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[Chiefwaffles]

You're just imagining that. If they had any negative effect whatsoever, Evicted would have told us so.

A lot, if not all, of the stability + acceleration issues comes from the fact that we tried to make a dogfighter by sticking a single vectoring rocket engine on the underside of the Avenger. It's like if you put guns on the Saturn V and infinite fuel then sent it to the front lines as a dogfighter.

[RAM]

Oh, wow, that design is terrible. It uses spokes, spokes are, like, the worst space-efficiency ever. And it makes a loud explosion. So now, instead of our aircraft exploding and the pieces plummeting to the ground we now have aircraft that make a loud noise and then plummet to the ground to explode into pieces.

 Does something that big even fit inside a protector?

 Do they work if placed on their sides?

The Unicaru
We have seen the horrible stability of the misguided "avenger". and the solution was blindingly simple. Anyone who has held a suit of armour knows that it is far more easily held upright when grasped from the top than the bottom. The Unicaru features a "mohawk" of crystal along its top-central line, attached to a "cowl" of crystal containing the propulsion effect, which constantly pushes the cowl upwards, lifting the craft. The weight of the remainder of the craft ensures its lower position.

To achieve this, we put the vast majority of our efforts into refining our existing propulsion. Given that everything else basically amount's to bodywork or circuitry, it should not be difficult to dedicate massive focus onto the propulsion system. the hoped results are a pure "force film" that perfectly conforms to a surface and pushes that surface dynamically without any other interaction. There is no exhaust typical of an explosion, instead the surface will be pushed by this film regardless of its surroundings. This in turn allows the ceiling cowl to fit very snugly around the vessel and continuously propel it in an absolute up direction.

Force-film panels around the rear of the craft allow rapid steering, directing a relative left/right/pitch/yaw. The main-body is tear-drop shaped with the "ball" at the front and a tube sticking into the tail, with the tail being geometric rather than rounded, to ease the steering operation. (A more precise control over the circuitry would be required to make use of a curved steering surface.) As nice as it would be to have the full efficiency of a force-film "sail" providing thrust, such just isn't practical without making the craft an needlessly large target. Instead, force-film is projected into the "tube" with their propulsion set to a relative backwards. In addition, a handful of magems are stored in the tube to power brief bursts of the outdated Kinetic Propulsion Drive which, while horribly unstable and inefficient, would provide a great burst of power when operated within a tube like that. granting brief bursts of speed when needed.

The pilot lays down near the underside of the craft, on a leather hammock with leg-braces with their head raised due to a mild incline. They operate the rear steering panels with a four-way lever, and have a pair of two-way levers to control the force of the lifting cowl and main thrust, with a big red button to activate and deactivate the burst-propulsion. The pilot enters through a hatch on the floor of the gunner's booth, in which the gunner stands, wearing a leather harness hanging from the ceiling. the harness is on a simple weighted pulley, with a weighted anchor on a leather strap going through a pulley. this is very simple, being a rope through a hole with things attached to either end to stop it being pulled through. The anchor goes into its own separate shaft and thus cannot enter the cabin. Thus the harness reduces the gunner's effective weight, easing their ability to stand and bracing them against falling. The gunner shoots a standard hac one that is forward-mounted through a hinge(derived from our steam-transmission mechanisms) at its centre-of-gravity allowing it to be easily and quickly aimed. Communication between pilot and gunner is achieve through a simple string mechanisms where identically-labelled tabs are attached to the same string, allowing a pull on one to be seen upon the other. The power systems are mounted behind the gunner, either side of the central thrust-tube.

After wasting so much time on aircraft we now need a dedicated air-superiority fighter in order to recoup our losses. the Avenger's fighter-bomber nature just doesn't fit on this battlefield as anything other than support, although it should serve quite well as close air support... The lightning fails to change its role at all. The propulsion is a constant pressure over the whole thing, we would need a computer to handle all the fine adjustments required to control it when the entire surface is a control surface. I proposed a computer, but we were too busy trying to protect a generator that was sufficiently armoured that it didn't matter and is still too big and expensive to actually use.

Roll And Shoot Heaps
A complete redesign of the Protector design. The rear wheels are replaced with a single roller. The passenger space is largely filled by the rear wheel and what remains is used for ammunition storage and magic generators. The front wheels are bigger and sturdier with a higher ground-clearance but the rear wheel can pull it back even if the front wheels break. It has only a single turret, though that turret is hopefully powered using the propulsion system from the Avenger. The turret contains a Mundane refitted to work from the much greater power generation of the vehicle's generator stacks. The top armour is heavier and the wheels have protective cowls and the doors(now instead mounted on both sides) are refined to more easily braced against external intrusion and can be levered back into a tight seal to protect against external conditions such as fire.
Flying is difficult and they are better than us at it and will continue to be so. There is no such thing as "final evolution of our aircraft" as whatever we do they can improve upon and nothing we do will ever set a permanent standard. We really need our guns to be fast, but mobile at least is a start and this would get us that. If someone proposes a properly fast gun wagon, or a means of overcoming their range advantage, such as heavier rounds, then I will probably vote for that, or state why I don't think that it will work.

[Chiefwaffles]

The difference in stability is the difference between "The Avenger explodes, killing its entire crew with no chance of salvage!" and "The Avenger is shot out of the sky, but the crew and wreck are later recovered."
But more importantly, the Mk. 2 is more stable in general. I asked evicted on Discord and got an affirmative on that. So not only is it less lethal to its occupants + craft when it explodes, but it explodes less. Basically, we've removed a major flaw in the Avenger - it no longer has a huge weak spot begging to be hit by Lucky Strike. Again, that was a major flaw.

As for space-efficiency, this is still the most space-efficient Aethergem design because of the spokes. If the spokes hurt the design, they wouldn't be in there.

It'd definitely fit in the protector, but obviously isn't the right size to be retrofitted in.

And of course they work when placed on their sides. That's like asking if a wire transmits electricity if it's on its side.


No, the Avenger is not a fighter/bomber. It's a fighter.
A bad fighter, but it's a fighter. The bombs (unlike the Haast!) were placed so the Avenger could contribute to the ground theatre in some capacity and for use against the larger Moskurg airships. And as a minor note, I believe the design proposal called for just one bomb.

The F45 Lightning is also a fighter. Instead of wasting effort on trying to reinvent the wheel and make a whole new craft and (to some extent) propulsion method, we just spend our effort on refining the Avenger. It has the potential to be a great craft and it's problems are concentrated into single spots, making it easy for a design to address them.
The small scope of the Lightning should mean it'll do a lot better on the stuff it does focus on. It doesn't try to make a new craft body because we've already made a good one.

Hell, in the combat report:

nothing else can be said about the Avenger, then the crews will admit that the damn thing is hardy.  Ballista rounds can't crack the crystal hull, and the lightning-resistive crystal requires a few lightning strikes before holes can be blasted through.  Once the armor on the Aether Reactor is worn through, though, then the brilliant explosion will send shrapnel at everything in a fifty foot radius.

That's right.
The best part about the Avenger is its hull. So we shouldn't throw that away. Better yet, we just fixed the number one integrity problem - the Aether reactor is no longer such a huge weak spot.

[RAM]

The hull is good because it is crystal, there is nothing mentioned that implies that it is an intrinsic quality of the Avenger that would not also be equally effective, likely even more effective, in a different design that is more resistant to attacks from above, which is where all the current dangerous attacks are coming from, and which the Unicaru is resistant to. So the hull can and will be improved by being dumped. Honestly, if the "best part" of the avenger is the fact that it has a crystal hull, based upon "hardy" due to "lightning-resistive crystal" then it needs to be thrown away with massive haste because the "best thing" about a design should NEVER be the components that pre-date it. That pretty literally translates to "it is a bad design, but the materials that you developed earlier almost make up for that"...

"The Avenger is shot out of the sky, but the crew and wreck are later recovered." is complete nonsense. The Avenger is not a glider. We  do not know anything about gliders, and even if we did the enemy has too much wind control for gliding to be practical. If the enemy hits the power supply, then the circuits stop working. If the circuits stop working, then the lift vanishes. If the lift vanishes then it drops like a brick, which would be lethal, there are zero survivors from reactor losses in-flight. Possibly take-offs and landings, when they, are, like, five metres off of the ground, but from 100 metres up? They may as well be falling into lava for all the hope we have of salvaging anything. The kinetic energy of a brick falling from such a height, in the proportions that transfer into the structure of the vessel and occupants? Well, the amount of ship and crew that you have is no longer an integer...

"The bombs (unlike the Haast!) were placed so the Avenger could contribute to the ground theatre in some capacity"
Uh, seriously? That is almost exactly why the bombs were fitted onto the Haast. Except in the Haast's favour it is also able to carry drop-tanks and torpedoes. Utility items that help with dogfighting and heavy weapons that do not rely upon initial kinetic energy and thus lose much of their effectiveness when dropped instead of fired. As for use against airships? Do we even have confirmation that we can fly higher than them? What little we DO know is that all theur guns are on the top. Flying over them is not a great plan...

And also, it would be sort of nice to avoid spending four designs and at least one revision on something and then look back and think "we ended up with something that was supposed to be easy in a single design"... Not that it is that the third attempt is necessarily going to go any better than the first two...

[Chiefwaffles]

And also, it would be sort of nice to avoid spending four designs and at least one revision on something and then look back and think "we ended up with something that was supposed to be easy in a single design"... Not that it is that the third attempt is necessarily going to go any better than the first two...

Kind of like the Hybrid Cannon? Y'know, our first cannon that was worse than a longbow in every way when we first designed it?


Running away from a design because it isn't immediately the ultimate thing in that category would be pretty silly.

[VoidSlayer]

Destroyer

A new version of the protector turned from APC to full tank.  It uses the new reactor to power the internal detonation engine, cannons and cold producing circuits in it's armor layer.  The two innovations are fully steel wheels and a carriage reinforced on the outside with a triple layer of crystal armor in thick defensive plating, lightning redirecting circuits and cooling circuits.

The vehicle mounts a full HA1-b, able to fire once every three minutes, and two swivel mounted HAC-1 for close fire support.  All three are controlled, aimed and reloaded from inside the Destroyer.

A crew of 4-6 mans the vehicle with any extra space turned over to ammunition.

[Andres]

DESIGN
3 - ASAF-F45 "Lightning": Chiefwaffles, FallacyofUrist, Andres

Glory to Arztotzka.

[RAM]

Destroyer

The two innovations are fully steel wheels and a carriage reinforced on the outside with a triple layer of crystal armor in thick defensive plating, lightning redirecting circuits.

The vehicle mounts a full HA1-b, able to fire once every three minutes, and two swivel mounted HAC-1 for close fire support.  All three are controlled, aimed and reloaded from inside the Destroyer.

What is the advantage of fully steel wheels? Also note that we just lost the mountains, so steel will be more expensive than it was. Now, I doubt that the G.M. will pay enough attention to the cost of steel for it to matter, and to be fair, the wheels may be large and bulky, but there are not that many of these things so it is probably within reasonable limits, but it is a concern.

Where do lightning redirecting circuits come from? Are they the lightning rods from the old armour? That really should work, their lightning is supposed to "not do anything impossible" and going through a human while failing to go through a metal bar just next to them ranks quite highly on the impossibility scale, but still, magic lightning has its own rules, well, it isn't magic lightning, but it was started by magic, and is controlled by magic, even though the magic is not present when it is being controlled... But regardless, it has its own rules, so whatever "impossible" is it doesn't include bypassing the effective shortest path... So it is doubtful that simple lightning rods will work, and I am not familiar with lightning redirection as circuitry, but I may have missed it. Or is this a new element that is being introduced in the design?

I could see controlling, aiming, and reloading a swivel mount from inside a vehicle being difficult. Is there any elaboration on how this would work?

[VoidSlayer]

The wheel and under carriage are made of steels they do not splinter apart and turn the tank into an immobile bunker.  Right now our super high tech crystal IFV is resting on top of an old fashion wooden wagon.  The whole thing will be expensive at best, even with the new reactor being reduced in expense.

I personally prefer true strike amulets but no one seems to want that.

[andrea]

the problem with true strike amulets is that we hardly have anything with the range to hit them

[VoidSlayer]

Uh, all their stuff is long range or very long range, our cannons exceed that by a lot.  They are not very accurate at beyond line of sight, but with true strike, they do not have to be.  We just need to fill the sky with shells and some will land where we want, by luck of the draw.

[VoidSlayer]

Anyway, we could always design a shell with a self-contained propulsion system and a true strike derived aim system with an explosive finish.

[andrea]

Void, they reduced our range by 2 increments a few turns ago. Now their ship mounted weapons outrange us

[evictedSaint]

Seems like the lightning is winning.  Design roll in a bit unless that changes.

[andrea]

Sorry to disrupt, but haven't had time to write before now.I find the lightning a good design, but for the sake of alternatives I want to propose something different: guided ammunition (aka, missiles)

SPS-1 Self propelled shell , "Seeker"
We have a power source. We have a propulsion system that can be activated by that power source. And our power source can explode. Why not put everything together?
The Seeker is a shell-shaped object made entirely of crystal, containing an appropriately sized aethergem reactor. On its back, there is a small version of the KPD2. Being made of crystal and not having thick armor(it still uses layered crystal for lightning protection), the Seeker should be able to fly on its own power. The big revolution is the way it is directed toward the enemy. The enemy lucky strike spell is examined and turned in circuit form. It is the spell itself that guides the nozzle to propel in the right direction, allowing the missile to follow enemy vessels. On impact, the aethergem reactor destabilizes and explodes, having removed the safety features.
Ideally, it should be small enough to be shot by a HA1, or at least small enough to be carried by an avenger although this is not a strict requirement.

basically: we scale down our aircraft technology to a small light crystall shell with a kinetic drive (lightning armor but no armor against projectiles). We use lucky strike to make sure it drives toward enemies. We remove safeties on aethergems so they explode on impact.

bonus point: if they shoot it down in flight it still explodes sending shrapnel.