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[evictedSaint]

Fixed it.  Sorry again, guys, I don't know how I misread that so badly.

[Chiefwaffles]

HOW DARE YOU MESS UP OUR DESIGN I BET YOU DIDN'T MESS UP MOSKURG'S DESIGN WHY ARE YOU SO BIASED I SHALL STRIKE AT THIS INJUSTICE WITH THE FURY OF A THOUSAND SUNS UNTIL JUSTICE IS REDEEMED AND WE HAVE BEEN HEAVILY BUFFED AND MOSKURG HEAVILY NERFED I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS WHAT KIND OF PERSON ARE YOU JESUS CHRIST YOU ARE THE WORST GM EVER IN ALL OF HISTORY _(/s)
Thanks, Evicted.


Now, onto the revision. The actual train seems to be fine and I don't think it needs a revision for now. A stronger steam engine would help (carrying more wagons) but that's something that can be globally and help the Crystalclad+Train. We could also reduce its expense, but eh.
Instead, we should focus on the category that Moskurg's threatening to overpower our artillery with: Air.

Revision: Hunter Falcons
Our falcons are, at the moment, only good for harassing enemy carpets. Sure, this harassing is effective, but as soon as the enemy does anything to their air units - new swords, stronger carpets, giving their riders armor, etc. - our falcons will become useless. We need to make them effective enough to become competent aerial fighters.

The Hunter Falcon is what you get when you modify the spell we use to artificially tame Falcons. The spell is simple to modify in the way we want. Currently, it just "tweaks" their brain to give it the effects of being tamed. By using our experience in life magic and in this spell, we can change it to in addition to the taming, also "tweak" the rest of the Falcon's body to make it much larger.

A larger falcon is extremely useful. It should be roughly 200% of its original size, and this increased size comes with many benefits: Stronger, Tougher, and just better. The new Hunter Falcon doesn't have to harass a mage until they fall off or run away, but they can directly eliminate the mage. They can attack the carpet to quickly shred it to pieces, or kill the rider outright thanks to its greatly increased size. It can take more punishment from arrows, lightning, swords, and any other attacks - all thanks to its increased size. The Hunter Falcon should be devastatingly effective all thanks to this one revision to the taming spell using experience we certainly have.

If possible, we also wish to equip our Falcons with machine crystal talon "blades" to enhance their lethality. It's an extraordinarily easy task - just attaching some sharp crystal to their talons. Crystal talons should generally increase lethality and make the Hunter Falcon more effective at piercing armor.


I'm just including this in the votebox to retain my sanity. If anyone wants to put in their own stuff from before, please feel free to.

1 - Hunter Falcons: Chiefwaffles

[RAM]

I suspect that a bigger target is not going to help much against lightning, unless the mages panic? In which case it might be better to modify their appearance to that end, adding serrated claws, fangs, long serrated beaks, colours that resemble gore, and giving them a few severed bodyparts to toss around before attacking... But given that our only growth magic applies to plants, and doesn't extend them beyond their normal limits, I do not see that this is a revision. From a bird-perspective, it is sensible, just make it a little bigger, but from a magic perspective this is a new thing... ^{_{I still say we should have gone with summoned vultures...}} Perhaps we could step towards it by revising the dogwood staves to enlarge an already grown tree beyond its normal limits?

Dogwood Giants
We modify the dogwood staves to take grown trees and make them bigger. We use this to convert naturally-occuring fortifications and increase them to resist ballistae, increase the volume of fresh wood to make them more flame resistant, and increase their reach to improve them as observation posts.

....I have no clue how I missed that.  I'm so sorry, I'm a complete moron.  I must have read the word "train" a dozen times.  Sorry guys, I'll fix it.

"train" technically just means a trailing assemblage, generally of vehicles, often tethered. Perhaps the most accurate usage is the train of a dress, which is just a line of fabric... It is entirely possible to have a train of A.P.C.s. Most of what we have here is a locomotive, although a locomotive without a train is pretty short of utility...

Similarly "tracks" doesn't really work as a general term. It inevitably means evidence of something's passage or a path through which something moves regularly. "tracked" is a pretty solid term though so long as it is clearly an adjective rather than a verb.

0 Crystal Optics:
0 Crystal Restless:
0 Erection of Everywhere Explosions:
0 Ministry of Martial Magecraft:
0 Halls of Higher Heirophants:
0 Fruitfulness:
0 Heat-conscious steam engine:
1 Hunter Falcons: Chiefwaffles
0 Dogwood Giants:
0 :

[Chiefwaffles]

Life magic involves growing trees and plants - living things. We already have a spell that physically modifies a Falcon. Using that spell to make the Falcon bigger really shouldn't be a problem. In terms of the lightning, I'd assume that more mass makes lightning less effective. It may not make them shrug off lightning, but ideally it should mean that the Hunter Falcons have a survival rate against lightning.

[FallacyofUrist]

I'm going to vote Crystal Optics(spyglasses!) because removing the need for spotters is really important. If Moskurg completely counters our spotters, we lose Beyond Line of Sight accuracy completely. Also, it'll let us see fliers and whatnot coming, increasing our defense against them.

1 Crystal Optics: FallacyofUrist
0 Crystal Restless:
0 Erection of Everywhere Explosions:
0 Ministry of Martial Magecraft:
0 Halls of Higher Heirophants:
0 Fruitfulness:
0 Heat-conscious steam engine:
1 Hunter Falcons: Chiefwaffles
0 Dogwood Giants:

[RAM]

Ooooh! Oooh! We already have flares! What if we extracted the 'essence' of light and conveyed it into a spyglass to apply illumination to the view from it. Creating night-vision! Would be a design though...

I am pretty sure that size has little benefit against actual lightning. It is great against something liek a taser, but this is nothing like a taser, and the lightning works against humans, so double-falcons are still not worth much in context.

I am pretty sure that the spell makes them passive, I see no physical modification there. And the tree growth spell is acceleration of natural processes, and if we wanted to grow from that we would be better off investing in time magic. And it would be MUCH easier if we start from modified plants, which could easily produce clouds of ninja stars that take flight in the presence of wind... The jump from plant modification to animal modification wuld be much easier.

Dogbone staves
We swap the dogwood for bone, and convert the effect from plant to animal. We have no idea what it will do but it should be fun finding out!

[Chiefwaffles]

It's going to take a while for them to counter our spotters. Since our spotters are just apprentices with the flare spell. That's not something that can be hard countered. Sure, they could do stuff to make them less effective, but I sincerely doubt that they'd be able to severely reduce their effectiveness in one design/revision phase, no matter how well they roll.
Crystal Optics is a (really) good idea that we should probably pursue in the future but I feel like it's just putting more onto our existing artillery advantage. An artillery advantage that can get hard countered if we aren't careful.

What if they improve their carpets to let them just fly over our lines and eliminate our artillery without resistance? Spotting doesn't help at all here. Sure, you could say it helps in general with our artillery but if they hard counter our artillery, revisions helping it will become useless until we make another revision/design like this one.
Of course, we don't actually know what they're doing this turn. Crystal Optics could very well be useful and probably will be, but there's a risk that it'll be useless. Better falcons helps prevent our artillery form becoming useless while still providing an advantage everywhere else. Since our current falcons aren't 100% effective - their carpets can still do very notable amounts of damage at sea and land before being driven away by falcons, and better falcons would stop that.

I'm just nervous about how fragile our artillery advantage is. I'd rather work to secure the advantage before building on it.

[RAM]

Crystal optics would probably help a *!!LOT!!* at sea...

[Chiefwaffles]

Design: AS-SPB2-Crystalclad [3, 5, 3]

The steam engine setup is pretty much just copied from the SPB1 Fog-O-War, being two steam engines hooked up to a four-blade paddle on the rear.  The armament has been upgraded, allowing either three HC1-E's or a single HA1 to be mounted above-deck.  Because shooting beyond line of sight is less helpful on the high seas and requires three apprentices to fire, the Crystalclad design instead features three HC1-E's that can all be fired by a single apprentice by themselves, as the higher firerate is more beneficial despite the decreased lethality of the individual cannons.  Thanks to the increased number of apprentices we have at our disposal, each ship features two apprentices; one to operate the steam engines, and the second to fire off the cannons.

[FallacyofUrist]

That bold bit applies mainly because spotters can't work in the seas.

Here's another argument for Crystal Optics: spending our apprentices on spotter duty prevents them from staying home and operating artillery, decreasing our firepower. If they're on spotter duty, they get killed very often, and thus can't advance to journeyman skill level... if this keeps up, we'll have a deficit in mage numbers... and people will be less likely to sign up for mage school because of the danger involved. This needs to be done.

True, it could wait for next turn's Design. I'm not dead set on this yet.

Do note that currently our falcons are Very Expensive, and a revision to make them cheaper might be safer than this revision.

Also, is anybody working on an emblem design?

[RAM]

Not really. I posted my flag for the Anarchist party, but that is only going to win by inducing insanity, and an insane G.M. will probably give us a bonus to developing flying pigs at the cost of a penalty to everything else. Which is good long-term, our pigballs will pollute the sky. Our tower of forever pig will slowly render the skies unusable under the opressive mass of 10^36 neutral and mostly harmless flying pigs, Our swinecorps will serve well at sea, duelling with carpets and harassing ships from above, and the great flying pigmen ships will rule the sea with their oppressive wakes. And it goes without saying that our boarcannons will utterly suppress the enemy at range with the endless gore exploding around the enemy positions. But it will take time to develop all this and our current stuff will all be at a negative...

[Chiefwaffles]

I think that Crystal Optics would really help us, yeah, but it relies entirely on our artillery still being useful. If they hard counter it (which is very possible) then Crystal Optics becomes useless. It's not just about next combat phase or anything, but rather it's just better  to have a secure foundation before building on it.

[evictedSaint]

Moskurg has decided on their revision, just waiting on you guys.  Again, sorry about botching that design description.

[helmacon]

+1 to CWs falcon revision.

[Andres]

Crystal regeneration: A minor improvement to crystal, this aims to give crystal a minor regenerative factor, to the point where microfractures and small chips repair themselves. Additionally, it allows manual repairs to be done more easily and quickly.

1 Crystal Optics: FallacyofUrist
0 Crystal Restless:
0 Erection of Everywhere Explosions:
0 Ministry of Martial Magecraft:
0 Halls of Higher Heirophants:
0 Fruitfulness:
0 Heat-conscious steam engine:
1 Hunter Falcons: Chiefwaffles
0 Dogwood Giants:
1 Crystal regen: Andres

Glory to Arstotzka.