I would like to avoid The Mind of Madness from having any associations with our fog spell. That spell has a material component and has already been largely hard-countered. We should conduct this battle in a purely metaphysical area if we can.
Chiefwaffles, I do not recall any occasion in which you "pointed ... out ... [RAM] make[s ] up everything[ In their arguments].". In order to point something out, you must point. I do not recall a single occasion in which it was every explained how any of my statements are "made up". It has been stated before, but never with any justification as to how it might be an accurate description of current matters. If you refuse to even state which specific elements of my statements are unsubstantiated then, well, it makes it really difficult to understand how your arguments could be compelling. So many of your designs have failed to even address all of their stated goals. It is obvious that your understanding of the game's boundaries is either lacking or you are deliberately making designs that are overambitious for some other reason. The crystalworks didn't have conveyor belts or steam engines or robot arms or anything, it was just slabs with a series of slots for templates. We submitted something silly and got something wonderful. The G.M. bent over backwards to give that to use and I can't see how we could be so fortunate. The protector didn't get air systems or antimagic immunity. It should have, it should have tried, failed, and resulted in not even any useful experience. What we got was mobile guns and armour. It was a miracle that the G.M. gifted us with such a working design, and we can only pray that we continue to benefit from such gifts. Should we continue to exploit this? I am not entirely comfortable with submitting nonsense and relying upon the G.M. to sanitise it. If we really want to just go out on a limb and do something awesome, lets do it in style!
Summon large, dangerous plant
Summons a large, dangerous plant. We have experience with plants, and summoning animals, and can use magems to power particularly large spells. This will obviously be easy because duh! and will be completely unopposably powerful because I said so, regardless of rolls or logic. We have experience from fields that included the keywords: Plant, shoot, and energy, along with designs that had results that could be listed as: "larger than it was before", "friendly to us", "largely impossible by all known sanity", and "spontaneous existence of weird creatures with energy attacks" so this design is not just plausible, but actually so incredibly easy that no sane person could find issue with it and I'll fight anyone who suggest that my idea might have flaws!remember when you (RAM) said making a Falcon larger was impossible?
Could you please cite the relevance of this? I am really not comprehending it. At a glance you seem to be equating it with the Mind of Madness spell. I don't really see the relevance. We have absolutely no experience with giant animals. We have experience with modified summons, which is not the same as modified natural animals. As summoned critter comes into being according to specifications. A natural critter comes into being according to specific designs and modifications must occur without rendering the critter nonviable at any point in the process and must enforce themselves over an actively manifesting design. If we didn't have conjuration, then I would suggest that giant falcons would be easier to make from existing falcons rather than making them out of nothing, but we are- It doesn;t seem right that I would have said that it was impossible though, just a new research field would be difficult and probably fail. Low odds off it working right and... Hrmm, the post your link sent me to didn't say that anything was impossible at all, odd, it seems that you are just making things up, by the Titan-load...
Now, for a refresher, this is how you do it.
You said that I said that giant falcons were impossible, and then you linked a post to that.
I checked the link, and I did not state that that giant falcons were impossible within that link.
You made a statement and that statement was false. You are making things up.
See, that is how you claim that someone is making things up. It is simple, you point out why the thing that they said is not true. You do not just claim that it is untrue and leave it at that, you actually have to explain why it is so. Well, unless you only want to win over simpletons.
Now, I am willing to believe that I might have said that giant falcons are impossible, in context. Such as "it is impossible to make them bigger as a revision" or "Making them bigger and armoured and lightning proof in a single design is just not possible", but "falcons being giant cannot occur" seems like something that I wouldn't say. But I am not the most consistent person...
Who wants to play a game of Spot the Difference?
Any vehicle we build needs to either have longer range then them, or be faster then them.
No they don't.
If we can annihilate them when they get close and their long-range stuff does nothing against them, we win. For example, see this combat phase where we just won everywhere except the jungle and where we won at sea even though their airships outrange our Crystalclads.
Honestly, I think we have sufficient momentum to keep winning for at least this turn
Let's see.
Jungle: We lost.
Desert: We had a tie. We only won by coinflip.
Plains: We win, but in Evicted's words:
Arstotzka manages to gain ground. It's not by a huge degree, but the battle does go solidly in their favor.
And this was with both Myark and Bjorn there.
Seas: We won, but that's not really the focus here.
Now I just leave it here with no explanation and see if people think that I have offered some grand insight or if I am just spinning my wheels uselessly. Now, granted, it is a very VERY strong shift in emphasis, but does it really contradict?
The reason that we won was my idea of a large-project oriented crystalworks. We got cheap guns and cheap ships. Those cheap ships made the turn for us. The seas are a massive power-factor and if Moskurg focuses on land then they will massively regret the sea advantage. The cheap cannons held our advantage. The protector, while useful, really wasn't a factor. It added some pressure, as an armoured combat vehicle would, but it wasn't effective at bringing down things that beat its range and speed, as was expected. We could have revised its speed, but even that would have only limited effects and been prone to an altitude upgrade on the carpets. Point is that the protector didn't win us the battles last turn. And a revision to it would not have changed that as far as I can see. We won the turn because of cheap cannons and ships. I remember seeing the cheap crystalclads in the revision description and suffering from a bout of internal giggling.
If they counter crystal, we will lose once, then revise crystal to be better than it was before, making their hard counter useless while benefitting ourself. This does not change based on the Titan.
EDIT: And this if Evicted lets them counter Crystal. As I said, hard counters are unfun and it should be obvious to anyone what countering crystal or anything like that would do - just endless hard counters.
And how am I fitting three designs into one?
The Titan is "make a huge land vehicle, give it treads, give it cannons." How that is that three designs?
We could spend this design doing something that is not made of crystal. Or developing a mixture of materials even? Weightite is still an option...
As for endlessly revising crystals to be immune to sound. We do it one, then they pull a universal frequency so we can't frequency juggle anymore. Then they pull a magic sound so that our semisolid crystals are forced to listen so we can't change the nature of their existence anymore. It is a bad line for us to follow as our avenues of retreat are steadily cut off.
As for what Evictedsaint will let them pull off? Well, lets see, what of the recent adamantine that is completely immune to all of our thermal magic, both hot and cold? And makes them immune to the thermal effects of high altitude while they are at it?
Well surely evicted wouldn't do that to our crystals!
With their troops lightly armored and massed, our theatre commander decides to start off with a sudden, powerful charge from our heavy calvary. They can't maintain formation in the dense undergrowth, but there's enough of them it doesn't matter. Gleaming lances of magic crystal are clutched in the hands of each horseman, but just before they slam into the enemy troops they all vanish into a puff of smoke. It's a shock to the horsemen as their weapons disappear from their grasp, leaving them unarmed in the midst of enemy spearmen. It's not even close - only one in ten make it back to our lines. Our men are dead silent as our wounded and decimated calvary are shuffled off the field. That battle went poorly, but now we know they have some new brand of magic that dispels our crystal weapons.
Well, we could have called that. I mean, it is antimagic, defeating magic is its whole thing! It is not as though our crystals had been previously demonstrated to completely ignore the antimagic fields of our antimagic charms... Oh wait...
Honestly, you are arguing that evictedSaint would not let Moskurg completely destroy all of our crystals. It has literally already happened once. How can you still have credibility at this point?
But hey, at least you are solid on The Titan not being three designs, right?
Massive in size in every way.
Layered resistive crystal makes it invulnerable to lightning strikes.
I recall that we never did get around to making resistive and conductive crystal variants. The overambitious armour project skipped it and I do not recall picking it up again.
Caterpillar treads
Transmission is improved
crystal wiring (or just sending the magical current through the walls if necessary/possible).
these two are probably pretty minor. It just says "improved" without any specifications so it is not like we are designing a modern gearbox here. And the crystal wiring is likely already working, just a risk of the scale being too much.
Magegem LightingI do not recall if they have sufficient radiance to work for this without modification, and you already have a room full to just under national effort of the things... and then again, low power means no light, so an antimagic field is lethal instead of merely disastrous. As is exhausting its power.
Internal Detonation Engines working in parallel
I expect that this will further pressure the transmission, but it might not be that bad...
Control Panels & Piloting
This seems like more technical stuff that we don't have yet. In theory it is just checking the power-levels of the circuits and whether the circuits are complete or not. But I do not believe that we currently have a means of determining whether a circuit is complete based upon a magem. An apprentice could probably pulse it to check if it is working, but it is yet more complexity to sort out.
upgrade it to include air recycling (also enchantment style). Seal the Titan to air. The strength of Crystal combined with this should allow the Titan to go fairly deep underwater, provided all hatches and whatnot are closed securely.
I recall it being explicitly stated that circuits required ongoing power additions in order to function. Scrolls may be different? This whole "enchantment" thing seems to be made-up, but feel free to cite a source if it isn't. Air recycling is, well, we could do recycling with convection, but it wouldn't make it any more breathable, and you specifiy that it is a closed system. Air that is actually made to be perpetually breathable is another matter. I feel that it is a design of its own. And I do not believe that water-tight hatches are a thing that we have ever actually done. It is rather more difficult than you might expect, but mathematically-perfect crystal shapes can likely solve it without too much difficulty.
HA1 battery on the top filled with numerous cheap HA1s configured for indirect fire. Platform with the HA1s can be lowered into the hull and have a bay door close over it, sealing and protecting them from harm if necessary.
Umm, and these are watertight hatches? That cover an entire artillery battery? That is rather more difficult than screwed-closed doors for personnel. It could be merely a part of a design, but it would be the primary focus. And then we have the matter of suddenly knowing how to do mechanical lifts and doors.
Portholes (with hatches of course) on all sides of the ships accessible from the inner decks are equipped with cheap AS-HAC-1s for point defense. Numerous AS-HAC-1s on top deck for anti-air. Ship-of-the-line-style configuration for HC1-Es exists mostly on front and a bit on left/right to allow for up-close siege potential.
Portholes don't offer the range of motion for close-area defence, and the air defence is more lifts and hatches or just waterproof or what?
Ugh, I already deleted the bit on engines, but I figure that you are assigning about 100 times the engines of Protectors for a vehicle that is about a thousand tomes the mass. That equates to a tenth of the speed, but this is meant to be faster... So, engine upgrade from nowhere?
Wherever the Titan is, we shouldn't need a camp
A mobile kitchen an plumbing doesn't sound like much, but it sort of is.
Protector Garages - Has space for a handful of Protectors to deploy from the Titan. Mostly used for side-missions, smaller assaults, scouting, etc.
Well this should just be a Protector-sized ramp, and watertight door... But the complexities of a landing bay are easy to underestimate. I would say that this is probably not quite a whole revision, but it could pull a surprise...
I cut out all of the stuff that I thought we already had, and thus would not require effort within the design. And honestly, I could see us spending two designs on the size ofthe thing. One for something that big at sea and another for supporting it on land.