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[Light forger]

Chiefwaffles don't take this the wrong way but, you post way to much crap(in the a lot of stuff way). Try trimming down both your descriptions(your never going to get your exact write up) and if it's not useful right now save it for while we are waiting for a battle update. On that note:

Magegems: Useful and likely to work at the cost of not being useful right away.

Crystalworks: Too much stuff in one design. We have stored magic plus, permanent crystals and, a magic factory. It's not going to fly. In a different note I doubtful about spending a whole design on things secondary to battle.

Obelisk: Probably a bit too complex since we are trying to get both a much larger anti-magic field and find some way to focus our anti-magic to effect some things. Also a bit too focused on countering their stuff rather then trying them to counter our stuff.

Unending: I don't think their flying tech warrants a full on AAA tech. Also more rate of fire won't be useful until we have the supply chain to feed it.

AS-SO1: An ok subbranch of our anti-magic shells but, I still think it's too focus on countering their new stiff without keep an eye on what they are making right now.

[FallacyofUrist]

Can't we just do Flares?

Flares: A modification of our fireball spell turns the power down to not much, but drastically increases the range and brightness, and lets more skilled mages choose the color of the flare. Can be used for blinding Moskurgian carpet mages(HA!), setting off incoming firebombs earlier, marking entrenched positions for bombardment outside normal sight range, communications, and confusing alm-you-tricka.

Hopefully easy to do. Probably effective if we succeed.

[Light forger]

Can't we just do Flares?

Flares: A modification of our fireball spell turns the power down to not much, but drastically increases the range and brightness, and lets more skilled mages choose the color of the flare. Can be used for blinding Moskurgian carpet mages(HA!), setting off incoming firebombs earlier, marking entrenched positions for bombardment outside normal sight range, communications, and confusing alm-you-tricka.

Hopefully easy to do. Probably effective if we succeed.

I think that's best saved for a revision.

[FallacyofUrist]

Not a bit too many changes for a revision?

Potentially doable in a revision, sure, but I'd rather have the certainty a design provides.

Also, another nice idea might be enchanted longbows.

[evictedSaint]

Changing colors, reducing the fall-time, removing heat is simple enough for it to work as a revision.

Developing a comm's network, prepackaging them so even mundane troops can use them would be design-worthy.

[Chiefwaffles]

It's weird seeing you guys propose something that wouldn't intrinsically require a dozen negative modifiers.

Posted by Evicted right after I posted this:

Future Revision: Flare
One night, when a bored mage was staring at the theatre from the top of a Frost Tower, he noticed the bright fires all over the theatre located where the fighting was thanks to the fire bombs brilliant Arstotzkan fireballs.
So, he thought - why not use that?

The idea is simple: Use our fireballs for communication. The Streamlined Fireball is taken as the base, then instead of destructive power, our Mathemagicians tweak the Fireball spell to create massive amounts of light and to allow casting mages to choose the color. Now the Streamlined Fireball can be shot upwards into the sky, where it'll provide illumination on the ground below and signal other soldiers in the area. Certain colors can also be interpreted to mean different things - for example, red could be used to signal for artillery strikes, blue could be used to signal enemy troop locations, and the illumination provided by the flare will light up the ground below at night, making it easier for our men in skirmishes. Some have even theorized that strings of different colors could be used to send "encoded" messages across troops.

The extremely decrease destructive power of the Flare means it simply burns out before it can fall back to the ground.

How?
1.) Increase the brightness of the Streamlined Fireball at the expense of power. (While the flare is in a way a new spell, it's such a simple tweak (power -> brightness) that it should definitely be able to be done in a revision. )
2.) Add colors
Why?
1.) Artillery spotting. Flares can be used to signal for HA1 strikes at that destination.
2.) General battlefield communication - not extremely effective and not extremely secure, but it allows for basic communications.
3.) Skirmishing. We can create artificial light benefitting us during the night.

EDIT: Oh, Evicted ninja'd me anyways. Thanks for clarifying still, Evicted.
And on that note, if someone introduces a plausible actual communications system (allowing mundane troops to use it as well as magical) to use in this design phase, I may be really close to supporting it. But I really like flares since they also help in Skirmish and darkness was an explicit problem this combat phase.


@Light Forger:
All the stuff I posted is currently relevant. My descriptions are there for fluff - I categorize the benefits inside the fluff and you can note the summaries/TL;DR's I give at the end of each design.

Magegems: Yup, but probably worth it. Namely to provide a reasonable stepping stone to Crystalworks.

Crystalworks: Yeah, overambition here is a risk but it'd be great to get it out of the way. And note how I already pointed out why now is the time for things which aren't useful immediately. We're at a point where we won't lose anything if we don't immediately produce a battle-worthy design. Now's our chance to do some much needed improvements to infrastructure and preparations.

Obelisk: That's the point of it being a design, but it is definitely fair to be concerned by overextension, but keep in mind it is a design and we do need to improve our anti-magic.

Unending: It's not an AA gun. It's an overall improvement to the HC1-E specializing it versus our HA1. It would be, without a doubt, a straight-up upgrade obsoleting our HC1-E's. I want a smaller gun to put on ships, to use in closer-range combat, etc.; the fire rate is the main improvement here because it also helps in terms of anti-air. It's an upgrade to the HC1-E first, and an AA gun third. It's more of a "upgraded cannon that also happens to be much more useful against air units". Besides, do you really think Moskurg is just going to stop with their current air units? They are without a doubt going to expand in that area and we need to be ready.

AS-SO1: See above. And when their new stuff is this powerful, focusing on countering it isn't the worst idea.


EDIT: Speaking of even more ideas, I still think guided fireballs/shells is a good idea. Roboson posted something for guided shells earlier and it could be super useful. Even though it won't actually be guided, things like a guided shell would be significantly more useful against flying carpets as well as just about anything else. Not going to post a proposal for that, though.

[RAM]

Sacrificial summons: Frost Vulture Aviary Program
A farm for frost eagles to be summoned, bred, trained, and sent to the front.

Learning from our wasps, we knew that to defeat a wind spell would require something more hefty. Learning from our crystal weapons, we knew that we would require something more mundane. But we also learned many positive things as well. We knew that combining life with the elements could be effective. We knew that magical materials could exceed mundane, and we knew that life could be brought forth from nothing.

To address the antimagic issue, we needed to conjure items that would no longer Be promptly dispelled. We addressed this with new Sacrifice Circuits(S.C.) that can drain a quantity of material and metamaterial into the circuit to feed a spell that promptly uses the sudden absence of material to summon a stable entity. In this case, a quantity of meat for living tissue and cheap gemstones for crystal materials, along with a frost-imbued and crystal-imbued magical artefacts(Strips of metal with circuits of inconsequential versions of these spell schools with which we are very familiar) for the relevant magical essences, a life(typically vermin, either a rodent from a store-house or a pest captured from the battle-field) to grant vitality, and a very large quantity of invoked magic, to make up the necessary force of the effects involved.

To address the wind issue, we sought out a high-altitude creature of extreme proportions. We found a vulture that flew so high that they normally couldn't be seen. It was a metre long with a wingspan of two and a half metres. We needed more, we doubled its size in every dimension, and then added 50% to its wingspan. We then looked to the mystical options. We added to the new creature naturally-growing crystal veins along its bones, talons, beak, and the trunks of their feathers. Then funneled cold magic to have them absorb cold into their crstalline growths, keeping the bird warm and causing an explosion of cold when a vulture dies and a small burst of cold if its crystals break. Finally, we used trial and error with the early prototypes to make them a more "powerful" and "healthy" and "intelligent" animal by magical mandate(magicdate? manical? umm, mangical? er... no...), to allow them to function with these alterations and be capable combatants.

Training them seemed to be a simple matter of launching Kegger carpets and uniforms in the general direction of their nests while Arstotzkans attack the crude catapults to win their favour. Additionally, being newly created they have little choice but to accept their summoners as family. Being summoned as adults has very much helped to accelerate the breeding program...

Summon Giant Fire-wasps.
Fire wasps, five-metres long, thick carapace, doesn't care about insect-breathing-mechanics or flight capability because "a wizard did it"...

Tall Frost towers
We use our abundant metal supplies to strengthen the frost towers, allowing them to be taller, thinner, larger, and have a concave shape without requiring more material or being weaker. They provide spotting for our artillery and have been modified to revert back to some of the fire-ball roots from which they emerged, being able to propel the same chilling effect as ball spells, essentially moving their point-of-origin forwards, or right into the middle of an already-freezing aerial kegger group. Given the already massive scale of the Forever Frost towers, this easily exceeds our fireballs in range just through brute-force.

Pillar of unmagic

[helmacon]

Instead of having a whole "magic gene editing" thing that will almost certainly get a -10 penalty or some such, why don't we just breed and train regular birds of prey to attack targets, and strap anti magic crystals to them. They wouldn't even need to hit, just buzz a carpet within the antimagic field and the thing falls out of the sky.

Falconry was around as early as 680 B.C., so it probably already exists within civilian use. All we have to do is strap some magic armament to them, and sick them on enemy soldiers instead of rabbits.

[RAM]

Because giant death-birds.
We were playing around with modified wasps eons ago, it was, like, the second action or something. I believe that "old magic" becomes easier to modify, so I am hoping that my insane wish-list is actually plausible.
But that is why I made the giant wasp thing too. Because some people hate everything that is good and right in the world.

[Chiefwaffles]

The idea of using trained animals as our air units actually isn't the worst idea.

Design: Giant Falcon
It's simple. We've used life magic to make plants, and animals before. Why not actually beginning to utilize this experience?
So we did. The Giant Falcon is accurate to its name. It's a greatly enlarged falcon. To avoid the expenses, trouble, and magic vulnerability associated with creating huge creatures from scratch, we merely find falcons and greatly enlarge their size via our life magic, avoiding having to waste designing and effort on making them from scratch.

The Giant Falcon is, in the enlargement process, given basic imprints of Arstotzkan troops as friendly and Moskurgian designs (FLYING CARPETS; SIEGE ENGINES) as prey. They are given basic training amounting to whistling and similar sounds from their handlers for commands such as "come" and "go".

A small anti-magic charm is affixed to the Giant Falcon. The charm is smaller than that given to our ground troops, as it only needs to protect the creature itself from effects such as wind or any other dirty Moskurg spells. If it turns out that our supply of these charms is smaller than that of the Giant Falcons, then the charms will only be given to some falcons instead of limiting the falcon production.

In addition to its combat roles, the Giant Falcon is able to perform basic functions such as being secondary sentries (A handler can order their falcon up into the air, and if it attacks anything, then the handler knows something's there) and as messengers. Parchment can be attached by string to some part of the Giant Falcon, and their handler can attempt to order the Falcon to go to one of our camps or fortifications. Of course, these supplementary roles aren't the purpose of the Giant Falcon and are thus somewhat unreliable at the moment.

We hope to one day fit riders upon these beasts.

TL;DR: Our own air units that should be accessible to make.

2 - Improved Frost Towers: Andres, 10ebbor10
1 - Giant Falcons: Chiefwaffles

[Andres]

There's always my idea of improving our frost towers. It's a simple improvement, it doesn't involve any new technologies or schools of magic, and the last time we did something like this it was proven to be very effective, and that was just a Revision!

Glory to Arstotzka.

((I'm worried that this is going to be like the MC16 - a really good SMG design that was limited in its usefulness by being Expensive. All it would've taken was a single Revision to give us a significant advantage but it was never taken because people were convinced that it wouldn't make a difference if it was cheap. The Revision finally got through and its effectiveness vindicated me, but by that point several years had gone by and its impact was not as great as it could've been.))

EDIT:

Design: Giant Falcon

This is bigger and more complex than anything we had done with that school of magic and will not have nearly as much effect as better frost towers would.

[helmacon]

Yea, my point was more like chief waffles was saying, It's a decent idea, but there is a much better way to go about it.

As for the great falcon design, strap some anti magic crystals to them so they have a bit of defence, and you have my vote.

[Chiefwaffles]

@Andres: Now that's just unnecessary pessimism. We enlarge falcons (not even making any new creatures) and give them basic training. The effects are effectiveness in pretty much every stage (picking off artillery, general combat in melee [though this is least useful stage], picking off enemies in Routing, and picking off enemies in Skirmish) as well as a direct counter to flying carpets. We can develop on it to great effects in the future, too.

@Helmacon: Sure, I'll add that in. It shouldn't be a problem as long as we don't try to put any mage riders on it. And we can always just remove the antimagic stuff if we do that later.

[helmacon]

2 - Improved Frost Towers: Andres, 10ebbor10
2 - Giant Falcons: Chiefwaffles, Helmacon

[/quote]

Yea, once we have people on there the defence is more just being able to consider a situation tactically instead of flying right at a mage and being surprised when they throw a fireball at you. Plus, ya know, our own magic.

Oh! what if we strap the anti-magic crystals to thier talons, so when they attack anything magical they literally rip the magic part of it to shreds. and then they can wear a anti-magic charm as general defence.

[Andres]

Yea, my point was more like chief waffles was saying, It's a decent idea, but there is a much better way to go about it.

He said it was a bad idea and gave objectively bad reasons as to why it was a bad idea. "They are currently not 100% effective in this specific theatre of war, therefore improving them will not make them 100% effective." It was utterly illogical. He was also not saying there was a better way to go about it, he just started arguing for infrastructure.

I have also read your argument, that they'll face diminishing returns, that it'll be easy to counter, and we should make them smaller.
Your fear of diminishing returns is entirely unfounded.
They cannot counter it without going within its effects or outright overpowering the magic, which considering its strength will not happen.
Reducing the range but increasing the intensity while making the tower smaller is a self-defeating idea. A smaller tower results in a smaller effect, not a more intense effect. A more intense effect is created either by a bigger tower or a better tower. All your idea will do is decrease the range of our towers - the small size and increased intensity cancelling each other out.

Glory to Arstotzka.