A staggering setback hits the Windrider production line when the cigar of a careless bureaucrat ignites a significant portion of the financing papers which carry the file identifiers of the requisition slips to pull authority manifests from high echelon reserve monetary trusts. It's not a disaster, but the time spent filling out the authorization requests to gain access to the accidental destruction forms in order to then receive the necessary paperwork to write an invoice to have the protected secondary financing papers transferred to the main project -as well as filling out secondary and triplicate paperwork to the DORD in order to have a new series of reserve copies written and filed into protective care- does mean that very little progress is made.
As much or more work goes into deciphering the savants cryptic designs and reconciling some of his calculations with the known parameters of modern physics. Some irregularities are irreconcilable, and engineers have resigned themselves to trying to build a faithful prototype first and devoting time to gaining understanding second if it works. Still, it's slow going, particularly given the brevity of the descriptive writings.
It is now the revision phase. You have 2 dice to spend.
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.
Wreth TerritoryHaze-Maze Marine Presence: K 0/8 | W 1/8
--->
Marines---> Squad G (No Equip)
Territory: 0/4 | 4/4
Resources: 1C, 3O, 1W, 2S
Conditions: Deadly Gas Pockets, significant vertical shafts and steep tunnels.
Miner's Folly Marine Presence: K 0/18 | W 1/18
--->
Marines---> Squad G (No Equip)
Territory: 0/4 | 4/4
Resources: 1C, 6O, 0W, 1S
Conditions: Toxic Stone, Massive Caverns, pitch-black
The Verdant Vista Marine Presence: K 0/18 | W 0/18
Territory: 0/4 | 4/4
Resources: 1C, 0O, 8W, 2S
Conditions: Mostly earth and soil, Unstable pocket caves
The BeltThree Captains Marine Presence: K ?/20 | W 8/20
--->
Marines---> Assault Squad A: [25%]
---> Assault Squad C: [50%]
---> Defense Squad D: Silk Vest (Officer) | Pincushion (1/4) | Suppressor (1/4) | Gauntlets (2/4) | BLOCK | PLACE | Envenomed Bolts
---> Defense Squad E: Silk Vest (Officer) | Pincushion (2/4) | Gauntlets (2/4) | BLOCK | PLACE
---> Support Squad F: Silk Vest (Officer) | Pincushion (3/4) | Suppressor (1/4) | PLACE | Envenomed Bolts
---> Support Squad G: Silk Vest (Officer) | Pincushion (3/4) | Suppressor (1/4) | PLACE | Envenomed Bolts
---> H: Silk Vest (Officer) | Pincushion (1/4) | Gauntlets (1/4) |
---> I: Silk Vest (Officer) | Suppressors (3/4) | Gauntlets (1/4) | Envenomed Bolts
Territory: 1/4 | 3/4
Resources: 1C, 6O, 2W, 6S
Conditions: Kinetoluminescent Ores, Heavily Infested
Wrackspire Marine Presence: K ?/12 | W 0/12
Territory: ?/4 | 0/4
Resources: 3C, 4O, 4W, 2S
Conditions: Unstable Aetheric Phenomena, Broken Spire
Burned MountainMarine Presence: K ?/24 | W 0/24
Territory: ?/4 | 0/4
Resources: 1C, 10O, 1W, 0S
Conditions: Inexplicably Molten Core, Hundreds of narrow tunnels and small galleries.
The UnfinishedMarine Presence: K ?/45 | W 0/45
Territory: ?/4 | 0/4
Resources: 8C, 0O, 6W, 2S
Conditions: Unfinished infrastructure, Massive open rooms and halls.
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.
Suppressor Repeating Crossbow: Cost: 2 wood+ 1 ore per fireteam, 8 wood + 4 ore to give to every man. | A repeating crossbow with a forty pound lever weight. Field modification allow it to operate has a standard repeating crossbow, or as a light crossbow using a goat's foot lever. The latter is underpowered, the former is inaccurate.
Pincushion Repeating Crossbow: Cost: 3 wood to give one to every fireteam, 12 wood to give to every man. | A lighter and nearly all wood version of the Suppressor. Limited draw weight and not terribly robust, but cheap.
Envenomed Bolts (Pain): Cost: 2 Wood, 1 Silk for a squad | A cripplingly painful toxin, derived from surface monsters, smeared on bolt-heads and then dried. Little additional lethality, but a small injury can take a Marine completely out of action.
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.
---> A.G.I: Some small QoL changes have been made to the gauntlet, slightly increasing its sustained rate of fire and giving the user a bit more time before the gauntlet burns their arm.
Portable Light Aether Cannon Emplacement (P.L.A.C.E): Cost: 2 Ore, 2 Crystal, 1 Silk | Fireteam can have a max of 1 | Weights 1 Cargo unit | A potent defensive weapon consisting of a 75% scale LAC hooked up to a cat sized core crystal and a reduced trim crystal, mounted on a folding tripod. When not in use, it can be set to hover, allowing it's weight to be comfortable pushed or pulled by a single man. When in use, it is deployed on the tripod and the trim is disconnected so as to let the cannon's weapon crystal monopolize the core crystal's (admittedly minor) power generation. It's shots are devastatingly powerful, but in enclosed spaces will rapidly bring the air to a burning heat. A blast shield is pre-packed that helps keep the backblast from directly hitting the gunners, but it's a delaying tactic at best.
---> Optimized Build: Optimized components have reduced the ore cost of the PLACE.
BLOCK: 4 Wood, if not carried by a squad it counts as 16 light items (half a TU). Provides a single fireteam with enough wood and building materials to put up very light fortifications, block off tunnels, and build very (very) simple structures in the field. Encumbers one fireteam heavily, or can be spread out to slightly slow down an entire squad.
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.
BOX: 3 Wood for a Fireteam's worth. Four military issue boxes. Each box can carry an eighth of a TU, (two small items) in addition to whatever the soldier is carrying.
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.
---> The Itshana Process has improved crystal purity, allowing for a slight increase in power.
---> Can be manufactured using Itshana Select crystals, which gives a 75-100% increase in power, at the cost of increasing the ore cost of the component by an amount equal to the base crystal price.
---> Improved Dissipation enables it to be fired 25% faster than normal once hot.
Basic Core Crystal+: [VS 3 Crystal | S 6 Crystal | M 20 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.
---> The Itshana Process has improved crystal purity, allowing for a slight increase in efficiency.
---> Can be manufactured using Itshana Select crystals, which gives a 75-100% increase in power, at the cost of increasing the ore cost of the component by an amount equal to the base crystal price.
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.
---> The Itshana Process has improved crystal purity, allowing for a slight increase in lift.
---> Can be manufactured using Itshana Select crystals, which gives a 75-100% increase in power, at the cost of increasing the ore cost of the component by an amount equal to the base crystal price.
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.
---> The Itshana Process has improved crystal purity, allowing for a slight increase in maneuverability.
---> Can be manufactured using Itshana Select crystals, which gives a 75-100% increase in power, at the cost of increasing the ore cost of the component by an amount equal to the base crystal price.
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.
Dragun Cannon: 3 ore, 2 wood per unit | A five pound bronze cannon, considerably heaver than the LAC. Originally designed to fire a mixed load of sulfur and lead shot, its boring is inconsistent and rather lackluster. As a conventional cannon, it needs to be reloaded component wise, and its placement on a ship necessitates both some form of gunpowder storage and storage for its main projectiles. When firing its standard munition, the flames reach approximately a fifth the distance of an LAC shot, while the balls get about 60% of an LAC's range before it becomes unrealistic to deal damage with them.
-Sapshot: A second shot type developed for the Dragun is fired in a bag and flies as a sticky ball. While its total flaming range is extended, it doesn't fan out as much as the sulfur shot. The amorphous nature of the projectile makes it inaccurate, but really not much more so than the initial shot type.
Dragun Mounting: 4 Wood, 2 Ore per mount when refit from Aetheric light slots. A bank of 3 guns can be refit to host 2 of these mountins | A rotating turntable of wood and metal, sporting a reinforced friction rail system capable of holding and absorbing the recoil from a small conventional cannon. The turntable is rotated via hand crank, and still does not allow depression or elevation of the cannon. | Currently heavily optimized for the Dragun cannon.
Ship Hulls
Windrider Corvette 9 wood, 5 ore for one.
The Windrider is the spiritual successor to the Cloudrunner, which is the last official reference to the Cloudrunner project that remains in public records. She's roughly three times the length of a skiff, sports a lightly armored hull, and redundant power systems. As a corvette she's readily maneuverable, but the weight of her armor and the additional infrastucture needed to run her dual core configurations makes her a bit more heavy than originally intended.
She's fast, durable vessel with excellent coverage on her ten guns- and efficient production practices make her hull easy to produce. She's just a bit pricy to outfit, and requires select crystals in order to function properly.
She has no usable cargo capacity.
Armor
Light Copper skin (Built-in)
Mounting for 2 Armor Sections
Armament
10 light cannon mounts. four on each broadside and two bow guns.
Requires:
2 Core Crystal (Must be Select Small, can fit up to Small)
2 Lift Crystals (Must be Small, can fit up to Small)
4-16 Trim Crystals [4/8/16 Poor/avg/excellent maneuvering]
8 reams of webbing
Windrider Corvette, Med Core Modification 11 wood, 7 ore for one. 3 wood, 3 ore to convert from a Windrider Corvette.
A Windrider with its cramped engineering section redone to utilize a medium core crystal. Interestingly, this also removes the power surge issue that plagued the prior design.
She has no usable cargo capacity.
Armor
Light Copper skin (Built-in)
Mounting for 2 Armor Sections
Armament
10 light cannon mounts. four on each broadside and two bow guns.
Requires:
1 Medium Core Crystal
2 Lift Crystals (Must be Small, can fit up to Small)
4-16 Trim Crystals [4/8/16 Poor/avg/excellent maneuvering]
8 reams of webbing
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
--->Skyskiff Refit(Conventional Cannon) 3 Wood and 2 ore to refit from the basic Skyskiff
A change of the skyskiff hull to (mostly) accommodate a single small conventional cannon. The mating isn't perfect, however, and firing the cannon will cause damage to her structure and will disrupt flight maneuvers. She also explodes at the drop of a hat.
She has no usable cargo capacity.
Armament
1 central conventional cannon mount
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.
Crossbow Corridors of Carnage: When engaging, Marines will attempt to find cover, or at least concealment, and fire from behind that. Advancement is a leap-frog between cover, and retreat is a similar series of backward jumps.
Anti-Flanking: A squad or squads will maintain a strong flank and rear for the other squads, repulsing assaults within their weight range and providing warning in case of larger attacks. If the squad carries a BLOCK system with them, this tactic synergizes by design.
Scorched Earth: A fighting retreat tactic employing the PLACE. Involves finding favorable ground to wait for an enemy push, firing the PLACE to annihilate the assault and deny the area, then moving ahead and waiting for the next push, hopeful in a position to cut off a flank on the original location.
PIN DOWN: Designed to work with equipment designated between light and heavy loadouts. Units with light weaponry will endeavor to either slow down or disable enemy infantry rather than kill- waiting for the heavy weapon groups to mop up disabled opponents. Light soldiers focus on disabling or pinning as many units as possible, rather than attempting to inflict direct casualties.
Scorched Roads: A tactic utilizing PLACE fire to clear tunnels ahead of advancing troops, and to fire down side tunnels in an effort to flush ambushers lying in wait. It's the only way to be sure.
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.
High Vigil: Tells a fleet to maintain a vessel as a high-altitude lookout. The lookout will give a warning shot if they spot an enemy vessel. After raising the alarm, the scout rejoins the fleet and follows the same tactic as her fellow ships.
AGILE: Ships using AGILE will attempt to evade and outmaneuver enemy vessels, focusing on evasive action rather than maximizing damage.
AMDG: Currently better known as AMES, this tactic attempts to get captains to bring their small vessels within the shroud of larger vessels before firing. Ambitions, and currently rubbish due to multiple lacking components and complete lack of buy-in from the brass.
Double Ambush: Splits a fleet up into two groups. One group attacks from ambush initially, boom and zoom style, then the second group moves into attack whatever slow or crippled ships do not pursue the first ambush group.
Double Ambush V2: Double Ambush, redesigned to make sure the initial wave targets soft targets, the second wave mops up, and the entire group flees afterward. Travels slightly lower as well.
Boom and Zoom: Ships attack in a series of fast dives, attempting to climb into a new dive as soon as they finish with one. Works OK, assuming they ships using this have a speed and/or climb advantage over the enemy vessels.
Helix Pattern: A helical attack pattern requiring two ships, designed to fully utilize broadside and bow guns on the same target. Suffers severely from trust issues at the moment, and works best when the attacking vessels have engagement control.
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. This production line has ~1000 base points of production.
-Wood MkI upgrade
-Silk MkII upgrade
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.
Crude Fuses: Extremely rudimentary fuses. You can make them fail safe, but they're going to fail often.
-->Knife Switch Fuse Box: In order to compensate for having terrible fuses, you use a multitude of them, networked through knife switches that can switch between good and bad fuses quickly. Though it still occupies a good stretch of an engineer's attention, these boxes allow bad fuses to be exchanged nearly instantly.
Itshana Crystals: Aetheric resonators inside vattery tanks, as well as more specialized chemical baths, improve the overall quality of all crystals. This also enables the creation of Select Crystals, which are slightly less than twice as powerful as unaugmented crystals, but cost ore equal to their base crystal cost.
--->Thermovariable Processes: When operating in bulk, I.E, when the ore cost of a batch of Itshana select crystals is higher than 10, a 20% discount is applied- though this discount cannot bring the ore cost below 10.
Ikusasa Matrices: Shaped matrices allow for dead-zones within core crystals, areas where flaws can be safely concentrated without harming the crystal's function. This allows crystals to achieve a very high effective purity, though it does mean that the crystal isn't used in its entirety. Provides a 50% bonus to core power that stacks with baseline itshana, but can't be used with select.
Production Line Investments: For any ship producing line, you can invest resources to increase the max and per-turn construction rates by 5%. This process can be repeated for as many times as you have resources, but it can only come from one resource at a time. At base, each improvement costs 5, but the cost doubles each time there after- but only for that resource. Thus, if you give it a MK3 upgrade from silk (costing 5+10+20), you can turn around and give it a MK2 upgrade from wood (costing 5+10), and they'll stack to give a production line +25% cap and production.
Production Patterns
Basic Marine Training: [Max: 25 | 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
Skyskiff Pattern 'Comet' [Max: 9 | Rate: 3 per 2 Turns]
Creates Three 'Comet' Skyskiff units per two turns, up to a max of 9 comet skiffs. Each skyskiff is outfitted with
2 SUCKERPUNCH Light Aether Cannons.
1 Very Small Select Core Crystal
1 Very Small Select Lift Crystal
4 Select Trim Crystals
2 reams of webbing
Buyback cost: 9 crystal, 15 ore, 5 wood, 4 silk
TOP Value: 377.952 | Max 755.904
Author
Topic: Arms Race: War of the Cinder Spires | Spire Wreth (Read 161541 times)