And that's another thing! Archers! Moskurg's adamantium means that archers simply aren't that useful anymore. It's just too tough to reliably pierce through. Swapping out our longbows with R2s will mean that we'll have a considerable percentage of our infantry having a much needed combat boost, once more allowing them to have significant effect against the enemy.
Or we can just use artillery.
You keep maintaining this contradictory stance. It's either "Our infantry need to kill Moskurgs, but they have to go over no man's land to do so. Let's give them APCs to do that" or "Our infantry don't need to kill Moskurgs. Our artillery kills the Moskurgs for them", but not both.
Currently, our infantry DO need to kill Moskurgs and thus DO need to cross no man's land, getting hit by the enemy as they run across it. Better the R2 than the APC because while they might both reduce no man's land casualties in their own way, the R2 almost completely does away with melee casualties whereas an APC will at most reduce them.
The APC, if successful (which isn't a disadvantage. This is true for all designs, including the R2), will completely eliminate casualties on no man's land. The R2 does not protect our soldiers from Lightning (which immediately kills at range and is accurate) or Tornadoes (stated by Evicted to be the #1 killer of our men) or sniper Ballistae (which can easily kill men in combat armor and is super-super-accurate).
This is what's killing our men. At most, the AS-R2 helps a bit against them but it's unrealistic to expect soldiers equipped with AS-R2 to be able to immediately snipe any mage casting killing spells. If this was true, then we'd have won the game with artillery already.
Or you can take it from Evicted himself. Charging across no-man's land is still pretty lethal for both sides despite their new armor
...
I mentioned the possibility of them countering our artillery in my argument. They will in all likelihood do so by having their wizards cast a spell. An R2 - a proper sniper rifle that's accurate beyond Moderate range - will significantly increase our men's ability to do so. Not only that, but it'll cut down on them casting other spells as well, spells like the lightning which their carpet wizards continue to cast.
That's literally what our artillery is already doing. This won't help in any way because it's already being done excellently.
This idea of "we have flares, so it's not that important to get optics" is so ludicrous I'm not going to waste any breath arguing over it.
That's not what I said. But let me restate my point then.
It's important to get optics, but not important enough to go with an inferior design just to
kind of of get optics in a package deal. Our artillery is already effective at BLOS+1 ranges (which we will not be able to get the AS-R2 to.)
Also, fun fact, that I'm emphasizing because this is really important.
The AS-R2 is (best case scenario since this is increasing its effective range by +2 and we've never done that before)
at Extreme range. Moskurg's Ballistae (and every useful spell) are at Extreme range. Ballistae can literally snipe soldiers. Lightning can snipe soldiers and can be done from BLOS. Tornadoes are at Extreme range. Snipers aren't useful if they're the same range as the enemy's good weapons.[/b]
A waste of a Revision. It's more efficient to get magnifying optics as part of the R2, then we can just retrofit it into our visors.
Not possible because this is not how retrofitting works. Retrofitting is if we upgrade a design already used somewhere else or if we make something very similar to an existing design used somewhere else, or if we make something that another design that we already included slots for in another design.
If we make a crystal scope, we'd have to fit it into a visor shape and add additional functionality so the soldiers can activate and deactivate it at will.
EDIT: For those who
don't feel like reading through even more quote-by-quote arguments, here's a short summary of my points:
The AS-R2 fulfills two roles.
Role one: Sniper. The problem here though is that our artillery already does this better than the best case AS-R2. Artillery is much longer-ranged, more widespread, has explosive ammo, and can carpet an entire area with explosives. The AS-R2 is at Extreme range, where they can be sniped by Moskurg's literal sniper Ballistae (which would beat the AS-R2 in accuracy), lightning, or tornadoes. And the latter two can even be casted from BLOS on their airships where the best possible AS-R2 can't reach them.
Role two: Infantry weapon. The problem here (other than the fact that it's Expensive) is that it doesn't matter how good our infantry if they die before reaching the battle. This was said by Evicted to be a thing. And if your answer to this is "well we can just snipe them before they shoot us!" then 1.) Our artillery literally already does that and 2.) See "Role one".
Sorry if this edit ninjas someone's post in response to mine.
EDIT2: Two things.
1.) @RAM and his criticism of the Blastshield: Yeah, that's why I decided against it ultimately. It only helps against Ballistae.
But the main point of the Blastshield is to pave the way for force-manipulation, allowing power armor and other cool things.
2.)
The AS-R2 has two points of failure unlike practically any other design. It relies on a successful Magegem revision to work at all. So if we don't get the Design and Revision right, the AS-R2 won't work properly. This is a minor point hence the edit, but it still matters. Sorry again if this edit ninjas anything.
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Topic: Wands Race - [Arstotzka] {COMPLETED} (Read 393301 times)