Copied+pasted from earlier, with some modifications.
Design: SBP2 "Crystalclad"The Crystalclad is a marvel of Arstotzkan engineering, making use of many of our innovations to this day in order to create the most fearsome ship on the sea.
The entire ship is made out of crystal straight from the Crystalworks. Earlier designs had a inner skeleton made out of wood or steel, but as we have plentiful strong lasting crystal, there's no point to weaken the ship with unnecessary materials. The crystal hull makes the ship nearly impervious to any known form of Moskurg weaponry. Crystal is unimpacted by fire bombs, and ballista bolts will largely just scratch the surface. In the rare event of critical damage, any old
battery apprentice can simply summon bits of crystal to fix the damage. The summoned crystal may require maintenance and won't be as strong as the rest of the uniform hull, but it allows easy field repairs on our ships until they get to port.
The ship has two decks - one inside and one outside. The upper deck is sparsely visited by crew, and is largely used only by sentries and for loading/unloading cargo and people onto the ship at port. The inner deck is where the cargo is stored, the ship is run, the crew lives, the steam engines reside, etc. etc.. This further increases the protectiveness of the new crystal hull - fire may still be particularly damaging to humans even if it doesn't damage the ship, but keeping the crew inside the ship protects them from Moskurger attacks.
Between the middle and back of the inner deck resides the "weapons bay". The weapons bay is slightly raised upwards to the rest of the main deck, and has an opening bay door at the top allowing for fitting in new weapons and firing outwards from. The weapons bay has configurable mounts for weapons. The
goal is to fit an armament of three HC1-Es or one HA1 here. Cannons and artillery fire outward from the weapons bay which can be closed as needed. The majority of Crystalclads will be holding HC1-Es for closer-combat, but a decent amount will be delegated artillery ships using HA1s to support the rest. While we have the goal of 3x HC1-Es or 1x HA1, our mathemagicians are hoping to fit as many cannons as possible on the ship without sacrificing integrity.
Armaments can be changed on a whim, as it's just a matter of moving the artillery in and out of an opened weapons bay at port.
Two steam engines inside the inner deck power the Crystalclad. These steam engines are different from the extraordinarily heavy ones found in the Fog-O-War. Our mathemagicians have spent some degree of effort in order to make the Crystalclad's engines out of largely crystal. These new crystal steam engines are exponentially lighter than their predecessors and take advantage of our cheap machine crystal to make the engines even cheaper. As a result of this decrease in steam engine weight and other factors such as the light Crystal hull, the Crystalclad should be as fast if not faster than a Fog-O-War.
Some people have raised concerns over microfractures from the repeated heating of the steam engine, but those concerns have been dismissed. It would take years of constant use to even approach semi-unreliable levels, and even then, the problem would just result in a crack, rendering the engine inoperable until fixed. But that doesn't matter because as it happens, our ships receive maintenance much more frequently than once ever few years.
Also inside the inner deck is the Battery, where an array of AA/A-sized Magegems (depending on what goes with the Crystalclad's expense the most) are housed then connected to the steam engines, weapons, and anything else needing power by insulated crystal conduits. Without a mage on board, a fully-charged Crystalclad has a very long operational life - our steam engines are quite efficient as the power simply goes to maintaining enchantments. However, the use of weapons provokes a noticeable drain on the battery. Without a mage, a Crystalclad can still serve as an excellent transport and provide limited fire support, but mage-less Crystalclads aren't intended since with our plentiful apprentices every ship should have a mage. With a mage, the battery allows them to only focus on charging the battery instead of having to run between operating every individual cannon and the steam engines, and when the ship is charged, use their own spells on the upper deck.
The battery also has the ability to charge individual magegems, in case that ever becomes a factor.
TL;DRLargeThe Crystalclad is significantly larger than a Fog-O-War, but not by a
huge degree. This isn't the equivalent of trying to make a carrier from a schooner, and I definitely feel as the main "challenge" it should be fine to handle. The size increase is to fit the new armament + steam engines without sacrificing integrity like the small Fog-O-War did.
Crystal HullThe hull is made entirely out of Crystalworks crystal. This confers extreme armor capabilities. Because of the Crystalworks, we don't have to worry about maintenance or dispelling. We also can get an Expense credit for this because of the Crystalworks. Thanks to the Crystalworks, this is probably the easiest task and even benefits us (automatic expense credit) for doing it.
Also, the hull is made so the crew and weapons go inside and are protected from Moskurger firepower. Weapons fire out of a vertical "weapons bay" door.
ArmamentAs many HC1-Es as we can fit on the ship without hurting integrity or HA1(s) + HC1-Es to fill the rest of the weight capacity. My goal is 3x HC1-E or 1x HA1 but anything more than that would be appreciated. HA1s are Expensive, meaning it won't be a problem fitting them on our ships, and HC1-Es are cheap, meaning we can use as much as them as we want.
Two Lighter+Cheaper (Crystal) Steam EnginesThe Fog-O-War uses two steam engines and suffers for it - its speed and integrity are much lower than they could be because of the extreme weight of the steam engines. The Crystalclad uses the same number of steam engines, but makes them lighter as well. This should ideally keep the speed the same as (if not better than) the Fog-O-War due to the lower weight. This is done using crystal, meaning the engines are more durable, cheaper, and
much lighter.
Our expense bonus from the Crystalworks should mean these engines will become Cheap.Magegem BatteryThis means we don't have to have a ton of apprentices on board to operate each cannon and individually monitor the steam engines. The Magegem Battery supplies power to the rest of the ship via crystal conduits (which we did in Crystalworks) meaning we have one centralized place for mages to handle. It even lets our ships move about without mages (energy-efficient steam engines)! Basically, this means we can just have one
battery apprentice/mage down in the
boiler room Magegem Battery providing power to the whole ship, and when it's charged, help out in battles with their spells.
ExpenseWorst case scenario, we get Very Expensive. (Thanks to Crystalworks). Expensive is a possibility and I hope to get it, but even at Very Expensive it's a huge bonus to our fleet. Especially considering at Very Expensive it'd still replace our fleet. The new nickel circuits make our lives easier too. The slightly lighter weapons + engines also help. When this design was first posted we still had Very Expensive HA1s + Expensive HC1-Es and steam engines still used gold circuits, but now we have the easy-to-make nickel circuits. The components in the Crystalclad are surprisingly cheap, really. Cheap crystal, cheap weapons, (probably) cheap engines, cheap circuits...
TL;DR TL;DR: A brand-new extremely durable ship with heavy firepower. It has a lot of stuff compared to a Fog-O-War, but almost all of this stuff is simply new application of existing technology. The Crystalclad is about half of my reason for pushing Magegems and Crystalworks so hard.
-Large (not
huge, though.) (A step up from our current ships but we're not trying to make any huge advancements here)
I decided to go with an all-crystal hull because:
1.) Wood skeleton would be too much of a weak link - it'd be like if you made concrete supports and everything else steel on a skyscraper.
2.) Metal is heavy and still inferior to crystal. Our crystal gets an expense credit, is much lighter, and is stronger. There's no reason to use metal anywhere instead of crystal.
Reasons why we should pursue the Crystalclad:
1.) Their ships aren't invulnerable to our cannons. More cannons = better chances of good shots = more destroyed Moskurger ships.
2.) Our armor is probably better than theirs (just based off of how long we've spent developing this kind of stuff)
and needs to reflect less. We just have to protect against firebombs (indoor crew+weapons) and ballista bolts (crystal armor). I doubt a ballista bolt, enchanted or not, can get through armor harder than steel.
3.) We have the Crystalworks helping in expense. (Also expense credit)
4.) We can field HA1s which should have more power in their shots which is exactly what we need. HA1s have had the problem of small AoE effects before but small concentrated+intense impact sites is exactly what would help us at sea.
5.) We can revise armor-piercing shells this turn to go with all our artillery, allowing us to beat their ships and future armor. When we do develop magical/explosive shells, we could even combine them with the AP shells to make explosive piercing shells! Pierce armor then explode!
Basically, our weapons can still get through their armor, just not at great rates. With crystal armoring on our ships, we should be able to perform better against their ballistae than their armor performs against our shells. Then we have things like the HA1s, etc.
1 - Crystalclad: Chiefwaffles
1 - Explosive Ammunition: Andres
1 - Rod To God: RAM
0 Ragnarok Rounds
0 Metaconjuration
0 Vine Mine
0 Antiluck wards
I don't think explosive ammunition is a bad idea, I just prefer Crystalclads at this point.
Author
Topic: Wands Race - [Arstotzka] {COMPLETED} (Read 377910 times)