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[TricMagic]

I would prefer one without. We have Spiral Shell Geometry, so we can use that in your design to better focus the ability, while still looking quite stylish.

[testmen]

Combat in Splatoon tends to be highly mobile, you are constantly moving from place to place inking turf and trying to flank the other team. 

Slowing down means you end up not covering much ground and probably end up getting hit more. Their weapons tend to either have longer range than us which will make moving slower than them painful.  I don't think would be all that help against defending from either Krakenblades or Splatling Gun, which both are able to quickly splat a inkling multiple time over if they don't avoid it.  We don't really have any dedicated specialist that would value protection over speed, Markslings would need to run if someone gets too close, and Inkrunners need to be fast.

Stealthy swim is good, since normally when a inkling swims through ink they makes ripples through where they swim, but with ninja squid there is only a little visible trail that would be hard for people to track in active combat. 

I thought Dazzling would be good, since natural high mobility combined with being harder to aim at would be a good boon.  We have alot of trouble with long range combat, and their cheap weapon is still a charger with a not great fire rate, so being able to avoid those shots would help alot.  I know it would be less effective against the splatling guns and krakenblades, but the giant octolings still need to keep it aimed at what they want to fire, so Inkrunners dodging around would have just that much more help not getting hit.

[TricMagic]

Dazzle Camouflage – Ability:
On closer inspection of the documents, they may not be precursor military technology, but about military FASHION.  I mean, just look at the fatigues, and how the precursor soldiers have different color uniforms for every situation; ‘Olive drab,’ ‘Woodland,’ ‘Snow,’ and… ‘Banana’?  ‘Rainbow?’  Some of these styles seem weird, but it would be really neat if we could outfit our troopers with something similar.  We even had plans to let them change the color and pattern of their uniforms like they could change their ink color

However, it seems some intern must have mixed up formulas, because upon inspection of the prototype uniforms, a fight broke out because part of the design team said it looked like a ‘eyesore,’ and a fight broke out.  After investigating the matter further, it turned out they meant literal eyesore, and a recreation of the dye showed that it had effected the light that bounced off of it somehow, where those who are a opposing color to the dye note it as being ‘loud and straining on the eyes, like the contrast between colors is more severe than actually thought possible.’  Yet, when looked at by someone of a friendly ink color, it looks perfectly normal.  Must be something to do with the ink that flows through our eyeballs. 

This has led to the development of Dazzle Camouflage, an ability that reduces the enemy’s accuracy by making it difficult and straining to keep a bead on someone wearing this uniform. We can only hope that while making these special Dazzle Camouflage fatigues we still have time to make regular fatigues for the rest of the troops.

tl;dr  Clothing that makes it hard to look at our dude, decreasing accuracy

Stellarstar Camo
Taking the Preliminary Ideas, this gear can be adapted to a number of different patterns, as the Enemy Ink Waves in a Ling's Eyes tends to lose sight of it though a combination of annoyance, blinding the eye, and blending in with the native environment. When standing still, eyes slip past it, though they may feel discomfort from the light. And when moving, the Camo blinds them with it's loudness as the fabric shifts. A strange mix between camouflage and attention. It is so called Stellar, because of it's ability to be produced in many fancy ways, and a star design was one of the first things they did. Comes in both Military and (hopefully) Civilian[Not Blinding/irritating, just fresh] designs.

Ability Shortening: Difficult to focus, or too much focus to see easily, blinding.

Ability (Clothing)
Shellskin: (0)
Ace Swimmer Shirt: (1) TricMagic
Dazzle Camouflage: (1) testmen
Stellarstar Camo: (1) TricMagic

[testmen]

Being able to hide in ink and having a low profile while swimming through ink kinda makes camouflage less useful to Inklings.  Camouflage would mostly just be helpful for when one of our guys has to sneak through somewhere without spraying around brightly colored ink, which isn't something any soldiers normally do outside of our heros.

Mixing "Not visible" when standing still with "So visible it hurts" when moving seems like it would be self defeating, specially when Inklings can already become invisible while standing still by submerging into a pool of their own ink.  It would just up the complexity a bit for no real gain, and if we really needed normal camouflage with could just do a revision where we take the Dazzling Dye out of the uniform, since it would still have voluntary color-shifting.

[TricMagic]

Ace Swimmer Shirt: (1) TricMagic
Dazzle Camouflage: (1) testmen
Stellarstar Camo: (0)

Fair enough. I am out of Coke Zero, and that kinda hurts me. Maybe in 12 hours or so..

[SamSpeeds]

Ace Swimmer Shirt: (2) TricMagic, SamSpeeds
Dazzle Camouflage: (1) testmen
Stellarstar Camo: (0)

[NUKE9.13]

Hmm. It's a fair point that our specialists wouldn't have much use for a defensive boost, although I believe we still deploy a fair amount of regular inkantry who would appreciate it.
However, I did some reading on the actual game, and I now better understand the value of swimming quickly and undetected. So, I'll go with that option- although I'd prefer it if the reference to spiral-shell geometry was removed, as it appears to be totally irrelevant.

Ace Swimmer Shirt: (3) TricMagic, SamSpeeds, NUKE9.13
Dazzle Camouflage: (1) testmen
Stellarstar Camo: (0)

[testmen]

I should note that if a Inkling swims slowly enough they don't make ripples when swimming, and ninja squid slows your swim speed, admitly you can swim stealthy alot faster with ninja squid than without it, and a good enough roll would have the swim up over take ninja squid's slow down.  (Honestly, my biggest problem with the design is that it is a SHIRT that improves swimming ability, even though ninja squid is restricted to shrits in the game.)

I still feel reducing accuracy would be more useful than stealth swimming, considering their main general infantry weapon are still chargers, their long range weapon has a natural weakness of accuracy that we can abuse, and their octo balloons prefer to fire at our guys while trying to stay out the range of most of our weapons.

[Happerry]

Design : Ace Swimmer Shirt (Normal Difficulty)
2+3+1+1 = 7: Superior craftsmanship

The new line of military combat shirts are, to quote a notable Inkopolis Idol, 'Totally Rad'. Crafted with specially engineered and very scientific thread technology to minimize interference while swimming, allowing the user to both move faster and to cause less ripples on the surface while they swim, the 'Ace Swimmer' line of shirts is selling like hotcakes, because even the civilians want some. Meanwhile, Inkantry, whom are assigned a set as part of their gear, get to be very smug about how they are in the front of fashion. At least until fashion changes again. In fact, the shirts are so slick enemy ink slicks right off of them! This does not actually prevent enemy attacks from doing damage, but it does mean a portion of the damage 'slicks off' in the moments after it is dealt. It also saves a lot on laundry bills and lets Inklings heal faster when exposed to friendly ink, which has an easier time removing the icky octoling ink.

Costs 1 Plastic and 1 Super Sea Snails, making it Cheap.

Spoiler: Resources (click to show/hide)

Basic Resources
Plastics : 2
Super Sea Snails : 1

Advanced Resources
Zapfish : 2

Spoiler: Inkling Armory (click to show/hide)

Primary Weapon

• Bamboozler : A compression powered ink gun that was recently invented before the Great Turf War. It charges somewhat slowly, is hard to charge on the move, can not store a charge, has limited maximum range, has low ink usage efficiency hampering repeated use before one must refill their ink tank, and can not be fired while uncharged. In other words, a revolutionary improvement over all that came before. Despite being shaped somewhat like a hammer, it is not advisable to use it in melee to hit someone over the head with.
  Cheap - Cost : 2 Plastic, 0 Super Sea Snails.
  
  • Bamboozler Quickcharge Cartridges : A modification of the Bamboozler that adds a socket for a pre-filled and pressurized cartridge of ink. A simple lever allows the user to switch between normal firing mode and using the cartridge to fire an instant and fully charged shot, if one at only around 85% the range and power of a normal charged shot. Takes a little bit to unscrew the old cartridge and then screw another one in, limiting their ability to be used more then once in an exchange.
  • Spiral Barrel Refit : A modification of the Bamboozler that adds a new barrel as well as an air compression tank, thusly resulting in enhanced firing range, shot damage, and ink efficiency. While improved noticeably over the original model, this is still inferior to the second generation Bamboozler the Octolings have in production, among other things being around 15% shorter ranged then the enemy model. Produced in enough numbers to allow for mass deployment by way of hiring some Urchins to do the needed carving of Super Sea Snail shell.
    Cheap - Cost : 2 Plastic, 0 Super Sea Snails.
• Inkerial Blotter : An ink shell launching gun powered by super sea snail homeopathy and applied anti-logic. It fires blobs of ink that burst upon contact with a target, splattering a small area around said target with ink. It is hampered by its relatively short range, but uses a triple firing chamber array to permit an acceptable rate of fire. It's ink shells are also fired in an arc, instead of having a straight trajectory like other inkarms, permitting a limited amount of indirect fire. The recent addition of a proper pressurization chamber has both increased the AOE of the shells to a more average radius, and also has somewhat increased the range of fire to 'below average'. Also has snazzy new stone triggers.
  Expensive - Cost : 3 Plastic, 2 Super Sea Snails.
• ⑨-Scope : A powerful charger that uses eight Quickcharge Cartridges arranged around the primary compression chamber to achieve the forces needed for long ranged fire. The necessity to replace all the Cartridges between shots as well as re-compress the ink in the primary chamber ensure the ⑨-Scope has an absurdly low firing speed as well as a ferocious amount of recoil when fired. On the other hand, with a normal compression chamber and eight cartridges powering the shot, at least it hits hard. Also, the designers ran out of time and never got around to designing a scope for the gun, hindering its accuracy at its maximum range.
  Very Expensive - Cost : 4 Plastic, 0 Super Sea Snails, Complex.
• 3D-Scope : A powerful charger that uses three secondary compression chambers around the primary chamber to power its shots. Using all three of the secondary chambers requires more charging time then using fewer of them for a weaker shot, but only when all chambers are used does the 3D-Scope gain its true power and range. Comes with a simple scope for accurate fire out into the long range bracket, but uses up lots and lots of ink when being fired out to its full range and power. Unlike the ⑨-Scope, using it will no longer cover your entire shoulder and or arms in bruises from the recoil.
  Expensive - Cost : 4 Plastic, 0 Super Sea Snails.
• Rapid Shooter : A short ranged triple chambered gun, the Rapid Shooter is the first proper Shooter to be put into production in the Great Turf War. It's short ranged and has minor accuracy issues at the edge of its range, but it is also light, handy, and can recharge its compression chamber on the go. As such, as long as one doesn't literally hold the trigger down until the compression chamber is empty, it can maintain a continual stream of fire no other gun in the turf war can yet match.
  Cheap - Cost : 2 Plastic, 0 Super Sea Snails.

Sub Weapon

• Inkdisc-A Bomb/Mine : A disk shaped plastic casing for ink filled balloons that can be used as a thrown projectile detonated upon impact with a needle of hardened ink, or with the flip of a lever the needle may remain unused to allow for the deployment of the Inkdisc as a sort of non-stealthy mine. While limited in range, despite and because of its frisbee like shape, by the muscle power and throwing ability of its user one good direct hit within its range can splat the average target. Takes a few seconds to inflate though.
  Cheap - Cost : 2 Plastic, 0 Super Sea Snails.
• "Big Smoke" Smoke Bomb : A shell shaped throwing weapon that emits aerosolized ink from three separate ports, providing concealment, soothing friendly Inkantry, and serving as a low level ablative defense verses enemy shots. Enemies moving through a cloud will feel like they're moving through a cloud of itching powder, and the cloud is pretty effective at blocking line of sight. Of course, like other smoke weapons, that includes friendly line of sight...
  Expensive - Cost : 2 Plastic, 3 Super Sea Snails.
• Ink-Missile : A weapon based equally off the Inkdisc and the Big Air Ink Bomb, the Ink-Missile is a plastic disk with an almost frictionless bottom, allowing it to be sent skating into enemy lines where an ink signature detecting sensor causes it to explode as soon as it gets close enough to an enemy. Or sufficiently inked enemy turf, for that matter. It also has a motion sensor to cause it to explode when it finally comes to a halt if it manages to find no targets at all during its long skid. Has a somewhat smaller explosion radius then the Inkdisc due to the space taken up by the sensors and special bottom.
  Expensive - Cost : 3 Plastic, 1 Super Sea Snails.
• Pocket Spray : A spraycan shaped container of pressurized aerosolized glowing ink. When sprayed on a fellow Inkling it can rapidly heal them, just as fast as taking a bath in friendly ink, as well as being useable to spray into the air to make walls of smoke, thrown as an improvised smoke bomb, or sprayed directly on surfaces to ink territory directly, hopefully in snazzy glowing patterns. A well designed and easy to use product marred only by the fact that its intended users see very little reason to actually use it.
  Expensive - Cost : 2 Plastic, 3 Super Sea Snails.

Specials

• Vortex Armor : A defensive special that generates a vortex of ink around the user. Its immense energy expenses prevent it from lasting beyond four to six seconds, with its time falling to half of that while being heavily used. While the vortex lasts it will cover anything nearby in friendly ink, turf or foe, as well as intercept enemy shots with its own ink. Its defensive coverage isn't perfect though, and well aimed, sufficiently lucky, or singularly powerful enough shots can penetrate its defensive shroud.
  Cheap - Cost 1 Plastic, 1 Super Sea Snail
• Big Air Ink Bomb : A special that allows the user to fire a glowing artillery shot of ink up into the sky, to then fall back down and land on an unfortunate Octoling's head. Has some minor issues aiming, but has decent range, enough damage to splat basically anyone directly hit, good splash radius, and leaves a five second cloud of aerosolized ink floating around the impact site. Was immediately co-opted by tactical officers for use as a signal flare. It's simplicity allows it to be charged faster then normal for a special.
  Cheap - Cost 1 Plastic, 1 Super Sea Snail

Ability

• Ace Swimmer Shirt : A specially designed shirt that offers minimal interference with surrounding ink as the Inkling swims, allowing for greater top swimming speed as well as less surface disturbance while swimming. The slickness of the shirt is sufficient to allow some enemy ink to 'slide off' in the moments after it impacts, though it does not actually decrease the original impact. It also makes the Inklings wearing it feel somewhat more Fresh, and is cheap and easy to put through the laundry.
  Cheap - Cost 1 Plastic, 1 Super Sea Snail

Personnel

• Inkantry : Brave Inklings, run through basic training and drilled repeatedly in weapon use and other skills needed on the modern battlefield. The Inkantry not only know how to use a gun, but also hold a basic understanding of the concepts of planning, crossfires, flanking maneuvers, and actually communicating with each other, and have superior running and swimming speed from all those athletic drills. They're still fairly basic soldiers, but they actually are soldiers now.
• Markslings: Inklings whom have powered through the frequent and blatant distractions and misuse of the Firink Field to maximize their accuracy, snapshot skills, and ability to assess cover to as high as the Firink Field could take them. While few are dedicated enough to become known as a Marksling, those whom are are rightfully known for their skills.
  Uncommon Specialist.
• Inkrunners: Inklings trained in Camp Booyah for speed, agility, and the arcane art of the Dodge Roll. Not actually better in direct combat then a normal Inkantry, but harder to hit and able to get to the fight, or any other location of interest, faster then a normal Inkantry. They need to use a light and easy to use weapon to be able to properly employ their skills however, preventing them from using most of the current armory. As only the best trainees can achieve this title, they are somewhat Uncommon.

Cultural Artifacts

• The Inkspire : A vast and continual open air market and cultural festival without end that has grown around Inkopolis Tower, better known as the Inkspire in those times. While of little direct military use, it's presence as a sign of what all Inklings fought for had noticeable effects on their overall morale. And besides, I found the cutest pair of booties there last time I went! Must visit again soon. And this time, I'll avoid drinking that homemade fire-water.

Other Gear

• Mark 1 Ink Tank : A basic ink tank, invented by the same inventor that invented the Bamboozler, and designed to work with the Bamboozler. A quarter of its mass is taken up with the complicated gearing that connects it to a Lings primary weapon and the generator for the subweapon, limiting how much ink it can store. Still better then having to produce ink manually whenever you need a refill though.
  Cheap - Cost : 2 Plastic, 0 Super Sea Snails.
  
  • Super Sea Snail Filters: The heavy valves that controlled ink flow in the Mark 1 Ink Tank have been replaced with a system of Super Sea Snail derived filters, which control the flow of ink without any jams or needed maintenance. The decreased size of the filters, in comparison to the original valve system, allows the non-tank part of the Ink Tank to decrease to taking up only around 15% of its mass instead of 25%. This does, however, mean that the Ink Tank now needs Super Sea Snails for construction.
    +1 Super Sea Snails (Cheap)
• Military Inkline Camp : A camp that teaches a two month course on the basics of military skills, with plenty of athletic and accuracy drills, as well as a new standardized basic training program to teach students how to be proper soldiers whom actually have basic military skills. Doesn't stand out as being awesome, but grants all students whom are put through its training a solid foundation for their new roll as Inkantry.
• Firink Range : An expanded weapons testing and training field with automatic targets that do things such as move and shoot back, as well as a multitude of different firing positions to practice from. For some reason the Inkantry have taken to using the place as a tournament ground, hindering attempts to train within it. Still, for those whom persist and fail to be distracted by the team verses team playfights, a noticeable level of skill can emerge. Markslings may not be common, but they have learned the lessons of the Firink Range well and full-heartedly.
• Camp Booyah : An alternate training area, Camp Booyah is an obstacle course that specializes in training Inkrunners instead of long ranged combatants. Unlike earlier obstacle courses it is far less likely to traumatize and splat it's victim-, er, trainees. On the other tentacle, it also produces far less lawsuits.
• Spike Covered Crevasses : It turns out that these are illegal to drop Inklings into, and do not in fact make good obstacle courses.

Superweapons

• Thunderbird Lightning Plane: A giant plastic airplane with four propellers, two wing mounted zapfish, a dump bay for air deployed Inkantry or masses of Inkdisks, and a lightning rod cannon on the nose. Accumulates lightning from the wing tips and the propellers and then fires lightning rods down to guide said lightning down and fry everything in an area. Totally not at risk of something crazy attacking a charged lightning rod and sending the lightning crashing back up into the airplane. Who'd be stupid enough to try that, after all?
  Needs 2 Zapfish to be deployed.

Heroes

• Commander Cauldo : A former instructor of the Inkantry Brevetted to Commander and deployed to battle. Armed with a refined Inkerial Blotter using lighter materials and a five-firing chamber arrangement for greater firing speed and usability, as well as experimental ink energy batteries that are no longer mildly explosive when things go wrong. Commander Cauldo is known for his tactical skill and ability at small scale unit command, skills which seem to come from his days as an instructor, and unlike most heroes works closely with an attached squad of Inkantry. His presence is inspiring to said squad and any other Inklings around, and he can use his reputation to get other squads to listen to him, increasing local coordination.
• Aoi the Painter: A former security guard and self employed manga artist, Aoi has been recruited into the ranks of the special Inkling Agents as Agent 2. She's armed with a self designed giant paintbrush weapon able to really paint some turf as long as the enemy is at point blank range, and uses compressed air to let her throw the ink off the brush farther when she swings it around. Even if the compressed air capsule has to be replaces every few minutes as it runs out of air, it still gives her a bit of extra range. Aoi is pretty fast on her feet and nimble, if not unreasonably so. Lastly, her glowing facepaint makes her look extra fresh.

The Revision Phase of Spring, Year 3 has begun.

[TricMagic]

Inkantry : Brave Inklings, run through basic training and drilled repeatedly in weapon use and other skills needed on the modern battlefield. The Inkantry not only know how to use a gun, but also hold a basic understanding of the concepts of planning, crossfires, flanking maneuvers, and actually communicating with each other, and have superior running and swimming speed from all those athletic drills. They're still fairly basic soldiers, but they actually are soldiers now.

Inkantry Revision: Bravely Inkantry
A revamp of the training program to outperform the solo-ist Octoling Agents, Commander Cauldro is once more seeking to improve the instructors knowledge. Better programs to train new Inkantry and Old beyond their previous abilities. Go Beyond Limits, Bravely Inkantry.

Spoiler: Previous Attempt, Retry, refer to as base revision (click to show/hide)

Commander Cauldo, when he's not busy, likes to train others at the Military Inkline Camp.. He and his Squad run a week-long training exercise to make our Inkantry faster over land and in ink, more accurate, and more able to use the turf to their advantage. And when he's not there, the Instructors themselves pass down his teaching to any Inkantry that wants to take the course.

In theory, this ups our own Base Inkanty to the next level of combat. Being able to hide in trees, swim up walls and ceilings on the fly, Dipping into friendly ink to doge an attack and then counter, and generally being faster and better shooting in skirmishes, even if they are still stuck using a bamboozler. Of course, there are rumors that a new version of this weapon will be coming next season.


One more thing that should come of this is better group tactics, something our Inkantry are already known for. Hopefully it will also trickle down to the rest of our specialists.

Special: Rain of Ink
You know that whole healing in a can that proved rather ineffective? This goes the opposite way, creating a deadly cloud of ink up in the sky. Ink coalesces in this cloud, then rains down on the area, dealing great damage to foes within it's area of effect. It also inks the ground as it passes too. The Cloud will head forward from the direction it's fired, and can be considered a mid to short range Special. At the least, it makes fighting us up close a dangerous prospect.

One additional thing I'd like to add is that it can simply be deployed on the ground, which will still damage everything in it. Such a thing doesn't actually move anywhere though, so that's more a point blank deployment for wanting an enemy splatted.

Sub-Weapon: Toxic Mist
Based upon the spray and aerosol, this type of sub-weapon does away with cover, to instead create an area of highly charged ink energy in the form of Ink Vapor. Enemies who breath this in will shortly splat from the inside out. It doesn't spread that far from it's deploy point though. But that's okay, since it doesn't matter what size you are. The Bigger you are, the more area it can target.

Bravely Inkantry: (1) TricMagic
Rain of Ink: ()
Toxic Mist: ()

[testmen]

I guess I got a couple of designs to post.

Blowback Bomb – Subweapon
This subweapon makes blobs of ink similar to those produced by the Blotter, expect filled with compressed air.  When it detonates, the compress air explodes with a large amount of concussive force, enough to push any lings that was close to the explosion away a significant distance.  The bomb isn’t planned to be all that durable as it’s designed to blow as soon as hit something, or even when it’s squeezed too hard, which allows skillful inklings to use it to blast themselves around without have to spend time throwing it.[/quote]
Pros: Pushes enemies off cliffs of Mount Nantai/the bridges of Moray Towers/, pushes Krakenblades users back, faster to throw then the Inkdisk.
Cons:  Can probably be shot out of the air, not as lethal as normal subweapons, pushes friendlies around as well.

Beep Seek Missile Launcher - Special Weapon
Being closer to the original intention of the Ink-Missile project, this weapon makes use of more experimental methods of tracking enemy ink signatures in order to track now enemy combatants.  Unfortunately for the time being this comes in the form of having the sensory equipment take more space, which will require the use of special energy to compensate for more expensive and complex set up.  Still, working with the Big Air Ink bomb as a base and using these more advanced Ink-Missiles projectiles, designed to be self-propelling and self-steering.  Someone on the design time also suggested we make the missiles beep as they track their targets.  Yeah sure, they will hear it coming, but it’s funnier when they see it coming and begin to panic to avoid it.
Pro: Anti-Air (For the copters) and anti-slow-and-heavy (for the Giant Octolings), fire and forget, might be able to lower morale.
Cons:  Probably high difficulty roll, more expensive than our other specials, low shot count.

[NUKE9.13]

Okay, so, I want this:

Inkternal Combustion Engine:
This is quite possibly the hottest piece of tech we have ever designed. Which is to say, it achieves a high temperature. Not to say that it isn't also pretty snazzy, but it's unlikely to show up on any catfishwalks, if you know what I mean.

The Inkternal Combustion Engine features one main innovation: the imflammatoratorer, a filter made from Super Sea Snail that makes ink that passes through it flammable.
Ink is pumped from a tank, through the imflammatoratorer, into one of several combustion chambers, where it is ignited by a spark. The burning ink drives a piston, connected to a crankshaft, causing it to rotate at high speeds.
To what end? Well, it looks cool. The exhaust consists of brightly coloured clouds of ink-smoke, and it makes a neat put-put-put sound. In terms of military use... we don't have one yet. But we have plans. The Inkternal Combustion Engine will allow us to make vehicles exponentially more powerful than anything ever seen before (without resorting to the use of Zapfish).

To be used next turn in this:

Mk1 Skywriter:
Ever since the first Inkling set foot on land, there have been those who dreamt of going one step further- into the sky! Following on the heels of the Thunderbird, the Mk1 Skywriter aims to give aerial access to a larger number of brave skylings.
But how can we make a plane that operates without Zap-power? Surely a regular motor isn't powerful enough? Ah, well, that's where the Inkternal Combustion Engine comes in. See, a large portion of the Skywriter's weight at takeoff is in the several large ink tanks situated throughout the craft. This ink is fed into the Inkternal Combustion Engine, which spins the propeller at the front of the plane. This has the totally radical and intentional side effect of creating billowing clouds of multi-coloured ink-smoke that stream from the exhausts, which linger in the air for a while before dispersing, allowing for a brave pilot to 'write' in the 'sky', hence the name.
Of course, that's not the Skywriter's primary purpose, cool as it may be. The ink tanks are also hooked up to two considerably up-sized Rapid Shooters mounted on the lower wings (it being a biplane), with greater power and longer range, their aim calibrated such that their trajectories cross a moderate distance in front of the Skywriter- perfect for shooting down enemy balloons, or performing strafing runs on enemy positions.
This does mean that the fuel supply and ammo supply are the same thing, which clearly has the potential to go poorly. Fortunately, the Skywriter is a fairly slow aircraft, with a very low stall speed, meaning that it should usually be possible to glide to a reasonably safe landing even if ink runs out in the middle of a fight. Nevertheless, pilots are recommended to keep an eye on their ink gauge, and return to base once it starts running low. 

The Skywriter is a small plane, with only a single seat in an open-air cockpit (with a windshield, at least). The pilot gets a totally fresh aviator cap and goggles, a bonus primarily designed to entice Inklings into volunteering to fly in this somewhat experimental aircraft. It is lightly built, so larger weapons may damage it, but it should be able to withstand small-ink fire.

I know, I know. A revision that does nothing by itself seems like a bad idea. But this will allow us to make a much more powerful aircraft next turn, something that can blow the Octolings' balloons out of the sky, and make their infantry fear open terrain.
Also, we could use the same engine in a land-bound vehicle of some sort. A fishtank, sort of thing.

Bravely Inkantry: (1) TricMagic
Rain of Ink: ()
Toxic Mist: ()
Inkternal Combustion Engine: (1) NUK9.13

[TricMagic]

Bravely Inkantry: (1) TricMagic
Rain of Ink: ()
Toxic Mist: ()
Inkternal Combustion Engine: (2) NUK9.13, TricMagic

And so comes the first step for advertising. I would note you should edit the Skywrier's weapons to use the Spiral Barrel refit to increase their focus and range. The Shooter is short range to begin with, but the refit adds a pressure tank and boosts the range. Should be useful to do so.

[testmen]

Bravely Inkantry: (1) TricMagic
Rain of Ink: ()
Toxic Mist: ()
Inkternal Combustion Engine: (2) NUK9.13, TricMagic
Blowback Bomb: (1) testmen

A plane isn't going to be a completely effective counter for their gyro copters, especially in places like Morey Towers where they will be able to use their superior maneuverability duck around bridges and towers to avoid strafing runs.

[TricMagic]

Their super-weapon also doesn't have much of a defense from the air either.