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[Failbird105]

I do not have a proper name, however some refer to me as the god of the Black Forest or just as The Black Forest. I am the god of creativity and oddity, known for making things that are thought up outside the box or require others to think outside the box to deal with them.

My domain is, obviously, the Black Forest. In spite of its name the forest is ironically bright, one of the few locations within the plane of darkness that can be seen in by mundane eyes with the magically glowing bulbs that hang from the tallest trees, giving an impression of stars in the night sky. Yet in some ways that just serves to emphasise how much of it is truly pitch black, even compared to the utter lack of light of the rest of the plane, like a void. The creatures of the black forest are only small shadow like demonic birds and critters, but have recently expanded to include a few small biological reptiles, and the ecology will likely continue to grow as the Darks knowledge does.

[Taricus]

(Design) Forgebound: Increasing the natural capacities of the imps, we could have a particularly skilled labourers that are magically talented and heat resistant. While losing the wings, and exchanging the claws for humanoid hands, the bodies of the forgebound are broadened and laden in muscle and some fat, with extra fire/heat resistance built in them to ensure that they can easily work with the furnaces and the blazing hot metal.

Designed with working in the forgeworks in mind, and being cheaper than most alternatives whilst being skilled labour makes them an optimal choice for running the forges for the legions. Not to mention the efficiency gains due to making them that extra bit fireproof so the heat won't impact them too much.

"As for I? I am Kyazir, Traitor to the Light & the God of War, Engineering and Beauty. Creator & Destroyer. I inspire my followers to be great builders, great warriors and being absolutely fucking fabulous and dashing all the while. You won't find someone as dedicated to creating utterly devastating machines of war, as who else but the virtuoso that sees such weapons operating to be akin to fine art?

As for my own personal domain, I don't like to boast or brag but my plane of Tiberus is pretty great, absolutely stunning vistas, absolutely stunning people and absolutely stunning works of art made here. Don't think the gods of light expected such a plane to exist on our side, much less in the hands of a turncoat. You guys should definitely make sure your domains are still there. No sense in letting someone else run your own little demesne."

[Doomblade187]

Forge notes:
it currently cannot produce magical gear.
Manpower needs are based on humans.
The power to materials ratio is basically static. Don't try to improve this, as it's based on the fact that creating metal bars is easier than creating armor. It's less mental effort for the gods.
You can build more than one forge. This just makes the overall forge complex bigger, adding more hubs. Each factory contributes to maintenance cost, but currently are run as one cost.

[dgr11897]

My name is Kran-CLak-thun Dark god of quantum mechanics, and my realm is basically a system of massive gears that make no sense, why? because reality is broken, with the gears each covered in a random biome, a biome that is not decided until observed. With the gears floating in an endless sky, with gears connected not necessarily by being next to each other, and which gears they connect to slowly changing as they turn, and some connections have no set endpoint, with the gear being connected to all possible connections at once. These connections are just points in space that transfer you to a different point when you walk through. The biomes on the gears are maddening and alien, with some being just areas where space and time don't work quite right. The gears are also sometimes apposed, you can walk through a connection, look up, and see the gear you just came from floating above you. In addition, sometimes you may find yourself on the cogs of the gears, with two gears mashing together, threatening to crush you if you don't get out of there in time. However, it does posses some stunning vistas, with waterfalls flowing off of cogs in a deep blue sky, and greenery thriving on various locations, it is only certain areas, known as the "Badlands" by those who dwell there, that are innately hostile. those who dwell here do so in a variety of villages, getting used to the broken reality of my realm, even delving out into the badlands to retrieve rare gems, resources, and to hunt dangerous creatures.  Of course the badlands are situated around my home in the direction of the entrance and things also get more dangerous the farther out you go, it also stretches out into infinity. The native sentient species that dwells here are called the broken, and appear as areas of distorted light, prismatic almost, don't touch them, less they quantum destabilize you. Imps also dwell here, along with humans, and many other species dwelling together in (relative) harmony.
 My home lies at the center, and you must follow a complicated series of nonsensical directions to reach it, with your path looping back on itself, and you going in circles before ending up somewhere else. My house meanwhile, is a simple affair for all of that, a high quality mansion, with a wooden fireplace and plentiful books.
When you look at me you see all possible versions of yourself, at once. A single glance can drive the weak willed or minded mad. My citizens, dwelling in my realm, are immune to my appearance driving them mad, and see past it to glimpse my true form. My true form, seen only by gods and those who understand, is a mass of gears, ever turning. As such I often wander the villages, seeing how they bend the broken physics of my realm to their purposes.

[Taricus]

Putting in a votebox so people don't forget to put votes in.

(Design) Forgebound (1): Taricus

[RAM]

Ravens: 1 RAM
Grue: (0)
Worker: (0)
Seeker v1:
Forging Darkness:
Daemons:
Ballistae:
Dark caster:
(Design) Forgebound (1): Taricus

I don't think that anything has changed?
I am pretty vehemently against forgebound. The imps seem good enough, the opportunity for beasties from the fire and earth planes seems absurdly good for this task, and it really isn't a large expense. A once-off cost of 1000-2000 power is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, and this would at best half the cost and double the production-capacity, which would only be saving 500(and ruining their combat potential if we replaced them later) once and 200 a turn, which is peanuts. We could get something to improve our performance in the planes and get much better options for this later on. If we had something that was actually good at fighting in the plane of fire, or were not looking to gain knowledge of beings that are partially formed from the sort of heat and minerals that a forge is all about, then I might consider it, but as things stand, no.

[dgr11897]

OK on the discord the GM told us that better workers could improve the output of the forge, as well as potentially allow us to make magical stuff with the forge.
Plus, Having a dedicated worker for the forges is just generally a good idea.

Ravens: 1 RAM
Grue: (0)
Worker: (0)
Seeker v1:
Forging Darkness:
Daemons:
Ballistae:
Dark caster:
(Design) Forgebound (2): Taricus, DGR

[RAM]

We don't have any magical stuff that would help us in the fire plane, and as it is it will be a meat-grinder at best. Improving the output won't get us more items per point of power, it will get us more items per forge, which does have an upkeep cost, so it is, effectively, more items per point, but it is massively inefficient at that.

A long, hollow demon mad out of segmented cylinders. Each cylinder has a pair of spiked legs that can dig into rock surfaces to climb up sheer cliffs. The segments can lock together to form an armoured but immobile laddered/stepped tunnel. It can inflate massive gliding wings from every 6th segment. Every sixth segment with an offset of three can produce a bag,m nflated with hot air, to slowly and clumsily take it to altitude in favourable conditions. The intervening segments breath and can assist in inflation. It's basic method of operation is to be loaded with troops and then gently float into the air, before switching to a glider and gracefully diving at a target to unload. But it is also capable of land-operation or locking itself to form a spontaneous fortification or passage. It lacks specific weapons, but the legs are dangerous and mobile, if clumsy spears, and it can do a great deal of damage by ramming or rolling at things.

Otherwise, it is a resistance-focused imp,hollowed out with its extremities removed, given ribbed plating and a few novel growths, then extended out to about 30 metres long and 3-metres tall, with about 60 segments...

With luck it gives us aerial mobility and logistics...

[Doomblade187]

Improving the forge's output, unless you're actually just increasing production rate/scale, typically means increasing the amount of equipment you get per point of power. That is to say, making a more efficient forge improves your power-equipment ratio.

[Taricus]

The thing is RAM, is that we don't need any magic to help in the plane of fire. Normal stuff will work just as well there. More to the point, we need the forgebound as the blackscales are too expensive to devote to laborious tasks, and the imps can't actually staff the forge.

[dgr11897]

Also, less expensive equipment (less power points per unit of equipment), means more power for making people to use said equipment

[RAM]

The thing is RAM, is that we don't need any magic to help in the plane of fire. Normal stuff will work just as well there.

It doesn't have a conventional land-route. We currently have land-forces only. At best we would be constantly harassed from what is largely beyond our ability to reply, at worst it is actually impossible. We probably don't even have blackscales on account of the heat. We are horrifically ill-equipped.

More to the point, we need the forgebound as the blackscales are too expensive to devote to laborious tasks, and the imps can't actually staff the forge.

I... somehow missed that imps could not work it. Apologies for that.
 Still, it is a fixed-cost investment, so blackscales could do it if they have no gear, and be cycled into the front lines when it is more opportune to design workers. At present we don't have army enough to justify this. We will struggle through the planes, be outrun by the light, and smashed in the middle against better prepared and better staffed forces. It is better to let the forges lay idle than sink more resources than we can afford. Forging is nice, but this is too many designs to sink into one project when we have no air-forces with which to attack a plane with no reliable land-passage and are using flame-throwers against things that live in fire. I don't think that the forge was worth it. It is nice, but the wrong time when we might be able to harvest the planes of the forge and lack a competent mix of forces(no cargo, fliers, high-mobility forces, scouts, combat engineers, defences against magic, heavy infantry(defined by armour, 'scales are heavy and infantry, but more shock-troops than heavy infantry, they lack staying-power, if anything they are cavalry...), and we just have the one artillery piece). The forge improved economy, I genuinely like it, but economy is multiplicative, and our army's value is low enough that multiplying it doesn't add much.

I am going to assume that 20 hubs was a typo. It is either that or each forge having 10 was a lie, or that we have two forges... Is there a cost to build forges?

50 blackscales per forge, 10 forges, 6 power per 'scale. 3000 power is... that is, 3000 power minus whatever forgebound cost is... cheaper than a design, and we can still use the scalers once we make something better at forging, possibly dedicated to forging, so we just lose 3000 points of production, that we would have used anyway. We can staff it with 'scales for now and get something better, for FORGING, from the planes of FIRE and EARTH... If you don't think we can get something suited to forging from the planes of hot metal then I give up...

I'll be glad to revisit the issue after we have taken a plane and know what can be harvested from such, and if someone wants to suggest a primary combat unit that fills a role we lack and might also be a cheaper or more-effective labourer, then fine, but a dedicated labourer is just not worth a design at this time.

[Taricus]

There's a cost to building forges, and it's ten hubs per forge. And we can't get anything better for forgeworkers from the plains of earth and fire since we need skilled labour for it. Also, the existence of bridges in the plane of fire means we CAN actually traverse it conventionally, if somewhat in a restricted fashion.

And what makes the forgebound good workers also translate into them being reasonably effective as infantry/combat engineers as well; they'd just need the equipment for it.

[RAM]

We haven't seen the whole plane, and we don't know if the bridges can be broken, and we don't know if they can just hover hundreds of metres over the bridges and drop rocks on use without much concern over the slow fireballs and sporadic bolts we can throw back. The fire natives have an immense terrain advantage over us. That we CAN get through, is plausible but uncertain. That we WILL get through, is likely but dubious. That we will lose more from being ill-equipped than we would gain from producing our ill equipment more efficiently is all but certain. Bl;ackscales used for forging are not lost, they can still be sent forward if we make something better. There is no loss to waiting, and massive expertise from the planes, not to mention saved forces from the battle, to gain.

Fire and plain deal with heat and mineral. These are things that would be massively advantageous to skilled forgeworkers and would be inherent to their nature, rather than things that could be easily added later. Also they have produced equipment, so clearly they ARE skilled labour. Just waiting until we have actually observed them and learned what their abilities are, maybe performing some dissections, would be a colossal boon to our efforts to design forgeworkers.

They are specialised to use forge-tools. Combat engineers would be far better suited to either be much more stealthy, much faster, or much more resilient. They need to work in rough climates and should be optimised to either not need tools or to have tools that are swift, and that means purpose designed. While forgework is more generalist, having to deal with anything that we might want to produce, and the threats are more climatic than violent. Then there is infantry, having to build equipment to get them to effectiveness is wasted actions. There are some advantages to wide-spread upgrades, but all too often equipment is too niche to benefit from such. Beside, again, the sacrifices made to make them effective in a forge and working with materials makes them ill-suited to a combat environment. Combat engineers and infantry face far grater costs for being uncompetitive, we should focus on that. We might want dedicated forgeworkers someday, but for now, we can get by just fine with combat forces that can serve in the forge to a tolerable degree.

The blackscales can't do anything that imps can't. They are nice, they can do things better than imps, but they still just run at things and hit them. The forge is nice. Power efficiency is a multiplier that will serve us well in the long-term, but it adds nothing to our capabilities. Our forces are extremely vulnerable to certain threats. These threats happen to be abundant in the fire plane especially. We need to deal with the extremely limited abilities of our army, and we have thus far spent all our actions on better doing things that we could already do. We have bolstered our strengths but done nothing to cover our weaknesses, and this needs to change. Being so horribly unprpared will cost us far more than any forge upgrade could hope to account for.

[Taricus]

Imps are far too weak or fragile to use as front line infantry. We need reasonably tough and strong beings for that, something the blackscales fill out rather nicely. More to the point if we can get from one portal to another on the plane of fire with just walking, we only need infantry to control it.

More to the point, dissecting their inhabitants will not be worthwhile and the earlier we get the forgeworks staffed with skilled labour, the better. It would also mean that we can get started in making more expensive equipment which can improve our combat efficacy several times over.

Finally, we still have another design this turn. And I plan on solving our ranged combat deficiencies with it. But we'll need the forgebound for it.