Arms Race: War of the Cinder Spires
An Arms-Race game that is in some places blatantly copied from, and in some places loosely inspired by, the various arms race games that have occurred. Various mechanical details contributed by random internet street people. The technology and setting is copied from Jim Butcher's The Aeronaut's Windlass, which is a book I'd recommend to anyone who already likes Jim Butcher and is waiting for Peace Talks to come out.
Spire KasgyreSpire WrethGame Discord: https://discord.gg/Ry4PMeZNo nation fights to control the surface of this world. The surface is covered in dense and perpetual mist, and there are monsters within that mist. Awful creatures that bear humanity no more enmity than a spider harbors enmity for a fly- and setting up a colony within their territory would be as foolish as a fly setting up a colony within a spiderweb. Humanity, thankfully, does not live on the surface. They live in the Spires.
The Spires we're built millenia ago, frames of nearly unbreakable spirestone designed with the specific intent of preserving humanity. Each spire is a cylinder approximately 2 miles in diameter and the same measure in height. Internally divided into several hundred floors which are each roughly 50' in height, each Spire is a nation unto itself. Vat farms produce vegetables, meat, limited wood supplies, and, most importantly, crystals.
Above the mist of the world's surface, in the high air of the spires, there is a peculiar energy known as aether. Its whimsical nature is the subject of much study, and (despite its unpredictable nature) it's the core of most all technology. Properly conducted and channeled into a carefully prepared crystal, aetheric energy has marvelous properties. Including the ability to cause a specifically designed and faceted crystal experience strong directional gravity. When such a crystal, known as a lift crystal, is paired with a method of harvesting aetheric energy on the fly, a decent sail (or more crystals), and is locked into the spine of a ship- you get a very basic airship.
Such airships are essential for travel between spires, as traffic overland is suicidal. In peace times, the most important role of airships is in making runs between the Spires and various Demi-Spires; protusion of stone similar in nature to Spires, but thinner and filled with rock and earth thrust up from the surface and locked into a frame of nearly unbreakable stone. Raw resources of metal and stone are frequently mined from such demi-spires, largely removing the need for surface mining.
Spire Kasgyre and Spire Wreth are two Spires which have lived in uncomfortable proximity for many centuries- always at each other's throats for one reason or another. Recent advances in airships and aetheric weapons spurred spurred border expansion and antagonistic rivalry- eventually culminating in a series of horrific raids on mining camps on various demi-spires. It's not known who struck first, but the resulting series of escalating engagements have stripped the two spires back to a few bare bones mining camps, and have set the stage for open war.
Rules and Play Sequence
General Play LoopThese rules are adapted from a couple different arms race games, with enough new twists that they're worth reading again even if you've played all the arms race games.
The game runs on 1 year=1 turn system. Every year both teams go through stages for design + project maintenance, revisions, and production + deployment cycles. At the start of the new turn, both teams get a base pool of 5 dice to allocate towards designs, projects, revisions, and basically everything good and useful.
At the start of each year designs and project maintenance is handled. Members of each team may propose designs. Everyone is allowed to vote for a design, or to vote for 'no design'. Each player has one and only one vote, and that vote is an integer with value 1. During this same time, players of each team propose resource allocation plans for various pre-existing projects. These are voted on in the same was as designs. The design (if any) with the most votes gets rendered into a new project and the progress for the funded existing projects moves ahead at the end of this stage. Any created prototypes or finished projects are described.
After designs and projects have been worked out, then the players move on to revisions. Revision are cheap, but best suited to address minor problems or incremental improvements. For example, if you finished an aetheric cannon last round that had issues with overheating, one could try and revise a better copper baffle in order to pull heat away. However, if you finished an aetheric cannon last round, one could not revise an aetheric rifle from it- even if the original cannon design was flawless.
Any dice not spent on revisions/designs/projects are saved back for the next round. Each team can bank a total of 5 dice, giving them a maximum of 10 dice to spend at any one time.
After revisions comes the deployment, tactics, and construction phase. During deployment you can set and modify standing movement orders to your ships, sending them to various locations to do ship things. A ship can go anywhere within two spires of its current location, but will be halted by enemy activity. Simple enough. Tactics is telling ships and marines how to engage. Tactics are designed/revised just like normal technology. The last part, construction orders, is about allocating resources to actually build new weapons/ships. Each player gets a single value 1 integer vote for each of these three.
After that's decided, ships are moved, and combat is resolved.
From there it's all clean up work. At the end of the combat phase, any resources coming in on transport ships, or directly from the spire itself, are added to the totals of the respective teams. Any ships generated by build orders or production lines are added to the fleet totals.
Production LinesAt the start of the game, both teams start off with the 'light dock' and 'marine academy' techs. These provide two production lines for the teams to work with at the beginning, and it's important to understand how they work.
Production lines are abstractions of government funding that automatically produce ships (or units, in the case of the marine academy) at a specified rate up to a certain numerical limited in a specified 'pattern' for as long as the line is active. Patterns are techs created through revision, and they specify all the components that will be made along with a ship. For instance, the basic Skyskiff production line comes with a pattern that outfits any Skyskiffs it builds it with a VS Core Crystal, a VS Lift Crystal, four trim crystals, two light cannons, and two reams of webbing. If a new cannon is created, a revised pattern can be created that outfits the Skyskiff with the new guns. Beware, however, that this will very likely reduce the total number of the Skiffs the production line will build and may decrease their build rate as well.
As an example, the Skyskiff production line creates up to 10 Skyskiffs, and creates them at a rate of 2 per turn.
For every production line EXCEPT the one granted by the marine academy (which produces marines) switching what ship is on a production line is just a declared action at any point during a team's turn. However, any ships created by the now inactive production line must either be paid for or be scuttled. You cannot rotate production lines to buff up your numbers, nor can you gain resources by scuttling production line built ships.
Capturing Ground and Controlling the AirControl in the game differs depending on whether you're talking about controlling the air or the ground. Let's start off with ground control, since that's the easiest to consider.
Each spire and demi-spire is broken up into four sections. In general, much of the fighting is done within the network of interior caves within each spire- where soldiers are insulated from any incoming fire from outside the Spire. Artillery support from ships outside, no matter how striking, will make very little difference due to the spirestone frames. Every spire is different, sometimes not by much, some times critically so. Burned mountain is hot as hell, and the wrackspire is so badly shattered that marines need to break out dinghies to move between pillars. No matter the challenge, the basic idea is the same. Get transports, load them chock full of marines, and send them off to a spire.
Any ship with a transport capacity can be used to transport troops. Every 2 units of capacity indicates that a ship can carry one squad of marines. Each squad of marines consists of about sixteen men, usually broken up into four teams of four. Each team determines (and pays for) their loadout when they're loaded onto whatever ship has been chosen to carry them. The transport can then be moved to its final destination where (assuming it doesn't get blown to cinders on the way) it will disgorge its troop load. The transport can then be moved back to a friendly port and reloaded with marines. Repeat as needed until you control the spire or until you're forced to evacuate. Each individual demi-spire has a 'marine presence X/Y', which determines the maximum number of marines you can reasonably have deployed there at one time. Some places are better controlled by a few elite units, where others benefit from more Russian tactics.
Critical to the objective controlling ground is controlling the air. In order for a ship to drop infantry it has to actually reach a spire and (usually) come to a near stop in order to launch dinghies to get marines on the ground. If the other team effectively has a spire blockaded, then there's no point in sending marines with fancy weapons and expensive armor, since their transport will get reduced to ash before they ever make it close. Controlling the air around a spire is (compared to controlling open sky) a straightforward. That is not to say it is simple. It's important to remember that spires, even demi-spires, are miles in circumference, and its difficult to completely watch all points. Lastly, one must remember that spires go a long way down, and that a transport can land dinghies at any point where there's an opening. While defensive ships can do their damnedest to patrol the known openings, a crafty captain can always try to find a new crack large enough to slot troops in. A suicidal one can even look for such an opening at the level of the mist.
Basically, if you focus your forces into a grand fleet to defend a spire, you'll have the best odds of resisting a focused assault, but your odds of being able to stop stealth transports goes down. If you fragment your forces into pursuit groups you're much more likely to catch and burn isolated transports, but you're in a weaker position of a focused force shows up. A good mix of ships makes for a good defense, but nothing is ever guaranteed, and whatever tactic you have the defending ships employing makes quite a difference.
Despite the amount of sky, it's important to remember that airships are but means to an end. Wars are won by boots on the ground, and airships are just a way to deliver boots, stop boots, or support boots.
Definitions and Resources
DesignsDesigns are the gateways to projects, and require a minimum of 3 dice: one for to roll time estimate, one to roll initial progress, and one to roll project expense.
Instead of creating an object immediately, design actions create Projects which run in the background. The Time estimate roll of a project, combined with how ambitious the project is natively, determines how much engineering effort it will take to actually make a deployable technology. This effort is quantified in a number usually in the range between 6 and 60. Determining this number is a nebulous process largely subject to GM fiat, but (in very general) rolling a 1 will cause the project to take twice as much time as it would have with a 6. If players elect to spend additional dice on rolling for time estimate, the result is the highest of the numbers rolled.
Initial progress is a roll that determines a small bonus to the start of the project's progress. Importantly, this progress is free and does not come with an associated resource cost. Additional dice spent on initial progress are additive, but, regardless of how many dice you spend, initial progress cannot rush a design past the prototype stage (50% progress).
Project Expense aids in determining how much it costs to keep a project going. After its creation, every time a team wants to make progress on a project, they have to allocate a number of die and pay certain resource costs. A high roll for project expense indicates and efficient project flow that costs a lower number resources to do research. For instance, a project that requires one of wood OR ore OR crystal on a 6 might require 1 wood + 1 ore, and one more of ore, wood, or crystal on a 1. If players elect to spend additional dice on rolling for Project Expense, the result is the highest of the numbers rolled.
ProjectsProjects are created from designs. A project represents a long term investment of man-hours and resources into building prototypes, live fire drills, good old fashioned research, and rigorous testing.
As mentioned in designs, all projects have an amount of progress that needs to be filled, and a certain cost associated with that progress. A project header for an ambitious new core crystal looks something like this,
Zulu-Type Core Crystal: 12/30 | 1 Crystal + 1 Crystal OR 1 Ore | Rushed 0 times | 4 Crystal, 2 Ore Invested
Name, followed by current progress/total needed, then how much each die of progress costs, the number of times the project has been rushed, and the total resources that have been currently invested.
Every round, during the design phase, a team can elect to spend any number of their dice on progressing projects. For each die they spend on a project, they have to pay that project's resource cost. So if you elect to spend 2 die on the above, you have to spend 2 crystal and 2 from any combination of Ore/Crystal. For every die you spend resources on, you can also elect to rush the project. This gives you an extra die that adds to project progress normally, but also adds a bug to the project, or worsens and existing bug.
Once a project reaches 50% completion, the team gets a prototype. The prototype gets three rolls: Efficacy, Cost, and Bugs. These are all fairly self explanatory and (barring revision) represent the final product. Higher efficacy means it's a better product, higher cost roll means its cheaper, and a higher bugs roll means that it's got fewer unexpected kinks to iron out. As long as you do not deploy the prototype, you can make revisions to it what will effect the final product of the project.
If you choose to deploy the prototype, either because you're satisfied with the design or because you're in desperate need of an edge, you cannot rebuild it after it's destroyed/lost. Large objects, like heavy weapons or ships, get a single prototype. Small objects, like jetpacks or experimental body armor, get enough to outfit a single fireteam.
A project can be canceled at any time, and its resources re-allocated. When a project is canceled, the team gets 50% of the invested resources back at the end of the next turn, and a number of die equal to the project's current progress divided by six and rounded down.
RevisionsRevisions are as standard in Arms Race games. They cost only one die, but they yield incremental (and diminishing) returns. Importantly, revisions are improvements and modifications to existing technology and/or tactics. If you find yourself wondering whether something should be a revision or a new design, ask yourself whether it uses the same frame, and whether the addition is a technology by itself.
Some situations are tricky, and if you overreach you might get a really crappy version of what you wanted and a none-too-subtle hint that you should spend a design somewhere.
As an example, take two different tactical doctrines. Paratrooper tactics and officer sniping. Paratrooper tactics, even if you already parachutes lying around, is a full on design. You're not making a small change to how your soldier fight, you're asking them to do something entirely new and different. Officer sniping, by contrast, is a revision that tells your squads to keep a designated gunner whose only job is to look for the opposing side's officers and eliminate. That's a revision.
ResourcesOne of our big breaks from conventional arms race games, along with the changes to Designs and the addition of Projects. There are four resources: Crystal, Ore, Wood, and Silk. Resource numbers don't just indicate amount, but quality and effort in working. So just because something is small doesn't make it inexpensive. As long as a demi-spire is controlled completely, the resources will be automatically transported back to the spire through the miracle of commerce.
Crystal refers to the ability to vat-grow crystals, and is the most difficult resource to expand collection of. The vats needed require years to get started growing even small crystals of usable purity, and you can't naturally mine the crystals needed. You start with a decent crystal production, but it won't hold you over forever- particularly not when it's the main component in many of the systems most critical to airships and aetheric weapons. Each nation's spire starts with 10 Crystal production.
Ore refers to various metals mined from the earth, either from the surface (stupidly dangerous, but it's how you get ore in the spire) or from other Demi-spires. You get a short supply of ore at start, considering how much it's used for, but it's the easiest to expand the collection of. Just go and capture a Demi-spire, and it'll at least produce ore. Each nation's spire starts with 8 Ore production.
Wood is wood, of various treatments and flavors. It is both cut from the surface when an exotic type is need and grown from vats for more typical fare. It's relatively easy to produce, and tree farms can be set up on demi-spires relatively easily. Who knows, with a bit of maintenance you might be able to design floating tree farms! Wood is a plentiful resource at start, and one that's relatively easy to expand, but is used in rapaciously for ship building and expansion. Each nation's spire starts with 10 wood production.
Silk refers to aethersilk, a unique material with the ability to conduct aetheric energy. In its base form, it's a sticky, ropy secretion created by surface monsters. For obvious reasons, this makes it rather difficult to obtain. Harvesters work on the surface in the area directly around spires in order to harvest silk, usually with heavy firepower to back them up. Sometimes it's enough. Silk production is low at start, but each demi-spire you control gets you another area that you can mine the base of for Silk. Each nation's spire starts with 5 silk production.
Setting Modifiers
War in Heaven: There's little reason to design a tank, because controlling the surface of the planet is similarly implausible to controlling the surface of the sun. All combat either takes place in/on demi-spires or in the surrounding sky. The 'bottom' of the battlefield is a perpetual shroud of mist, tangibly different and colder than a normal cloud. Monsters dwell in the mist, so, while it's great for stealth, it's not a good idea to hang out there. The ceiling is the higher air where it becomes difficult to breathe. The aether is stronger there, and it provides more energy to a ship, but it's also more unpredictable and steadily drives humans insane. So while it's great for high power maneuvers, it's not a good idea to hang out there. The battle space between the two is chaotically streaked by clouds, storms, upwellings of mist, and general environmental nuisances, but it's still safer than the other two options.
Less than Ultra-Marines: When capturing the demi-spires, you NEED marines. The spirestone frames means that an entrenched force can weather basically any bombardment. You can blockade a demi-spire with ships and starve the enemy out, but, to actually take and hold territory you need boots on the ground.
Powered by Spiders: Aethersilk, the best material for conducting aetheric energy, is prepared from a ropy secretion used by the surface monsters to catch prey. As one can imagine, this makes it somewhat difficult to obtain. It's like if battleships ran on tiger milk- if tigers were poisonous, as large as a Buick on steroids, and impossible to tame.
Pretty Crystals: Vat grown crystals that are designed to interact with the Aether are the primary physical component of most magitech. Lift and trim crystals, core crystals, weapons crystals, etc. Short version, crystal can draw and channel energy from the aether.
Iron Doesn't Work: Something in the atmosphere, perhaps the aether itself, reacts powerfully with iron and steel. Exposed ferrous metals will rust and rot away to nothing but red pulp over the course of a few days. Copper cladding is frequently used as a sheath for iron and steel in order to prevent them from rotting.
Guns sort of work: Gunpowder exists, and firearms of the flintlock persuasion. However, they are famously unreliably devices. In order to contain detonation pressure, the chamber (and to a lesser extent, the barrel) is steel clad in copper. If the energy of the shot nicks a hole through the copper, or the corrosive gunpowder eats through the lining, the atmosphere will eat through the weapon's internals and cause the weapon to explode on the next shot. Mostly for shooting through defenses meant to stop aetheric weapons.
A word on Airships and Airship Combat
A few important things bear specific mention with regards to airships and the way they fight.
The most important detail to discuss is webbing. Most airships will run several spars (similar to thin masts) that are designed to run out the web. The web is the actual device that catches aetheric energy in the atmosphere and transfers it into the vessel. The more web you can run out, the more energy you can take in, which in turn increases the rate at which you can fire weapons and the speed at which you can maneuver (up to the strain limit of your crystals). However, webbing is fragile, and a single blast of aetheric cannon fire will fry large sections of the web into drifting ash. With damaged webbing, a ship is forced to rely on the internal capacity of its core crystal and whatever power they can eke out of the remaining strands. At best, this renders a ship slow and vulnerable. At worst it slowly depowers the ship's lift crystal, resulting in a slow death by monster for the crew. Webbing still functions within the area of a shroud, and combat vessels typically optimize for web patterns that allow them to run out as much web area as possible within the area of the shroud without compromising their firing arcs. Even given that, the maneuvering and firepower advantage to running out extra web is usually valuable enough that combat vessels are outfitted with extra reams of web, so that they can afford to have a few extra sections burned off.
Short version: ships are powered by running out web, which is really fragile. The more you web you can put down, the better, but your shields can only protect so much. If you get your web shot off, you're dead in the sky. Unless you've got a sail, and even then you've got to worry about falling.
Shrouds, as mentioned elsewhere, are energy shields generated by core crystals. Their base level is ONLY effective at stopping aetheric energy blasts, and even then it will buckle after sustained fire. Shrouds aren't entirely Star-Trek shields, though they do have similarities. A Shroud surrounds an airship in a rough oval, generally of the shame shape as the ship's core crystal. Much like a normal Sci-Fi shield, if it takes too much overall damage it will buckle in a shower of sparks. However, it can also be penetrated on a point by point basis. Focused fire can tear a hole in a shroud, even if it doesn't have enough energy to actually buckle the shroud completely. Holes shot in shrouds will fill in relatively quickly, within minutes, but a shroud that has been completely buckled requires the airship to bring the core to near zero power in order to reset. Doing so without depowering the lift crystal and plunging a ship on a one way trip to the surface is something of an art, and a heroic feat to do under combat circumstances.
It's important to note that Airships behave more like dirigibles than planes or ships. While they can run on sail, they typically use trim crystals to maneuver, which lets them pull off pinpoint maneuvers and turns that would make a sailing ship green with envy. Inertia is the greatest controlling factor in airship maneuverability, though more powerful lift and trim crystals can help offset this issue.
Airships themselves are constructed from various components,as you can see in the starting tech spoiler below. You can outfit a ship with whatever you've constructed that will fit, but the ship has to come back to the spire (or a forward port if you've built one) in order to complete the refit. If you make a revision that modifies an existing hull design, for instance making a version of the basic ship with a single medium size fixed position bow gun instead of two small cannons, those refits can also be performed only at a port.
Starting Technology
Infantry
Flint-Lock Pistol: Cost: 2 ore to give one of either to every fireteam in a squad, 8 to give to every man. Inaccurate beyond spitting distance, incapable of dealing significant damage against hard armor, and liable to explode when used regularly even when given the most expert maintenance, the primary advantage of these weapons is that they can punch straight through shrouds like they didn't exist, and they're slowed by aethersilk officer's coats as much as by an ordinary silk shirt.
Flint-Lock Rifle: Cost: 3 ore to give one of either to every fireteam in a squad, 12 to give to every man. Reasonably accurate, but slow to reload and still incapable of dealing significant damage against hard armor or ship hulls. These weapons still require expert maintenance to keep them from being single-use weapons, and sustained use still makes these weapons terrifyingly unreliable as service weapons. Still, an excellent choice for shooting through silk shirts and ignoring shrouds.
Grappling Gear: Cost: 1 ore to give to every member of a squad. Standard issue ropes and hooks for boarding vessels or climbing the outside of spires. Cumbersome if you're not going to use it.
Aetheric Gauntlet: Cost: 1 Ore, 1 crystal to give one to every fireteam in a squad, 4 of each to give one to everyone. A gauntlet (usually left handed to keep the right hand free) of copper and leather with a tiny weapons crystal locked into the palm. Capable of firing dozens of low energy blasts of aetheric energy at the user's discretion, but is difficult to aim and the copper cage used to draw heat from the crystal has the unsettling tendency to leave disfiguring gauntlet burns, melt, or set the user on fire if used too frequently.
Bronze Cutlass: Cost: 2 Ore to give to every member of a squad. A simple, heavy blade of bronze attached to a wooden handle. Simple, and brutally effective in close quarters.
Aethersilk Vest: Cost: 1 Silk to give to a squad's ranking officer, 5 silk to provide to ranking officer and team leads, 16 silk to give to every member of a squad. A double layer vest of dense aethersilk, capable of absorbing a considerable amount of Aetheric energy. Can stop multiple point-blank shots from a gauntlet, but doesn't cover the arms, legs, or head. Does nothing against physical weapons or projectiles.
Ship Tech
Light Aether Cannon: 1 Crystal, 1 Ore for one. A small cannon, capable of being mounted on deck without reinforcement. Fires powerful blasts of aetheric energy, and uses a removable block of copper as a heat-sink. Relatively inaccurate, short ranged, hot, power hungry, and prone to exploding violently if hit directly by enemy fire. Still, it can blow wood into flaming cinders and will melt through light plating in a few shots.
Basic Core Crystal: [VS 3 Crystal | S 6 Crystal] A massive rough gem, grown in vats and used to transduce aetheric energy into electric current. This particular model is relatively inefficient, both as a transducer and as a storage unit. It can generate a defensive shroud around a vessel, but more than a single shot from a light Aether cannon on the same point will knock a hole in the shroud. Will explode spectacularly if hit directly.
Basic Lift Crystal: [VS 2 Crystal, 2 ore | S 3 Crystal, 2 ore for one] A chunk of crystal the size of a bathtub, heavily reinforced so that it can be locked into a ship's spine. When fed electricity, it will progressively invert gravity's effect on itself, flying upwards and pulling anything attached up with it. This basic model is incredibly power hungry, produces only enough lift for a small ship and internal flaws mean that extreme maneuvers could easily cause it to crack.
Basic Trim Crystals: 1 Crystal for two. Head sized chunks of crystal, similar to lift crystals, though of greater refinement. These produce directional gravity when powered, allowing a ship to make finer maneuvers. Like the basic lift crystal, these are power hungry and prone to fracture of used for rapid maneuverability.
Basic Webbing: 2 Silk per ream. Aethersilk webbing, designed to catch hold of aetheric currents and shunt them into a ship's core crystal. Particularly susceptible to fire from aetheric weapons, which will rapidly cause overloads that burn out whole sections of webbing.
Light Copper Ship Plating: 3 ore per section. Nearly pure copper plates, heavy, but with good thermal conductivity. Useful for spreading out the heat generated by an aether blast. Low melting point does mean that repeated impacts will melt the armor and set fire to the wood beneath.
Ship Hulls
Skyskiff 5 wood, 2 ore for one.
At her heart, the Skyskiff is an 18ft long frame of sleek timber and brass reinforcement, built from the ground up to be light on the air and quick to handle. Her basic design is quite old, dating back before the perfection of trim crystals, and she still sports a rudimentary mast that a sail can be run from in addition to the normal spars to run out web. In service, she's typically run by a crew of four. Two gunners who worked crouched in the middle of the ship, a pilot who spends their time practically laying on top of the core crystal in order to manipulate the power control, and the spotter who usually stands at the rear of the ship and calls out directions and threats. Generally, the captain of the vessel is the spotter, due to their superior vantage point and ability to see the entire local theatre.
A notable problem with the Skyskiff is that despite her speed, her web is cumbersome to replace, and without it she's painfully slow. In addition, both her Core Crystal and Her Lift Crystal slots are only designed to fit small crystals. Her small lift crystal means a lot of the burden for vertical maneuvers is still placed on the power hungry trim crystals, which in turn puts more demand on her small core. As a result, her shroud is weak, and a single light cannon blast will knock a hole in it. It still takes two or three more shots before her shroud will buckle entirely, but if another shot comes in the same spot swiftly enough- that's the end of the skiff. Except in the most fortunate of circumstances, a single cannon blast to an unshrouded skiff will destroy it.
She has no usable cargo capacity.
Armament
2 light cannon mounts. One on each side.
Requires:
1 Core Crystal (Up to Very Small in size)
1 Lift Crystal (Up to Very Small in size)
4 Trim Crystals
2 reams of webbing
Transport barge 7 wood, 2 ore for one.
In times of peace, this was the vessel most frequently seen going to and from Spires. She's little more than a wooden oval with a few metal bands designed to support the lift crystal. She's got capacity for crew and cargo, but she's quite slow when fully loaded, and her lack of significant trim crystals means that she can't maneuver with any speed. Her only real defense against attack is to dive down into the mist layer and hope that the attacking vessel loses her trail before the mistmaw comes lurking.
She can hold six units of cargo.
Armament
None
Requires:
1 Core Crystal (Up to small size)
1 Lift Crystal (Up to small size)
2 Trim Crystals
1 ream of webbing
Basic Dinghy (Special, used automatically by Marines to embark/disembark transports)
A very small boat, technically capable of transporting eight people as long as they aren't too broad, don't have a fear of heights, and their legs aren't too long. Her core crystal is about the size of a housecat, and kept powered by a fixed ventral web. She's solid wood, unarmed, and has the tendency to tip alarmingly as she doesn't actually use a lift crystal, but makes do entirely on a trio of small trim crystals. It's a slow and terrifying way to travel. Though she's the primary lifeboat of transports, your chances of survival are alarmingly small if you find yourself alone in a dingy .
When used by marines, she's typically crewed by five, with the squad leader acting as an extra member in every set of three boats. When going into a hostile spire, one marine steers, the other four act as spotters or (if one or more has a gauntlet or rifle) shooters. She's such a small vessel that it doesn't take more than a dozen gauntlet shots for her to break apart completely, and a single shot to her ventral web will (at best) cripple her.
Her core crystal is, technically, capable of generating a shroud. However, the limited energy the miniscule core crystal can process limits the crew to picking two of three options: Maintain Altitude control, maintain thrust, raise shroud. For obvious reasons, raising the shroud is something of a last resort. Worse, even when powered, the shroud can be penetrated by sustained gauntlet fire. This is to say nothing of a shot from a light cannon. The shroud will buckle completely after a single shot from a light cannon, though to its credit, that's one more cannon shot than the Dinghy would have survived normally.
Marines
Massed Fire and Charge: When engaging, Marines will bunch up to focus fire with their ranged weapons until they run out of ammunition or become too hot to use (depending on weapon type), at which point they will charge in with melee weapons.
Ships
Close Aggressively: Ships will attempt to close distance with enemy vessels and engage at close range, firing all cannons until the enemy is destroyed.
Small Docks: Relatively simple affairs of wood jutting out into the void, capable of servicing a relatively small number of light craft. These docks are best suited to peace time usage, and are ill-equipped to service or build true warships. Light defensive cannons have been mounted in strategic positions, and will be upgraded automatically when needed.
Provides a single production line that can be used for any small or smaller production pattern.
Marine Academy: The basic and unaugmented marine academy, where men and women are transformed from milksop civilians into hardened marines.
Provides a single production line to be used ONLY on Marine production.
Production Patterns
Basic Marine Training: [Max: 15 | Rate: 2]
Generates Marine units at the spire. These marines are capable in hand-to-hand combat, but are not provided any initial weapons. You might want to buy them swords, at the very least.
Skyskiff Pattern A: [Max: 10 | Rate: 2]
Creates two Skyskiff units per turn, up to a max of 10. Each skyskiff is outfitted with
2 Light Aether Cannons.
1 Very Small Basic Core Crystal
1 Very Small Basic Lift Crystal
4 Trim Crystals
2 reams of webbing
Buyback cost: 9 crystal, 6 ore, 5 wood, 4 silk
Boilerplate from the other arms race games, pretty much. At this point I'm not sure who I'm copying; ES or Sensei. There will be a winning nation, and there will be a losing nation, but one shouldn't get too worked up about which is you. It's a game. Winning is fun. These are the Dwarf Fortress forums. Losing is Fun.
Take it in stride, be chill, and keep to the rules.
1. Don't be salty! If you are salty, please cover yourself in rice and wrap yourself in nori, because onigiri is feckin' delicious. If at any time you find yourself having an urge to mouth off at another player, step away from the keyboard, go outside, and take a breath. Seriously. Players who repeatedly get angry or passive aggressive will be asked to leave. If you have an issue with the way the game is being run, DO NOT expect a tantrum to get you what you want.
2. Keep in mind that I am not a historian, aetheric engineer, professional airship captain, Almighty God, or Kyle (the feckin' know-it-all wanker), so there will sometimes be mistakes and inaccuracies. Even in the best of circumstances, minor inconsistencies are a common occurrence. If some piece of equipment is imbalanced/unrealistic, I might consider changing it if you bring it up once -AND ONLY ONCE- and politely state your argument. However, I will err on the side of consistency with my own game, I do not like to go back and change things. Sometimes it is more important to simply keep the game running smoothly than other concerns. That, and your pitiful whining only serves to make my god-complex boner harder.
3. You may accuse me of being biased. I won't care. If you don't want to play because you think I'm biased, that's okay too. I'll do my best to remain objective, but it's possible that someone will manage to sell me some magic beans because they're a really good writer- not because the idea actually had merit. I acknowledge this, and will try to keep it to a minimum. See the rule above about politely stating an argument. Just bear in mind that it's quite possible I won't respond. Like any good Christian, I aspire to be like God, and that means being a strangely absent father at the best of times.
4. Do not spy on the other team's private thread. Trust me, playing fair is more fun for everyone! If you suffer from a lack of self-control and cannot stop yourself from spying, keep it to yourself. Do not use it to metagame. And do not post what you saw in the central thread.
Violations of the rules may lead to me PUNCHING YOU IN THE MOTHERFUCKING SOUL.
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Topic: Arms Race: War of the Cinder Spires (Read 26360 times)