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[milo christiansen]

Bronze for the cannon body, sulfur+lead for the shot.

This should result in something kinda like a dragon's breath round, but not quite as awesome since sulfur doesn't burn as hot as magnesium.

Whoa! I just had a thought! THERMITE! Thermite is iron oxide + aluminum or magnesium. Iron oxide is no problem, the aether will make it for us, but magnesium or aluminum may be hard to impossible to get without lots of work. Thermite+wooden hull=I thought there was a ship around here somewhere?

[Nirur Torir]

If we're going for an early advantage, infantry upgrades will be critical. Blockading is hard, and not something we'll be able to do with a handful of ships.

[Madman198237]

Thermite's concentrated heat is generally better for burning holes in something, however I agree that spreading flaming powder across a ship's deck is a good way to start a panic. And a dash for the life boats when they realize that the stuff will literally burn through water.


But no, Aetheric cannon first. It will have the greatest effect on aethersilk webbing.



I'm advocating a long-term strategy, NOT the zerg rush.

That said, much as I'd love to be solely in charge, we have to make that decision, and it needs to be done before working on designs. So, put it to a vote, I guess.

All in favor of fast-paced early-game victory, say aye.

All in favor of long-term buildup/start-with-infrastructure plan, say aye.

All opposed to planning, get out, you're fired from the war council. And you'll be working with the next group of web harvesters.

Oh, shoot. By the way, there is the turtle-up-and-let-them-break-upon-our-shields defensive fire positions approach, allowing for a mid-game style rush (Darnit, now I'm stuck in StarCraft mode) after one or two attacks, when they're recovering from the damage dealt.

[Nirur Torir]

All in favor of fast-paced early-game victory, say aye.

All in favor of long-term buildup/start-with-infrastructure plan, say aye.

.. Aye?

I prefer long-term.

[Madman198237]

Just so you know, there's a way to do middle-game that I should've remember. Like I edited in---darn you, StarCraft.

Anyway, we can always do a full-bore defensive set involving heavily-armored and really slow blockships and infantry-based antiaircraft artillery, allowing us to wait behind, well, not steel, but bronze anyway, walls and set up to attack as soon as they try and fail to attack us. This does, of course, rely on not getting overwhelmed, because static defenses are generally not great at getting un-attacked.

[milo christiansen]

Intellectually, I prefer long-term.

But I think we need to build weapons -> docks -> hull
Hull should always come last, as a hull is worthless without weapons. Docks second to last, as a dock is worthless without something to build in it.

Actually, we can probably ignore ships for now, and focus on our marines. We are several turns travel from our enemies, so we should grab and fortify as many spires as we can. Maybe even design a spire-to-ship cannon?

[Nirur Torir]

Actually, we can probably ignore ships for now, and focus on our marines.

... Which require docks, since we need those for transports.

[milo christiansen]

Weird... We have a cargo ship, but no production pattern for it? Surely we have facilities to produce more of these barges? If they use the same line as the skyskiff, then how much does it cost to build a second identical line?

It would make exactly zero sense to require a design to build examples of our starting tech...

[Madman198237]

No, because here's the thing: We have, at present, no capacity to BUILD a decent ship, while we have the weapons (Basic versions, for sure, but they exist) and equipment to put on them. Having an armored hull with refined crystal manufacturing and a preexisting shipbuilding infrastructure would give us solid benefits across the board. Yes, marines will need some love sooner rather than later, but as of right now they have functional weapons and transport that is good enough. If anything we need a better "dinghy" for them, and soon. That said, I predict that using these starting turns to build infrastructure without any competition will be extremely useful. Follow up with some developments to aid ground forces and we'll be set.

Basically, if we have a midsize combat ship hull designed, we can, if my understanding is correct, design assorted other devices and mount them to it at appropriate build costs. We'll need the dockyard to actually build the thing, and we'll want crystal-production refinements to make it simply better than the enemy's equivalents.

So, design a medium dockyard with two production lines (One for warship hulls and one for the future/additional warships fast), design a warship hull with no trimmings right now, but adequate mountings for various weapons and crystals, and a crystal-production facility capable of producing crystals that are MUCH more efficient than what we have now.

Sound like a pre-game plan? Note that we'll not be using ANY revisions or that fourth design. This gives us, I believe, 11 dice to spend on advancing projects. That should be enough to have our basic projects done. If we start by designing the dockyard, spending our two remaining dice first turn on the project, then designing the ship, finishing off, if possible, the dockyard, and then designing the crystal facility, we should be in good standing at the beginning of the game, with a stockpile of materials to boot.

[milo christiansen]

I'll get behind the dockyard so long as it is equiped to build small ships OR medium ships. Design the building slips so each one can do two small ships or one medium. (Several slips make up one line, basically each medium line is also tooled as two small lines.

This will allow us a turn or two of skiff production before our medium hull is ready. Also later we can use these lines for "fighters" or whatever. More flexibility is good.

If we can standardize a small/medium dockyard now we will be able to forgo separate small lines.

Edit: We need to do *something* soon, so we have an idea how long things will take.

[Draignean]

Weird... We have a cargo ship, but no production pattern for it? Surely we have facilities to produce more of these barges? If they use the same line as the skyskiff, then how much does it cost to build a second identical line?

It would make exactly zero sense to require a design to build examples of our starting tech...

Production patterns are solely so you can place things on lines. Lines allow you to build a certain number of ships WITHOUT paying the cost normally associated with their frame. Making a production pattern is ONLY for you if you want to put a design on a production line.

You do NOT need have a production line to produce a ship. Adding new production lines will be difficult, and represents a significant investment in infrastructure. As a friendly bit of GM advice to give you a feel for progression, designing an expanded dockyard to give your existing single production line more mileage is a feasible thing. Instantly going to a mid-size dock is not.

You can produce your existing transports just by constructing the hull and the needed crystals, then telling me that you want to slot them together to make a ship out of them. Boom.

To reiterate: you can construct anything that has a cost by it. Production lines are JUST for gaining free construction up to a certain limit, and are NOT necessary to build a ship.

[milo christiansen]

Ahhh, that makes a lot more sense.

There, no need to waste time on infrastructure just yet, we can go directly to some marine improvments or an anti-web cannon.

As for construction: we MUST build some barges and marine gear during these first four turns. Taking more resources should be priority #1 in the early game.

[NUKE9.13]

Alright, alright. As the GM said, there's no need to build better dockyards if we want transports. We can build them manually. We should build at least two before the start of the game, so that we can deploy marines to the two spires near us that we don't control.

I think an important design will be better infantry weapons. Maybe an Aetheric rifle.

The scattershot cannon is good too.

Better lift and trim crystals are also important.

As for our strategy, I think we should aim to secure as many resources as fast as possible. So... more towards the Zerg Rush side of things. If we let the enemy gain a resource advantage over us, their (relatively) cheaper ships could take down our technically superior ones through force of numbers.

Anyway, for our first design, I'm guess we can go with Madman's

Multifaceted Light Aether Cannon: By reworking the firing crystal of the LAC, the shot is changed from a single blast into a spread of smaller shots. Whilst less effective against shrouds and ships, this is expected to burn through webbing like nobody's business.

Multifaceted Light Aether Cannon (3 dice): (1) NUKE9.13

[Jilladilla]

Welp, I signed up for Spire Wreth, so it's about time to contribute something, so here is something I thought up: A relatively simple way to get fairly heavy duty armor for our airships:

Encased Steel Armor Plates: A relatively small steel plate is encased in either copper or bronze to prevent it from rotting away, these plates can of course be attached to the outside of an airship hull side by side. As each plate has its own casing, a hole in one does not doom the entire armor system to rusted ruin, just whatever plate became exposed.

Now I would feel that repairs will be a PITA with that, with even small nicks potentially mandating replacement plates, but it would let us armor our ships in steel, and the iron rot doesn't seem like it acts fast enough to be decisive in a battle.
Another potential alternative for steel armor is electrolysis; but that would require a lot more tech to set up I feel, and most definitely a better core crystal for power.

But for now, I will vote for the cannon, as I have a distinct feeling we don't have the ore income at the moment to take advantage of these armor plates if we went for them.

Multifaceted Light Aether Cannon (3 dice): (2) NUKE9.13, Jilladilla

[Khan Boyzitbig]

Multifaceted Light Aether Cannon (3 dice): (3) NUKE9.13, Jilladilla, Khan Boyzitbig

This could probably also be used at range against groups as sort of a flak cannon, not a very dangerous one but early game that doesn't really matter.

I suppose an alternative is a rapid fire cannon but I suspect that would be prone to overheating.