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[Draignean]

Be sure to check out the Core Thread that has all the rule updates for this game

For centuries, the proud people of Spire Wreth have worked tirelessly to claim the sky as their own. Every new farm, every new habble settled, every new Demi-spire visited, is a victory for Spire Wreth, and for humanity itself. It is the manifest destiny of Spire Wreth to own these skies, and to unite every stone and every timber not poisoned by the taint of the surface towards the same glorious purpose.

And yet there are individuals, crass and uncultured, who would defy this purpose. Individuals who would hoard the resources of the spires like a rat stealing bread from a baker. Spire Kasgyre. Their touch defiles whatever they create, and they have been tolerated long enough. For decades we have pressed against their idiocy, trying in vain to bring them some semblance of unity and reason, but they've failed to learn anything of value. Yet we tried, and what did we get in return? Wrath and flames. An unprovoked attack on all that we have built! Hundreds dead by the cannon and cutlass!

Enough. We are Spire Wreth, and we fear no man or monster. We will take Spire Kasgyre, cleanse its people, and use its strength to rule the Sky!


To play for Spire Wreth, post here. You can only play for one side, so choose wisely. If you do choose to play for this team, be respectful of the other team and stay out of their thread.

To start off with, you need to pick which of the nearest Demi-spires your team retained after the initial skirmish. It can be any of the spires marked in Wreth territory. You should probably also name those spires to make them more interesting. After that we'll be entering into a four year long development phase that will simulate your nation's unique pre-war tech. This will go fast, even with limited votes, so getting in early has power.

Spoiler: Map (click to show/hide)

The Calm: The calm is a region of the aerosphere with almost no wind beyond fleeting turbulence, and absolutely no aetheric currents. It's frigidly cold, and filled with fine red 'snow' that barely moves. Traversing it with a conventional vessel is impossible due to the lack of energy to fuel the lift and trim crystals.
The Everstorm: As the name suggests, the everstorm is a region of the aerosphere dominated by an enormous and eternal thunderstorm. It's a chaotic region of raging winds and surging aetheric energy that manifests in terrible bursts of prismatic flame. No conventional vessel could hope to survive the nightmarish storm conditions.

Kasgyre Territory

Leftmost Demi-spire
Marine Presence: K 0/14 |  W 0/14
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 5O, 2W, 0S
Conditions: Rocky, large caverns, very dark

Middle Demi-spire
Marine Presence: K 0/10 |  W 0/10
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 2O, 1W, 4S
Conditions: Spider Nursery, narrow and twisting tunnels

Rightmost Demi-spire
Marine Presence: K 0/20 |  W 0/20
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 2O, 6W, 1S
Conditions: Verdant galleries, significant bio-luminescence


Wreth Territory

Left Demi-spire
Marine Presence: K 0/8 |  W 0/8
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 3O, 1W, 2S
Conditions: Deadly Gas Pockets, significant vertical shafts and steep tunnels.

Middle Demi-spire
Marine Presence: K 0/18 |  W 0/18
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 6O, 0W, 1S
Conditions: Toxic Stone, Massive Caverns, pitch-black

Right Demi-spire
Marine Presence: K 0/18 |  W 0/18
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 0O, 8W, 2S
Conditions: Mostly earth and soil, Unstable pocket caves


The Belt

Three Captains
Marine Presence: K 0/20 |  W 0/20
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 6O, 2W, 6S
Conditions: Kinetoluminescent Ores, Heavily Infested

Wrackspire
Marine Presence: K 0/12 |  W 0/12
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 3C, 4O, 4W, 2S
Conditions: Unstable Aetheric Phenomena, Broken Spire

Burned Mountain
Marine Presence: K 0/24 |  W 0/24
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 10O, 1W, 0S
Conditions: Inexplicably Molten Core, Hundreds of narrow tunnels and small galleries.

The Unfinished
Marine Presence: K 0/45 |  W 0/45
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 8C, 0O, 6W, 2S
Conditions: Unfinished infrastructure, Massive open rooms and halls.

Starting Technology

Spoiler: Tech (click to show/hide)

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.

Spoiler: Tactics (click to show/hide)

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.

Spoiler: Infrastructure and Production Patterns (click to show/hide)

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

Battle Reports Thus Far

356AR (3)
355AR (2)
354AR (1)

[milo christiansen]

I haven't played an arms race game since "Design Engineers of the Republic" many eons ago...

Count me in! Spire Wreth shall wreck all opposition!

As for a design:

The obvious starting point is a simple bronze cannon.

[NUKE9.13]

Alright. Let's have the left demi-spire.

Which Demi-Spire should we take?
Left: (1) NUKE9.13
Middle:
Right:

Which I suggest we name "The Haze Maze".

[Draignean]

Patched the starting techs in.

All your production lines will start full when the game begins in earnest (after the initial research phase), meaning you will 10 Skyskiffs and 25 marines.

[milo christiansen]

Left sounds good, we need that metal

Which Demi-Spire should we take?
Left: (1) NUKE9.13, Milo
Middle:
Right:

As for name, what about "Bronze Bastion"?

The first post in the main thread, could each section be spoilered so it is easier to find things?

[NUKE9.13]

...are you looking at Kasgyre's demi-spires? Our left demi-spire has 3 ore, and is filled with toxic gas. I like it because it has balanced resources.

Wreth Territory

Left Demi-spire
Marine Presence: K 0/8 |  W 0/8
Territory: 0/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 3O, 1W, 2S
Conditions: Deadly Gas Pockets, significant vertical shafts and steep tunnels.

[Nirur Torir]

All your production lines will start full when the game begins in earnest (after the initial research phase), meaning you will 10 Skyskiffs and 25 marines.

All? What if we made another dock in this time?

Alright. Let's have the left demi-spire.

Which Demi-Spire should we take?
Left: (2) NUKE9.13, Nirur
Middle:
Right:

Which I suggest we name "The Haze Maze".

When possible, I prefer 3 Captains, for it's silk.

I propose that the middle is Deathspire.

[Khan Boyzitbig]

Toxic gas sounds like morale for the marines will suffer (if that matters) but looks like a balanced choice.

[Nirur Torir]

Brainstorming time on what to develop for 4 years.

A ship designed around a giant aetheric cannon. Probably increase ship casualties on both sides, but it will advance our understanding of aetheric cannons greatly.

General improvements to Skyskiff's cannon and crystals. Assuming our full lines start with upgrades, this will be pretty helpful. Maybe we can up it to hold 1 cargo, which will let us quickly get on with initial capturing.

Edit: If we up our infantry gauntlet range/accuracy, and somehow get a cargo space in a combat vessel, we'll have great firepower in the sky.

[milo christiansen]

...are you looking at Kasgyre's demi-spires? Our left demi-spire has 3 ore, and is filled with toxic gas.

Yes, yes I was. I dumb.

Which Demi-Spire should we take?
Left: (2) NUKE9.13, Nirur
Middle: Milo
Right:

If we work on bronze cannons instead of aetheric, we will be able to ignore any shields...

[Madman198237]

Here's my suggestion for a starting design: A scattergun. Having some form of aetheric shotgun-cannon to take advantage of the aethersilk webbing's inherent weakness would give us massive maneuvering advantages.

Other than that, I'd go for a general improvement to make all our technologies more efficient from the get-go, followed up by using the last two years to develop a solid warship we can use for years. Actually, we throw a hull in development immediately, with nothing mounted, prioritizing strength and adaptability (Many hardpoints for attaching things). As for spires, well....I'll think on it.

[milo christiansen]

I personally think a new hull would be something to do later. Early on it will be too expensive to use, and we won't have a good "feel" for the game yet.

[Nirur Torir]

I'd like a new hull the size of the transport. The skiff is tiny.

However, what about upping the lift crystal's abilities, the core crystal's shielding (with the power freed from the lift crystal), and trying to give the basic aetheric cannon two shots, since one will pierce a skiff's shields?

[Madman198237]

Here's the thing. Discussion earlier established that webbing to capture Aether almost always protrudes outside a ship's Shroud, because so much webbing is needed. So we make a scattergun using Aetheric tech to take advantage of that disadvantage.

The reason I say HULL is because a hull can basically be infinitely reused as long as the technology isn't changed. For us, if it can be equipped with things, it will work. So, we make something to be equipped with things. Should take a VERY small amount of time.

[Nirur Torir]

On further thought, we might want to wait on a new hull. The skiff's are expensive enough, and we're going to want a second dock, transports, and to outfit marines.

Which Demi-Spire should we take?
Left: (1) NUKE9.13
Middle: (1) Milo
Right: (1) Nirur

We need that wood for docks and transports.