Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[FallacyofUrist]

Well, firstly, Research Credit. I think we'll end up getting good rolls because of that.

Secondly... yeah, cool stuff. There is plenty of room for improvement with bird cavalry, however.

Thirdly, more importantly... well, for one, our resource bonus isn't usable right now(BAD! must recapture mountains!). However, I'm more worried that your gun won't have enough power to shoot the enemies out of the sky. Maybe if we had exploding shells that we could already apply to it, but we don't. The only special shell we have is the Equalizer(which is awesome, though), and it only works for our HA1.

I'm not entirely sure that it'll be one bird for every airship. Isn't pricing more of a relative thing or something?

Of course, we can use antimagic to protect against Lucky Strike.

I guess what I'm most worried about is the stopping power of the AS-HAC-1. I don't think it's likely to hit the War Pegasi, and I'm not sure if it'll put down the flying ships. Create an anti-air weapon that actually does that, and I'll be much more likely to vote for it.

In the meantime, though, Giant Bird Cavalry, then for a revision, something to let our mages cast through our own anti-magic so they can ride the falcons and shell Moskurg with our Cheap(yes, seriously) squad-destroying fireballs. Maybe an improved Fireball Wand that works in antimagic and can be used by non-mages. Or only one of those things for safety.

[Chiefwaffles]

Research Credit - It seems like a huge waste to use a research credit on this. (I don't even think we should use the Research Credit on the AS-HAC-1; it should be saved for something more critical or groundbreaking)

Resource bonus - Uh. Crystalworks. It's basically an artificial resource bonus for Crystal. Which the AS-HAC-1 uses.

AS-HAC-1 Power - Our HC1-Es and HA1s are quite clearly very powerful. This is just a downgrade of the caliber while retaining speed. It'll have less destructive capability, but the shell is still notably bigger than a bullet. It'll have a bit higher velocity. This means it should be very effective at taking down the completely unarmored carpets, and with an AP shell revision (which helps the Crystalclads a ton, and helps a ton for the future when they inevitably introduce more armor on their stuff), it'd be very effective at taking down airships.

Ah, yes, lucky strike, I forgot about that. Our birds will be shot out of the sky easily, and we've know for quite a while that our antimagic does not stop lucky strike. Our bird cavalry will be effortlessly shot out of the sky by their superaccurate ballistae and bows, both from airships and from the ground.

In Wands Race, Very Expensive has always been a "You have a few of these things." It's not just "limited distribution" but rather you just have a handful of that design and thus give it to the most important people. So we'll get >10 birds and they'll get >10 airships. Probably - numbers aren't exact. But just check the descriptions Evicted gives related to expense for any design. It's the same thing.

Stopping power - Again. The AS-HAC-1 is still a cannon. It shoots a shell with a high velocity. It's a cannon. It just won't be as effective as a siege weapon, which we don't need at all anyways. It's designed specifically as an AA gun. It has a drastically higher rate of fire, meaning it cares much less about missed shots and can fill the sky with shells much faster. It has firing angles allowing it to fire directly up into the sky and all around it, making it very useful for targeting flying enemies. It's extremely easy to aim - easy to swivel it around and easy to find a target. Therefore, it's much more likely to hit air targets than any weapon we've had before.

Revising a method to let our mages cast through our own antimagic seems extremely overambitious.

[RAM]

Bird-riders are less valkyrie and kind of impractical. A riding harness for a bird is all kinds of difficult. Better to have a riding harness on the Valkyrie and the bird gets a perch to grab onto. This also naturally lends itself to bird natural swooping practices so they can recover valkyries that have lost their birds before they go splat...

Also, valkyries are the opposite of medics. They make people more dead, unless you get into the whole "people revive in Valhalla" thing but that is really pushing it. They also need lightning rods cages Bypasses that could just be a four-point metal pole thingon their armour that would attract lightning to itself and pass it onto the nearest one to the ground. We have seen enough lightning+metal to know that the former prefers the latter over human flesh. Making a path of metal to attract lightning is reasonable enough.

Stopping power - Again. The AS-HAC-1 is still a cannon.

Cannonballs can bounce off of wood. The Keggers are using super-metal...

[Chiefwaffles]

We don't use cannonballs. We use shaped ammunition. Shells. When I say "cannon", that's what I mean. I don't mean like "17th century cannon". We still use cannons today - tank cannons, autocannons, etc.
Our cannons are far superior to ye olde cannons that people seem to think we use.

Moskurg is using their metal on only the airship. And it's been established that a HC1-E's shells can still pierce the armor on one of their armored ships. It just takes a while. Our shells do not bounce off of wood. And the majority of our problems with their air units is their Expensive upgraded carpets, which again, don't have any armor.

And again, AP (armor-piercing shells. It's a good idea regardless of the AS-HAC-1. It'd help significantly at sea, since right now the standard shell takes multiple tries to pierce their armor.

[FallacyofUrist]

Evicted: Can we save our Research Credit? Also, have we ever hit one of Moskurg's flying ships with an Equalizer, and, if so, what were the results?

Okay, power. Now there's a tiny(relative to the whole thing) hole in the flying ship. If it penetrates the adamantium armor with its limited caliber, anyway. When it comes to shooting down War Pegasi... basically, our accuracy for small targets isn't all that good. If we had some sort of shotgun shell...

Maybe, maybe we'll be able to shoot fast enough to take down their ships with death by a thousand cuts and shoot the Pegasi out of the air with sheer luck. I'm not sure if we would shoot that fast with this design, however.

Okay, maybe we'll have a price issue. If that happens, we can use a revision for better production. I would prefer to do electricity resilient crystal, but we need what we need.

Also, this handles the spotting issue we've been having. Extra bonus.

Two ninjas.

Moskurg is using their metal on only the airship.

And you think your anti-air design with reduced power can pierce it when even our HC1-Es sometimes fail?

And again, AP (armor-piercing shells. It's a good idea regardless of the AS-HAC-1. It'd help significantly at sea, since right now the standard shell takes multiple tries to pierce their armor.

Oh, definitely, Armor Piercing shells would be wonderful. Maybe make them out of crystal.

[RAM]

Oh, definitely, Armor Piercing shells would be wonderful. Maybe make them out of crystal.

Crystal is light and brittle, that is kind of terrible for armour-piercing unless you are using some sort of squash-head weirdness or something.

And I worry that scattershot would be difficult to implement into the automatic firing mechanisms.

And rate-of-fire alone is nothing compared to scatter-shot. It is still the sort of thing that can be dodged if you see the gun aiming at you. You want to render a whole section of the sky uninhabitable for a brief period of time if you can, instead of increasing the rate at which you plink them off one by one.

[evictedSaint]

Yes, you can save your Research Credit.

You managed to hit an airship once with an Equalizer shell.  Much like the other HA1 artillery shells, once it penetrated the hull of the ship the entire thing came crashing down.

[Chiefwaffles]

Power - Their airships are presumably very easy targets. We should have lots of AS-HAC-1s, and they will have very high rates of fire. Sure, they aren't actually autocannons, but they still have a very notable rate of fire and we'll have a lot of them.

Shooting pegasi out of the air "with sheer luck" - I honestly don't know what to say here. Their carpets obviously aren't going that fast or their riders would fall off. This cannon is easy to aim, easy to shoot, easy to reload. It'd be by far the best weapon in our arsenal to deal with this kind of stuff.

Price issue - "Maybe" is extremely generous. There will very probably be a price issue. May I remind you that we got a 3 in Expense on the Restless and that gave us National Effort? It was only our resource bonus that brought it down to Very Expensive. If a much-easier-to-make design is Very Expensive, then why will bird cavalry be anything below that?

Spotting issue - Still very inferior to the Crystal Spyglass.

Reduced power - AP SHELLS. You refer to AP shells directly below this line! I'm saying we use AP shells in conjunction with the AS-HAC-1! But even without AP shells, it should still be useful. It'll be unlikely to pierce armor, yes. More-so than the HC1-E, yes. But ultimately, the speed of a projectile matters more than the mass of the projectile. The AS-HAC-1 should be firing them with improved speed. So it shouldn't be that much, if at all, worse than the HC1-E. The AS-HAC-1 has reduced power, but less mass to shoot and thus shoots with comparable/improved speed.

Crystal is light and brittle, that is kind of terrible for armour-piercing unless you are using some sort of squash-head weirdness or something.

I say a crystal tip on an otherwise metal shell, along with some other structural tweaks to the shell. It's been well established that our crystal is significantly sharp and that helps us a lot, even against their soldiers' supermetal armor.

And I worry that scattershot would be difficult to implement into the automatic firing mechanisms.

A flak shell is the best idea here, and the AS-HAC-1 is just breech-loaded, but if it is done, I want to do an self-feeding AS-HAC-2 at some point.

And rate-of-fire alone is nothing compared to scatter-shot. It is still the sort of thing that can be dodged if you see the gun aiming at you. You want to render a whole section of the sky uninhabitable for a brief period of time if you can, instead of increasing the rate at which you plink them off one by one.

Yeah, but we just can't make a scattershot here. It's out of the scope of the design. And Evicted is _unusually restrictive with shells, and we'd almost definitely have to spend its own design for a scatter-shot/flak shell. And without an AS-HAC-1, a flak/scatter-shot shell wouldn't be useful as we wouldn't be able to actually shoot it at their air units.

I like the idea of an anti-air shell, I just don't think there's any way we can do that this turn. Perhaps we could do an explosive shell next turn's design then revise a flak variant of it?

[VoidSlayer]

I would prefer fire rods for our soldiers, but I will take the fast firing steam cannon.

How do you suggest making an AP shell?

[Chiefwaffles]

Huh.
So crystal may not be the best idea as a tip in an AP shell. Wikipedia article suggests that typically AP shells use low hardness but high toughness in tips, which is basically the opposite of crystal, no?
I mean, we could still probably use it thanks to regenerative crystal and the fact that it's still notably tough and just handwaving, but still.

Feel free to suggest a better AP shell revision.
Future(ish) Revision: AP Shell
(I'm tired of the weird SOx-yy designation I've been using for shells.)

The AP shell is simple. It's a culmination of multiple tweaks to the materials used and structure of a shell. No breakthrough was made here - just conclusions (and their implementations) by our Mathemagicians on what material and shapes are best.

We change the structure of our current shell to encounter less resistance on its trajectory - something our Mathemagicians are calling "aerodynamics". In addition to this, we replace the inside of the shell with crystal, and toughen up the steel tip to avoid shattering on contact. The result is straightforward as well - the shell strikes harder thanks to its improved speed, from both aerodynamics and lightness, and the toughened steel tip means the shell doesn't shatter on impact, and more energy is "given" to piercing the armor.

The AP shell should be able to effectively pierce Moskurg's armor. The shell is meant to come in two sizes: One for the HC1-E, and one for the AS-HAC-1. Though if we can only do one size, the AS-HAC-1 caliber is higher priority.


However, since our shells explicitly don't shatter on hit with their armor, we could probably get away with a crystal tip. So I can write that version up too if people want.

[helmacon]

Flack shells are easy. Mage Gems on a timed circuit for a wasp summon. Summoning wasps from the ground means they have time to make a wind spell against it, but wasps unexpectedly exploding out of the air next to you? They wouldn't have time to react. Fire wasps = Burning Carpet = Win.

[FallacyofUrist]

Hm. If we manage to do the Armor Piercing thing, the AS-HAC-1 could actually(with several shots, which isn't an issue because rapid fire) take down a flying ship.

In that case, if we are going to try AP shells for our Revision(possibly with a Research Credit, though that may be a bit of a waste), I'm down for it.

2 - (Chiefwaffles)AS-HAC-1: Chiefwaffles, FallacyofUrist -- WARNING: DO NOT USE RESEARCH CREDIT.
0 - (RAM)Phalling Glow:
0 - (RAM)Erection of Everywhere Explosions:
0 - (RAM)Heat Rays:
1 - (Kadzar) Giant Mutant Bird Cavalry: Kadzar

As for what to use the Research Credit on... I'd suggest using it on something groundbreaking. Like this.

Spoiler: Groundbreaking (click to show/hide)

Catgirl Assassins... nyah, that isn't that groundbreaking. Aetheric Plane Shifting System, or APSS: We've done some research into the nature of magic itself. As it turns out, magical energy is drawn by our mages from an "Aetheric Plane", although it can be generated using other means. In a leap of madness, one of our mages attempted to enter this Plane and use its predicted properties to go to the equivalent location of Moskurg's capital, and then reenter the real world. It didn't work out very well. He splattered blood and guts all over the floor, and probably all over Moskurg's capital as well, given half of it was missing. As it turns out, the Atheric Plane is highly toxic to anything from the material world.

We've devised a workaround for that. We've created a complex wearable crystal apparatus, the APSS, that uses a ridiculous amount of magical energy to create a compressed shield of crystal around the wearer. It's so compressed that it can even survive the Aetheric Plane for a short time, and a short time is all we need to utilize the Aetheric Plane to teleport as far up as, say, a Moskurgian flying ship. After all, our mages manipulate aether, and can hence use it to move themselves in the Aetheric Plane at extreme speeds.

This does cause some difficulties. One, navigating the Aetheric Plane is basically impossible currently. However, we can use large amounts of trig and calculus to tell our mages how far and fast they need to move in the Aetheric Plane to get to their destination. In the future, we'll develop this into a magical autopilot. Two, it does take a ridiculous amount of power to create the crystal shell. Entering and exiting the Aetheric Plane is easy enough with training, but only Myark could possibly create that shell at the moment.

We have managed to counter this difficulty. The apparatus uses a large number of chained Magegems to generate the needed shield so the wearer won't have to provide the needed energy. Odds are we'll need to upgrade our Magegems in order to make this work, however.

[Chiefwaffles]

I definitely think the Research Credit should be saved for a design. It's just better with a design since it's applying to all three rolls. And usually designs are pretty important.

Also, on the note of future stuff, if the AS-HAC-1 wins and Moskurg doesn't do anything too gamechanging next combat phase, what do people think of explosive shells + a revision to make flak shells? The main reason I didn't want to do them earlier is because of Moskurg's air advantage. If the AS-HAC-1 succeeds/we find some way to get rid of their air advantage, then we can build on our artillery advantage. Explosive shells is just a straightforward upgrade, really.
Though Crystal Optics may be better.


For a steam rifle, here's my thought process:
1.) Make the AS-HAC-1: Significant steps towards miniaturizing the steam cannon and also introduces several things useful to a rifle (breech-loading, magegem operation, sights)
2.) Crystal Optics: In addition to helping us with spotting, if we have a working Crystal Spyglass by the time we make a rifle, we can include a scope in the rifle (Which should be easy - "Just glue a crystal spyglass onto the top of the rifle")
3.) AM Resistance: We just need to make our circuits+Magegems anti-magic resistant. Maybe a revision, maybe a design. I dunno. Making our spells resistant is a whole different deal, but we need AM resistance for stuff like a APC and close(r)-range use of the steam rifle.
3.) APC?: While our rifles can be used as snipers (especially with crystal scopes), I think we should possibly make an APC beforehand so we get the full effect of it. Our infantry isn't that effective right now because of their ballistae, and giving them rifles won't solve this.
4.) Steam Rifle: Miniaturize the AS-HAC-1 way more, make it use much smaller caliber (bullets instead of shells), make it handheld, add a crystal scope, make it magic-resistant, and bam.


@Helmacon: That's basically a different version of the explosive ammunition, which Evicted has said multiple times is not worthy of a revision. I too think an explosive shell/your idea is pretty easy to do, but evidently Evicted does not agree.


EDIT: I'm just now reading it because I thought it was just Catgirl Assassins, but I really like the idea of your idea, Fallacy. It's basically a precursor to a teleport spell.
However, it's not really possible at the moment. Something like that would have heavy penalties, which a research credit doesn't help with. Perhaps we can go Aethergems -> APSS? At the very least, we should do something with the Aether first.

[RAM]

I would not be surprised if they upgraded their carpets. It would grant them something along the lines of greater altitude, greater carrying capacity, or more armour.

[evictedSaint]

Design: AS-HAC-1 [3+1, 3+2, 2]

The Hybrid Autocannon 1 is Arstotzka's first attempt to do something previously thought impossible: build a smaller cannon.

Based off the success of the HC1-E, the HAC-1 is a minaturized version that can be quickly aimed or loaded.  Rather than requiring the barrel to be depressed to have a new round loaded between each shot, the cannon makes use of a small locking hatch on the rear.  After each shot the hatch can be opened, allowing a new round to be placed in the firing position without having to be rammed down the length of the barrel.

The gun is made almost entirely out of crystal, aside from the mount and circuit.  The cooling circuit bands the barrel in multiple rows of nickel wires and quickly reduces temperatures to nominal levels between each shot.  Being made of crystal, the cannon can be essentially 3D printed at the Crystalworks, replete with rifling inside of the barrel.

Unfortunately, the fact that the hinge on the breech-loader is also made of crystal represents a problem.  The crystal is rather thin in the hinges, as neccessitated by the design.  Firing sometimes causes these hinges to snap, blowing off the breech door and rendering the gun useless.

The cannon can fire six times a minute, as water and ammo must still be loaded by hand.  It has a high muzzle velocity, but the relatively small size of the steel round means speed drops off quickly.  It can shoot higher than a longbow, and is somewhat accurate thanks to a crude crosshair made of horse hair, but it can be difficult to track the small, high-speed round by eye.  It is mounted on a small, free-spinning swivel on a tripod - the user must brace the cannon before firing lest it knock itself over. 

Firing is performed by an apprentice performing a PSF, as mage gems were deemed too expensive and not powerful enough to launch the shells. Expensive