Bay 12 Games Forum

NAV - 10/20/2017
I think one of our mad science designs should be the attempted taming and weaponizing of surface monsters. Difficult to get more mad science than that.
Helmacon - 10/20/2017
hrmm... Aether madness is a thing at altitude that makes people go unconscious, right? We could compose a sort of "crown" of interacting aether crystals that subdues the beast to make it manageable. Basically, induced aether madness. Playing with fire, sure, but it might actually work.

The marines at Three Captains continue to fall back and continue to make Wreth's marine's lives hell with prepared bait and strike. We promise that reinforcements are coming soon.

The skiff at Three Captains tries its best to sneak away and return to Kasgyre.

Mercury and 4 skiffs escorting it return to Kasgyre.

Buy 1 royal topaz trim web pair (1c 1o 3w)

Train 3 comm officers (1 squad 1c 1o)

Finish Anguis:
-7 kettleguns (7c 7o)
-1 topaz trim web pair
-1 normal trim web pair (1c 1o 3w)
-1 comm officer

Finish Ophidian:
-2 kettleguns (2c 2o)

Christen the transport hull as Artemis and equip it:
-Small core (6c)
-VS topaz lift
-Trim crystal pair (1c)
-1 ream of webbing
The Artemis will climb a bit slowly because of her discount lift crystal, but she's cheap.

Give our brand new Natalie skiff a comm officer.
Give one regular skiff a comm officer. (Give it to the survivor from Three Captains if possible)

Mercury squads 1 and 2:
Give everyone who doesn't already have a vest an aethersilk vest (-24 vests)
Give everyone in squad 1 a prototype grenade (I don't think we've used our prototype grenades yet)
Give everyone in squad 2 a grenade (1c 1o)

Create 2 new squads.
Sniper squad:
16 witch hunters (8o 8w)
4 aethersilk vests

Royal heavy squad:
16 bronze armours (10o)
16 aethersilk vests (16s)
4 topaz gauntlets
4 crossbows (2o 2c)
12 aether gauntlets (3c 3o)
2 topaz grenades per person

We still have 4 aethersilk vests in storage.

Costs:
23/26 crystal
36/36 ore
8/93 wood
16/24 silk

We have never gotten a royal topaz vanguard cannon.
The topaz kettlegun revision said "The kettlegun and the Vanguard can now be fitted as topaz variants."
The vanguard cannon description does not have "--->  Lucky improvements allow higher energy projectiles from topaz weapons crystals to be channeled without loss of operation efficacy."
Have we just gotten unlucky or is vanguard missing from the topaz role table?

Revisions:
Webbed SkySkiffs: [3] Talion, Kashyyk, NAV
Vanguard Serpent:  [2] Kashyyk, NAV
Grenade mounting: [1] helmacon

Hold 1 die: [1] Talion

Switch to Natalie Skiffs?
Yes: [2] Kashyyk, NAV
No:

I was planning on just counting the votes in the thread when the time is up.

A short comparison of bows and crossbows. Specifically longbow vs arbalest.

Bows have much longer limbs than crossbows so bows have more distance to accelerate their projectile. Because of that a crossbow needs a higher draw weight to reach the same kinetic energy as a longbow. The bow accelerates a lighter projectile to higher speed while the crossbow accelerates a heavier shorter projectile to lower speeds. So a bow has more range but a crossbow has more power at close range.

Because of the higher draw weight crossbows take a lot longer to reload. With a bow you just have to nock your arrow, pull back the string and loose. It takes a few seconds. With a crossbow you have to attach the crank, crank for a while, take the crank off, load the bolt, and shoot. It takes about half a minute. Crossbows can fire their first shot quicker though because they stay loaded.

Bows require a lot more skill to use. It requires months of practice and training to build the necessary technique and muscle to be a half decent archer. You can teach someone to use a crossbow effectively in a few hours. A skilled archer will outperform an equally skilled crossbow user, but a novice crossbowman will be more accurate than a novice archer. Crossbows can also be fired while prone or crouched behind cover while with a bow you have to stand straight.

Well I suppose we deserved to get some crappy rolls eventually...

Anyway, I suggest the following:

Webbed SkySkiffs
All our ships are designed for trim crystals, yet trim webs are much more efficient. By redesigning the hull layout with trim webs in mind, we can reduce the refit costs for webs. Naturally, we'd have to pay some sort of refit cost if we wanted to use trim crystals instead, but we have a specific hull design for that already. As part of this action, we update the Natalie pattern to stay in line with this design, as that patter uses trim webs.

This would likely get us two Natalie skiffs per turn. That would be amazing.
Having a second Natalie skiff per turn would certainly lower our Royal Topaz production to almost nothing. That's bad.
We should try to get one Natalie skiff + 1 normal trim web skiff per turn. Even the non-topaz skiff would be an upgrade from standard due to trim webs, and it leaves us topaz for our Marines and Vipers.

Vanguard Serpent
The Vanguard can be fitted into a pair of small mounts, poorly. By planning specifically for the Viper, we can customise the modifications needed to give the Vanguard gunners the best experience possible.

It would be better to revise a generic medium mount onto the Viper.

That could be a somewhat useful weapon for fighting mind readers. Just flail around with random tools and they wont be able to dodge or counter because even you have no idea what you're doing.

Might be able to do a telefrag type thing by making a random tool appear inside someone.

Shuffling and locking until you get a generally useful versatile tool, then just keep it at that. Not living up to its full potential but at least its useful.

Useful as a last resort. When compleyely stuck and out of options try random tools until something solves your problem.