Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Roboson]

Just couple ideas:

Danger Sense: Counter lucky shot by predicting the shot, thus dodging.

Ship Repair: Advantfe of Dog Wand. As our ship hulls are wood and can summon wood. We can fix our battered ships at sea. Just accelerate/induce haul growth to repair.


Land Ship: My take on steam engine water wagon. Has four huge wheels with blades. Armor. Steam engine with exhaust jet for blasting, mobile hybrid Cannon and sluts for bows/fire balls. Could double as troop transport or invest in a Sister unit as a ancient apc (hey it exists. Trojan horse. Just combat efficient.)

Danger sense is new tech, but they have it so maybe we can get a cheapening from observing. I prefer living magic, we can make crystal shields that observe and defend autonomously. Their antimagic is getting more range, but it is still very short ranged, and we should be able to make a magic syphon that acts as a barrier against it, and it would stop prediction also.

I like transforming still-living trees(Something coastal for salt-resistance) into ship hulls, for the same effect, but more awesome...

sluts for bows/fire balls

Would be crippling effective against Moskurg, but we don't want to go there...

It would be nice if our cannons could be used to take out their ballistas. Or their mages. Or their commanders. Right now it sounds like we can aim them, but like all smoothbore weapons, they don't fly straight.

Is mundane accuracy going to help with that? We can't even see them until we are inside of their preferred range. I figure that we are aiming at locations rather than materiel...

After doing a little research, I have found that ballistas really don't fire all that far. It seems that medieval ballistas have an effective range of around 500 meters, and for the first few centuries after their creation, it was only around 300 meters. I found a modern ballista that's so large it barely fits in the flat of a truck and is made of modern materials with modern methods. It has a range of 750-800 meters. That said it has rather impressive grouping at that range (I posted its firing data below). Still that's a best case scenario situation, as its made out of advanced modern materials, includes a motor to prepare it to fire, and is mounted on a flatbed.

Cannons from the same time periods (14th century) could fire a cannonball upwards of a mile (1600 meters). Which means if we get our cannon optimized to reasonable levels, we should never have an issue with ballistas taking them out.

So to answer your question, if we've gotten into range of them, we're too close. But as long as visibility is good, we should be able to see their position.

[evictedSaint]

It still out-ranges longbows, which is the crucial aspect.

"Short, Medium, and Long-Range" would probably be grouped under "Short-to-medium Range" by todays standards.

That being said, if you continue down this line you will eventually out-pace Moskurg due to using a design five centuries ahead of the times (which I am kindly allowing)

[Chiefwaffles]

So once Moskurg sees the cannon, what will happen?
I'm thinking since it's less of a "special" thing and is harder to hard counter combined with the fact that it isn't a gamechanger right off the bat, they may move to make some tech/magic to help them in defense.

I'm just going to lay out my design and revision right now. I'll repost them once the actual phases start, but while we're waiting I may as well. Don't actually try to vote for anything until we reach the respective phases too, please.
Design: Disrupting Mist (This is a design because the goal is to make it more resistant to wind and to counter lucky strike)
Disrupting mist is an iteration of obscuring mist. It has two advantages: One is that the mist is magically "anchored" to its intended location, whether that location is mobile or not. This prevents wind and similar effects from merely blowing the mist away and rendering it less useful. It also means that as those summoning the mist don't have to constantly summon it to account for the mist being blown away and as such the mages casting Disrupting Mist have a bit more free time on their hands than those casting the previous version.
Secondly and more importantly, the mist works almost as a magical "jamming field" via the wonders of Mathematics. It doesn't disrupt magic performed within, but continuous effects will have greatly reduced effectiveness if not just fizzling outright and attempting to channel magic into something inside the fog from outside is impossibly difficult.
--------
The idea behind disrupting mist is to use a design for an iteration, allowing to do more than just a revision and not suffer penalties for being new. It's really just an improved Obscuring Mist. The first advantage is it being resistant to wind, but this is low-priority and I think it may not be the worst idea to scrap it in order to more reliably get the second advantage: Countering lucky strike. Lucky strike has been the bane of our forces' existence. We need to counter it and Disrupting Mist should do the trick.


Revision: Extremer-range Hybrid Cannons (Name pending.)
The name is again self-explanatory. Improvements to increase the range of our hybrid cannons even further.

What advantages does this have? It's simple. Any kind of success in this should allow hybrid cannons to outrange anything Moskurg can produce. It also allows us to strike even further behind enemy lines and/or have our hybrid cannons in more safe spots. It's also still more effective at sea. Right now, I'm predicting that hybrid cannons will just roughly even the playing field at sea. But with improved range, our ships will just straight-up outrange theirs.


I also want to improve on plant magic (for impromptu cover, skirmishing, and actual jungle restoration) and hybrid cannon accuracy. If we get the revision credit we can address one of these perhaps, but regardless - I believe the upper two things are more important.

[Roboson]

That being said, if you continue down this line you will eventually out-pace Moskurg due to using a design five centuries ahead of the times (which I am kindly allowing)

Which I for one, am quite appreciative of. Steam power is a bit anachronistic for the 10th century, but man is it fun. And with some of the magic things going on, I don't think its outside the realm of possibility.

Edit:
@ChiefWaffles: I think a sort of magic jamming device would be lovely. Basically it would differ from antimagic in that it interrupts persistent effects. So it would jam their lucky strike and mind reading, but wouldn't interrupt wind or fireballs. I think that's something feasible we should look into after we finish up our naval advances.

[andrea]

To be fair, steam cannon idea seems to date, once again, to  ancient Greek world. What was missed in terms of effectiveness was a way to flash evaporate the steam before the ball exits the muzzle  and we solve that by fireball. There are many other things to solve, but we can use magic rather than decades of research.

That said, thank you oh so kind GM.

[10ebbor10]

Alright, I raised tundra garrison to 55% and lowered jungle cavalry to 25%. I would have preferred higher amounts of cavalry, but I suppose this works.
Final Proposal?
25% of new apprentices (I assume we were already referring to apprentices)
55% of tundra garrison (including cavalry)
25% Jungle Cavalry
50% all non-jungle cavalry
4 cannons
All the crystal weapons we can give them without sacrificing production in other areas.

Objection !

I really don't like the idea of stripping part of the mountain forces. An enemy attack there would be devastating, costing us our cannons, swords, steam engine and armor. I formulated the idea of stripping the Tundra precisely so we could avoid that

[Azzuro]

Welp, looks like I missed everything. But you all voted the way I would have anyway, so all's good.

Alright, I raised tundra garrison to 55% and lowered jungle cavalry to 25%. I would have preferred higher amounts of cavalry, but I suppose this works.
Final Proposal?
25% of new apprentices (I assume we were already referring to apprentices)
55% of tundra garrison (including cavalry)
25% Jungle Cavalry
50% all non-jungle cavalry
4 cannons
All the crystal weapons we can give them without sacrificing production in other areas.

I'll second that list.

I would prefer to send ALL the new apprentices off to fight. Look at it this way:
-it's a relatively risk-free way for them to gain combat experience, given that the enemy has no magic.
-Moskurg has the anti-magic advantage, so I doubt spamming apprentices would have more than a marginal impact on the current battlefield. It's a matter of comparative advantage, those apprentices would be better used helping us gain that revision credit than struggling against Moskurg antimagic.

I'm assuming 'new' here means the extra apprentices that we get from having spent the expense credit on the Academy, while the usual intake of apprentices sent to the battlefield remains unchanged.

Oh, and to chime in on the whole ballista-vs-cannon discussion, they are fundamentally different weapons. As I understand it, ballistae were primarily anti-personnel weapons, short ranged with extreme accuracy, and were not only used in siege warfare but also in regular battles where there was time to set them up. Ballistae eventually fell out of use with the decline of the Roman Empire, supplanted by the crossbow in the anti-personnel role and catapults and trebuchets in the siege weapon role.

In contrast, early cannons were only ever intended as anti-fortification weapons, and had the accuracy thereof, being used only in siege warfare to plink away at enemy walls outside the range of archers. Our hybrid cannon, being steam-powered can't be easily compared to gunpowder cannons. However, it seems to have a far shorter range and higher accuracy than normal cannons.

EDIT: Ebbor, I don't think losing a single piece of territory in the mountains would instantly raise the cost of our metal items, but rather remove the bonus we get for designing new ones. Can the GM confirm?

[Chiefwaffles]

I'm pretty sure losing a single piece in the mountains would lose the metal bonus. But it's definitely possible that it doesn't. After all, we get the bonus for completely securing the mountains.

And -1 to any proposal involving sending all of the new apprentices. I'm nearly certain that combat experience is not modeled in the combat, and their new anti-magic doesn't make our apprentices useless. Just because it has mid-range doesn't mean it envelops all of mid-range all the time.

[Azzuro]

I'm pretty sure losing a single piece in the mountains would lose the metal bonus. But it's definitely possible that it doesn't. After all, we get the bonus for completely securing the mountains.

And -1 to any proposal involving sending all of the new apprentices. I'm nearly certain that combat experience is not modeled in the combat, and their new anti-magic doesn't make our apprentices useless. Just because it has mid-range doesn't mean it envelops all of mid-range all the time.

Er, that's what I'm saying. Losing part of the mountains would mean we don't get the 'expense credit' for designing new primarily metal items anymore, but it shouldn't retroactively remove it for existing items and drive the cost up.

Anyway, I really doubt Moskurg would choose this turn to attack the mountains. I mean, we have the advantage in the mountains, and having just secured a piece of the jungle, they should be choosing to focus their efforts there where we're slowly losing rather than in the mountains, where we have the climate and terrain advantage.

And regarding the issue of the new apprentices, I was thinking that our magic is the greatest advantage we have over whatever Moskurg may offer. They have a numerical advantage over us, so they'll be able to send relatively more troops, who are also more adapted to the desert climate of the foreign land. So our only advantage over Moskurg is that we can send away more mages.

[Chiefwaffles]

Ah, sorry for misunderstanding.
And apprentices: I personally wouldn't be against 50% or under of our new apprentices, but I'm still pushing for ~25%.

Ebbor: If you don't like my proposal, mind adjusting the parts you don't like?

[RAM]

I would suggest that you change your mist design into something that has no physical component. It would be completely immune to wind and more magically active, while still obscuring vision by the power of 'being able to see the magic gather in the wizard's hands looks cooler so therefore magic can be made visible before(or even without) physically manifesting'. It would still be conjuration by the virtue of using the same principals of generating a magical construct in a region, just never bothering to give it a physical component. Normally this would only be possible with illusion, but mathemagics allows us to tease apart the essence of conjuration and pulling out the bit that makes magic gather into a location and assume a form while leaving out the bit about that form being physical and sticking in some of the observations of pure magic we have from antimagic.

[Andres]

That being said, if you continue down this line you will eventually out-pace Moskurg due to using a design five centuries ahead of the times (which I am kindly allowing)

And this time it actually is magic that's responsible!

[Azzuro]

Final Proposal?
50% of new apprentices (I assume we were already referring to apprentices)
55% of tundra garrison (including cavalry)
25% Jungle Cavalry
50% all non-jungle cavalry
4 cannons
All the crystal weapons we can give them without sacrificing production in other areas.

Edited. It's assumed that the foreigners will be providing supply and transport for them, right?

Also, while I really like the Disrupting Mist design, can we please please get around to making the Fog-O-War ships next turn, barring Hypothetical Moskurg Magical Superweapons? I mean, it's been goodness knows how many turns since we had the idea but didn't getting around to doing it for various reasons, and I wouldn't like Moskurg to suddenly capture the Western Sea and cause the Jungle front to collapse as well, undoing our efforts.

[10ebbor10]

On apprentices

Our cannons use mages to operate. That means that we need those apprentices to deploy them at full efficiency. Even more so if we still want to use all other spells.

In contrast, early cannons were only ever intended as anti-fortification weapons, and had the accuracy thereof, being used only in siege warfare to plink away at enemy walls outside the range of archers. Our hybrid cannon, being steam-powered can't be easily compared to gunpowder cannons. However, it seems to have a far shorter range and higher accuracy than normal cannons

Early cannons had fire rates measured in single digits per day. Ours fires much faster. The comparison does not work.


Adjusted Proposal?
25% of new apprentices (I assume we were already referring to apprentices)
55% of tundra garrison (including cavalry)
25% Jungle Cavalry
4 cannons
All the crystal weapons we can give them without sacrificing production in other areas

[Chiefwaffles]

I just really want to get rid of that stupid lucky strike. It's been plaguing us at sea and land for way too long and giving them a huge advantage.

And @RAM: That feels a bit like it'd be too much of a progression away from current mist designs. Currently our mist is just magically-summoned dense mist. Your thing while cool and something that should be visited on in the future, is somewhat similar but too far off. The core idea behind disrupting mist is "magically-charged mist".

And my iteration on Ebbor and Azzuro's proposals: (Basically just Ebbor's but with +5% apprentices to make up for the loss in non-jungle cavalry)
Final Proposal V.2
30% of new apprentices (I assume we were already referring to apprentices)
55% of tundra garrison (including cavalry)
25% Jungle Cavalry
4 cannons
All the crystal weapons we can give them without sacrificing production in other areas