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[Pandarsenic]

Northeast Village "Diplomats":
-Armor/Vehicles
 = 1 Thaumatank (100/100 HP, 130/100 Morale, 32/32 Mana)
 == 3 Magitech Elites

Southwest Village Scouts:
-Squad C
 = 2 Magitech Elites (60/60 HP, 60/50 Morale, 7/7 Mana)
 = 1 Magitech Sergeant (50/50 HP, 52/32 Morale, 7/7 Mana)
 = 2 Machine Gunners (40/40 HP, 63/33 Morale, 9 Mana)
 = 4 Recruits (20/20 HP, 40/10 Morale, 1/1 Mana)

Southeast Village Scouts:
-Squad D
 = 2 Magitech Elites (60/60 HP, 60/50 Morale, 7/7 Mana)
 = 1 Magitech Sergeant (50/50 HP, 52/32 Morale, 7/7 Mana)
 = 2 Machine Gunners (40/40 HP, 63/33 Morale, 9 Mana)
 = 4 Recruits (20/20 HP, 40/10 Morale, 1/1 Mana)

Garrison:
-Squad A
 = 2 Magitech Elites (60/60 HP, 60/50 Morale, 7/7 Mana)
 = 1 Magitech Sergeant (50/50 HP, 52/32 Morale, 7/7 Mana)
 = 2 Machine Gunners (40/40 HP, 63/33 Morale, 9 Mana)
 = 4 Recruits (20/20 HP, 40/10 Morale, 1/1 Mana)
-Squad B
 = 2 Magitech Elites (60/60 HP, 60/50 Morale, 7/7 Mana)
 = 1 Magitech Sergeant (50/50 HP, 52/32 Morale, 7/7 Mana)
 = 2 Machine Gunners (40/40 HP, 63/33 Morale, 9 Mana)
 = 4 Recruits (20/20 HP, 40/10 Morale, 1/1 Mana)
-Reserves
 = 4 Magitech Elite (60/60 HP, 50/50 Morale, 7/7 Mana)
 = 2 Recruits (20/20 HP, 10/10 Morale, 1/1 Mana)

The Thaumatank heads Northeast. Time for a passive display of power.

It arrives without incident, expending 2 mana in the course of parking itself in front of the gate when the internal systems reacted to incoming Small Arms Fire. All the place's gun emplacements and fortifications really didn't mean a damn thing in light of the Mana Barrier making a mockery of their armor piercing attempts. A speaker system delivered your demands: submit, leave, or fight.

They choose "Dig in even harder." You suspect they also choose "Shit pants in terror."

 = 1 Thaumatank (100/100 HP, 130/100 Morale, 30/32 Mana)
 == 3 Magitech Elites

Northeast Village: +1 Fear

Squad C, Squad D, and Garrison updates impending. I'll let you think on what to do about that village while I write those, though.

[Taricus]

Teleport into the village and thus bypassing the gate, then offer the the surrender, leave or fight choice.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Yes, do that. Still without firing a shot. If it doesn't get results next turn, we'll try something more proactive. Them mana reserves aren't limitless.

[Pandarsenic]

Did you guys figure out which research path you intended to use to get moar vehicles?

Anyway.

No incidents with Squad C, other than their random event value being the one that (if it were for the Garrison) would give you bonus research. What a shame.
You can't get much relevant information out of the scouting of the southwest village. You can approach them or turn back.

Squad D encounters Bandits; the Bandits spot them and attempt to engage! Your men haven't gotten a very good look so you can't tell how trained they are or even how numerous. You know there's more than one and that's about it.

At The Shell, a band of 17 raggedly-dressed individuals approaches and requests entrance. You spot a couple children amongst them. Or midgets, maybe. One of those two.


The Thaumatank teleports across the rather heavy fortifications, right past the solid metal gate, and again delivers your demands.
Well, on the plus side they're too busy panicking to actually shoot, and all their guns are facing outside. A bit of a crowd is forming inside the walls. They look less-than-pleased at your presence but seem to know better than to get close to the teleporting tank. (Still at 30/32 Mana.)
+2 Fear in Northeast village.

[Armok]

Ok, I'd like some more detail on what parts we actually have to make stuff from. I know a few already but even those I need more info on. Also I'd like a rough estimate on how hard each thing is to make

- teleporters: What kind of places can you put them, how do you chose what to teleport, how do you chose the location to teleport to and avoid overlapping with objects already there, and can you teleport things that do nut include the teleporter itself?
- magitech motors: how are they different from electrical motors, is it just the energy source?
- mana barrier projectors: how strong are the barriers, how well can you control the shape, and can you let some things through and others not?
- magitech guns: do there jsut accelerate bullets using magic, or do they fire slow moving bolts like the blasters in starwars or wands in harry potter, or something else?
- hover thingies on the tank: can we make these?
- mana based interface: what is this exactly, what kind of bandwidth does it allow between the user and the device in each direction? Does it allow you to control things like they were part of your own body or is it speech recognition or is it just buttons that you happen to press with magic instead of your hand or what?

These are the ones you've specifically mentioned, but I'd really like to know of as many as posible since obviusly these are not the only ones we've used.

[Taricus]

Well, atleast they're getting in a nice group so we only need one shot to kill them all

Let the immigrants in, get half of the reserves keeping an eye on them though.

Squad D is to stay mobile, harrasing the enemy while making sure that they can't be hit. MGs are to attempt to take the enemies mobility away by suppressing them.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Since it appears I'm in charge of thaumatankboat diplomacy, I'll have to strategize a little.

Now that it's proven they're more prone to be afraid than reasonable (i.e. continuously shooting an impervious target that hasn't so much as threatened them yet, explicit warning of "submit, leave, or die" notwithstanding), we have one of the two options.

A) Less diplomacy, more gunboat. Take aim at the main gate, sound warnings and otherwise make it ABUNDANTLY clear we're going to fire. Then blow the thing to kingdom come - preferably with the thaumic blaster thingies rather than the mana cannon. This is assuming they're not going to stop being suicidally afraid of the tank that doesn't fire at them. To prevent them being suicidally afraid, that is afraid enough to attack, we could make them deathly afraid, that is afraid enough to drop and cower. Once we're at that, we can actually try to get them to listen to what we're saying, "show mercy" as it were, and perhaps gain control of the place with less of a mess a more violent takeover would incur.

B) Less gunboat, more diplomacy. Keep stationery, do not fire or do anything at all. Let them throw everything they have at the tank, it can so far afford to keep it up. Give them a chance to calm the fuck down, we haven't harmed any of them yet. Assuming the incoming fire does stop at some point (either they see they're not putting a dent in us, or they run out of ammo), have one of the Elites crawl out and present the same terms in person. Tell them that if they let us take over rather than fight us, they'll be able to count on technology like this if they need defending, otherwise we'll return with a proper occupation force and let one of these tanks pulverize all your defenders. (never mind that we only have just the one tank at the moment, but we might cook something up later) We'd really rather not resort to force, because we'd like to improve this world, not destroy it. Feed them some high-idealistic monologue, see if they warm up to us. If they don't, pack up, 'port out and return. We'll return with an occupation force, as promised, as soon as we can actually spare one. If they do, park outside the gates and wait until squads C and D return to survey the situation in the place.

So, which do you people think is more likely to succeed?

[Pandarsenic]

I'd like some more detail on what parts we actually have to make stuff from.
You currently have the ones available. Once you have to build in places other than The Shell, you convert Raw Materials into buildings using Labor without an intermediate part. Major upgrades are done with Equipment, I'm considering having smaller ones done with Resources instead.

- Teleporters: What kind of places can you put them, how do you chose what to teleport, how do you chose the location to teleport to and avoid overlapping with objects already there, and can you teleport things that do nut include the teleporter itself? Personal Teleporters can be used by any force that is given them; they can be assigned non-standard using Equipment to make a set of Personal Teleporters that you can then give to forces that don't normally have them. They only come in the normal gear for units that have a reason to teleport. Mobility makes it easy for your ranged troops to disengage, but Elites can do things like teleport (teleportation being a free action to them) and then do stuff like drop a grenade and warp out or use their ranged attack at no penalty at a close enough range to cause a penalty to their opponents. When you get short-range troops, they'll also receive teleporters.

- Magitech motors: how are they different from electrical motors, is it just the energy source? Energy source, can also do stuff like move something without it having a direct mechanism of motion built in. Without the Magitech system, the Thaumatank's pivoting turret has no actual way to move and rotates freely; with the Magitech system, it's being rotated by mana and only mana.

- Mana Barrier projectors: how strong are the barriers, how well can you control the shape, and can you let some things through and others not? It basically hardens the field of mana a person projects around their body (and a bit stolen from the environment) into a barrier that stops or deflects force. Strength depends on the quality of the barrier device, the amount of Mana available, etc.

- Magitech guns: do there just accelerate bullets using magic, or do they fire slow moving bolts like the blasters in Star Wars or wands in harry potter, or something else? Directed magic at a similar velocity to actual bullets and similar effect, save for that they have better stopping power (100% energy efficiency an' all that jazz), no bullet drop, no wind adjustment, don't pass through the person entirely, etc.

- Hover thingies on the tank: can we make these? Those are the main thing you'll be replicating to start your vehicle tech

- Mana based interface: what is this exactly, what kind of bandwidth does it allow between the user and the device in each direction? What it more or less amounts to is intersecting the circuitry of the machinery with the user's mana/"soul" to create something between an instant two-way connection and them being a single entity Does it allow you to control things like they were part of your own body or is it speech recognition or is it just buttons that you happen to press with magic instead of your hand or what? A little bit of both of the underlined ones. It'll never be as natural as the body you learned to use from birth but with practice it can be close.

These are the ones you've specifically mentioned, but I'd really like to know of as many as possible since obviously these are not the only ones we've used.

[Toaster]

Did you guys figure out which research path you intended to use to get moar vehicles?

Mobility at first, for basic (cheap) buggies.  Once we have those, let's move on to hover buggies via Magitech.

At The Shell, a band of 17 raggedly-dressed individuals approaches and requests entrance. You spot a couple children amongst them. Or midgets, maybe. One of those two.

Let them in.  Interview them to look for super-obvious crazies and malcontents, but be generally accepting.  If they're midgets, send them up to our office to be our personal servants.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not really.

As far as Thaumatankboat Diplomacy, I favor option B.  Let's not go crazy just yet here- you never know what word will leak back to the Shell.  If they hear that we're blowing up villages that get in our way (remember how rumors stretch the truth) then that will cause a loss of respect.

[Armok]

I think you misunderstood what kind of things I were asking for; engineering information to come up with new pieces or magitech equipment to research/engineer, not tactical data on how to use the units we already have.

For example, "Personal teleoporters" is ONE use of the teleporter component, the teleportation built into the tank is another. Other things that may or may not be feasible if I knew more about it would be teleporting mines, bullets, or bombs, devices that teleport enemies organs out of their bodies, teleportation pads that can be used by any unit, etc.
Another example: currently barriers are used as personal shields, or as shields for the tank. Possible other uses are cutting force blades, quicker to set up barbed wire equivalent, portable shield generators that can protect an entire squad or civilian target, force buckets carrying liquid, etc.

And I'd like a lit of more atomic parts like this, ones that when multiple are put together just the right way become a single usable piece of equipment.

You mentioned circuity, exactly what can we do with that? Do we have any way to transmit mana and/or information wirelessly? Do we have magitech camera to go with the interfaces and act like eyes?

[Sean Mirrsen]

I'm assuming the Teleporters are what you HAVE. What you CAN DO is up to you to try and propose. Put it up for the GM to check, he might roll some dice and tell you what you got. That's how a game works, you know.

[Armok]

He obviously have some pretty clear ideas on how stuff works, and some things are going to succeed on lower rolls than others than others due to reasonableness and similarity to what we already have.

[Pandarsenic]

You're thinking about this in the way Man of SCIENCE!! was run, which isn't really how getting new stuff works here. Making the mana barrier effect into a blade isn't a matter of reworking one you already have, it's more related to researching a relevant Doctrine to design a troop type loadout based around using mana barriers, mana blades, and personal teleporters to drop on things at melee range against their will. These devices tend to be considered more traits of that troop type / their equipment than a legitimate stand-alone thing, with troop types receiving standard loadouts to optimize their performance but the option of assigning nonstandard equipment (e.g. "Let's give an entire platoon teleporters and Portable Cover Devices. It'll cost a ton of equipment but having 50 infantry with show up in the middle of their city with perfect cover is too good not to do!") is present.

But to answer the "let's be kidneythieves" bit, teleporters send things. You can't steal shit with teleporters or every time you came across a fortification you'd just teleport it away and melt it down into Resources. <_<

Edit: Which isn't to say you can't do those sorts of things. Hell, Doctrine: Battlefield Improvisation is practically made of it. But yeah.

[Armok]

*facepalms*

I'm trying to actually ROLEPLAY coming up with new troop types and nonstandard equipment. Actually justifying them with in universe explanation, and making things more likely to be accepted by the GM, because this is magi*TECH*.

As for kidnythives: what abaut kidnaping somone by shoting them with a bulte that has a teleporter init that teleports both them and the bullet itself back to base?

[BunnyBob77]

We should research magitek for small vehicle designs, then mobility to improve them.  As for the village, move the thaumatank father into the village, but don't attack.  Say that all you want to do is speak with the village leader.  Don't let down your guard, but make them think that your plan is to obliterate them.  We want to rule the village, after all (Probably more so with fear than respect though).