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[Maxim_inc]

Arms Race of Souls and Steel: Grand Duchy of Wehland

The Grand Duchy of Wehland. The Wehls live in luxury in their capital city of Wehlburg on the west coast of their island. The Duke’s city being fed from the fertile lowlands on the north-western coast of the islands worked by peasant farmers. Backed by the Dominion the Duke claims control over the entire island as the King of Nivae and vows to bring to heel the unruly mob masquerading as a government to the east.

Link to the main thread: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177782.msg8230173#msg8230173

The Wehls Armory is as follows:

Fabrique Francois Quick-Fire Light Support Cannon: A 50mm infantry support cannon with a shorty stubby barrel and a low velocity round. It's one-piece ammunition is easy to store and to load into the gun as the gun kicks the empty casing out of the breech every time it fires. It is capable of loading either solid shot or canister shells. It is currently Cheap to produce and Small in size.
Basic Scrap Soul Engine: A simple Soul Engine capable of using Scrap souls for power. It is currently Cheap to produce
Shoddy Medium Quality Animal Soul Engine which is more powerful than the Scrap Engine but breaks down occasionally and is currently Expensive to produce.
Basic Infantry: Basic Line Infantry with single shot cartridge rifles and brightly colored uniforms. Crucial for holding the ground the mechs take.
Basic Artillery: Basic muzzle and breech loading artillery capable of firing high explosive shells. A lucky hit will knock out a weaker mech.

Souls and their uses.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Low Quality Scrap Souls:No one knows what these used to be, souls that have degraded over the ages into a shadow of their former self. Capable of Powering Motorcycle or Horse sized walkers and light turrets on larger walkers.

Medium Quality Animal Souls: Souls that clearly take the shape of animals of both modern times and ages past, if it were not for the war some of the prehistoric souls would be quite the spectacle at the national science museum. Capable of powering Car sized walkers and medium turrets on larger walkers.

High Quality Animagnus Souls: The resulting amalgamation of an Imperfect Human Soul and a Medium Quality Animal soul. Capable of powering tank sized Walkers and heavy turrets as well with some difficulty. Can have limited interface with a Magnus Engine.

Imperfect Human Soul: Can power Heavy Walkers of a large size and when paired with a Magnus Engine can perform limited motor controls with ease, moving arms and legs with only minor assistance from mundane hydraulics.

Perfect Human Soul: Extremely rare and expensive to contain, can power mechs of absurd sizes. When paired with a Magnus Engine one could run an entire mech on their own if the Driver is skilled enough, though that puts great strain on the driver if there is much mechanical complexity involved in the mechs function.

IT IS PRE-GAME TURN DESIGN PHASE

Each team will get 1 pre-game turn to design their basic Mech and then revise it or design a new weapon to mount of their basic Mech. After the end of the second revision phase the first Deployment phase will begin. The teams will decide which of the 3 middle lanes to send their new mech force too in order to gain the advantage over the other, after this turn it will be assumed that mechs will be spread out along all fronts unless stated otherwise by the teams.

[The Ensorceler]

one nepotism pleasr

Edit: So, for worldbuilding, i think itd be neat to lean into the heavily stratified society we've got. At first, mechs will be just crew served weapons, albeit pretty sweet ones. They'll be a lower class design and operate under the command of a general somewhere pushing miniatures on a map. Once the war gets rolling, and we start deploying Magnuses, then we'll have something prestigious and in need of a main pilot, with lots of eager royalbloods with fewer sense than titles getting appointed operators of the flashy mechs.

Long way to say that these first mechs might be neat to design as walking pillboxes or somesuch

[Happerry]

So do we want to do a proper human-ish shaped robot first, or use weaker souls and do a spider-bot or a tank bottomed bot or something instead?

Given our current weapon, I'm inclined to do a spider/bug mech for a stable firing position for our artillery gun. Or we could try making a human sized one and having it use the gun the way a soldier would use a rifle?

[The Ensorceler]

hmm, rereading i realize we dont have the scale for a pillbox crabwalker unless we use multiple animal soul engines, and thats asking for trouble til we get the breakdown less frequent.

thinking about smaller designs for a bit

[Happerry]

We could just make a walking cannon, like, literally a cannon with legs, for mobile artillery. That shouldn't be bigger then a horse so we can use the cheaper engines and with the gun itself cheap as well we could spam out all the self propelled arty we'd ever want.

[The Ensorceler]

i can imagine a couple of configurations, but the important bit is whether it should have one or two people crewing it. is one enough if the weapons can be reloaded between engagements?

edit: ill start on a single person design. if it comes out bad we can put a sidecar with extra leg to hold the weapons

[Happerry]

'Skunk Gun' Mobile Cannon Walker
This four legged walker is roughly the size of a large horse and consists of two main sections as well as the legs that allow it to travel. The first, and front, section is where the gun is mounted, and may either be changed between either fixed mode, where the weapon is fixed is place, and slack mode, where the weapon can be rotated and have its angle of aim changed by hand to properly point at the target. The gun also, of course, has a gun shield to protect people operating the gun from attempts to kill them. The back section is where the Basic Scrap Soul Engine is, where the driver sits, and where a lighter secondary shield is mounted to protect the driver against light enemy fire. The driver has both a steering wheel and a speed lever with which to control the mobile cannon walker. The wheel, of course, determines where the walker is going, and if let loose will automatically be brought back into alignment with 'going straight'. The speed lever, which determines the speed, has a slot shaped like an L for it's four settings. If the lever is pulled to the side, the walker will move in reverse at a pace of roughly one MPH. The other three settings are 'stop moving' (at the bottom of the L), 'slow speed' (Half way up the L, 2 or 2.5 MPH, also known as the 'keeping pace with infantry' speed), and 'faster speed' (At the top of the L, four or five MPH, intended for use in short bursts for battlefield relocation). The very back of the walker has a hitch type attachment point to allow it to draw ammo wagons if needed, though there's been one or two suggestions of 'hey maybe it can pull a few infantry people on a cart for self escorting purposes if it does not need to carry ammo' though that is not a primary design goal, as well as a rear facing bench seat for carrying an additional crewman or two for helping to load and fire the gun. Right in front of the bench seat there is a small storage area with a closable lid for the purposes of carrying tools and other light items in. Any gun crew assigned to a Skunk will be given pistols for self defense purposes.

While simple, the Skunk Gun should provide valuable mobile artillery support to the Grand Duchy.

(1) 'Skunk Gun' Mobile Cannon Walker : Happerry

[Maxim_inc]

'Skunk Gun' Mobile Cannon Walker This four legged walker is roughly the size of a large horse and consists of two main sections as well as the legs that allow it to travel. The first, and front, section is where the gun is mounted, and may either be changed between either fixed mode, where the weapon is fixed is place, and slack mode, where the weapon can be rotated and have its angle of aim changed by hand to properly point at the target. The gun also, of course, has a gun shield to protect people operating the gun from attempts to kill them. The back section is where the Basic Scrap Soul Engine is, where the driver sits, and where a lighter secondary shield is mounted to protect the driver against light enemy fire. The driver has both a steering wheel and a speed lever with which to control the mobile cannon walker. The wheel, of course, determines where the walker is going, and if let loose will automatically be brought back into alignment with 'going straight'. The speed lever, which determines the speed, has a slot shaped like an L for it's four settings. If the lever is pulled to the side, the walker will move in reverse at a pace of roughly one MPH. The other three settings are 'stop moving' (at the bottom of the L), 'slow speed' (Half way up the L, 2 or 2.5 MPH, also known as the 'keeping pace with infantry' speed), and 'faster speed' (At the top of the L, four or five MPH, intended for use in short bursts for battlefield relocation). The very back of the walker has a hitch type attachment point to allow it to draw ammo wagons if needed, though there's been one or two suggestions of 'hey maybe it can pull a few infantry people on a cart for self escorting purposes if it does not need to carry ammo' though that is not a primary design goal, as well as a rear facing bench seat for carrying an additional crewman or two for helping to load and fire the gun. Right in front of the bench seat there is a small storage area with a closable lid for the purposes of carrying tools and other light items in. Any gun crew assigned to a Skunk will be given pistols for self defense purposes. While simple, the Skunk Gun should provide valuable mobile artillery support to the Grand Duchy.

Rolled: 4

The Skunk's base chassis is quite reliable, though during testing it was found that the simple mechanical system the wheel used to turn the craft to the side would get torn up if the legs were stuck in any form of much or mire due to the friction and the nature of the Soul-Engine's flywheel transmission converter. This was resolved by one of the assistant engineers who instead took the gearshift system used for speed and installed one on each side of the driver's position. To go forward the driver has to push both levers to the same speed setting and when wanting to turn the driver having to put one of the two gearshifts into reverse and the other into full speed to turn in place, it's slow to go but mostly reliable compared to the former system which would break down in any form of soft or non-paved terrain. The levers are locked in position at each speed setting with a pair of hand levers on the grips which need to be depressed to unlock them.

The secondary shield for the driver was found to impede the movement of the gun crew from having more shells handed to them after they expended the readily available ammunition stacked next to the gun on the firing compartment, thus this has been removed and the gun-shield has been widened and made taller with the edges tapered inwards slightly which doesn't affect the guns range of fire too much. The Skunk can support the weight of a small cart of around 20 extra shells though this impedes the speed to a max of 2MPH in reliable terrain. When trying to pull infantry in greater number than a pair of men sitting on the ammunition cart it is found the Skunk's legs dig themselves into the ground unable to pull the weight of the infantry cart alone without being stripped of it's armament and most of the plating on the body so this idea is scrapped for the time being.

The crew are all equipped with heavy second line blackpowder revolvers, not the best but will still kill a man if he gets too close, the gun officer is given a Musketoon version of the standard rifle.

----------

'Skunk Gun' Mobile Cannon Walker: The Skunk is a four legged walker slightly larger than a horse powered by a single Basic Scrap Soul Engine. It mounts a single 50mm Fabrique Francois Quick-Fire Light Support Cannon on a platform at the front of the walker protected by a large gun shield which protects the gunner and assistant gunner from small arms fire. It has a Standard Speed of 2.5 MPH and a Flank Speed of 5 MPH, it is driven by a the officer located in the rear of the walker who sits just behind the Soul Engine with his control levers. It can carry a small cart of spare ammunition behind it though that limits its speed slightly, for longterm firing it needs a horse-drawn caisson of ammunition to support it. The two gunners each have a black powder cartridge revolver for self defense and the officer/driver has a musketoon version of the standard rifle.

It is Slightly-Expensive to produce.

[Maxim_inc]

It is now the Revision Phase

Wehland Armory:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fabrique Francois Quick-Fire Light Support Cannon: A 50mm infantry support cannon with a shorty stubby barrel and a low velocity round. It's one-piece ammunition is easy to store and to load into the gun as the gun kicks the empty casing out of the breech every time it fires. It is capable of loading either solid shot or canister shells. It is currently Cheap to produce and Small in size.
Basic Scrap Soul Engine: A simple Soul Engine capable of using Scrap souls for power. It is currently Cheap to produce
Shoddy Medium Quality Animal Soul Engine which is more powerful than the Scrap Engine but breaks down occasionally and is currently Expensive to produce.
Basic Infantry: Basic Line Infantry with single shot cartridge rifles and brightly colored uniforms. Crucial for holding the ground the mechs take.
Basic Artillery: Basic muzzle and breech loading artillery capable of firing high explosive shells. A lucky hit will knock out a weaker mech.
-
'Skunk Gun' Mobile Cannon Walker: The Skunk is a four legged walker slightly larger than a horse powered by a single Basic Scrap Soul Engine. It mounts a single 50mm Fabrique Francois Quick-Fire Light Support Cannon on a platform at the front of the walker protected by a large gun shield which protects the gunner and assistant gunner from small arms fire. It has a Standard Speed of 2.5 MPH and a Flank Speed of 5 MPH, it is driven by a the officer located in the rear of the walker who sits just behind the Soul Engine with his control levers. It can carry a small cart of spare ammunition behind it though that limits its speed slightly, for longterm firing it needs a horse-drawn caisson of ammunition to support it. The two gunners each have a black powder cartridge revolver for self defense and the officer/driver has a musketoon version of the standard rifle. It is Slightly Expensive to Produce

[Happerry]

So here's two revision ideas.

'Battleskunk' Mobile Gun Walker <- not valid according to word of discord, posted for later reference.
It is a fact that certain over-enthusiastic souls, on seeing that there was a cannon mounted on a walker, attempted to see if they could aim and fire the cannon while the walker was in motion. It is also a fact that, to the surprise of few, the actual accuracy of an infantry cannon mounted on the highly unstable firing platform of a legged walker ranges somewhere between 'Oopsies' and 'Non-existence'. To the surprise of more then a few this didn't actually discourage the mentioned over-enthusiastic souls enough to get them to stop. Instead, what they decided was that they needed something easier to aim. As such, they took the Skunk and re-designed the front firing platform to carry a swivel gun they 'requisitioned' from the navy instead of the infantry cannon, allowing for a lighter, easier to maneuver gun primarily loaded with grapeshot to make the the continual issues of actually aiming at anything more then a short distance away no longer an issue while sheltering behind the still existent gun-shield when enemy fire shows up.

While certainly inferior to a purpose designed close assault walker, the so called 'Battleskunk' does show a certain amount of promise.

'Beast' Animal Soul Engine
It is a fact that while it is possible to construct engines that function off the power of animal souls, the current generation is... well, shoddy to put it bluntly. That forces certain limits on the overall size of any designed walkers. These limits highly irritate certain engineers, whom decided to get around them by making a version of the engine which was less shoddy and less likely to randomly break down while still generating the motive power that an animal soul should be able to generate.

[The Ensorceler]

Beast Animalsoul Engine(1): Ensorceler

[Happerry]

'Beast' Animalsoul Engine(2): Ensorceler, Happerry

[Maxim_inc]

'Beast' Animal Soul Engine
It is a fact that while it is possible to construct engines that function off the power of animal souls, the current generation is... well, shoddy to put it bluntly. That forces certain limits on the overall size of any designed walkers. These limits highly irritate certain engineers, whom decided to get around them by making a version of the engine which was less shoddy and less likely to randomly break down while still generating the motive power that an animal soul should be able to generate.

Rolled: 3
The new model of Animal Soul Engine was... not entirely what we hoped for. We were able to get it to be more powerful than the others but it puts the Soul-Core under immense stress during operation which is counterproductive to our original intent. We've lost 4 test operators so far when running it on a cut down Skunk hull, the core rupturing sending super condensed liquid oxygen into their face and chest under enough pressure to cave their chest and skull and freezing the air in the lungs of anyone nearby in not to mention the permanent loss of the animal spirit due to exposure to a mundane environment. This new model can output 1.5 times the power of the previous one but needs to be made with a high quality ghost core to prevent rupturing. It would be recommended that anything using this have heavy armor to protect the core from harm. Any form of damage being potentially fatal for the crew.

Due to the high cost for parts the 'Beast' Animal Soul Engine is Very Expensive to produce.

[The Ensorceler]

Fer-Tortuga Mobile Entrenchment
Powered by a Beast class Medium Soul Engine, the Fer-Tortuga is a slower, heavier, and larger answer to the rumors of Sordian mechs outpacing our own. Wehl is not a land of small people, or small ambitions.

A Fer-Tortuga is a mobile hexagonal bunker carried on six squat legs, with rectangular firing slits across the front three faces. the basic hull of a Fer-Tortuga is a 7x7.5 meter metal platform with an overhead girder and rebar skeleton anchored at a centerpost and a raised housing at the rear for the Beast class engine running everything. Concrete slabs are cast arount this skeleton to form the tough outer shell with a minimum thickness of 8cm for the front and 4cm for the roof and rear sections.
Each Fer-Tortuga is armed with either three cannon and gunnery crew to operate them, or a single cannon and an infantry detachment plus supplies. In either case, the Fer-Tortuga is expected to be self-contained and carry its own ammunition and able to hold a position until resupply, with even a heavily damaged mech 'retiring' its engine by venting the soul out the rear end and becoming a stationary emplacement for as long as most of the superstructure is intact.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[The Ensorceler]

Fer-Tortuga(1): The Ensorceler