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[evictedSaint]

Your crystal is lighter than steel, but denser than water.  It is also lighter than Moskurgs Adamantium, can hold an edge better, is harder, more brittle, and you can essentially 3D print the stuff.

Moskurgs Adamantium is a constant temperature outside of magical forging, lighter than steel, and cheap as dirt.  It has similar hardness and brittleness to RHS, and all their blacksmiths are trained in forging it.

[andrea]

anyway, our engines are still way heavy. You are not going to get any helicopter from that until you lighten them A LOT ( or make them A LOT more powerful).
Unless you aid yourself with baloons, I guess.

[Chiefwaffles]

Crystal also self-regenerates to a degree, which is really nice.

anyway, our engines are still way heavy. You are not going to get any helicopter from that until you lighten them A LOT ( or make them A LOT more powerful).
Unless you aid yourself with baloons, I guess.

We miniaturized them in the Restless design, and making the engine 100% crystal should drastically reduce weight even more. (It won't be light, but as a random example, 10% of 100,000 is a much bigger reduction than 10% of 100.)

That and we're making a primitive helicopter, not a hot air balloon. This is using powered flight - of course it's not going to be light.

[Andres]

Their waterships are fairly non-magical.  The only thing that'd be affected by the shells are their ballistas, and their ballistas aren't effective against crystalclads anyways.

What about their adamantium? Doesn't it rely on magic to provide as much protection as it does and/or exist at all?

[andrea]

and I say that jusdging from what we have seen so far, I have big doubts about it being able to lift anything.
Mind you, a research credit can help... but I think this project is best done next turn, if we have the revision credit. It will be very very hard to get something actually useful this turn.
You may make the steam engine much lighter, but it is still very underpowered for its size. We never actually optimized our turbines even.

[evictedSaint]

Unless you aid yourself with baloons, I guess.

We miniaturized them in the Restless design

You attempted to, but it was too ambitious for the design.

[Chiefwaffles]

Ugh.
Sure. If you put our steam engine in a modern helicopter, it wouldn't do anything.

But this isn't a modern helicopter. It's significantly smaller and significantly lighter. It's a tiny thing - just big enough for one person, the already small AS-HAC-1, and limited ammo. On top of this, it's using a light yet strong material. The material may not be magically light, but it doesn't need to be. With all this in mind, the AS-SVA-1 is probably exponentially lighter than any modern helicopter. Our steam engine should definitely be able to power it.

(image snip'd)

Another brilliant example of genius Arstotzkan engineering!

We miniaturized them in the Restless design

You attempted to, but it was too ambitious for the design.

As a significant aspect of the design, our Mathemagicians aim to noticeably decrease the size of the steam engine for best performance. This is a very high priority design goal compared to any other individual element.

I would like to fire everyone involved in the Restless project please.

EDIT
I don't think the AS-SPA-1 is a perfect design this turn. But so far it seems to be the best one. (And also the most fun.) People are arguing against it, but I don't see anything I think is a better solution. It brings us into the air game, helps significantly against carpets + airships, and can help defeat their air units before they get within lightning strike range of our stuff. It helps at sea and at land.
There are a ton of other designs (most notably the APC) I'd like to try at land, but we really need to fix the problem at sea or else we'll start losing at land.

[andrea]

The problem is, I doubt it can lift itself without a revision to lighten and empower it.

Speaking of revisions, soon we should uprate our mage gems. They have huge potential, but right now are basically only useful to allow our mages to get distracted for a few minutes. ( and a few rerouting stuff, which is good)

[Chiefwaffles]

And I have already explained why I believe you are wrong.

As for revisions, we should really just switch our cannons + engines to use crystal. One of the biggest reasons we're losing at sea is because they can just ignore a Crystalclad's armor and lightning strike the steam engine for a big explosion. One of the biggest reasons we lose cannons is because they just lightning strike the steel cannons.

[Kadzar]

It seems now is the time for

Design: Giant Mutant Bird Cavalry

For a while now, Arstotzkan researchers have recognized a need to counter Moskurg's flying force, and ultimately decided they needed to beat fliers with fliers. So, using their knowledge of life magic, they devised an alchemical brew to make birds big enough to carry a man, and, with their experience mind-controlling birds, were easily able to make them into perfect flying mounts. In doing so, they could finally join battle with  Moskurgs in the skies.

Now, hear me out. This design has certain advantages compared to other flight options currently proposed:

Birds don't need magic to operate: Once we have our big birds (possible alternative name: Project Sesame Street), they'll stay big, without requiring a magic-user to maintain them. That means our magic users will have plenty of magic still available to cast fireballs while in the air, and we can alternatively employ Mage Hunter teams with antimagic arrows with no problems.

Birds aren't complicated: There are so many things that could go wrong with a helicopter regarding mechanics and just getting off the ground, whereas making a bigger bird is simple, especially when you apply fantasy logic, as this game does.

Birds already know how to fly: Making a working helicopter is going to require lots of complicated controls, which might be hard for pilots to grasp, whereas flying a bird should be similar to riding a horse, just with a few more dimensions (which a helicopter pilot would have to deal with anyway. Plus, a bird can always fly itself if need be, so it could potentially return if it loses its rider or compensate for a minor lapse of attention.

Birds are fast: In any likelyhood, the first helicopter model we'll get will be something like one of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, but, even if it is really successful, the best we can hope for is a Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, which had a top-speed of 50 mph, whereas birds can do better than at average speed, and could double or quadruple that at diving speed. The only proposal so far that could beat that is Jet Birds, and we'd need to make them bigger first to make that idea useful anyway.

TL;DR: Bigger birds is best

DESIGN

1 AS-SPB-3 "Dreadnought" (w/ Research Credit): Chiefwaffles
0 Aether Blink (w/ Research Credit):
0 Ritual of the Enflamed Wasp
0 Jetbirds
0 Pillar of unmagic
0 AS-SPA (w/ Research Credit): Andres
2 AS-SPA-1 (w/ Research Credit): Chiefwaffles, Andres
1 Giant Mutant Bird Cavalry: Kadzar

[VoidSlayer]

It seems now is the time for

Design: Giant Mutant Bird Cavalry

For a while now, Arstotzkan researchers have recognized a need to counter Moskurg's flying force, and ultimately decided they needed to beat fliers with fliers. So, using their knowledge of life magic, they devised an alchemical brew to make birds big enough to carry a man, and, with their experience mind-controlling birds, were easily able to make them into perfect flying mounts. In doing so, they could finally join battle with  Moskurgs in the skies.

Now, hear me out. This design has certain advantages compared to other flight options currently proposed:

Birds don't need magic to operate: Once we have our big birds (possible alternative name: Project Sesame Street), they'll stay big, without requiring a magic-user to maintain them. That means our magic users will have plenty of magic still available to cast fireballs while in the air, and we can alternatively employ Mage Hunter teams with antimagic arrows with no problems.

Birds aren't complicated: There are so many things that could go wrong with a helicopter regarding mechanics and just getting off the ground, whereas making a bigger bird is simple, especially when you apply fantasy logic, as this game does.

Birds already know how to fly: Making a working helicopter is going to require lots of complicated controls, which might be hard for pilots to grasp, whereas flying a bird should be similar to riding a horse, just with a few more dimensions (which a helicopter pilot would have to deal with anyway. Plus, a bird can always fly itself if need be, so it could potentially return if it loses its rider or compensate for a minor lapse of attention.

Birds are fast: In any likelyhood, the first helicopter model we'll get will be something like one of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings, but, even if it is really successful, the best we can hope for is a Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, which had a top-speed of 50 mph, whereas birds can do better than at average speed, and could double or quadruple that at diving speed. The only proposal so far that could beat that is Jet Birds, and we'd need to make them bigger first to make that idea useful anyway.

TL;DR: Bigger birds is best

DESIGN

1 AS-SPB-3 "Dreadnought" (w/ Research Credit): Chiefwaffles
0 Aether Blink (w/ Research Credit):
0 Ritual of the Enflamed Wasp
0 Jetbirds
0 Pillar of unmagic
0 AS-SPA (w/ Research Credit): Andres
2 AS-SPA-1 (w/ Research Credit): Chiefwaffles, Andres
2 Giant Mutant Bird Cavalry: Kadzar, voidslayer

Lets do this.

[Andres]

Future design - Velocity Boost Ring: A magical ring made of crystal/circuits (whichever it is allows for infinite enchantments) placed on the muzzles of our guns. It boosts the velocity of the shells that pass through it by a significant amount without increasing recoil, boosting range and damage.

Basically a flat upgrade to all our guns. It'll also be good for when we make handheld firearms.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[RAM]

You want to use wind magic to do this stuff. While it's definitely not a huge leap to be able to draw wind magic from our mastery of hot/cold, it's still wind magic. And Moskurg specializes in wind magic. We don't want to go head-to-head against Moskurg in the one thing they've been truly specializing in for practically the whole game. It'd be like if Moskurg suddenly tried making better cannons than us instead of building on their own advantages.

I really don't follow your line of reasoning. There is absolutely no magic that is acting to create wind. All that the magic does is make things cold, wind is a natural product of that. It is like saying that we should give up on cannons because they cause objects to rise into the air, just like their levitation magic does. This is pure cold magic, a field in which we are strong in. This should, by all sanity, already be a thing, but it isn't, so I am putting in a design to make the logical consequences of a BEYOND MASSIVE field of rapid temperature reduction actually take effect.

This is just like when they used their wind magic to blow hot air from their deserts. That successfully reduced our temperature intensity, it removed our design bonus, and it was a pathtic effort. Moving an entire region's air into another region cannot be a simple task, it is a larger area than our frost towers by an order of magnitude and not lacking in force, but it is still weak because they do not actually have a source of appreciable temperature. We,  the other hand, have a source of appreciable motion. Convection is not gentle. Making an area this large, this universally chilled, it is not a petty thing like moving some air from a place that is still habitable, this is making the skies fall by taking away the ground beneath them.

There really is no gentle way to phrase this. The argument I quoted above has invalid assumption, it is in no way wind magic. The argument has invalid logic, Deriving wind magic from hot/cold interactions is ridiculous. Wind magic is motion magic and temperature magic is state magic, there is no logical connection there. There is no logical basis to believe that competing with the opponent is impractical. You can argue that energy states are motion derived but that won't fly even a little bit. The argument has invalid conclusions, Wielding enough wind magic to oppose them would actually be quite effective, and observing their wind magic in progress would probably give a design action dedicated to duplicating their wind magic a bonus. We would actually have an example to draw from. If convenction was not available then wind magic might well be a good idea, but we have access to convection on a scale that makes modern technology look like a joke. I am pretty sure that a single tower of forever frost would take less than a day to put out more energy than a moderate-sized nuke.

Sorry, but the quoted statement is purely wrong. The only insane thing we could do with wind magic is try to fly wthout accounting for it.

DESIGN

2 AS-SPB-3 "Dreadnought" (w/ Research Credit): Chiefwaffles, RAM(insane)
1 Ritual of the Enflamed Wasp(R): RAM
1 Jetbirds: RAM
1 Pillar of unmagic(R): RAM
0 Aether Blink (w/ Research Credit):
1 AS-SPA (w/ Research Credit): Andres
2 AS-SPA-1 (w/ Research Credit): Chiefwaffles, Andres
1 Celestedemorte: RAM
3 Giant Mutant Bird Cavalry: Kadzar, voidslayer, RAM

The Celestedemorte noteably saves our research credit. It is completely unecessary. The only complex thing about it is integrating circuits into spellcasting rather than using them as a maintenance tool. The rest is just some tweaking to the spell's existing dimensional parameters and exploiting the advantages of our crystal's low weight and high rigidity to make buildings out of it. The stuff is a building-designer's dream-fantasy.

I really cannot fathom Aetherblink working. Conjuration has only ever made new things, often practically impossible things. The idea that it is actually a form of teleportation seems ridiculous given that nothing conjured has ever had any evidence whatsoever of having existed prior. If you rephrase it to be Star-Trek-style murderporting then it would be plausible, but our people would suffer a sever drop in morale once they realised that the people who were 'teleported' ceased to exist shortly afterwards. And it goes without saying that we can't murderport without a disintegration spell. If you want something like this in an offensive variant, conjure something inside enemies. Regardless, it would be useless as a spell because the range is insufficient. Once we fix the range problems, such as with Ritual of the Enflamed Wasp, then offensive conjuration would be viable and we could look into such things.

I still don't think that giant birds are a thing that we have experience with. But it sounds mildly useful and apparently we can vote for everything now. The Dreadnought is not terrible, but it is not going to be killing anything on account of being too slow and not having enough range against air targets. Ehh, why not, we have votes to burn apparently. Wooo!

I feel that gyrocopters are too mundane, without magic to spport their flight they are overly reliant upon gears and propellors and such that is trying to work with nothing but 10th century know how and some admittedly very nice crystals. I just don't see it working any better than plant magic did, especially given that their wind and weather control will be a massive obstacle.

[andrea]

bird cavalry would work wonderfully, with rifles.

but really, if we make the bird cavalry... what are they going to fight with? longbows, I assume?

[helmacon]

I just had a great idea for an anti air shell. Our anti magic crystals have a tendency to explode when encountering magic, right? Now, these fragments are good for grenades and such, and basically how our bomb arrows work.
What if, instead of just exploding it once, we explode out twice. Simultaneously. We do this by connecting two different mage gems to it, and pumping it full of magic from each end.
The result is the mage gem not just exploding, but literally testing itself apart into a fine glassy powder.
When detonated in midair, the result is a cloud of powder that takes a few minuets to dissipate, and will coat any flying carpets our airships that fly through the area in a billion tiny grains of anti magic.
This allows us to render entire areas of the sky inoperable for short periods of time, and take down air targets without direct hits.
It's like a flack shell, but even better because it hangs around for a bit.