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Author Topic: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2994 B.C Revision  (Read 12007 times)

andrea

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #90 on: April 17, 2018, 03:14:40 pm »

Ra's Wrath - A modification to the Sun Cannon, this creation operates off of similar technology at roughly the same size (only slightly bigger), but instead of firing a single ovaloid sphere of energy at the target, it instead fires a continuous beam for multiple seconds.  It can be mounted on a cart to be carried into battle, or in any existing emplacement that uses a Sun Cannon.

(Hard) (3,3) -1 =5 Average

It is now the time of the year where, as usual, you set out to disassemble explosive divine relics. Or, well, you would be if most of your servants hadn’t abandoned you by now. They will need to be flogged and replaced, but for now you take a less invasive approach. What makes the weapon fire only a short burst? Simple: the trigger rebounds after being pressed. It is an easy enough problem to solve without messing with the interior components, with a system of levers that allows the operator to keep the trigger pressed for a longer time. You are however left wonder as to why it was built this way.

Gods are mysterious, but this particular mystery doesn’t last long. During the first test the cannon does indeed fire a continuous beam, for roughly a second. Then it melts. Then it explodes throwing molten metal in the thankfully empty (except for the operator) field. The Wrath of Ra is too much for even divine materials to contain. Lowering the power of the cannon is beyond your current understanding, but while you study the problem you have another solution: water buckets. While the operator keeps the trigger pulled, a pair of slaves showers the weapon head with water. Operators are instructed to only firewhile water is pouring and stop when buckets are empty. Even then, it takes a while for it to stop being red from heat and the flowing water absorbs part of the power of the weapon, making it less powerful than the Sun cannon… instantly. But it can keep delivering that power for a couple of seconds. While it may not be an extraordinary breakthrough to break a hypothetical wall of stone, it has a couple of advantages: the continuous beam makes missing hard since you can scour the field around the target and you can hit larger numbers of small targets (such as soldiers) while still being lethal; most importantly perhaps, it was decided to bring them to the field using the war chariots. It is predicted to be revolutionary.

Ships and Sky Temple have been upgraded with it.
[3 wood, 2 ore, 2 relics] [Alien][Very Expensive]

Spoiler:  Egyptian equipment (click to show/hide)


It is now Revision phase for 2998 B.C

Failbird105

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #91 on: April 17, 2018, 03:24:44 pm »

Hmm, I feel like the whole "needs water to continue firing" thing makes it a bit of a bad idea to just straight up replace your current sun cannons with it. It shouldn't be too much of a problem if you just make a system to gather water from the sea for the ones on your boats, but the Sky Temple one is effectively going to have a limited number of uses before it can no longer fire anymore, even if the firepower is fairly drastically increased.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2018, 03:30:20 pm by Failbird105 »
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Doomblade187

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #92 on: April 17, 2018, 03:36:55 pm »

Understanding the Sunstaff: we already have mostly disassembled the sunstaff. Now let's understand it, and figure out how it works. This should remove the [Alien] tag.

Dearmor the temple: the sun temple is overarmored for it's purpose. We could remove it's armor to make it less expensive and field more of them. Alternatively, we could make a dedicated scaffold to make building them easier.
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In any case it would be a battle of critical thinking and I refuse to fight an unarmed individual.
One mustn't stare into the pathos, lest one become Pathos.

Chiefwaffles

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #93 on: April 17, 2018, 05:31:32 pm »

Floatchariot (name is super-pending, please please please give me a better name)
By adding Shu Stones to the underside of the "War" Chariot instead of wheels, we can fix a massive amount of issues!

While we still use horses to keep a fast speed and no reliance on the Shu Stones' minimal forces, the chariot is no longer unstable as it no longer has to deal with rough terrain (as long as the horses can handle it, that is); the fact that it is no longer physically touching every part of the ground with bad wheels and bad [suspension] means that it no longer shakes at speeds - it's a silky smooth ride always, meaning shooting is easily possible at any speed. And the best part is that as we don't have to worry about friction or max wheel speed at all, the cart can go as fast as the horses can go!
((Or faster, if the elimination of weight also includes elimination of inertia, but I don't think Shu Stones do that?)

We are aware that the use of Shu Stones will increase the expense due to the salvaging requirements, and accept that as a necessary sacrifice for the time being. It sure is nice when you don't have to worry about interactions with the ground at all, and all we have to do is glue on some Shu Stones and hack off the wheels!
TL;DR: Replace the War Chariot's wheels with Shu Stones put on the underside (but still use horses). Much higher max speed, perfectly smooth rides, cooler, and more.

Quote
Understanding the Sunstaff (0):
Dearmor the Temple (0):
Floatchariot (1): Chiefwaffles
And Failbird: Sometimes, the benefits outweigh the consequences. Even if the change made it so a Wrath-equipped vehicle had only a certain amount of ammo before running out, the damage it could do before it runs out would be well worth it.
But that's not a huge problem anyways. The Sky Temple is big and slow enough that keeping a water supply line will be trivial (and it's powerful enough to keep that supply line safe). Solar barges are on water themselves.
And if we ever put the Wrath on smaller more mobile things, then they won't be on the field long enough to have ammo be a concern, and can easily move back for resupply.
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Quote from: RAM
You should really look to the wilderness for your stealth ideas, it has been doing it much longer than you have after all. Take squids for example, that ink trick works pretty well, and in water too! So you just sneak into the dam upsteam, dump several megatons of distressed squid into it, then break the dam. Boom, you suddenly have enough water-proof stealth for a whole city!

Zanzetkuken The Great

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #94 on: April 17, 2018, 05:42:42 pm »

Hmm, I feel like the whole "needs water to continue firing" thing makes it a bit of a bad idea to just straight up replace your current sun cannons with it. It shouldn't be too much of a problem if you just make a system to gather water from the sea for the ones on your boats, but the Sky Temple one is effectively going to have a limited number of uses before it can no longer fire anymore, even if the firepower is fairly drastically increased.

It doesn't explicitly have to replace the gun on the Sky Temple, it just can be done as an option.
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Quote from: Eric Blank
It's Zanzetkuken The Great. He's a goddamn wizard-dragon. He will make it so, and it will forever be.
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andrea

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #95 on: April 19, 2018, 01:28:24 pm »

votes, anyone?

Rockeater

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #96 on: April 19, 2018, 01:30:21 pm »


Quote
Understanding the Sunstaff (1):Rockeater
Dearmor the Temple (0):
Floatchariot (1): Chiefwaffles
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Damnit people, this is why I said to keep the truce. Because now everyone's ganging up on the cats.
Also, don't forget to contact your local Eldritch Being(s), so that they can help with our mission to destroy the universe.

Doomblade187

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #97 on: April 19, 2018, 01:34:10 pm »

Quote
Understanding the Sunstaff (2): Doomblade, Rockeater
Dearmor the Temple (0):
Floatchariot (1): Chiefwaffles
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In any case it would be a battle of critical thinking and I refuse to fight an unarmed individual.
One mustn't stare into the pathos, lest one become Pathos.

Atomic Chicken

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #98 on: April 19, 2018, 02:09:24 pm »

Quote
Understanding the Sunstaff (3): Doomblade, Rockeater, AC
Dearmor the Temple (0):
Floatchariot (1): Chiefwaffles
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As mentioned in the previous turn, the most exciting field of battle this year will be in the Arstotzkan capitol, with plenty of close-quarter fighting and siege warfare.  Arstotzka, accordingly, spent their design phase developing a high-altitude tactical bomber. 

andrea

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2998 B.C Design
« Reply #99 on: April 20, 2018, 04:32:32 pm »

Understanding the Sunstaff: we already have mostly disassembled the sunstaff. Now let's understand it, and figure out how it works. This should remove the [Alien] tag.

(Normal) (4,1) =5 Average
Finally, you did it! You understand how the Sun staff works. Well understanding may be a far too great word as the works of the gods are mysterious, but you know what is inside it and how those components interact. This already provides some benefits: some of those components are relatively common in other devices, and there are some failures that you can kind of patch up. In the end, your ability to source components and maintain the staves is significantly increased, leading to greater presence in the battlefield. Is the age of the bow at an end?
Spoiler:  Egyptian equipment (click to show/hide)


It is now Battle Phase. You can vote on where to send your national effort. If no votes are cast, it will stay in the land lane.

Chiefwaffles

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2997 B.C Design
« Reply #100 on: April 25, 2018, 03:29:17 pm »

Ibis Chariot
Called the "Floatchariot" by our less... educated, soldiers, the Ibis Chariot is a wonder of technology.
In the simplest of terms, it's a war chariot but with the wheels (and horses, for that matter) replaced with Shu Stones. It's no longer affected by rough terrain, we no longer have to worry about the durability of the wheels, it no longer shakes and rattles as it moves preventing accuracy from soldiers, and it can go as fast as its propulsion allows as we no longer have to worry about the wheels breaking off.
Now, the above isn't that difficult. Just a matter of kicking the wheels off and gluing on Shu Stones on the underside. While on our rightfully-deserved breaks, we realized we could probably do something else with our time.

Shu Stones are great and all, but they only provide a small amount of force. After we finish with the lifting stones on the Ibis Chariot, we shall set to work on figuring out a method of modifying Shu Stones to devote all their divine energies to forward movement, rather than only a tiny portion (with the rest going towards [gravity nullification]).
As all we - the head researcchers - have been told is that the Shu Stones are "tiny objects", we hope that our underlings will make the most out of this instruction. But our leading theory is that perhaps, given that the sun staff works in components, there's a "gravity" component in the Shu Stones that we could remove. And once this component is removed, then the divine energy has no choice but to all go to powering propulsion.

If the Shu Stone modifications are succesful, then they shall be applied to the Ibis Chariot and the Sky Temple (for non-snail movement). If not, then the Ibis Chariot shall use horses for now. It still has extreme stability, faster (because no bad wheels) speeds, and more. But if we get a workable variation of the Shu Stone as desired, then we can increase the speeds of the Ibis beyond that of horses *and* even use it to some degree over water and other terrain not usable by horses (or men)!


Quote
Ibis Chariot (1): Chiefwaffles
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Quote from: RAM
You should really look to the wilderness for your stealth ideas, it has been doing it much longer than you have after all. Take squids for example, that ink trick works pretty well, and in water too! So you just sneak into the dam upsteam, dump several megatons of distressed squid into it, then break the dam. Boom, you suddenly have enough water-proof stealth for a whole city!

Shadowclaw777

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2997 B.C Design
« Reply #101 on: April 25, 2018, 03:31:37 pm »

Quote from: VoteBox
Ibis Chariot (2): Chiefwaffles, SC
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Rockeater

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2997 B.C Design
« Reply #102 on: April 25, 2018, 03:34:01 pm »


Quote from: VoteBox
Ibis Chariot (3): Chiefwaffles, SC, Rockeater
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Damnit people, this is why I said to keep the truce. Because now everyone's ganging up on the cats.
Also, don't forget to contact your local Eldritch Being(s), so that they can help with our mission to destroy the universe.

Atomic Chicken

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2997 B.C Design
« Reply #103 on: April 26, 2018, 11:20:06 am »

Quote from: VoteBox
Ibis Chariot (4): Chiefwaffles, SC, Rockeater, AC
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As mentioned in the previous turn, the most exciting field of battle this year will be in the Arstotzkan capitol, with plenty of close-quarter fighting and siege warfare.  Arstotzka, accordingly, spent their design phase developing a high-altitude tactical bomber. 

andrea

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Re: Ancient arms race - Temple of Thoth - 2997 B.C Design
« Reply #104 on: April 28, 2018, 05:57:53 pm »

(Normal) (3,3) =6  Above average
You already know how to make Shu stones move stuff forward, but they seem to have a strong preference for upward. It turns out, there seems to be some setting regulating it, and that you are nowhere near the maximum.  The slider seems to go up to half the corner of a square away from vertical. That represents, of course, an enormous increase of thrust.

You mount it on a “chariot” and add a way to control the slider from the chariot itself. And the test is a success! The Ibis moves smoothly forward and can move almost as quickly as an unladen swallow horse, making animals redundant for the task. It presents however a small side effect: the craft isn’t pushed forward. Rather, it falls forward, as if “down” itself changed direction. Nothing that couldn’t be accommodated through a redesign of the chariot to suit the tilted orientation, however. The Sky temple probably already suffered from this, but it just wasn’t big enough an effect to be noticed.

The real downside is that, as more energy is directed forward, vehicles using shu stones as a method of fast propulsion require more relics. Regardless, you implement it in your Sky temple design as well as the chariot, although you could still decide to deploy them with regular stones.

It is fast, provides a smooth ride and can house 2 fully equipped soldiers which can fight while moving.

[2 wood 2 ore 2 relics][Alien][Very expensive]

Deployed with horse traction:

[2 wood 2 ore 1 relics][Alien][Expensive]
Spoiler:  Egyptian equipment (click to show/hide)


It is now Revision Phase.
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