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Space-Time

2 (14.3%)

Hammer Time

3 (21.4%)

Time...to die.

6 (42.9%)

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

3 (21.4%)

Total Members Voted: 14

[NUKE9.13]

You know, I'd like to advise that the GM is likely to being in a -4 modifier to the rolls for stuff that's extremely improbable. Which is what I'd suspect would happen to the GSA. Moreover the Caelium engine (Gravite sucks ass as a name for a material) seems a little... out of place on a scout craft, given that we'd want a simple and relatively cheap aircraft for the role.

-4? You're insane. -2 would be my guess, at most. Extremely improbable? This is literally what Gravite/Caelium was designed (by us at least) to do. Sure, it won't be trivial by any means, but then again, neither is designing a regular aeroplane, and a lot of the difficulty involved with that is nullified by the lifting engine.
As for the cost, I doubt it'll cost more than 2 Caelium. Maybe 3. It might not be Cheap now, but I shouldn't need to remind you that the amount of resources we have access to is going to increase rapidly.

[Maximum Spin]

Incidentally, I was thinking we could compromise on "Caeligrav".

[Taricus]

Nuke, we still have to design the aeroplane at all. That's going to be a constant factor in the difficulty. And from the discord:

Man of PaperToday at 22:29
The hawk would be the easier of the two, as the only real new idea in it is the fact that it's an aircraft
TaricusToday at 22:30
So that's a -1 difficulty at most?
Man of PaperToday at 22:31
Not gonna say specifically. Just know it'll definitely be easier
TaricusToday at 22:31
And how much harder would the GSA be in comparison?
Man of PaperToday at 22:33
A couple tiers probably

[Yami]

Well yeah, that's why I switched over to the Hawk to tie it up.  Actually, no, the difficulty had nothing to do with it.  I just wanted the gun cuz it forces our scout planes to turn tail and run if they want to engage the enemy.  The difficulty thing was more of a bonus for me.

~Yami

[Maximum Spin]

Actually, maybe we should design our aircraft using myomer and realistic bird-like flapping motion. Caelium-filled "bones" even. Call it the APW-13 "Flappy Bird" All-Purpose Wingcraft.

[Taricus]

Yeah that's just gonna be too slow.

[Maximum Spin]

Yeah that's just gonna be too slow.

Yeah, but you know how far that ranks below "conceptual hilarity" on my personal priorities list.

[Rockeater]

Actually, maybe we should design our aircraft using myomer and realistic bird-like flapping motion. Caelium-filled "bones" even. Call it the APW-13 "Flappy Bird" All-Purpose Wingcraft.

I take it as you support that idea, that make us 2/3 depend on if Fallacy agrees, gonna write something now

[Yami]

Okay, okay, what if we added the myomer wings to the 'hawk' for 'added manouverability' or something?  You still get the speed, we still get the silly flappy bird.  Eh, ehh?

~Yami, Mad Genius Scientist.

[Twinwolf]

So, my argument against going with the GSA-13. I think, and it has been confirmed by the GM, that it will be *significantly* harder than the Hawk. There are a few reasons for this. For one, it's discovering new properties of two of our special resources at once, and then combining them into an engine. On this own, I think it would be only Hard - similar to our creation of the Gavrillium engine. The extra difficulty I believe comes from how it both discovers those properties and makes an engine of them, and then tries to apply it to aircraft (for which lift is not the only problem). Doing one or the other is already difficult but doable. I think doing both will result in a -3 or even -4 to the result - we'd need to roll extraordinarily well to make it average.

This is not to say I'm against the idea of such aircraft in the future - I just think we should have other experience first, maybe even design the engine on it's own (again, similar to what we did with the Gavrillium Engine). We should come back to the GSA and other such craft when we have reasonable odds of building something working. It's not impossible to make that work like we want, but it's hard enough that I'm worried of what it'll mean in regards to future applications of Caelium and Gavrillium if we fail.

[Jilladilla]

I think doing both will result in a -3 or even -4 to the result - we'd need to roll extraordinarily well to make it average.

I will note that Man of Paper intended to introduce the -4 next turn, not this one.

I will also give you a counter-argument Twinwolf: Action Economy. Being overly careful and taking smaller steps in our tech is a safer way of progress, yes; but doing so risks falling behind a more ambitious opponent. It's a delicate balance, really; and it's hard to tell when one is leaning too far to one side or another.

[Man of Paper]

In that same vein I am by no means discouraging taking large steps of progress. I was simply asked which would be more difficult and explained why. Don't want anyone taking my input as GM saying don't do it (though I was always the guy that grabbed the cursed treasure even when the DM would heavily suggest otherwise anyway).

[Taricus]

An ambitious opponent has the same pitfalls to consider. But as a general rule of thumb, too ambitious is trying to do two designs in one action, both of which have never been done before by us, or else would need more than a single revision to being up to a serviceable condition.

The fact that the GSA is wholly reliant on the Caelium engine means that should it fail there is no easy way to bring it up to scratch to get a usable plane out of it.

[Twinwolf]

I understand action economy. I also don't think we can reasonably expect to get a working vehicle out of this, at least one that works well. I think that holding off is actually good for action economy - if we develop the anti-grav engine by itself, like the gavrillium engine, we can apply it to future flying machines without dramatically increasing difficulty or cost. We lost two development phases, in exchange for likely enhancing our overall capabilities in the air in the long term.

[Rockeater]

Here's my wingcraft idea, Not good but I had an annoing day

APW-13 "Flappy Bird" All-Purpose Wingcraft.Where practicality goes to die
From the dawn of time man-kind wished to fly like the birds, some people claims we did it with the invention of the airplane, those claims are absurd, we all know birds flap their wings to fly.
But that ends now, The APW-13 is the first Operational Wingcraft, based on the structure and working of birds, using Myomer to move the wings, Cealium steel for stracural support and a Gavrillum engine for power, this one-person craft is built to be light weight, with cloth and wood used where possible, a LGG-12 on the front and a binoculars and a hatch on the bottom to allow it being used as a scout and fight potential planes from the enemy.