Bay 12 Games Forum

Not if they can shoot from beyond visual range. They shoot plenty fast, or are enchanted with magic. Take your pick, either one is bad news.

The point is, a cannonball will take somebody off their feet and take out the people behind them. This is well-known and well-documented behavior of cannons. People go flying. Or just disintegrate. Depends on how effective they are at absorbing the energy of the impact.

Better armor will NOT prevent us from losing multiple guys. It won't. You're just making our soldiers more effective at collecting that KE from enemies. Read: acquiring acceleration and liquefying their internals before flying into their comrades, all because their armor was so inconsiderate as to not deform like it should.

But it WON'T stop it killing many people. It might, MIGHT, stop the projectile (As opposed to just sending the whiplashed and thoroughly liquefied soldier flying into more buddies while the cannonball continues to hit more people). But that is at the exchange of the person it just hit going flying and killing or crippling other soldiers in his path.

A cannonball doesn't have to weigh more than a man. KE=.5*m*v². In other words, the velocity is a SQUARED TERM. If you double velocity, you quadruple impact force. And so on. The cannonball has high velocity, which makes it deadly. It has the mass to back it up, as well. The trick would be making this super material not bend, break, or MOVE when impacted. I think that that's less practical than upping the ante on our wind spells.

Wind can't do that yet. But an improved Storm Strike can kill them, most certainly. And a revised Cyclone Shield can also protect us a lot, but we won't need it if we can just electrocute their cannon operators.

UFAF-JF-40 'Sobriety' Pattern A w/research credit: (2) Happerry
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UFAF-I-40 'Dart': (1) Strongpoint
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Legalise Marijuana : (3) Khan Boyzitbig, Stabby, Piratejoe
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Leave the cannabis discussion for the Strategy Phase (3): Powder Miner, Lightforger, evictedSaint

Alright fine, all aboard the silly hype train.

Fine, I'll answer my own question. This has become an artillery war. You know why people didn't wear bulky armor in WWI/WWII? Because guns and artillery made armor almost useless. It'd stop shrapnel, but with the encumbrance of the armor you'd just get hit more and more.

We do NOT need better infantry gear, because it's not working. Infantry can't get to the fight. Using this storm might make it possible for our infantry to close to range again, but it will, at least, give us better killing rates. Ballistae can't cover the area covered by a good old-fashioned storm of death.

Blast in, the Crimean War sounds very familiar, but I can't call anything particular to mind. When was the Crimean War, though? I thought it was some years after the American Civil War (After our start date, in other words). That or it was in the 1840s....Gah, silly imprecise memory.

In fact, it will. In about two turns, depending on our accomplishments with this design.

We'll need a better carrier after the jet. A carrier capable of launching said jet, as well as the Haast. After the carrier, we might want to invest in a cruiser. And I mean a 6" gunned light cruiser similar (But not as heavily armored, most likely. I've not looked at its specs recently) to their Khorne. Modern navies have been using better light warships for two decades. I think its time we joined them.

Honestly, Wikipedia might be a good place to start. Other than that, just Google. Works every time.

However, being a bit of a military history guy, if you have any specific questions just ask here or PM me or something. I'll do my best to answer any questions.

We can't pull off a conventional navy to counter theirs.
Not unless we manage to go full-on Iowa-class battleship and pull an Essex out of our collective rears.

This turn, do the hard but worthwhile jet fighter. Think about it: It's not all that unreasonable for this game. If highly-directed anti-explosives explosives built into the hull of armored vehicles was very hard on a revision, we ought to be able to pull off a Very Hard with a jet fighter given our experience with airborne forces and complex piston-driven engines (AKA the science of mixing exploding gases and compressed air). We should have massive advantages to air designs, just like they have advantages to designing naval things. Hence, Lexington class in a single turn.

EDIT:
Oh and by the way, if we make an F-82 Sabre type jet fighter in two turns, all their air forces will become nearly entirely obsolete. We'll be able to murder them at sea (Probably use a revision for special high-octane fuel. It might give the Haast enough of a boost to use Wasp Nest carrier decks. And if it doesn't, or we don't have a revision when we finish the jet fighters, then we use a turn to build a new carrier capable of utilizing jets and Haasts---the ultimate duo)