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[Chiefwaffles]

Really, though, we're better off in many ways compared to Moskurg. Namely, the relative durability vs damage of both sides.

A single Lightning can take many hits from both ballistae and lightning bolts. Yet it can destroy a Moskurg airship in merely two shots (and this is still very quick when factoring in breech-loading) and a fighter in one shot. Yes, it may not be as effectiveness due to its slower rate of fire making it harder to dogfight (IF ONLY WE HAD THE CAF), but it should be much better than the Moskurger equivalent.

Unfortunately, the turret is practically useless against fighters. Not because of its rate of fire, but because of tracking. The turret rotates/aims slower than a Moskurger fighter flies. We can't actually aim our guns at their fighters, which means that we will lose engagements. Powered turrets will mean we won't auto-lose to Moskurger fighters. We may not have 100% effectiveness due to rate of fire (we should still get the CAF soon!), but any effectiveness is better than 0%.
And powered turrets will be necessary for any weapon that needs to be pointed at the enemy. Which is every relatively effective weapon we have right now.


Also power armor.
The MKPD can totally be used for power armor. And tons of other cool things. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves.

And in other news, RAM mentioning webs gave me an idea.

Future Design: Silkcrystal

Here we are, looking back at decades of complaining about the relative brittleness of crystal, when we had the answer standing in front of us the whole time.

Some apprentices playing experimenting with the mistake spell Webs yielded extremely interesting results. The spider silk material comprising the webbing is extremely tough. Of course, it comes in such tiny quantities in thread form making it normally impractical for us. But we're Arstotzkan!

Webs is a conjuration spell. One of the original three from the spell book, in fact. Since we acquired that spell book, we've made factories dedicated solely to conjuring crystal, a material that didn't even exist in the book. It may have been impossible then to make this spider silk on an industrial scale in the right form, but with our society and industry based on conjuration, it should almost be a trivial task.

But instead of creating entirely new production lines for this, we can simply use it to upgrade our crystal. Use our experience with integrating and revising different types of crystals along with the conjuration knowledge garnered thus far to do so. Merge the best properties of this spider silk and crystal and apply the new crystal to every fabricator in the kingdom.


Silkcrystal should, obviously, no longer be brittle. In fact, it should be magnitudes better than Crystal if we succeed. Imagine crystal no longer shattering to lightning bolts. Imagine being able to endure infinite ballistae bolts. Imagine being able to treat their new railgun as if it were nothing but a fancy ballista. That is what Silkcrystal may be able to do.
Furthermore, Silkcrystal should also allow us to exert much more control over the flexibility of the crystal. Though while it should be very easy if Silkcrystal succeeds, we'll leave that to its own revision or part of a design.

TL;DR: Merge spider silk (From our Webs spell) with Crystal, make SUPERCRYSTAL.

[RAM]

I am leery of being too dependant upon crystal, but that is actually a good idea. I am a little unsure as to how you can lose brittleness without losing rigidity, so I would tend to leave this as a fabric, though possibly one that can be used to reinforce crystal by riunning fibres through it. If it can hold the crystal's basic shape then the regeneration should allow it to recover its original form... But crystal fabric would be really useful for, ummm... stuff? Conveyor belts! We could make thick layers of the stuff with embedded crystals and probably make some really decent tank tracks. Hopefully it would retain its brittleness in the form of not stretching. I mean, sure, stretching fabric is really nice, but wool will stretch, and you can weave a thing to stretch if you are creative, but something that doesn't stretch permanently over time would be really nice... And making extremely slice-resistant armour padding could have its uses...

[FallacyofUrist]

How to lose brittleness without losing rigidity?

We are mages. We will make it work. It's flexible when we want it to be and rigid when we want it to be.

[evictedSaint]

Revision: Powered Turrets [6]

The Lightning Turret is overhauled.

Rather than an entire sphere, the turret is now a half-sphere that rotates horizontally.  The HAC-20(mm) rotates vertically 45° up and 5° down through a shielded vertical slit in the blister. 

Though we have never truly isolated the ability to levitate and move objects ("Autokinesis", as referred to by our Mathemagicians) from our conjuration magic, the turret still manages to make do through a system we like to call "Pneumatics".  A geared track runs around the edge of the blister and vertically along the slit, which is hooked up to a gear powered by a smaller version of the KPD Mk.2 - by generating exhaust perpendicular to the gear, we can exert enough torque to force it to rotate.

The system is a bit clunky, but works without issue.  The exhaust is vented outside of the cabin and makes a pleasant "whirrrr" noise when fired.  The turret is controlled by an orb in the gunners chair similar to the joystick orb in the pilots cockpit and can rotate a bit faster than a gunner could do by hand, and with more precision.

As an added bonus, we introduce a socket on the gun where the TrueStrike module could be socketed, if we had enough to go around.  Cheap.

[VoidSlayer]

Expanded Firing Angles

The Lightning Turret is further overhauled to have a larger range of motion vertically using a second inset variant of the powered turret.  Both the vertical and horizontal Pheumatics can be activated and controlled at the same time, allowing the system to rapidly aim in any direction on the sphere.  The blister is moved out further from the craft to allow a 50° firing angle in any direction.

Circuit Stamping

Creating complex scrolls is currently a difficult hand process of metallurgy, but we can add crystals to that!  A sheet of "scroll" metal is laid out flat and then a "stamp" made out of sharp and durable crystal is pressed into it with force from a screw-press system.  While each stamp takes some time to make in the precise mathemagical shapes needed, once it is created the metal stamp-press can be operated quickly to churn out thousands of scrolls before needing repair or replacement.  This should reduce the labor and technical difficulty of complex scroll production, like the Honest Strike, reducing over all cost.

[FallacyofUrist]

Excellent... excellent...

Now that we have that... while I do like Honest Strike, I think there are better priorities for the moment.

Rocketshells: By using a variant of our KPD attached to the back of our HA1(and if we have extra time, AS-HAC-1) shells, we can take advantage of the fact that aethergems offer continuous power to add continuous thrust to a fired shell, boosting range and velocity.

AS-SC-L: We've created a variant of our Lightning craft. This variant replaces the 20mm gun turret with a Lumos turret. Basically, when the trigger is pulled, it fires a Blind-Flare at the target. Due to the magical cheapness of the Blind-Flare and our vast experience with circuits and fireball variants, this can be done fairly easily and rapidly. This may be more of a design than a revision, however, which is why it doesn't have my vote for the moment. If this worked, it would be devastating against personnel, but not against (relatively) sealed enemy craft.

Revision 2:
1 - Rocketshells: FallacyofUrist
0 - AS-SC-L(Special Cannon-Lumos):
0 - L.A.M.P.:
0 - C.A.B.L.E.:
2 - honest strike: RAM, helmacon
1 - Circuit Stamping: VoidSlayer
1 - Expanded Firing Angles: VoidSlayer

Also we should name our orbital bombardment craft the Firestorm.

[Chiefwaffles]

The MTS is revision 2! C'mon.
Revision: Mageglass Targeting Suite
Note: "Mageglass" = "Reactive Crystal Glass" = That crystal glass we use to make Magegems.

The idea here is simple - take out a component from TrueStrike and make it its own device as to avoid the typical Moskurger kludges holding us back with TrueStrike.

Spoiler: Fluff (click to show/hide)

The Mageglass Targeting Suite takes just the "predict where the target is likely to be" from TrueStrike. We don't need to bless our projectiles. We don't need to guide them. We don't need to automatically bless projectiles, so on and so forth. The majority of this revision is simply taking out all this stuff.

Once the appropriate element is isolated, we can make have the circuitry simply send its output to a chunk of Crystal Glass [based off of / from] the Magegem Crystalworks fabricators - "Mageglass". The Crystal Glass will glow as magic goes through it, allowing us to highlight targets """divined""" by Lucky Strike. Instead of wasting power, resources, time, and effort on the actual "blessing" part and making the projectile go where we want, we simply rip out the useful part - "divining" enemies - and have it output to Mageglass.

The Mageglass Targetting Suite should be applied to the Lightning Turret first, and Combat Armor visors second.

TL;DR: Take TrueStrike, rip out "divination", and wire it to Mageglass (the special-ish Crystal Glass we use to make Magegems) in order to highlight targets. Should be much cheaper since we don't have to actually bless the projectiles, which one would assume to be the hard part. (After all, you have to "program" each projectile with the destination, have it actually be "guided" there, continue updating on target, etc. etc.).




I don't suppose someone could put this in the votebox for me?


And this allows for much better targetting, improves skirmishes, and is almost a requirement for any orbital strike craft.

[VoidSlayer]

I want to make rocketshells, but we should spend a whole design to make a competently new thing.  Aerodynamic, with a fuel source that also acts as an explosive charge, with a directional thrust system aided by a "Honest Strike" type system to allow onboard guidance.

Effectively infinite range, homing explosive shells that maintain maximum muzzle velocity, or higher, for the entire trip.

AS-SC-L would not be useful because we only have a 5 degree downward angle.  We can not hit the ground.

[VoidSlayer]

Revision 2:
1 - Rocketshells: FallacyofUrist
0 - AS-SC-L(Special Cannon-Lumos):
0 - L.A.M.P.:
0 - C.A.B.L.E.:
2 - honest strike: RAM, helmacon
1 - Circuit Stamping: VoidSlayer
1 - Expanded Firing Angles: VoidSlayer
1 - Mageglass Targeting Suite: Chiefwaffles

[FallacyofUrist]

AS-SC-L would not be useful because we only have a 5 degree downward angle.  We can not hit the ground.

It's intended to blind flying Moskurgians from carpet riders to skiff riders.

Some sort of super shell might be nice, but we're working on orbital bombardment right now, and this is the best you're getting.

Unless you want explosive shroud.

[Chiefwaffles]

If we are going into space, we need a targeting system. The MTS helps greatly with that. Just Lucky Strike won't work - it doesn't even fix the long-range of Moskurg rail guns. That and it only works if it's being fired at something in the first place, which will be hard from orbit without targeting aid.

Like the MTS.

[helmacon]

If we don't make true strike cheaper at some point we have effectively made no design this turn.

[VoidSlayer]

If we don't make true strike cheaper at some point we have effectively made no design this turn.

I was hoping that the scroll stamp-press would do that, make the stupidly complex enemy scrolls mass produced to reduce cost.  Should I put that explicitly in there?

[helmacon]

I would be willing to vote for that, but yea, explicitly stating it can't hurt.

[Chiefwaffles]

Not every turn can produce a viable design helmacon.

We can either waste just a design or a design and a revision.