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[andrea]

Revision: Our craftsmen work well, but the needs of the army outpace the capacity of human arms and skills. We now have an enormous supply of machine power in the form of the steam engine, easily shapeable, extremely strong tools thanks to our crystals, abundant fire. In this modern age, the role of a skilled craftsman should not be to craft himself, but to direct the operations of the apprentices operating automatic machines.
Crystal steam powered drills to produce reliable size rifled holes, Standard issue molds for consistency of barrels, magic boosted tree farms to have an easy nearby charcoal access. Many are the innovations in manufacturing that make our cannons easier to produce and maintain, with standard sizes across the army.

This is kind of a synthesis of ebbor's proposals with some fluff, but it makes it sound very ambitious.
I would vote for the steam drill if this is deemed unfeasible.

[10ebbor10]

:
Revision :
1 Barrel bore -10ebbor10

Order :
- Engage upon the edge of the desert. Blow up any Moskurgian fort, then build frost towers under covering fire of our artillery. Ruin their harvest and stop their heating spell.

- Defense against raiders : Have our people thought about placing exploding magic arrows along the camp perimeters, then summoning fire insects to patrol the very same perimeter. An approaching enemy will have 1 of 2 choices. If the approaching enemy doesn't notice the fire insects, they will light the barrels and burn their skirmishers. If they do, then the wind spell they cast to get rid of them will detonate the arrows, sending sharts of glowing hot crystal into the barrels. Either way, the enemy is hoist by their own petard.

[Chiefwaffles]

Andrea, that seems a bit "wasteful" of fluff, in a way. You're making the idea sound way more ambitious than it should be and are taking improvements that could be more useful in an action design. Like the upcoming factory design.

+1ing Ebbor's Barrel Bore and Engage Desert orders. Defense against raiders seems too problematic if it backfires, however. And it looks like Ebbor didn't vote for those orders, so I'm assuming that in writing the votebox.

Revisions
2 - Barrel Bore: 10ebbor10, Chiefwaffles

Orders
1 - Engage upon the edge of the desert. Blow up any Moskurgian fort, then build frost towers under covering fire of our artillery. Ruin their harvest and stop their heating spell:  Chiefwaffles
0 - Defense against raiders : Have our people thought about placing exploding magic arrows along the camp perimeters, then summoning fire insects to patrol the very same perimeter. An approaching enemy will have 1 of 2 choices. If the approaching enemy doesn't notice the fire insects, they will light the barrels and burn their skirmishers. If they do, then the wind spell they cast to get rid of them will detonate the arrows, sending sharts of glowing hot crystal into the barrels. Either way, the enemy is hoist by their own petard:

And @Roboson: Nice idea, but I 100% think cheaper HC1-E's and HA1's is critical here.

[andrea]

Revisions
3 - Barrel Bore: 10ebbor10, Chiefwaffles, Andrea

Orders
1 - Engage upon the edge of the desert. Blow up any Moskurgian fort, then build frost towers under covering fire of our artillery. Ruin their harvest and stop their heating spell:  Chiefwaffles
0 - Defense against raiders : Have our people thought about placing exploding magic arrows along the camp perimeters, then summoning fire insects to patrol the very same perimeter. An approaching enemy will have 1 of 2 choices. If the approaching enemy doesn't notice the fire insects, they will light the barrels and burn their skirmishers. If they do, then the wind spell they cast to get rid of them will detonate the arrows, sending sharts of glowing hot crystal into the barrels. Either way, the enemy is hoist by their own petard:

We can use the barrel bore experience to help with the factory design anyway.

[Roboson]

Blegh, more cannons.

[Roboson]

Also is our wizardite seethrough or is it opaque?

[Chiefwaffles]

So, while we wait for (I assume) the lazy Moskurgians to get off their backs and do something, I'm going to throw around ideas for what to do next round!

1.) Design: Factories. I was going to write this whole thing breaking down RAM's Spell-forged Steamworks proposal and how it was extremely over-ambitious (definitely more-so than the HA1 - just look at the post yourself) and how its benefits were vague and kitchen sink-y, but I decided it wasn't worth it and will instead post a tentative design proposal for next design phase. RAM's just felt like overengineering, to be honest. And on second thought, I shall make multiple types of factory designs because that is what I do.
Future Design: Crystalworks
Crystal is the future. Sure, it may last 24 hours and disappears when the enemy gets nearby, but it's still the future, and the Crystalworks shall make that a reality.
The crystalworks is, essentially, a building placed by the river (which I assume exists). This river powers steam engines that power the mundane portions of the factory.

The Crystalworks is simple: Instead of wasting wizards to make exact shapes of crystal, we let machinery do it for us. Crystal is constantly being summoned by circuits, yet instead of a single circuit making perfect ready-made crystal shapes, the work is divided into multiple circuits across multiple "conveyors" powered by steam engines. These circuits progressively work on the crystal - the crystal starts as raw "blobs" but its hardness, weight, shape, and more is refined and manipulated as the crystal moves throughout the Crystalworks. Eventually the finished product is deposited in large storage containers that are regularly emptied to be brought to the field.
The result is much cheaper crystal items and products.

We've found that crystals are, in a way, "bound" to the summoning wizard. Being dispelled is likely breaking the connection to the wizard. So what if we made the crystals connected to themselves? Then the crystal is a solid object, now completely free of magic and immune to dispelling. The nature of the circuits used in the Crystalworks works great for this - the circuits can easily make "isolated" Crystal because the circuits are "isolated" themselves. No wizard is making this crystal.
The result is permanent crystals no longer tied to magic and therefore no longer dispelable.

As a very minor feature in addition to the selling points of the Crystalworks, it's created in a very modular configuration. It has multiple crystal lines and more can be added easily. These lines can be configured without difficulty to produce different products as we come up with new crystal-based designs.

Finally, powering these circuits is not an easy task. The steam engines may power the mundane aspects such as these conveyors, but a way to power the circuits constantly summoning and manipulating crystal was the hardest aspect of the Spellworks. The result is a series of gems placed in a central part of the Crystalworks that store magical energy. These gems are based heavily on our anti-magic charms, but don't include the "absorb magic" part. They simple store magic. Apprentices can easily input magic into them and then very simple circuits can deliver this magical energy to the rest of the factory. These gems do need to be routinely charged by apprentices, but a mere handful of apprentices can work together to keep the factory powered constantly thanks to the fact that it doesn't need to be constantly charged.

The main goal here is to just make crystal better and lay the groundwork to use it (and metal I guess) in our magitech designs. We can still use our metal bonus - things don't have to be 100% crystal or 100% metal.
Crystalworks Design Principles (In order of importance)
1.) Magic batteries
2.) Anchored (permanent+dispel-immune) Crystals.
3.) Cheap crystal anything in the future
Crystalworks Benefits
1.) Make existing crystal weapons usable again
2.) Make current + future crystal designs cheaper.
3.) Helps Crystalclad, crystal armor, more crystal weapons, etc.
4.) Provides infrastructure for complicated designs. (Things like the HA1 can be made to use crystal ammunition. It'd be lighter, stronger, and cheaper to make+treansport. Crystal can be worked into a lot of designs to let the Crystalworks "cover" them in terms of manufacturing. Just be sure to mention it in their designs)


More ideas to come! I was going to write out a plan for designs+revisions but then I got carried away when I looked deeper into RAM's steamworks proposal.
EDIT: Probably. I'm actually really liking the Crystalworks.
And feedback is greatly appreciated, everyone. Feedback now lets me adjust the design to a consensus everyone likes before we have to vote, or I can just come up with a new design if people don't like it. It just makes the whole process easier and better to have feedback.

[Chiefwaffles]

So the whole Gem Battery thing seems to be a pretty useful thing for designs in general. While I'm not afraid of putting it in another design as long as it's the focus of that design (Crystalworks is just "more advanced circuits + battery gems -> cheaper permanent crystal"), having it in its own design would make the whole thing a lot easier.

Really, gem batteries aren't that hard. Our antimagic charms are batteries - they just aren't configured to input/store energy in the right way. Again, I have no doubts that it wouldn't be a huge problem putting it in a design in addition to other things, but still.

Future Design: Magegems (New names extremely appreciated)
We've begun to explore the new areas of magic without the presence of our mages. Magegems are gems (or crystals) based on the anti-magic charm. But where the anti-magic charm actively absorbed ambient energy, a magegem does nothing of the sort. Energy can be actively input into the gem by a mage of any skill level, then the gem can be safely handled by anyone; mundane or not.
A magegem does nothing on its own other than storing energy. But when inserted into a compatible device, circuits on the device can actively draw energy from the magegem, allowing for items with much more drastic effects. Without a magegem, circuits are limited to sustaining low-power existing spells. But with magegems, circuits can actually cast spells and enact significant changes to the surrounding reality. HA1 and HCx series weapons will be able to fire without a mage casting the required spells. Steam engines will be able to start, stop, and last longer without a magician. And more!

Converting our current designs to work with magegems is a simple task. Most modern designs utilize circuits, which means all that has to be done is to configure the circuits to draw power from the magegem instead of a mage. Non-circuit based devices can also be converted fairly easily, as the lack of a circuit suggests making one wouldn't be a complicated task for that particular device. For example, the HA1 already utilizes circuits, so a slot can be very easily added to it and the circuits configured to draw energy from an input magegem.

Magegems at the moment are planned to be only distributed in bulk to sites making use of them, like artillery. But if our soldiers ever require them, they can be issued with a handful of magegems to use on the field to power equipment. Magegems are designed to be reusable - soldiers are instructed to safely store depleted magegems until an apprentice is available to recharge them. But even if there are no apprentices available, the energy stored in magegems should last for long enough. Artillery configured to use magegems, for example, may ultimately require apprentices to charge the magegems, but as each artillery piece won't require the constant attention of apprentices, a single apprentice can be assigned to many different artillery pieces with the simple task of recharging depleted magegems.

As a part of this design, HA1 Onslaughts have been tweaked to accept magegems. Considerations were made to equip steam engines and other devices with compatibility for magegems, but that was deemed out of scope for now. Future iterations of those devices can be made compatible and the ease of converting likely means adding magegem compatibility can be done as part of a larger revision.



I'm okay with this instead of the factory. In fact, it could even maybe be a revision to the anti-magic charm.
Possibilities:
- 1 step closer to magic rifles. (Magegems = magazines)
- Significant step towards weaning our magitech off of the dependence of apprentices and freeing our mages.
- Many "general" uses like anchored crystal, better steam engines, better artillery, etc.
- They're just cool.


And again, feedback for this + crystalworks pleaaase

[evictedSaint]

Revision: Steam-Powered Barrel Boring [2]
In an effort to automate production, we take some time to update the means by which we produce our equipment: specifically, our artillery.

Cannons can be cast as an entire, single, solid piece.  This requires more steel initially, but because we will be boring through the center we can recycle the shavings.  Once cast and cooled (which takes some time) we line the cannon up with a steam engine and secure it to a moving wooden rail.  A wizard casts a pre-set crystal boring bit, which features a screw-like design and is the same length as the cannon it will be boring.  The bit is then geared (which takes some doing) to the steam engine to massively increase torque.  The cannon is then guided by four men and pushed up against the giant, crystal bore while the wizard engages the steam engine.  The process of boring through takes all day, but the result is an incredibly smooth, straight internal barrel.  This (as well as the boring process) increases the reliability of the cannon and further lowers the chance of explosion, although the cannon still requires several tempering processes to reduce the brittle nature of cast steel.  This new casting process takes advantage of our ore influx, meaning our HC1-E's are now merely Expensive.

Because the HA1 already takes advantage of our available ore and the limiting factor is the process of rifling and the golden circuitry, and unfortunately must stay as Very Expensive.  They do take advantage of this system, though, and the accuracy and reliability is improved slightly.

[Chiefwaffles]

Okay. That works. I'm happy with that. Better reliability and accuracy by a bit is great, and tre plentiful HC1-E's would be worth their own revision.

So for now I'd say we focus on other things and maybe if we get an expense credit, use it on the HA1.
And no feedback/ideas on the factory/crystaworks/magegems stuff?


EDIT: Oh yeah, Evicted, got any rough count of how many HA1's we're deploying now? I'm just curious, as it doesn't really change anything.

[evictedSaint]

Your HC1-E's are now as common as your HC1's (which are now obsolete).  Your HA1's are as common as your HC1-E's were; three or so per theatre. 

[FallacyofUrist]

Does the HC1(not E) now have Normal cost? So we can spam it?

[evictedSaint]

No, because they were already produced with the available ore.

[Light forger]

You know the whole not putting some form of flamesheirker shell back I lied... probably.
On to others things:

Crystalworks:
To much too soon. Your trying to get not only a full magic factory but, also better crystals in the same design. Which like the HA1 probably won't fly. Further more until we get a better way to use magic other then apprentices spam more stuff won't help that much. On that note.
Magegems:
Better suited to being one design the main thing I would change is to make each gem hold a preset spell and then active it on command. So we can just make it use whatever spell makes our cannons work and hand them out en mass and, then also possibly let our troops use spells like fog without a mage. Chance are this will be design I vote for next time when the shells fail again.

[Chiefwaffles]

Magegems being one spell invalidates the point.
The point is a universal source of energy to use for inanimate objects. It works for that purpose.

Crystalworks I'd argue against. It just progresses on circuits and introduces a more simpler variant of magegems. I think that's fine.