. All thanks to the volatile nature of Aethergems.
This is the easy part. We're simply sticking a smaller KPD and much smaller reactor into a very small aerodynamic chassis. The actual design-worthy component comes next. The guidance.
To operate the guidance, we require an "intelligence". Some apprentice suggested making a "computing device" using complicated circuitry, but that was just a silly suggestion that the Apprentice was assigned to flare-duty for having the gall to bring up.
Instead, we use an AA Magegem. But instead of the Magegem, we use our experience of the mind to be of a unique structure. One could make the comparison to a mind, and they'd be mostly wrong. Instead, this Magegem - this "Mindgem" - is simply creating the proper conditions to house a magical intelligence in.
Imagine if you could scan the mind of any being and turn it into magic. Just pure magic. The mind could still think and act like a mind, just without a body. We like to call these mind scans "Engrams". One day, we'll be able to scan the Engrams of important individuals to upload into Mindgems for immortality. Of course, that's the distint future.
The reality is that since as easy as it is, we do have to spend some time on the rest of the missile and on integrating the Mindgem, so we can't go jumping into this head-first.
We isolate the "mind" component of our Summon Wasp spells and have it summon a mind in magical form without a body. Well, not a mind - the mentioned time limits come into play here - we only have enough time and effort to put parts of this mind into the Mindgem. Just the necessary parts.
The Mindgem with the partial-wasp-intelligence uploaded to it is then linked to a missile. The mind, being magical, can detect life and sources of magic (our signatures being hidden due to our use of circuitry and not extravagant spells + our stuff working in anti-magic) and point the rocket to it. Hopefully the Mindgem can differentiate between friend/foe because the original Wasp can, but we're not holding our breaths.
This is all it can do in its primitive "half-mind wasp" state. It gives a heading that the circuitry interprets into exact angles and feeds to the KPD which then thrust-vectors the missile towards that heading.
The missile can be activated via a simple magical current activating power to the KPD. At the moment, it should be able to be deployed via a "missile launcher" - an object housing four "missile pods" in which each pod houses a GM-45. The missile launcher is large and should be carried either via Restless or horse/hand-pulled. Simple mechanical gears can "aim" it and a capacitive AAA Magegem (behind a crystal glass panel to prevent accidental launches of course) for each missile fires their respective missile.
- The GM-45 is
significantly lighter than the Avenger. Because the GM-45 is a missile. And the Avenger is a 2-man gunship. This is relevant later.
KPD - Put the Gen. 2 KPD (from the Avenger) onto the missile. Greatly decreased in (size? dunno how big it is in the Avenger) and power/thrust because of the aforementioned weight decrease. Missile should still have much greater acceleration than the Avenger for obvious reasons, but ultimately much less power+thrust.
Reactor - Because of the much smaller KPD, we can go for a much smaller Reactor, preferably consisting of AAethergems or in the worst case scenario, Aethergems. Because the GM-45 is a missile and doesn't really have much of an operational lifetime, we can put
extreme overcharging on the Reactor gems to decrease the amount+expense of gems needed to power the GM-45.
Warhead - Instead of Magegems powering a Blastball like in the Blastshell, we just put the Reactor at the front of the missile in a thin crystal shell. The volatile aethergems should provide a violent detonation hopefully even greater than a Blastshell without having to waste more space on Magegems+Circuitry for the detonation.
Mindgem - Make modifications to an AA (Aether/)Magegem to fit a magical entity. Then isolate the "mind" part of our summon wasps spell and summon parts of the mind in magical form into the Mindgem. We're shooting for simplicity, here; we're not even summoning the whole wasp mind! The goal here is to just get an extremely primitive precursor Mindgem that can point the missile at bad things. Again,
simplicity - this Mindgem is not intended to host actual intelligences; but rather just the bare minimum of a wasp to go "see bad thing; go there" and literally nothing else.
Mindgem Maneuvering - The Mindgem just outputs primitive targeting data that circuitry then feeds into the KPD, which then thrust-vectors to point the missile at the target. (Which is an established existing feature of the Gen.2 KPD)
Mindgem Targeting - Doesn't really matter. Probably via magical signatures, though ideally the Mindgem will be able to interpret between friend/foe due to the fact that the Wasp can, but it's not a dealbreaker if there's no IFF. Fluff is mostly irrelevant here.
Firing - The missiles are fired via a missile launcher - a large object housing four missile pods on a fairly tall mount and slowly "aimed" via some mechanical gears. Transported by horse, hand, or Restless.
TL;DR: Make a small KPD, put the reactor at the front as a warhead + super-charge it because we're not reusing it. Then put an extremely simple Mindgem with the bare minimum parts of a Wasp's mind to point the missile at bad things which the KPD then thrust-vectors to point the missile at. Warhead is done via the volatile-reactor.
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Topic: Wands Race - [Arstotzka] {COMPLETED} (Read 386150 times)