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[RAM]

My pulse-jet is a tube with two narrow points.
 In each of these narrow points there is a cone-shaped plug to seal it.
The plugs are kept loose inside cages that are affixed to the tube to keep the plugs in position and oriented to seal the narrow points without blocking the airflow much.
On plug(interior) is in the space between the two narrow points, one(exterior) is outside of that space.
When the explosion happens, both plugs are pushed out. The interior plug is pushed into the narrow point and seals it, while the exterior plug is pushed away from its narrow point and stopped by its cage, which opens that narrow point fully and allows the air out.
When the explosion recedes, both plugs are pulled in. The interior opens and the exterior seals.
In this way, which of the narrow "necks" of the tube is sealed alternates based upon whether the interior is exploding or imploding. Thus it alternates between pushing out of one opening and pulling into the other.

That said, it is just a shaped tube with a couple of loose bits and repeated explosions. With our crystal shaping and explosion magic and repeat-casting fogs and curuits it should be very easy to make. The only difficult part is tweaking the relatively constant continuous fog into a rapid repetition(which I suspect that it already is) and apply it to the explosions. But we got the continuous spell from tweaking an existing spell already, so doing a very similar thing to a different spell should be relatively easy. I really have a hard time figuring out where extra difficulty could come from.

Add to that that it is pretty plausible too. The idea of using explosions as propulsion is fairly plausble. After that it is just a matter of realising that it pulls after it pushes, so you need to force it to pull from somewhere other than where it pushes. This gives you the idea of a manual plug, and seeing how it automatically pushes the plug out, it is not far to realise that you can use that force to make the plug automatic. I half-think that we could make the thing from an order if we were willing to force an apprentice to keep tapping the thing for a rate of explosion that is too low to get the most out of it.

...

Apparently real pulse-jets don't bother putting valves on the outflow.I guess the blockage would be too much and the outflow is strong enough to impose the suction ipon the newly opened vent rather than the massive opening that never closes. Also they are kind of weak compared to jet engines, ore even piston engine, maybe, I didn;t look too closely, but they were enough to keep V-1 cruise missiles airborne for an hour after being launched by a catapult, so they can fly while lugging a massive bomb with tiny wings around at least...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsejet
It is also interesting to note the pulse jets that have no valves, just two holes of different size and length, but I can't think of a good reason why we would create those, and the vlaves should be pretty easy.

[andrea]

AH, thanks. It is clear now. I can see the idea, but I think it would need some sort of spring action on the inlet valve to allow it to close rapidly. Relying on air flow alone will be ineffective I feel. not a big problem, since it seems that the kind of vale usually used is just a plate of metal, not exactly a complex thing.

As for the outlet pipe I guess a combination of not wanting to interrupt the flow, and the fact that at speed, in the unlet pipe you get fast air slamming on the inlet trying to get it, while on the tail pipe you have air moving away. Even without valve, you are getting far more fresh air than you get exhaust gas.

[RAM]

Yep. I like mine because I feel that it would make sense to design it that way, and While yes, the valve would be slow, I still feel that it would basically do the job, and would likely never break down... It really ought to be blown into place and kept there by the pressure, but I have no testing equipment and couldn't find such a thing on a quick search so... But feel free to do it your way. A spring would be an extra issue, but should be possible, and an open outlet is probably superior for everything but extremely low-power operation. That said, I see no reason why this wouldn't work in water, though steam would probably be more efficient energy-wise.

[andrea]

Actually, your valve is more complex than the valve that was historically used on pulsejets, the Reed valve.
A reed valve is just a thin sheet of flexible material over an hole. when pressure differential is high enough, it bends opening the hole. Can't get any simpler than this.

and yes, it would work on water. Was there nay doubt about that? it is not like we are actually combusting anything.

[RAM]

Not any doubt, but it could have been missed that we could use this for jet-subs...
And because there are no moving parts, it is very very quiet, because that matches a quote from The Hunt for Red October and thus is true. And as everyone knows the distinctive ear-shattering sound of pulse-ets is completely silent. So no moving parts means silent engine because magic! I think we can pull that off if we just ignorant furiously enough!

[VoidSlayer]

Submarine or air ship, I am good with either.  We can control crystal density also, what if instead of using air as ballast we used temporary summoned crystal.  Or bees.  Then we unsummon them to surface.

[Chiefwaffles]

An idea I kind of like is an amphibious vehicle useable both at land and sea.
We have an advantage here that real life doesn't - crystal (and y'know, all that other magic stuff). Crystal should allow us to do something like this.

It'd be great if we could mostly unify our land and sea designs. An amphibious fighting vehicle equipped with a HC1-E and AS-HAC-1 and capable of holding ~8 people could be a great asset in all theatres. At sea, it can serve as a fast attack craft with the additional benefit of being 100% enclosed and thus secure from pretty much any Moskurger attack. At land, it can provide close combat support with our troops and bring troops to the battlefield safely, unharassed by lightning or ballistae fire. It'd also be the first truly mobile weapons platform we'd have.


Alternatively, an idea which I really like is completely investing in our combat armor. After we upgrade the power of Magegems, we can create a Combat Armor design with an integrated magegem battery and magically assisted movement, letting us essentially create powered armor. We can add things like a rocket jump/jetpack based on Blastballs. (The first version would just be like an assisted jump due to power constraints, but later we could maybe do something like a full-on jetpack.)
Powerful combat armor could really help us here, as it applies to every theatre. Our sailors will be more secure on deck and our soldiers will become more relevant and powerful on land.

[Andres]

An amphibious vehicle is useless. The lack of islands makes it useless.

Power armour isn't useless, but it is questionable. The point of power armour is to make it possible to move in armour that is normally too heavy to move in. With crystal, we can just revise it to be more protective without increasing weight.

Jump packs/flight packs are a good idea.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[Chiefwaffles]

Power armor just isn't about moving in armor that's too normally heavy to move in; power armor could also just improve the strength of our soldiers in general. Makes things like logistics and cargo-transporting as well as melee-combat much more easy. That and while we can always improve crystal, more will always be nice. More upgraded crystal is better than less upgraded crystal, after all.
An alternative to jump/flight packs is summoning temporary wings on our soldiers with (single-use) Magegem-powered wands/items. Plays into our life/summoning magic and can be designed based on one or two Magegems in its design, versus the definitely-energy-intensive blastball alternative. But we also arguably have more experience to use for a blastball-related method. We'll see.

The idea of an amphibious vehicle isn't islands or shore invasions. When I say "amphibious vehicle", I'm not talking about some kind of landing craft or a tank that can cross rivers. I'm talking about a vehicle that can be used effectively at sea and at land. So this theoretical amphibious vehicle would be useful as a fast attack craft at sea, and for transporting soldiers and providing close fire support at land. This may not be a realistic or great idea in real life, but real life didn't have magic and Crystal in the 10th century.

[Andres]

An alternative to jump/flight packs is summoning temporary wings on our soldiers with (single-use) Magegem-powered wands/items. Plays into our life/summoning magic and can be designed based on one or two Magegems in its design, versus the definitely-energy-intensive blastball alternative. But we also arguably have more experience to use for a blastball-related method. We'll see.

I think we should go with the flight packs. They would be using a miniaturised version of our future Kinetic Drive Engines which makes them easier to develop. Angel wings would not be as easy to develop.

The energy consumption of the KDE is a non-issue. One of the advantages of our circuits is that continuous effects remain indefinitely, without consuming any extra energy. Thus, a flight pack can be used for a theoretically unlimited amount of time while angel wings would only last for a limited amount of time.

Finally, since KDEs would be made out of crystal, they'd be more durable than wings. A small concern but a concern nonetheless.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[RAM]

An alternative to jump/flight packs is summoning temporary wings on our soldiers with (single-use) Magegem-powered wands/items. Plays into our life/summoning magic and can be designed based on one or two Magegems in its design, versus the definitely-energy-intensive blastball alternative. But we also arguably have more experience to use for a blastball-related method. We'll see.

I think we should go with the flight packs. They would be using a miniaturised version of our future Kinetic Drive Engines which makes them easier to develop. Angel wings would not be as easy to develop.

The energy consumption of the KDE is a non-issue. One of the advantages of our circuits is that continuous effects remain indefinitely, without consuming any extra energy. Thus, a flight pack can be used for a theoretically unlimited amount of time while angel wings would only last for a limited amount of time.

Finally, since KDEs would be made out of crystal, they'd be more durable than wings. A small concern but a concern nonetheless.

Glory to Arstotzka.

I am not convinced that wings would be more efficient. They still require energy to function, unless they don't but then that applies to anything. We know that fireballs are powerful and can be miniaturised. A decent pulse-jet probably produces a more focused air-flow so it comes down to efficient lift generation. If we produce a pressure-differential wing then it would be equally effective flapping or fixed, so it is just a matter of how to get air-flow over it. I rather suspect that fixed hawk-wings with a pulse-jet would be more efficient than flexible hawk-wings. Still, there is the issue that flexible wings would use muscular energy rather than magical energy, but the wings or airflow would need to be huge to account for the difference in weight between hawk and soldier, so the energy to flex them would be similarly huge and it is unlikely that they could be maintained for more than a couple of minutes before exhaustion sets in.

As for the circuits? The initial impression that I got from their initial description left me convinced that they resulted in a perpetual spell, no further input required. Since then it has, I believe, been made very clear  that they continue to require magic to be inserted. I am not entirely clear how they were initially useful, I think maybe they were just a bit of an autopilot so that the wizard operating them could take a break for a few seconds to eat a cookie and then continue with the spell without having to recast it from scratch. It probably lets a wizard cast a fireball once in a while while also maintaining a steam engine... Still not so helpful. I believe that constant magic is required even with circuits.

Although I still say that an air-force is a bad idea right now. We can fight their wind magic, easily, with a little convection. We could try to freeze everything above about 20 metres up and let them see how good their metal protects them when the surrounding air is at -40 and their every wind spell for mobility causes all their warm air to vacate the premises. I recall hearing that we were holding back because someone needed to survive to maintain the thing, but if we only did it to higher altitudes, and convection has been inconveniently absent so far. Regardless, they have lightning and wind, opposing these magics directly would be plausible, trying to confront them aerially in the midst of them would be less so. I feel that a low velocity winged-flier would be practically useless at this point, at least in something as large and unwieldy as a soldier. The jet-propelled version would be less agile, and steering would be a proper pain, but it would be harder to aim at and more resistant to buffeting, so I would be less hesitant towards it given the circumstances.

[Chiefwaffles]

The point of a rocket jump/jet pack isn't to create an air force. It's to allow our infantry to work against their air force (among other things) without having to invest tons of time and actions into our own air force. With a sufficient enough jetpack/whatever, our soldiers can just jump onto and board their ships, or briefly fight their carpets.
We won't be able to hard counter their air force. We can beat them in the airgame via things like anti-air or our own air force, but hard countering just isn't going to be possible. At most, we can waste a design on countering them for one turn and nothing else until they spend a revision or part of a design to undo our counter.

And Evicted just said this on the discord regarding what the difference between a circuit's enchantments and actual spells:

It's the difference between "Passive" and "active" spells.  passive is stuff like "stay this temperature" and active is stuff like "activate a fireball".
the circuit doesn't require a mage for use

[RAM]

It's the difference between "Passive" and "active" spells.  passive is stuff like "stay this temperature" and active is stuff like "activate a fireball".
the circuit doesn't require a mage for use

It may just be me, but that seems horribly ambiguous in context. Not requiring a mage is different from not requiring an ongoing source of new magic. And we are using circuits to produce active spells, so... I really don't see how that statement could confirm anything.

And jetpacks against air seems like an airforce to me. They are going to be working on increasing their altitude if hey have any sense at all, it just buffs everything they do and they already have the temperature-controlled metal to make their pressurised cabins out of... They are probably discussing how to justify "wind magic" being "summon breathable air" right now... It would be like a beach-landing. A crowd of infantry charging against gravity as deadly air-swells knock them around and fire-pots burst around them and lightning shreds through the soldiers either side of them. And all this time they are completely out in the open praying that they can rach the cover of an enemy airship before the magic holding them aloft expires. I think that the helicarrier is more plausible, and the helicarrier would be cut in half after a half-hour of bombardment...

[helmacon]

When did they get temperature controlled metal? That would give them a hard counter to our frost towers too..

[VoidSlayer]

When did they get temperature controlled metal? That would give them a hard counter to our frost towers too..

The metal maintains a constant temp, but the people inside and air outside can still be effected.  So our fireball still burns their eyes and joints and the chill seeps past.

Plus now we have hand cannons so we can just punch through it.