Evicted, shouldn't we have the cheap version of the frost towers? And you still have the pre-buff Dogwood Wands listed.
Also
it's almost like we didn't need Myark in the mountains at all.Anywhoo, things I can immediately see we need:
1.) Communication. This is difficult. Linked Magegems? To make some kind of (mundane-usable radio!)
2.) Exploding ammunition. (Maybe magegem + shell for magical explosion?)
3.) Crystal Circuits re-try. We could get a bonus if we try it again with some fitting fluff. It's honestly worth a retry in my opinion.
4.)
A goddamn counter to Lucky Strike. (Cheaper Equalizer shell?)
5.) Better AA (Falcons are effective, but carpets still do damage before our falcons get to them. More or faster falcons probably. Maybe even cheap flak shells for HC1-Es?)
As for the trader, I actually don't know. If we do something like the delegator/another "trinket"-like item or revise any of our designs (namely the steam engine) to fit magegems, we could do that.
I do really like the idea of a magical radio.
Design: WCD1 "Delegator"It turns out that with some careful manipulation of Magegems, we can create a kind of magical link between them. This actually came from some miscellaneous study into crystal summoning - magical links should be what keeps our summoned things alive. It's why antimagic can dispel things like crystal. If you disrupt the magical link, it can no longer exist.
So what if we artificially create a link between two AA-sized magegems? Manipulation of magical charge in one gem is reflected across a link of our creation in another magegem. Remember how our anti-magic crystals hum? What if we could turn that into voice? And what if we could make the charge in the gems just sensitive enough that voice can manipulate them as well? We can add in a little button on the side that when pressed, changes the state of the gem to allow for these changes.
The result is a wireless communication device. By pressing the button, one can talk "into" the magegem, "disrupting" the magical link between the magegem and its sister gem. This change in the link is reflected in its sister gem, which instead of releasing this changed energy via a hum, will create low-quality but audible speech! Mundane and magical troops alike will be able to communicate without any kind of visual indicator!
Delegators are issued in pairs of two - with the field troops getting one and our artillery operators and commanders getting the other one. Each squad should be issued a gem leading back to the local command. The squad can relay new information to Command, receive new orders, and spot for artillery using a system of coordinates.
Delegators running out of power is a frequent problem, but the very rare apprentice-less squads can be issued redundant Delegators and even then, it isn't that big of a problem. Squads with apprentices can simply have the apprentice directly power the delegator or charge it when it's not being used, while mage-less squads can be conservative in its use and get it charged whenever they come across another mage. Thanks to the fact that the delegator shares the indicators of charge level with the Magegem, a squad can also call an apprentice or command when the charge is critically low.
The Delegator is based off of the AA-sized gem, but if our mathemagicians fail their only purpose and can't mathematically optimize the power-to-speech and maintenance of the magical link, we can use A-size gems. This is only if AA-sized gems are literally useless for this purpose.
TL;DR: A design based on our Magegems. A magical radio that can be used by mundane and magical forces. It's actually just a radio. It's based heavily off of our existing knowledge, namely magegems and summoning.
Copy+pasting Crystalworks from before.
Design: CrystalworksCrystal is an amazing material sadly of little use to us currently, but we can fix that. The Crystalworks uses new techniques to mass produce cheap crystal invulnerable to the pathetic anti-magic utilized by Moskurg "wizards".
The Crystalworks is a large building - somewhat like a warehouse - with a high roof and wide while quite long.
At the center of the Crystalworks lies the "power room" where extreme amounts of A-size Magegems are connected in series. This room provides powers for the many power-hungry circuits across the Crystalworks. Thanks to the discoveries from our
failed delayed Crystal circuitry revision, we have crystal wiring from the power room connecting it to the many circuits, providing a quick and efficient way to transport large amounts of magic power across the building.
We realized early on that having one circuit summoning precise crystal designs is inefficient and wasteful. Instead, we use "conveyor belts" of a some kind of fabric or cloth-like material strong enough to hold the contents on top being artificially moved by a steam engine.
In the first part of the Crystalworks, we have large amounts of circuits constantly summoning new unformed slabs of crystal. These hunks of crystal are split across other conveyor belts moving across the rest of the factory where other circuits gradually reform the crystal into different shapes, like sections of armor plating for ships or people, axes, wiring, and more!
New lines of circuits and conveyor belts can be added to the factory as needed as we design more crystal-based items.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Crystalworks is the nature of the crystal. It turns out that when a human summons crystal, they "spend" a bit of their total magic potential and put it into the crystal. This magical energy can't stay outside of its natural host (the summoning wizard) for too long, and thus eventually returns, dispelling the crystal. Maintaining it simply resets the timer by replacing the "old" energy with "new" energy. The method of production using circuits simply creates the energy without forcing it to rely on "borrowed" magic, meaning the crystal lasts forever. This means that the crystal also can't be dispelled by Moskurg anti-magic because there's no magic to dispel in the new crystal.
It turns out this "assembly line" method of creating crystal items is much more energy-efficient than spending effort and time summoning one perfect item at a time. This plus the decline in required personnel means we can produce crystal at a
much greater rate than before. Things such as crystal axes almost pour out of the Crystalworks and into crates designated for shipping onto the battlefield, to replace the old dispellable crystal!
TL;DR Mass produce anchored crystal. Allows us to more easily manage expense in future crystal designs and not worry about dispelling.
How?The Crystalwork does just two things: Anchored Crystals and Infrastructure, with Expense being an additional/the main benefit from Infrastructure.
If anything, we should get a bonus from it. We know how to use circuits to make spells. We have magegems. We just use magegems with circuits to cast spells to summon crystal!
Why?Crystal is extremely useful if it doesn't get dispelled. The Crystalworks makes crystal useful again by anchoring it then increases our supply of it. We'll be able to use crystal for useful design, like armor for our soldiers or crystal canopies/plating for our artillery, Crystalclads, and much more. In addition, Crystalworks
provides immediate benefits. At the very least, it should make Crystal Axes and Crystal Caltrops, two useless designs that we spent actions on, just as useful as they used to be. And hopefully it should even reduce their expense! Imagine if
every soldier gets a crystal axe!
Next turn or soon I want to do the Crystalclad. This is essential for that.
Designs
1 - Crystalworks: Chiefwaffles
0 - WCD1 "Delegator":