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[10ebbor10]

They are not.

They are Very Expensive, and so are our ships.

Oh, and GM, you forgot to include our newest designs.

[Chiefwaffles]

They explicitly are. Read the report again.

Despite all these flaws, it can - barely - match pace with a Moskurg ship once at full steam.  It's not as manueverable, but it does currently out-range everything Moskurg has deployed.  Due to the very expensive nature of the steam engines, cannons, and ships, the Fog-O-War is a Very Expensive as well, especially without the mines in the mountains to suppliment the high metal cost.  We will be able to deploy three in each sea theatre, although decreasing the cost of its components will allow us to outfit more of our fleet with these upgrades.  Very [Very] Expensive.

[10ebbor10]

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Very Very expensive does not exist.

I though it was just fluff, as the GM said earlier.

It's "technically" just Very Expensive.

A new tier invented solely to put our ships in, despite the fact that our lucky roll said they should have been just normal very expensive. We got lucky that it wasn't a nat effort, let us then profit from that luck. Moskurg gets lucky too.

The idea that cost of components increases cost of vessel exists only for our steamship. It's applied in no other situation. Look at our cavalry, for example. We did not have lances for all of them, but that doesn't mean they dissappeared, our cavalry forces simply used other weapons. Look at our anti-wizards, they use expensive charms, but are cheap. My guess it is the same for the Moskurgians. They did not get less archers or ballistae due to relying on lucky strike.

Logically, what should happen is that the expensive parts serve as limiter. Ie, we can't make an expensive ship using very expensive artillery. But since in our case all parts are very expensive, no shortage occurs.

Just because our original boats were very bad (and thus very expensive), doesn't mean our new ones should suddenly get a new ruleset to nerf them.  I'd rather that our old vessels are retconned to being just expensive than this inconsistent mess where one design gets treated differently than everything else. What I'd like most, of course, is for the design to be treated as it should.

We spend more than enough design actions on this thing than to deserve yet another, "you are still losing".

[Roboson]

It's... not an antimagic bomb?
It's based on the antimagic but the goal is to cancel out enemy magic near where it hits. When we have existing technology that does this.

It's the same thing as loading an anti-magic charm into a shell but with a better range, it's not a singular point of failure (think of it like this: 100x1 = 100.)

I'd like to point out that we've delayed a counter to lucky strike what, 3 turns in a row?
Lucky strike is the reason for the success of their ballistae.
It's why their fire bombs are so effective.
It's why we're losing at land and sea.
We need to counter it. We've delayed it too many times and delaying it again isn't going to work.

The exploding anti-magic field is not really a jammer, and if the lucky strike counts as an enchantment, it won't counter that, just how our antimagic doesn't dispel our axes. It's a variant on the antimagic bomb, and I don't think it will do a whole lot for us. I just don't think it's actually capable of stopping lucky strike, and it definitely won't go off in their antimagic fields.


Your "Hopeless" design was far superior, in my opinion.

[10ebbor10]

Yeah, if we make a bomb, we need something that goes off in anti-magic fields.

The original was dissapointing, least we could get something that works out of this one.

[Chiefwaffles]

Yeah. This kind of thing is why I'm voting for multiple things. Heretic shells, the AM shell, new artillery, all are viable options.
Though I do think the shells are the best choice for now.

[andrea]

the main point wouldn't even be to have the shell explode, but to leave it there sucking up magic.

anyway, making artillery cheap will work better next turn. Remember that holding mountains gives a bonus when designing metal stuff. right now we have no such bonus, so we should leave heavy metal things to next turn. And counter lucky strike, possibly.

(vote jammers! vote jammers!)

[evictedSaint]

It's a weapon you'd have less of than your regular ships that's not quite a national effort.  There wasn't an expense level to describe that so I made up one - lowering expense would push it down to the same expense as the rest of your ships, but at the moment you have more than a national effort would suggest.

I'm...honestly getting pretty tired of this game.

[10ebbor10]

It's a weapon you'd have less of than your regular ships that's not quite a national effort.  There wasn't an expense level to describe that so I made up one - lowering expense would push it down to the same expense as the rest of your ships, but at the moment you have more than a national effort would suggest.

I'm...honestly getting pretty tired of this game.

I know what it says, I don't see why. We spend a ton of effort designing the engine, revising it, getting the cannons working. And then we get a lucky roll despite the -3 modifier, and all it does is get us a marginally better result than if we rolled a 2.

On a side note, a better case for my argument.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wall of Fire: [3, 2-1, 3-1]   Very expensive
Anti-Magical Charms [2-1, 4-2, 2-1] Very expensive
The Arzotskan Academy for Adequate Apprenticeship: [5-1, 4-2, 6-2] very expensive

Magic Lance: [1, 3, 6] Expensive
Crystal Long Axes [3+1, 4+1, 3] Expensive
Hybrid Cannon [4+1-1, 5+1-1, 5-1]  expensive


These are all rolls relevant to Expense levels. Based on this data our steam ship should actually be expensive, not very expensive. To have it instead end up a tier higher is just weird.

[Chiefwaffles]

Evicted, I just want to let you know that I really appreciate what you're doing. This has probably been one of my favorite forum games that I've ever participated in, and it's almost entirely thanks to you (And in a part to Iituem, but by far mostly you).
Everyone makes mistakes, and you've done a great job - far better than I could have ever done myself, on a lesser note - despite them.
I'm positive that everyone playing on both sides greatly appreciate your efforts, and despite some people or entire sides trying to point out inconsistencies or errors, I'm sure that those people still appreciates everything you've done.

So I'd personally say, just try and make it fun. I know "fun" is relative and vague, but still. You don't have to bend to the will of the players and shouldn't feel pressure to. Rather, just ask if you agree with the arguments people present. It's your game, and if you don't agree with the players on the reasoning for something, in the end, it's your reasoning that wins because it's your game. Like for example, if someone were to directly ask me what I thought Ebbor is right in his expense thing, I would agree with him, but I cannot emphasize enough how much I would be fine if you made a judgement call going against him. Like, I wouldn't be "ugh, fine I guess", but rather I'd literally be fine. It's a game and I trust in the GM to make it fun. Just do what you think is the best idea and then present it to the players. People are playing because they find it fun to play. I'm most certainly not the authority or even that knowledgeable in forum games, but I still want to say all this because again, this is one of my favorite forum games that I've ever participated again.

[Andres]

I'm not significantly opposed to a new artillery design but a revision that works at sea is very important. I'll be fine if we get better artillery this design phase. 

Also, shouldn't the AS-HC2-E actually be named the AS-HC3?

We can revise our current ship to be cheaper. Our commander said it wouldn't even be a contest if we just had enough ships.

The design is based on the HC1-E. The HC2 has too many bugs to base a design off of that.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[andrea]

what chiefwaffles was proposing was a revision to the steam engine, which could make the ship cheaper AND more effective.

HC2-E already exists, it is the extreme range version of HC2. it was made automatically.

evictedsaint, I quote waffles entirely. This was the second best arms race after Sensei's. you did a great job and I hope you can continue.

[Chiefwaffles]

Andres: The name doesn't mean "HCn: Based off of HC(n-1)". It just means the next actual version of cannon. The AS-HC3 should be the proper name because it's an actual new version of the cannon.
And yeah, revising the Fog-O-War cheaper could definitely work, but I'm a bit nervous of the concept of such a sinkable fleet. But I still think revising the steam engine to be lighter is the best option for the reasons I stated, and what Andrea just posted.

[RAM]

Wait... if Roboson is a character now, can it be selected with "char(rand())"
Oh, wait, it is kill_char(rand())
huh, that seems like poor coding to me, I feel as though there should be a selection process specific for characters, just feeding an unbounded random number in there seems risky and unreliable. I mean, sure, there are ways of dealing with it, but you never know when you might have more characters than possible random values and just dividing it down will tend to leave you with an uneven overlap, slightly increasing the likelihood of a low-numbered character being selected.

Oh, wait, on topic? Umm, I feel as though wands are nice. they address our current problem, enough cold will kill a flame, and learning wands is a nice step towards magic access to the masses.

Also also, my wood is the best wood! We have lots of wooden stuff, and this is basically reactive armour, it explodes as it breaks down, so fire especially, but probably also piercing impacts, will cause a small explosion at the point of impact. It makes sense scientifically(well, okay, not even remotely, but sort-of), because trees are already high-energy and crystals are high-energy and crystals are brittle so will tend to release energy on impact rather than transfer it(although I might be a bit ambitious with the thing not chain-reacting, but the individual explosion are literally microscopic, it is only when lots of cells break at once that it is noticeable, and it would tend to be angled towards the facing that was breached...). It makes sense thematically because we really like our crystals, and making better wood is an obvious application of our plant magic, reactive armour is just a nice surprise from an in-character perspective... And it makes sense militarily because they are putting fire all over everything and this is wood that is pretty much immune to their fire, except that it splashes it around in the direction it came from, which could be unfortunate if it landed directly on top of a plank, but are tiny little gobs really that much of a worry?

[Chiefwaffles]

Personally I think you "under-marketed" the wooden boards a bit, RAM. Their name is misleading and the description is somewhat vague - I thought they were actual wooden boards for a while before carefully looking at them again.
Also, Roboson, out of curiosity, do you prefer the Hopeless or Heretic shells? Hopeless would need a bit of refinement to make it a bit more anti-divination versus anti-prayer (same principle though) but it still works. I'm asking because isn't the Heretic shell pretty functionally similar to the Hopeless?

Anyways, a FUTURE design based off of RAM's living crystal ideas.
Future Design: AS-DF1 "Gallant" Crystal Barrier
Fortifications are generally a good thing to have.
Fortifications generally take a while to construct.
Our mathemagicians, being the genius Arstotzkans that they are, have come up with a solution to this problem: The living crystal. In the past, a more eccentric lead Mathemagician suggested the use of using the "spark of life" imbued to the fire wasps our mages summon in combination with crystal could lead to interesting results. Now, as our mages have observed in the field, our fire wasps aren't exactly smart. This leads to problems, but we must start somewhere.

The AS-Deployable Barrier 1 "Gallant" uses this living crystal in its core design. Ultimately, the intention of the design is to be distributed to as many mundane and magical troops as possible.
Prior to activation and in its "default" form, the AS-DF1 takes the form of a small crystal "stone" - almost like a gemstone - stored in a very simple case on the person. In order to activate it, an Arstotzkan soldier merely has to take it out of its case, apply pressure, and place it where the barrier is desired. Once this is done, the crystal stone rapidly grows out into the shape of a large barricade - big enough to completely shield a huddled group of roughly 3-5 people (depending on how huddled they are) and/or an HCx. This is accomplished via the use of stored energy in the crystal imbued at its creation; enough pressure triggers a chain-reaction, unleashing the energy. Normally this would result in a magical explosion (multiple people were lost during testing), but the "spark of life" imbued in the crystal guides the energy into growing the crystal into the shape of a useable barrier. Because of how fast this chain-reaction is, the crystal expands with speed comparable to a bomb, and is thus very useful in the field.

The crystal, once deployed, has the same maintenance requires as regular crystal. Allowing it to be used as temporary fortifications mid-battle or for easy construction of more long-term constructions with an apprentice or other mage present to maintain it. The recommended use for soldiers is for protection during artillery and other ranged fire, general-use barricades, or for shielding artillery. It also has application in the sea - for shielding against hostile bombardment. Our mathemagicians theorize it could be used in the field to patch-up holes in our ships, but they're uncertain if that can make it in the final design. If not, a simple revision to the imbued life can allow it to intelligently patch up holes it's placed in.

Now, this is an incredibly simple application of the "spark of life" - it just uses it to grow, but with this pioneering design completed, we could explore much further possibilities in imbued life!


If we do use this design and do it after something like the AS-HC3, then we can take advantage of the fact that we would have already explored into "stored energy". Not exclusive to the AS-HC3 design of course, but anything that uses stored magical energy.
Also, note to self, this could be revised to work even better at sea - with minor improvements to the life imbued, the crystal could instead grow in holes of ships to patch the hole.

EDIT: P.S. more votes from undecided people in general would be nice, by the way. I think the heretic shell, anti-magic shell, and any of the new artillery (HA1 is the best though clearly) are all viable options.