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[Chiefwaffles]

Great. It's not particularly useful. A city bomber. When we're the ones defending the city. With bombs rivaling the strength of grenades.

Anyways. This is essential. It'd allow our artillery to outrange theirs again.
Revision: Starshell (Blastshell M.2)

The Blastshell M.2 "Starshell" is a straightforward modernization of the Blastshell.

First, we just retrofit in one-size-bigger supercharged Aethergems (which is possible since the Blastshell was made before the cost of ____gems went down) to replace the Magegems if size permits. Otherwise we just do same-size Aethergems.
We replace the propulsion with a standard KPD2. The current cup-based Blastball propulsion system should be easy to adapt to the nozzle-based KPD (which is heavily derived from Blastballs) system.
The Aethergems should enhance explosive capabilities just by being present, due to their natural volatility. This isn't a necessity of the revision in any way and shouldn't be actively pursued - it's just a nice side-bonus we can reasonably expect.

The nature of the Aethergems and the KPD2 should allow for effectively limitless powered flight and therefore massively increased range. The Starshell, naturally benefitting from the new aerodynamics, shouldn't suffer the same kind of accuracy penalties acquired through powered flight that the Blastshell M.1 experienced.

REVISION 1
1 - Blastshell M.2: Chiefwaffles

[andrea]

I believe the firestorm can be salvaged, but for now the blastshells seem good.

REVISION 1
2 - Blastshell M.2: Chiefwaffles, Andrea

[FallacyofUrist]

Sure. But Rocketshells are a much better name.

REVISION 1
2 - Blastshell M.2: Chiefwaffles, Andrea, (FallacyofUrist: Conditional on name change to Rocketshells)

[Roboson]

I can't believe this game is still running. How are things going for us? Can someone give me a summary? I've been thinking about coming back to this.

Edit: a short summary, not like an everything that's happened in the last like 100 pages lol, just enough to get my bearings.

[FallacyofUrist]

How are things going? The game's going great. But we're losing badly. As in, if we lose this turn, we lose the game.

[andrea]

and we rolled 2 on effectiveness and bugs on our design, so you are in time for a battle of the embassy style thing

[Roboson]

Oh in that case it's probably not worth it to write up a summary lol.

[Chiefwaffles]

@Roboson:

It's complicated.

Both sides have gone magitech. Arstotzka more-so. We both developed artillery. Arstotzka has ~20th century artillery powered using magic while Moskurg has railguns (which are okay) and ballistae (which we obsoleted with our artillery). Both sides have an airforce - we have a combat transport craft, a gunship/fighter, and now a lame bomber. Moskurg has airships and flying canoes(?) using primitive jet engines. While Arstotzka powers our aircraft via continuous controlled explosions.
We also have guns.

Moskurg started winning due to destroying us in the air game, airborne artillery, and using their weather magic to decrease the range of our artillery. Eventually we matched them in the air game (though the exact status of that is currently disputed), and for reasons largely unknown to me they're still advancing.

@FallacyofUrist: I'm okay with a new name if the prefix is one syllable. "Rocket" is two syllables, which makes it unacceptable.

Also, possible revision. The contingency plan. If anyone has a better idea to create supernatural cold, please do submit it.
Revision: Aetherfrost

The Frost Tower. An artifact of older times. Numerous are even visible from Arstotzka city itself. But they lie dormant, rendered useless by Moskurger armor. Climate-controlled armor immune to temperature.
But since then we have improved so much. We can harness our knowledge of magic to once again weaponize these towers. Magineers will be sent to the local Arstotzkan towers to re-activate them with modern technology and improvements, making them useful once again.

Aetherfrost is the result of combining our knowledge of the Aether with our knowledge of the cold. By using the same technique that Aethergems use to connect to the pervasive Aether, we can infuse the entire area with cold. No amount of armor or insulation, however climate-controlled it is, will save them. The circuits in the Towers shall be worked on with this technique, making the Towers of Frost into Towers of Aetherfrost.

Aetherfrost will likely affect us as well. We will lose men to the cold, yes. But Arstotzkans are more naturally resistant to the cold than Moskurgers, giving us the edge. Furthermore, we hope that as Aethergems work by drawing power from the Aether, Aetherfrost's effects are diminished near Aethergems and thus our forces should hopefully receive a much lesser version of Aetherfrost. But ultimately, this is nothing but a hope.

TL;DR: Use our knowledge of the Aether, combine it with our extensive Frost Tower/cold magic experience to make the Frost Towers spread a supernatural "Aetherfrost" instead of just decreasing the temperature regularly. Aetherfrost, being supernatural, should bypass any kind of insulation/temperature-control/etc.. Arstotzkans will likely be affected to, but their natural resistance to frost should help and hopefully Aethergems, taking power from the Aether, should reduce the local effect of Aetherfrost.

[FallacyofUrist]

Why not do both(Rocketshells and Aetherfrost)?

As for alternative names... Starshells? Short for Shooting Star Shells?

[Andres]

Shit. Forgot to vote. Can't believe that many people actually voted for something that will barely help us.

Glory to Arstotzka.

[RAM]

Blasteyes(pronounced "blasties" or "blah styes")
The Firestorm doesn't work because it cannot differentiate enemies. Artillery, obviously, would be worse, as the Firstorm can still just go to a lower altitude to improve its aim and completely suppress the nonexistant enemy ground forces that are somehow overwhelming us with their insubstantial menace that destroys our crystal armour and A.P.C.s with halberds.
Combine Honest Strike or whatever it is named plus aerodynamics from the aerophobic crystals, rifled barrels, aerodynamic shell shapes, various aircraft... We give or bombs little fins and a luck-spell and maybe a lucky streamer or a propulsion spell and they will naturally veer into enemies. This has been explained in various proposals from various people but it really doesn't matter, we got antimagic resistant circuits from "antimagic resistant circuits", we have enough for seeking bombs. I doubt it will be difficult to get something that can consistently fall onto enemies if there are any enemies within, say, a 20 degree wind-adjusted cone directly under the craft. This would give us something that could consistently blow up ground forces as they move from house to house, rather than levelling a whole suburb and having enemies climb out of the rubble...

Reflexive regeneration (Rrrrargh!)
Our crystals regenerate, but too slowly to survive repeated lightning strikes. Lightning, it seems, contains a great deal of energy. We have a great deal of experience in converting energy so we are attempting to have crystals store much of the force of an impact in the form of potential regeneration, which is then released in the form of massively accelerated regeneration. While this won't do anything if the whole structure is shattered in a single blow, it should allow a near instantaneous recovery from smaller blows, up to the amount of energy that was absorbed. We worry about the ability to absorb kinetic and thermal attacks which will likely see only minor repair of the damage that they inflict, but electricity seems to have a natural affinity for being converted into other energy forms, so a near-total-and-instantaneous repair of lightning damage should be possible, and the more affinity that the lightning has for our crystals, the more easily it will be absorbed into the regeneration matrix.

Crystals Conferred Accelerated Regeneration by Power (Something's fishy...)
We make the crystal regeneration accelerate when magic is applied, allowing us to near-instantly repair damage by shovelling boatloads of magic into it.
This is more modest than reflexive regeneration and potentially more powerful if our craft can afford to divert reactor/mage output into staying alive. And a mage in such armour would be resilient... Doesn't help much against their coilguns mind...

Both of the winning proposals were pretty terrible. Both amounted to dropping bombs on aircraft. Still, we have air-control of a fashion now... I guess I should do that...

Resiliant! (Say "resilient" but think "Valiant"...)
The Resiliant! is a revision of protectors to incorporate new technology. Reactors are installed, cutting into passenger space but who cares? An atmospheric control is established to allow it to be completely sealed against incoming gases to stop ambient heat from entering. K.P.D. is included to act as suspension to stop the breakdowns and the design includes far more crystal now along with the latest of propulsion technologies invoked to improve the performance of the enegine(opposing K.P.D.4s can oscillate between pushing each other apart or pulling each other together based upon positional shifts in circuitry. With all of the cylinders pushing constantly like this it should be more powerful than cycling explosions in one cylinder at a time.) The powered suspension should make it effectively lighter and years of observation of its field performance should allow us to revise out the problems that were causing it to break down. Incorporate the latest in turret technology to improve the main gun and replace the HAC-1 with an actual Lightning turret.

[Kadzar]

I also think rocketshells would be a better name, but my vote doesn't hinge on it.

REVISION 1
3 - Blastshell M.2: Chiefwaffles, Andrea, (FallacyofUrist: Conditional on name change to Rocketshells), Kadzar

[VoidSlayer]

Uhhhhh, so we need to get the honest strike module working for the firestorm.  And a simple heating circuit should be more then enough to keep the frost issues at bay.

We made a high altitude bomber, we need to make it a useful high altitude bomber.

Revision: Trust Fall Targeting System

We revise the Firestorm to have bombs fall out of a short tube, like a cannon, and fix a modified honest strike circuit to the tube.  A dedicated bomb dropper then drops the bombs when he thinks a target is under it thanks to a clear crystal crosshair embedded in the bottom of the vessel to allow sight of the ground.  Flare targeting is also possible with bombs dropped where a flair can be seen through any cloud cover.

[VoidSlayer]

The enemy is immune to our frost stuff, their armor completely protects them, or at least mitigates it enough that I doubt it will have a big effect.

[RAM]

I was under the impression that we lost range due to inaccuracy rather than a lack of flight distance. And thus, Blastshells would not increase our range, because it increases maximum range but does zero for effective range where we are bottlenecked. That is, it is not completely hopless, it may increase the flight speed, which would mean less flight time and thus less exposure to side-winds and thus less side-motion? I didn't see that mentioned though...

evictedSaint! Can we get a confirmation that if the only effect of a revision was range(say, hypothetically, a bullet that is less affected by gravity) that it would not increase the current range at which our longest-range artillery is effective? I feel that this is just clarifying things that we have seen in battle reports. We know that wind is blowing them of-course but it is unclear if it is headwinds blowing them back or blowing them down or if it is vortices turning them around or wind spirits making them stop to fill out a questionnaire and sapping away their precious flight-time... Given what we have already observed I feel that we would know if a pure increase in flight distance would resist the defences that we have observed.