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[Chiefwaffles]

That's a valid criticism, but I don't believe it makes the CAF unworthy for this revision.

1.) The CAF can apply first and foremost to the AS-HAC-1, the cannon that would benefit the most from this. The HAC (Hybrid Autocanon) was designed to be later revised for self-feeding. Imagine a point defense cannon that doesn't require reloading. This will turn the HAC from a 15th century swivel cannon to an actual fiercesome weapon of war. Infantry will be mowed down as they try to past. Aerial attacks made impossible as the skies are filled with crystal.
The AS-HAC-1 also does not use any special ammunition at the moment, too.

2.) The CAF does not replace breech-loading. We will still be able to use special ammunition where needed. Even if we have a Cheap Explosive or +Range shell (I think we do?), the much faster rate of fire can prove more useful at times instead of explosive/+range. But for the (probably majority of) times that we do need explosive/range shell, we can use them at the same effectiveness as before.

3.) Potential! We're not restrained by the rules of physics. We have magic. With another revision or design or whatever, we'll be able to summon explosive ammunition. Remember that Magegems are made out of Crystal Glass. Circuits are ultimately just a material carved in a different way. (We actually have crystal circuits but don't use them because we made them before regenerative crystal and heat fluctuations + no regen made crystal impossible to use for circuits at the time.) It's very possible to eventually create special ammunition with the CAF. Then we'd be firing explosive shells at breakneck speeds!

Furthermore, again, this isn't just an upgrade for the HA1. This is an improvement to our weaponry tech which will be extremely useful both now and for the rest of the game. We can make an infantry rifle that doesn't require reloading easily with this! We can do so many things.

[RAM]

Flares seems to shoot up quickly and then drift down slowly, that could potentially be something that could be incorporated into a detonation system.

Magic Apparatus: General Edition
We build a light crystal box that contains a AA magem and two AAA Aethergems. This box is held upon a soldier's back using shoulder and waist straps of broad leather. The second component is a crystal 'wand'. The wand consists of a stick with a socket at one end, adjacent to the socket, sticking out of the side, is a handle, above the handle is a blunt, square hook, and at right-angles to all three is a cord. The socket receives cylindrical spell-circuits to be channelled through the wand and the hook affixes to a sash which also functions as a bandoleer for spell-circuits. The cord is composes of a simple circuit printed on leather that is then smeared with tar and rolled into a cylinder. This cord transfers magic from the generator pack on the back into the wand for use by spells.
Circuit-cylinders to be designed, in order of priority:
Flare
Caltrops
Fog
minor firewall(from steam-engines)
Smallest fire/forceballs
minor Frost aura(from condensers and cooling units)

Hopefully this would replace apprentices in scouting parties, allowing them to survive more often and granting us more wizards, along with a highly utilitarian device. Of course, infantry upgrades don't seem all that useful right now, but the hope is there that it might give our skirmish troops enough of an advantage for there to be an actual skirmish phase this time.

[Chiefwaffles]

So.

After some questions for Evicted and some research, here's my current conclusion on the effectiveness of crystal bullets.

First, here are some answers from evicted on Discord:

... on a small-scale (like bullets) would the weight difference between crystal and steel cause any differences in effectiveness as projectiles?

your crystal is notably lighter than steel, though still denser than water.  It would not be as effective as lead, i guess?

You use iron shells

Second, I'm assuming we're using cast iron shells. I don't exactly have much knowledge surrounding metallurgy, but cast iron appears to be "pure" iron that comes to mind when one says "iron".

So according to the first result from online searches,
Lead weighs 11.34 grams/cubic centimeter.
Cast Iron weighs 7.208 grams/cubic centimeter.

Third, note this quote from evicted:

It would not be as effective as lead, i guess?

This was in response to me asking the effectiveness of crystal ammunition.

Considering that we currently use Cast Iron ammunition, and that Cast Iron weighs 63.563% as much as Lead...
I think it's safe to say that crystal ammunition would very likely be as effective as our current iron ammunition.

[helmacon]

To be fair, he also said its lighter than steel.

[Chiefwaffles]

Yep.
My point is that Evicted explicitly compares crystal to lead in terms of effectiveness, when I asked him about crystal and steel. I ask him about the effectiveness of crystal bullets and steel bullets, and he says crystal bullets would be worse than lead bullets.

This doesn't explicitly say it, but it, along with my other information, implies that crystal is roughly as effective as steel in ammunition. And cast iron + steel have pretty similar weights too, I believe.


If someone asks "Is A worse than B?" and the answer is "A is worse than C" and you know that B is also worse than C, the implication is that A is not notably worse than B, as there's a reason the person doesn't say "A is worse than B."

[helmacon]

If someone asks "Is A worse than B?" and the answer is "A is worse than C" and you know that B is also worse than C, the implication is that A is not notably worse than B, as there's a reason the person doesn't say "A is worse than B." 

that's... Not how logic works. The above statements tell you nothing about the relationship between A and B unless you make some pretty big assumptions. I would ask Es for clarification here.

[Chiefwaffles]

Oh, I've been trying.

I asked evicted the same question on Discord three times.
The first two times evicted essentially dodged the question. I don't know if it was intentional, but they did it.

The first time, I asked them "would the weight difference between crystal and steel cause any differences in effectiveness as projectiles?"
He tells me that crystal is less effective than lead.

The second time, I ask them "So compared to our current steel(?) shells, would there be any noticeable decrease in effectiveness if we switched to crystal bullets?"
He corrects my usage of steel, saying our shells our iron, and says nothing else.

The third time, I ask them "Since you made the comparison to lead, I'm assuming we shouldn't have problems going from iron->crystal?"
Then he says this before going offline!

Im gonna need to limit you to a dozen questions per turn, because this is getting kind of ridiculous

It's actually really frustrating.


And that's how logic works, yes. In a conversational context, at least. It's not about things like mathematical relationships but rather the implication.
Why would Evicted compare crystal to lead? Doing so implies that lead is the first material that would be notably more effective than crystal (or iron). If crystal is less effective than iron, then chances are evicted would have said that instead of comparing crystal to lead.

[evictedSaint]

You're trying to get me to say "yes, this thing you want to attempt is a good/bad idea" which I refuse to do. 

It's actually really frustrating.

[RAM]

Water basically weighs 1 gram per centimetre.
"not as effective as lead" is not the same as "more effective than iron".
"Effectiveness as projectiles" is somewhat vague given the context. Technically accurate but it can get caught up in things like penetration and stopping power. We only care about flight performance when it comes to brute-forcing through their wind-deflection.
Those responses seem uncertain to me due to the question marks. Also, I do not believe that discord is an official source of information on the game. Convenient, no doubt, but such thingsare best handled on the thread where everyone can see them and the full context.

so... I don't really want to have to deal with discord stuff... But the datapoints that I get are:
Lead is greater than crystal for "projectiles".
Crystal weighs an otherwise unknown value between one and one seventh as much as our current shells.

Lead is soft, which makes it good against soft targets, but poor at penetration. As a bullet it can be regarded as very bad for certain niche roles. Its flight characteristics, though, are superior to steel, as air will not deform lead at any sane velocity. As a "thing to project to a distance" it is good, but "projectile" can be inferred to mean "bullet"...

So crystals could weigh two times as much as water, and be one third as effective as our current shells. My feeling from the thread is that it is probably close to four or five times as much as water, but I really couldn't be certain. I believe that steel is slightly, well, less than 10%, heavier than iron, so it is not impossible that it is heavier than iron, but I cannot see that being borne out from the descriptions of it.

 I do not know of any qualities that crystal has that would influence it's flight-path other than pure density. Crystals have fractal designs, which tend towards rough surfaces at a chemical scale. Metals tend to be smooth. It really isn't possible to say that one would have a more aerodynamic surface than the other, but the metal is probably easier to polish while the crystal is probably easier to forge smooth in the factory, so I guess it depends how gritty they get in transit? Crystals do grow under certain circumstances, so they might tend to stick together and deform if left adjacent to one another for a long time? But really, the surface is an unknown factor, but metal comes highly recommended as a projectile by all the world's armies, so it certainly isn't 'bad'. So all that we really have to go on is density? I mean, sure, other things come into play once you actually hit the thing, but right now we are incapable of attacking their long-ranged stuff as it is faster and longer ranged that anything that we have.

 So the continued value of cannons, as derived from its ammunition, is a matter of density. And crystal is an unknown density in a range which includes densities less than a seventh of that of our current bullets.

We know already that our current bullets are not good enough due to their susceptibility to wind. We know that lead would be better. Revising crystal works to summon something more like lead, such as weightite, is confirmed as an upgrade, and would be a better revision given that range is our current problem. I did not notice any significant problems with rate-of-fire last turn.

[Chiefwaffles]

You're trying to get me to say "yes, this thing you want to attempt is a good/bad idea" which I refuse to do. 

It's actually really frustrating.

If for whatever reason evicted literally refuses to answer _{a simple question well within the bounds of reasonable in-context knowledge} like this, it means it's the rolls. If we get a 3, then Evicted may say we get what we want but the bullets aren't as good.

Also he could have told me this! Please, if you're getting annoyed by my questions, just tell me you don't want to answer it instead of giving me weird semi-relevant answers that only serve to make me more curious. Good for both parties.

tl;dr: Don't worry about the density, then. If Evicted refuses to answer this then it means it's just going to be a possible bug if we get rolls worthy of bugs.

[evictedSaint]

Seems like a 3-way tie between a crystal ammo fabricator, an aethergem pack, and a magegem capacity upgrade.  I'll pick one at random, unless the tie is broken soon

[helmacon]

We have two votes for flash flares, right?

[evictedSaint]

I dont see them in the most recent vote box, so no.

[helmacon]

Can someone add those, I am at work

[Draignean]

Can someone add those, I am at work

I could be wrong, and I could be referencing the wrong design, but here we are.

0 Aethergem Shells:
0 Academy Aethergems:
0 Temporary Wizards:
0 Weightite works:
0 Gemerators:
1 Magegem Capacity Upgrade: Kadzar
1 Aethergem recharging pack: RAM
0 Aethergem Fitting:
0 Better Aethergems:
0 Duststorm Equalizer:
0 Growing Crystal:
0 U.N.C.L.:
0 S.A.F.E.:
1 Crystal Ammunition Fabricator: Chiefwaffles
0 Forced Force Flourishes:
3 Blind Flares : Voidslayer, Helmacon, Draignean

0 Save the credit:

Orders:
2 Buy Chief and RAM a room so they can hatefuck and get it out of their system: Draignean, helmacon