We actually have nothing that's worth selling to a person without magical ability. The wands of fireball and dogwood are out, as they require magic. The crystal axes and lances aren't really permanent. He's already passed over the steam engine. And there's the cannon, but they're not exactly magical where he comes from.
He has some minor magical ability, but cannot use the National Effort Wand of Fireballs you tried to sell him. The steam engine was mundane, and he made it explicitly clear he was interested in magical artifacts. And then you guys sold him a crate of wooden nickels.
GM : What happennedto the Army we send out. Shoukdn't they be back by now?
I'm so sorry, I forgot to write it up in the last battle report. They have returned, having successfully repelled the invaders from the foreigners homelands. You sustained negligable casualties due to having more highly trained and better equipped troops.
Uh.
Evicted, can we do what Roboson's proposing? Please?
Sure, I'll allow that.
HC1-E Mobile
-snip-
Your HC1-E's currently retreat at the same pace Moskurgs front line advances. If they develop faster troops or equipment, this design would be beneficial. At the moment I cannot see any application for this carriage beyond
eventually making a tank.
So...
They managed to make a fireweapon that is longer ranged than our fireballs, magic proof, apperently cheaper, seemingly deadlier, stays in place, and all that.
Well, I'll scrap the range, that comes from their ballistae.
I'm going to call upon Rule 2.
2. Keep in mind that I am not a historian, so there will sometimes be mistakes and inaccuracies. Even in the best of circumstances, minor inconsistencies are a common occurrence. If some piece of equipment is imbalanced/unrealistic, I might consider changing it if you bring it up once -AND ONLY ONCE- and politely state your argument. However, I will err on the side of consistency with my own game, I do not like to go back and change things. Sometimes it is more important to simply keep the game running smoothly than other concerns
My argument here is simple.
It is inconsistent for a single design roll to be vastly more powerfull than several design rolls made over a long period of time.
To start: By virtue of being magical, magical fire must be better than normal fire. If it isn't (ie, mundane fireweapons are easier to develop than fireballs), then we got heavily disadvantaged when choosing our starting wand. I assume Iituem did not intend that, so to be consistent magical fire must be better than normal fire.
After all, I would not expect a simple designed peptalk to defeat Moskurg's wand of heroism.
Now, the modifiers we got for our fireball wand were significant. We got -1 for Firewand reverse engineering, and -1 for making it stick for an hour. I emphatize that was with a design bonus.
Secondly, the design is ahistorical. The molotov cocktail was invented in the second world war. That is several centuries further away than our steam engine. Sure, alternative fire things existed in history, but those all relied on rare resources Moskurg should not posses.
Third, it's not consistent with our own rolls. When we designed the Design: Antimagic Bombs [6, 4, 5], which were even based on existing tech, we had serious limitations in range, applicability and damage. It was an explosive arrow that needed repeated fire to pierce shields. It started fires, but only very tiny ones. It had shrapnel, but stopped by armor. Our enemy does not share any of those disadvantages for their fire-stuff. In fact, their fire-stuff is completely immune to means of stopping fire.
Therefore, I do not think the design is consistent with either historical interpretations nor game mechanics as applied before now.
First off, thank you for calmly and respectfully bringing this to my attention. I have mulled this over and come to a decision.
To begin with, it is not "a single design roll". It is the culmination of several turns of focused work:
A design to develop ballistas.
A revision to make ballistas stop killing their crews.
A design exploring the concept of alternate ammunition.
A revision for cheaper ballistas and better crews.
A design for fire ammunition.
A revision to make fire ammunition stop killing their crews.
Furthermore, their design isn't based on futuristic molotov cocktails, it's based on Greek Fire - which was invented nearly three
centuries ago. It has longer range as a byproduct of their ballista design, but the area of affect is smaller than your fireballs and cannot be spontaneously generated by a mage.
Now,
all of that being said, I will concede that their effect is more pronounced than it should be. Namely the splash damage should be dialed back to a meter in range and successfully striking a ballista with the ammo loaded should result in a cook-off. I will make these changes in the next combat phase.
On the subject of respectful conduct, I do not want name-calling, insults, or hostile remarks. You are all on a
team, working
together to develop your side. Calling someones design "useless" and shutting them down immediately discourages creativity. There's nothing wrong with pointing out flaws with a design, but remember that your remarks don't need to be confrontational to get your point across. If you're going several pages with just the two of you arguing back and forth, realize your debate is going nowhere and agree to disagree. I hope you guys are mature enough to refrain from insulting one another or resorting to name calling, because that would be a stupid reason to have to ban someone. I don't want to type this out again, so please conduct yourself in a manner befitting a
professional Arstotzkan Mathemagician.
Author
Topic: Wands Race - [Arstotzka] {COMPLETED} (Read 393379 times)