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[UristMcRiley]

Promethean War Dolphins

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In order to secure victory on the high seas and patrol our vast coastlines. A breeding program was established in a attempt to create a naval asset capable of defending the coasts and assaulting enemy naval vessels. The first attempt with the local Kraken resulted in a lot of dead cattle and researchers, as the attempt to train the local merfolk which resulted in some minor skirmishes, sharks had a promising start but our sailors couldn't hold there breaths long enough to keep up with their mounts. However dolphins showed promise being comfortable skimming the surface and being the friendly sort of creatures very rarely eat there riders. The Promethean War Dolphins are prized for there size being able to carry three sailors on there back one pilot and two boarders. Standard procedures for War Dolphin crews is to attack enemy vessels in the dead of night submerging a hundred meters from the enemy vessel and gliding under the water until aside the enemy ship where the boarders will climb aboard the enemy vessel and begin there grizzly work while the pilot stays with the dolphin slaying enemies that fall in the water and snagging enemies off deck when possible.

[andrea]

It is my fault for not writing it in the thread, but the one ton war ostrich was a special case. You shouldn't expect any naturally occurring unusual fauna to be around for you to tame.

[UristMcRiley]

to be fair dolphins do naturally occur

[sprinkled chariot]

Would vote dolphins if they were trained to strap orichalchum charges to bottom of the ship

[NUKE9.13]

Did somebody say ballista?

Aesystrofi's Poliánthion: In our efforts to find new uses for Orichalcum, we have stumbled across a manner of treating it such that it develops springiness- that is, it is somewhat flexible, but will always 'spring' back to its original form.
However, it requires too much force to make bows out of. Perhaps as a single layer in a composite, but that's not what we seek to use it for (today). Instead, we have developed an ingenious engine capable of projecting stones and bolts across vast distances- far greater than bows or sun staves, more equivalent to Sun Temples in range.
This 'Poliánthion' is made out of wooden components, reinforced with regular metal (or Orichalcum if needed). It somewhat resembles a (very) large bow, with two prods attached to a (thick) string, which is pulled back before being released, firing a projectile. Unlike a bow, the Poliánthion stores its energy in 'torsion springs', made out of the new Orichalcum, which can store exponentially more energy than a bow of equivalent size could. A crank is needed to reload the weapon, as no human could hope to pull back the string.
It fires either stone shot, or wooden bolts tipped with metal. The bolts are more accurate, but the stones can do more damage in certain situations. It is primarily intended to be used as a siege weapon or mounted on ships, but battlefield use is not impossible. Indeed, it should give commanders a way to deal with the sand-dwellers' "Sky Temple", and anti-infantry use is also an option.
The weapon may be disassembled and transported in pieces, or placed on a cart (if we have them) and moved whole. (Or put on a ship)

[UristMcRiley]

Would vote dolphins if they were trained to strap orichalchum charges to bottom of the ship

I feel like explosive charges and domesticated dolphins are a little much for one design but once we make ourselves some explosive charges it wouldn't require more then an edit to start planting charges on the underside of enemy vessels.

[frostgiant]

War Dolphin:
Aesytrofi's Ballista (1): Frostgiant

[Man of Paper]

What if instead the ballista was the good old slingin rocks kind? I feel like they'd be almost as effective as the bolt launching kind on land, but much more effective at sea, if we were to say revise our ship to remove front armor and add the ballista, unless that'd be overreaching for a revision.

Regardless, if we hammer an orichalcum shell onto the shots we can fire our own balls of light, and really, what's more important than showing your enemies you can style on them?

[Thanik]

War Dolphin (0):
Aesytrofi's Ballista (2): Frostgiant, Thanik
     - Rename Aesytrofi's Poliánthion (1): Thanik

Let's please not even consider the "war dolphins", since there are several inherent flaws to the mere concept of using them in war, and then in the fact that we're out of "fantastic beasts and where to find them" cards. Personally, I was going to propose a conventional ballista firing mid-air superheating orichalcum rods in addition to conventional ammo, but I feel like a better ballista is a more worthwhile investment since we can later add ammunition, but revising the ballista itself would take some effort.

I propose we call the machine the Poliánthion (from gr. 'poliorkías' (siege) and a.gr. 'ánthion' (spring)).

[NUKE9.13]

War Dolphin (0):
Aesytrofi's Poliánthion (3): Frostgiant, Thanik, NUKE9.13

Name changed.

[Happerry]

War Dolphin (0):
Aesytrofi's Poliánthion (4): Frostgiant, Thanik, NUKE9.13, Happerry

[andrea]

Aesystrofi's Poliánthion: In our efforts to find new uses for Orichalcum, we have stumbled across a manner of treating it such that it develops springiness- that is, it is somewhat flexible, but will always 'spring' back to its original form.
However, it requires too much force to make bows out of. Perhaps as a single layer in a composite, but that's not what we seek to use it for (today). Instead, we have developed an ingenious engine capable of projecting stones and bolts across vast distances- far greater than bows or sun staves, more equivalent to Sun Temples in range.
This 'Poliánthion' is made out of wooden components, reinforced with regular metal (or Orichalcum if needed). It somewhat resembles a (very) large bow, with two prods attached to a (thick) string, which is pulled back before being released, firing a projectile. Unlike a bow, the Poliánthion stores its energy in 'torsion springs', made out of the new Orichalcum, which can store exponentially more energy than a bow of equivalent size could. A crank is needed to reload the weapon, as no human could hope to pull back the string.
It fires either stone shot, or wooden bolts tipped with metal. The bolts are more accurate, but the stones can do more damage in certain situations. It is primarily intended to be used as a siege weapon or mounted on ships, but battlefield use is not impossible. Indeed, it should give commanders a way to deal with the sand-dwellers' "Sky Temple", and anti-infantry use is also an option.
The weapon may be disassembled and transported in pieces, or placed on a cart (if we have them) and moved whole. (Or put on a ship)

(Normal)(1+1)=2 Utter failure

You set your scholars and smiths to work on a new orichalcum alloy. Many things are tried: Charcoal, sand, brimstone in different combinations, heating and rapid cooling. In the end, you seem to have reached a suitable recipe, on which you focus.

You personally are invited for the first full scale test of a bar of this new alloy. It did recover from an impressive deformation, indeed. The surprise comes when they bend it a second time, in which after a bit you hear a loud crack and the bar breaks, sending hot shrapnel around the room, although not fast enough to truly maim anyone. This, needless to say, wasn’t observed in small scale testing.

After much testing and time, it seems that the new alloy isn’t stable. Furthermore, its stability decreases as the energy stored increases, which allowed the small bars to slip through testing. The breaking effect isn’t even consistent: Sometimes the metal just settles in the bent shape, other times it springs back, slowly and releasing great heat, sometimes it seems to mildly explode; at least once it created a small lightning between fragments. It is nowhere near reliable enough to use, the Polianthion will have to wait for another year.

Spoiler:  Atlanteans equipment (click to show/hide)

Oricalchum tipped spear – A pole of hardwood with a strong orichalcum tip , this weapon shines in formation fights and keeps enemies at a distance. It can pierce most things rather easily, and the tip is barbed to produce more grievous wounds. [1 wood, 1 ore, 1 Orichalcum] [Cheap]

Bone composite bow – Made of bone and wood, it can propel arrows at fairly large distance and have good piercing capabilities. However, it takes a long time to manufacture, due to the need to join together layers of different materials [complex][2 wood, 1 ore] [Expensive]

High guard armour – A full set of armour and shield made entirely of orichalcum. It makes the user impervious to most common weapons. It is light and durable, thanks to the extraordinary properties of orichalcum, and it is treated to glow brightly with Atlantean glory. [2 ore 2 Orichalcum] [Expensive]

Protection of the bigger fish a fairly well crafted set of scale armour, it covers torso, legs and arms. While somewhat inferior to high guard armour, it still offers good protection against both slashing and piercing, especially from the front, which uses orichalcum scales. It comes with a wooden shield with a metal rim. [2 Wood 2 Ore 1 Orichalcum] [Cheap]

Penteconter – a slim ship made of thick wood, with an orichalcum plated ram in the front. It can house several warriors on the deck, while below deck the crew mans the oars, allowing short term burst of speed. Main propulsion system is a large square sail. Provides 1 TC [2 wood, 2 ore, 2 Orichalcum][Expensive]

Aetokos - A very large flightless bird, it is the mount of choice of your army. Very fast, if a bit coward and not particularly robust, it allows your soldiers to move on the battlefield at great speeds and perform great charges. It can be deadly in a fight, when it decides to fight. Thanks to good saddles, your soldiers are comfortable while riding and perform better. [4 wood] [Expensive]

Mule caravan – many mules, in a line, delivering good carried in their saddle bags. The mule is perfectly adapted to uneven terrain that would make carts less easy to use. And you don’t have to embark a cart on ships. Provides 1 TC [1 wood] [Cheap]

It is now Revision phase for 2999 B.C

[NUKE9.13]

Aesystrofi's Bow: Okay, so, that could've gone better. No matter. The principle is sound... ish. Whilst we don't now have the time to both develop a working recipe for spring-Orichalcum and develop a brand new siege weapon, we should be able to manage the first. Instead of applying it to a Poliánthion, we can simply replace some of the layers in our composite bows with the new alloy. As the Orichalcum can hold more energy than bone or wood, this will mean fewer layers are required to reach the same level of strength, making manufacture substantially easier.

[Chiefwaffles]

Orichalcum Bombs
So it turns out our latest alloy of Orichalcum violently reacts. Our apologies go out for the families and people who got injuries in testing and whatever, but this is great news!

By spending some time on the alloy, we can hopefully modify it to produce only the shrapnel-explosive effect, then tie it to heat and have a spherical amount of the alloy, once a button is pressed or a lever pulled or a string broken or whatever, quickly heat up to breaking point. Then the user can throw the bomb towards the enemy, and have it blow up, inflicting massive enemy casualties. We hope to give the same effect to our other ammunition, like arrows and future working version of a ballista, but for now we'll settle with a handheld version.

Aesystrofi's Bow (0):
Orichalcum Bombs (1): Chiefwaffles

We may have not gotten a ballista, but we got really lucky with our failure state. Explosively-reactive Orichalcum makes Orichalcum explosives extremely more easy, so let's take advantage of that!

[NUKE9.13]

I edited my proposal to focus purely on reducing cost.

I have a problem with the Orichalcum Bomb proposal, which is this line:

then tie it to heat and have a spherical amount of the alloy, once a button is pressed or a lever pulled or a string broken or whatever, quickly heat up to breaking point.

I don't think we have the ability to heat up Orichalcum this way. I believe we can currently only set the temperature at time of forging, after which it is constant (or attempts to be constant, presumably it can still be cooled down/warmed up by external sources).

Anyway, in the absence of any other ideas, I'm just gonna vote for bows.

Aesystrofi's Bow (1): NUKE9.13
Orichalcum Bombs (1): Chiefwaffles