I lied. It's magegems.
Design: Magegems
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 and HC1-E's 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.
TL;DR: Magic storage. Potentially not immediately useful but has extreme number of possibilities. Mundane artillery, engines, etc. freeing our mages, Crystalworks, Magic Rifles, Grenades (Revision - add a priming mechanism to make them explode), and more.
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 gems are large, heavy, and expensive. To use them anywhere else would likely require serious design considerations.
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)
Crystalworks was just copy+pasted from an earlier Future Design post of mine. For maximum safeness (especially consider all the roll penalties we've been getting lately) we can do it after magegems. But I believe it's still a very viable option to develop primitive magegems here then make actual Magegems in a revision.
But again, now is the time to develop infrastructure. We're at a point in defense where Moskurg may not be able to immediately push out again, and there's nothing we immediately lose if we lose ground anywhere (other than Mountains which we've got pretty much covered still). We can use this time to develop infrastructure critical for other things, like the Crystalworks. Want Crystalclad or functioning crystal again? Crystal caltrops? Crystal weapons? Choose the crystalworks!
If anyone thinks the Crystalworks is too ambitious, let me know and I can trim it down.
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Topic: Wands Race - [Arstotzka] {COMPLETED} (Read 393371 times)