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[RAM]

voting for angels but only because I just decided that the gods should be the forumites and our angels would be interesting...

[evictedSaint]

Design: Steam Engine [2-2, 1-2+1, 6-2]

Well...it doesn't explode right away, at least.  That's good.

Smith-made steel, assembled in a confusing and curious configuration of pipes, valves, boilers and a single rotating steel-on-steel joint that screeches whenever it runs - the entire design team took a step back when the thing turned on for the first time.  It's the worlds first steam engine, and by god it's glorious. 

It first took a minor tweak of our existing Flame Wall spell to generate a more manageable sized flame.  It still requires the attention of a mage to be maintained, but so long as they aren't distracted for more than a few seconds it wont go out.  This flame was then placed in a special brazier below a sealed container of sea water.  As the entire vat of water heats up, steam goes up through a pipe to a secondary container, which has two adjustable valves facing perpendicular to the center.  This secondary container is attached via a rotating joint that leaks steam whenever it runs (which our researchers point to as an "emergency release valve").  When the water reaches its boiling point, the steam goes up through the pipe, into this container, and out through the valves to produce rotation.  To make sure the entire thing won't break under pressure, we also took the liberty of making sure the parts are as thick as we can possibly make them - that requires a lot of steel, and to avoid cracking the floors at the AAAA with the weight the contraption is assembled outside.

It's loud, it's heavy, it's not very powerful, and it's expensive as can be, but technically...well, it's the continents first working steam engine.  That's certainly very impressive, even if we don't currently have a way to harness the rotational energy coming from the secondary container.  Unfortunately, the rotating joint has a tendency to seize as the pipe heats up and the seawater produces waste-salt, and the spinning valves need to be adjusted as the amount of steam coming through increases and decreases.  Since it's difficult to immediately control the temperature of the water inside the tank as the steel casing retains a great deal of heat, all these combined to result in the secondary container suddenly blasting up off the steam engine and disappearing into the sky during one glorious demonstration.  Luckily no one was hurt in the explosion, and the rest of the device was perfectly fine.  Still, we'll likely need to do a lot more work with this device before it's ready to be put to practical use.

The Mathemagicians would also like to note that if you find where the secondary container landed, they will pay a hefty sum to have it returned to them.  National Effort.



(NOTE:  I'm allowing you guys to develop this nearly 8 centuries early because magic doesn't exist in the real world anyways, and it is plausible that if it had something like his might have come along sooner.)

[OceanSoul]

Can we command a small amount of our forces to look for the secondary container and get a funding credit from the Mathemagicians, then use that on the steam engine?

[evictedSaint]

Can we command a small amount of our forces to look for the secondary container and get a funding credit from the Mathemagicians, then use that on the steam engine?

You assemble a small force from the palace guard to comb the lands outside of the AAAA for the missing container.  You eventually find it a few weeks later in a farming village a few miles outside of the capital, being worshipped by a newly-formed cult.

Apparently, the strange metal contraption landed in a field as a farmer was tending to his crops, causing him to see it as a divine message from God.  He then gathered his neighbors to come see the strange, heavenly device, and after a while formed a small cult to worship it.  They are certainly disappointed to discover that God had not, in fact, been contacting them.  They are pleased with the reward money, however, and use it to fund a new mill for their village. 

The secondary container is returned to the Academy and taken in to be repaired.

Dangerous Cult preemptively halted.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Nice, I'm aslo guessing we should use our revision to make it useful? or at least cheaper since even if these things are rare a decent one would allow us to screw their navy over massively especially since we rely on the wind even less now.

[RAM]

Should have gone for the pulse-jets, it is some complex magic combination if you build it from crystals, which is ideal because they have no effective wear-and-tear, but the principal problem of the thing is a controllable explosion. Also the question of why you would do such a thing, I mean, propelling things out of tubes is pretty odd thinking unless you have seen fireworks... But if you start with a controllable explosion, and see it blowing things around, the pulse-jet is actually a pretty logical progression aside from some minor details that ought be solved with trial-and-error in short order given their nature. Like, we tried putting a fireball behind the boat, but if we get it off by a little then it just rocks it to the side, if only we could force it to push the boat forwards, hmm, some sort of tube maybe? Then it would always be in the right place... We find that it pushes the boat forwards then pulls it back again, we noticed the vapour being sucked back in, we need to block it somehow. The cork was pulled in magnificently, but the fireball was much weaker and the cork was destroyed and it was just waiting to suck again as soon as the cork was removed, actually continuously sucking on it... Well, lets let air in the front instead of the back, and we will block it when we detonate it. The stopper keeps getting blown out, we need to block it somehow, wait! if we did that, it would close all by itself when it pushed back! just need to stop it falling off when air is sucked in the front... Hey, we could do the same thing at the back except in reverse to stop it sucking between explosions...
 Jets may seem more technological than steam, but in practise, given what we have, it is much simpler...

So, we can work on steam again and risk getting nothing this turn, work on steam baby-steps and get something simple, like a national effort metal stamper than can reduce the cost of one of our equipments at the cost of Myark's time, or do something different and delay steam-tech but hopefully get something out this turn...

Steam just works now
We wanna reroll our steam pliz!

Low-power engine
 Reducing the size and power of the engine has advantages in terms of low magic use and easier material reinforcement along with smaller explosions if things go wrong. We can just pipe the steam into the ocean for a small increase in thrust and experiment with steam-powered oars mounted on wheels. These small steam-engines are very weak compared to a longship, but they give us a chance to learn more about the technology.

Steam-press
 We work on getting our engine to work as-is. Hook it up to a low-geared wheel that rolls patterns onto metal sheets to produce plate-armour more quickly.

Steam-lumbermill
 We work on getting our engine to work as-is. Hook it up to some sort of circular saw-like mechanism and carve up wooden beams like nobody's business. More Longships!!!

Magic immune crystals
We produce a reduced-scale antimagic charm that affixes to a crystal weapon and only covers the weapon to make it immune to our enemies' magic, allowing us to reintroduce some of our crystal weapons in smaller quantities.

antimagic arrows
 We revise our antimagic to fit onto some of our anti-wizard guard's arrows, using the old burst-into-flames variant. Effectively a revision of the guard, but theoretically a revision of the charms...

[evictedSaint]

I would like to do the revision and combat phase tonight, if we can.  If not, nbd.

[stabbymcstabstab]

I'll vote for RAM's Low-power engine

[VoidSlayer]

They will be surprised when tanks come over the hills.

So will I cause thats wierdo.

[Tyrant Leviathan]

Well I originally looked forward to Magi powered war bots tearingbpeople apart. With steam power that and tanks are something to look forward too.


Low Powet engine research here.   :As I will not bother to submit new plans just vote on what I think is cool.:

[stabbymcstabstab]

I mean they shouldn't be to surprised we are  kinda taking the MagiTek route with our designs, and steam engines aren't that far fetched the first was was built during the first century possible before.

[evictedSaint]

Low Power Steam: [2] Tyrant, Stabby

I'll do the revision phase in about an hour from now.

[Roboson]

Why would we waste our revision on trying to make a steam engine that's actually weaker/slower than our longboats? We may as well use that revision to just straight up improve the full model. If we revise it to be less good than a long boat, we're going to have to use another design and revision phase to get it into longboats.

Meh.

[andrea]

Wait, is that a full working steam engine?
I thought we were making a simple steam net thing (metal tube, fire on one end, boiling water goes out of the other end pushing the boat),  which would be much, much simpler... oh, well. I should pay more attention i guess. Maybe we can still get it to work.

[Roboson]

Getting an actual engine working would change this whole game. I'm down for low engine if it means we can someday overcome their weather bullshit.