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[helmacon]

Ah yes. One more for the half finished tech pile. Truly, this is a brilliant strategy. Once we have enough, we can start pumping out game changing designs every turn, and there will be nothing they can do to keep up!!

To cover our asses until that time, we need to use the revision to make penetration rounds to kill those sky skiffs. It's pretty obvious we are going to have to sink a design into this thing to get it to a useful state. We might be able to get it working with a revision, but it wouldn't be useful.

Edit: Scrap tech for the scrap tech God! Salt for the salt throne! - official war cry of Arstotzka.

[VoidSlayer]

Ah yes. One more for the half finished tech pile. Truly, this is a brilliant strategy. Once we have enough, we can start pumping out game changing designs every turn, and there will be nothing they can do to keep up!!

To cover our asses until that time, we need to use the revision to make penetration rounds to kill those sky skiffs. It's pretty obvious we are going to have to sink a design into this thing to get it to a useful state. We might be able to get it working with a revision, but it wouldn't be useful.

We just have to fix 7 different issues!  I am sure one revision will be enough.

On the other hand, if we can drop an Interceptor onto an enemy ship its a great bomb!

At least it proves the theory of a group of aethergems working as a high explosive.

[RAM]

Weightite Works
We design a crystalworks to produce weightite instead. Weightite being a material whose defining characteristic is "heavy". We would like to see a result of approximately ten times the weight of lead, or about 100 grams per cubic centimetre, but just being heavier than gold and cheap enough to use in ammunition would suffice. It is hoped that the great simplicity of the material will simplify the summoning process enough that it will be easy to modify the equipment(With which we have great experience modifying the crystalworks, but a non-crystalline material might be difficult) and much faster to produce weightite than crystal, although the energy demands of doing so are somewhat open to speculation...
Our initial trials are to be with bullets, possibly combined with inserts to reduce the diameter of our current cannons or using summoned crystal shells to increase the diameter of the bullets while reducing their average density.
This much heavier material should aid our cannons in overcoming inclement weather and penetrating armour.
 Further refinement of its deployment techniques would greatly improve this effect, potentially making a summoning platform swift enough to summon ammunition directly into barrels(It has been sited by some of our design crew that crystal summon slowly), producing discarded sabot rounds based upon our old anchoring gem methods that would dismiss the bulk of the bullet after leaving the anchor's vicinity and leave only the heaviest portions of the bullet after absorbing the majority of a larger(and thus more influenced by wind resistance and armour) shell's force which would greatly enhance our range and penetration.
Or the cannons could be adapted to a heavier ordnance and just put that much more force into the bullets.
It also has the potential to be subjected to a crystal growing through it, to produce a material with much of the hardness of crystal and near as much weight as weightite. Producing extremely potent armour penetrators and armour for more elite or long-term uses where the expense of a more complex process would be worth it.

[Chiefwaffles]

Ah yes. One more for the half finished tech pile. Truly, this is a brilliant strategy. Once we have enough, we can start pumping out game changing designs every turn, and there will be nothing they can do to keep up!!

To cover our asses until that time, we need to use the revision to make penetration rounds to kill those sky skiffs. It's pretty obvious we are going to have to sink a design into this thing to get it to a useful state. We might be able to get it working with a revision, but it wouldn't be useful.

Edit: Scrap tech for the scrap tech God! Salt for the salt throne! - official war cry of Arstotzka.

A design only becomes half finished tech if we just drop it and never try to fix it and instead opt for one-use revisions to temporarily "patch" other problems.
Which is exactly what you want to do. Yet you're complaining about half-finished tech?

We just have to fix 7 different issues!  I am sure one revision will be enough.

On the other hand, if we can drop an Interceptor onto an enemy ship its a great bomb!

At least it proves the theory of a group of aethergems working as a high explosive.

One issue.
Weight.

Guess how we fix this issue? Better Aethergems. Remember that the Better Magegems revision rolled a 4 (or worse) and for that 4, we got AA Magegems that could store the same amount of power as two old A Magegems. That's what, a 400% power capacity increase?

So if we just get a 100% increase in power generation for Aethergems, that halves the size and weight of the F43. Which means a much smaller target, that can actually fly, that's less volatile, and that we can armor its Aethergems more. (And that's disregarding hopeful Aethergem volatility improvements this revision.)

Oh it also means Aethergems will be more useful in the future and it means that the mistake which is the Mundane will fire much faster.

*sighs* I told you to focus on the technology and not the device. Now we don't have the one thing that the design actually needed in order to work. There really isn't any point in fixing this because we will still be fighting air supremacy and environmental control with an unstable prototype. At least with the force film it could have attempted to brute-force oppose their control, now we have to balance thrusts against constantly changing wind patterns... And we still need living magic to perform those sorts of rapid precise pressure shifts over the frame of a whole aircraft... We still need to solve this situation by denying the sky as a theatre, which should be pretty easy given our massive-huge-megacolossal-scale thermal-magic.

RAM. It got a 1.
If we had tried for a jetpack, we'd be in an even worse situation. We would have still gotten a 1. (And Evicted doesn't count modifiers resulting in a total value below 1 or above 6.) But we would have done less with that 1 due to the scale of the design.

And now we have the KPD which will make future efforts tremendously easier, and we have a F43 which can be fixed with a single revision.


EDIT: I'd also like to point out that this is our first ever aircraft and we're just one revision away from it being useful.

[helmacon]

I think simply making a heavier type of Crystal would be better than making a whole new material.

Edit@ CW. Better aether gems might mean we could do all that, but it would take another action to actually do it.

So, basically, we have a hovercraft that explodes when used.
Still, Chief, you are correct. It is an excellent dog fighter. It managed to nail the one dog present in the audience.

Can sig?

[RAM]

*sighs* I told you to focus on the technology and not the device. Now we don't have the one thing that the design actually needed in order to work. There really isn't any point in fixing this because we will still be fighting air supremacy and environmental control with an unstable prototype. At least with the force film it could have attempted to brute-force oppose their control, now we have to balance thrusts against constantly changing wind patterns... And we still need living magic to perform those sorts of rapid precise pressure shifts over the frame of a whole aircraft... We still need to solve this situation by denying the sky as a theatre, which should be pretty easy given our massive-huge-megacolossal-scale thermal-magic.

RAM. It got a 1.
If we had tried for a jetpack, we'd be in an even worse situation. We would have still gotten a 1. (And Evicted doesn't count modifiers resulting in a total value below 1 or above 6.) But we would have done less with that 1 due to the scale of the design.

And now we have the KPD which will make future efforts tremendously easier, and we have a F43 which can be fixed with a single revision.

We do not have "the KPD". We have an orion drive. It is propelled by explosions. It is going to be unfathomably difficult to steer, assuming that the whole thing doesn't shake apart after an extended voyage. My whole argument was that the project might fail, nay, was quite likely to fail, the prospect of getting all of our design goals seemed like a stretch., Some designs are usable on a one, some aren't. I argued that we should prioritise what was important. As you say, that was "the KPD" which we did not get. We basically already had this form of propulsion if we wanted it, a half of a revision tops! If we had said, "do this drive! and then work on a craft for it..." then the one would have gotten us most of the drive and we could have done the same design again, or maybe even revised it into flying armour like everyone wanted. My question was "if it fails, how should it fail?" and my answer was "get the complicated propulsion thing going and worry about a vehicle as an afterthought.". A 1 is no excuse, we can still work with ones. Instead of a shiny new propulsion system that might, potentially, get us a viable aircraft at some point in the future, we have an outdated aircraft that will never amount to much no matter how much we work on it, short of burning a design on the one thing that it was supposed to produce. Now we are locked into a weird vehicle that has, umm, a rear-facing gun? Is powered by repeating explosions(in tubes?), four per second no less which is, well, it is not going to be comfortable, or stable to fire from, or good at navigating turbulence, or, well...

Just... Just... Just try planning for failure a little... 1 and 2 are a third of the rolls. They happen. They happen a lot. Three and four and not bad, they are average. Five and six are only a third of our outcomes, they are not something that you base your designs on. Always assume that you will get 3, 3, 3, and try to get something out of 1, 1, 1...

[Chiefwaffles]

@Helmacon: Akyshually...

Better Aethergems is something that'll take effect automatically, like how Better Magegems took effect instantly with Blastshells and the AS-R1. And yes retrofitting better aethergems does involve decreasing the total # of gems in the F43, but we also did that with the AS-R1. Originally it took 2 A Magegems for one firing and after we got Better Magegems it got autofitted to only use 1 AA gem.

Tech automatically retrofits if there isn't some notable change to how that tech would be implemented. Like better steam engines, Magegems, and more. Like if it's just a straight-up upgrade to an existing component.
The Internal Detonation Engine is an exception to this, but it's more-so of a new engine heavily based on the steam engine rather than an upgrade to the steam engine. Because after all, it isn't a steam engine.

We do not have "the KPD". We have an orion drive. It is propelled by explosions.

So we got the KPD then. A beta version, if you will. It can be improved, but it's still a KPD.

Just... Just... Just try planning for failure a little... 1 and 2 are a third of the rolls. They happen. They happen a lot. Three and four and not bad, they are average. Five and six are only a third of our outcomes, they are not something that you base your designs on. Always assume that you will get 3, 3, 3, and try to get something out of 1, 1, 1...

And I did.
Realize that we now have access to extreme amounts of aeronautic possibilities not accessible beforehand, and we now have an engine, albeit rough, for doing that.
Realize that all we need to fix the F43 is one revision which will also help us in other areas.

[Draignean]

So, basically, we have a hovercraft that explodes when used.
Still, Chief, you are correct. It is an excellent dog fighter. It managed to nail the one dog present in the audience.

Can sig?

Go right ahead.

[VoidSlayer]

Since everyone seems to want to upgrade aethergems, I should note that the smaller gems have the same generation ability as the larger ones, just less capacity.  To that end, why not just make very, very small aethergems and connect them together in an array rolled up in a metal scroll.  We can reduce the cost and exponentially increase the output of the aethergems.

[Andres]

This was not a failure. This was an advanced prototype, a proof of concept more of anything, a successful proof of concept I might add, as it proved that such a machine can theoretically work. That said, Moskurg may see this wrongly for the failure that it wasn't and have increased morale as a result. Therefore, I will propose keeping the results of this experiment a secret.

ORDERS

1 - Do not reveal the F43 in the next battle report: Andres

Glory to Arstotzka.

[helmacon]

Revisions:
1 - Penetrator rounds (whenever someone posts an appropriate revision for them): Helmacon
Orders:
2 - Do not reveal the F43 in the next battle report: Andres, Helmacon

[Chiefwaffles]

Huh. That could definitely work.
I'm a bigger fan of just going with better Aethergems across the park just to make them more viable for future pursuits and because their power capacity is pretty important. But it's definitely a viable option.

Revision: Aethergem Array

We create a large number of "AAAA Aethergems" - notably smaller than even AAA Aethergems with almost zero power capacity but still keeping the same power generation rate. Then we bind a number of these "minigems" together with a single AAA Magegem with crystal wiring.

The effect is a device the size of an AAA Aethergem with a slightly higher power capacity (the sum of the AAAA gems' capacities adds a small but notable capacity to the AAA Magegem0 but a much greater generation rate. The top priority in this revision is ensuring that the Aethergem Array can be easily, without a dedicated revision, be fitted into the F43 to greatly decrease its size and weight.


@Andres:
We should probably wait until we see the revision to decide that. There's a very real chance that with better AGems, the F43 may be really viable.
But I definitely see your point regardless.

@Helmacon: You ignored Andrea and my votes for Better Aethergems.

[Andres]

Revisions:
1 - Penetrator rounds (whenever someone posts an appropriate revision for them): Helmacon
1 - Aethergem Array: Andres
Orders:
2 - Do not reveal the F43 in the next battle report: Andres, Helmacon

Glory to Arstotzka.

[Chiefwaffles]

Revisions:
2 - Better Aethergems: Chiefwaffles, Andrea
1 - Penetrator rounds (whenever someone posts an appropriate revision for them): Helmacon
2 - Aethergem Array: Andres, Chiefwaffles

Orders:
2 - Do not reveal the F43 in the next battle report: Andres, Helmacon

Fixed the votes and duplivoting for AGem array. If there happens to be a tie between the two AGem proposals I'll remove one of my votes.

[RAM]

I feel compelled to mention that I already proposed that we completely remove the storage capacity from our generators to make more optimised generators. Is there some compelling reason that the array is better then the gemerators?

And is there some reason that the weightite works proposal does not offer penetrating rounds. Yes, penetrating rounds is only happening on a decent roll, but the groundwork is there for some really amazing penetrating rounds on a future revision if the roll is bad.

I say again that crystals have an inherently low density. There is only so much structure that you can fit into an extremely dense space. Crystals are good like the patterns on a cardboard box are good, lots of strength for minimal materials and weight. This is great if you are building a house, terrible if you are building a bullet. Also, the only way to potentially get dense crystals is more compact structures. More compact almost certainly means more complex, which will probably make summoning them more difficult. A new material really is the only plausible way to get the performance necessary to be, well, better than lead...

Query? How is the following true?
size of (AAA gem + many AAAA gems) = size of (AAA gem)
There is something there that I am really not understanding.