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[stabbymcstabstab]

Edit: Since plate armour is still likely to be expensive let's make it officer armour, and then revise our chainmail to be general equipment with a breastplate.

-1, we may as well have it for everyone. Even if its expensive, we can use that revision credit on the plate instead of the chainmail and get it down to inexpensive.

I guess thats a valid plan i'll support it instead of mine.

[Iituem]

Plate Mail:  [1-1, 6, 5-1]  There's good news and there's bad news.  The good news is, you've been able to make a design that could conceivably outfit your entire army.  Apart from some weight issues causing grumbling amongst the troops, your available resources mean that you can successfully equip everybody with the metal you have.

The problem is that you apparently haven't the slightest idea how to make plate armour.  You smith multiple curved plates of armour, fitting them together to cover every part of the body, which they do.  Unfortunately the test subjects couldn't then move, because you couldn't figure out any way to cover them whilst still allowing enough movement.  Even later efforts resulted in highly limited mobility, despite designs ranging from chainmail with bits stuck on top to a sort of giant tortoise a man could fit inside.  Right now, the protection afforded is completely negated by the fact that its wearers have the manoeuvrability of a dead snail.  Against all odds, Normal Cost.

[Note that your material bonus from having the mountains is already applied.]

[Roboson]

Revise it!

Edit: To be more mobile.

[FallacyofUrist]

We need more cheap spells. Or something like that.

Hm. Improving the Plate Mail can wait until we have improvement magic.

For now? Lingering Mist: This mist naturally congeals itself, meaning it can reform once or twice after being dispelled.

[RAM]

... Ugh, it would have been so much better to learn how to perform permanent conjuration and make armour from the superior magical materials and use conjuration which would have been more of a pain to set up initially, but once done could have opened our magical manufacturing sector and would have been much faster, on account of armour having all these tiny fiddly bits that take forever to forge with metal... It should have been possible to get it up to, like, 5 suits of armour per day per craftsman, instead of, like, one a week, maybe, if we're lucky, and we could have had super-tough chainmail with ultra-light plates instead of this garbage...

Armour that cannot move is useless, we are not wasting another main phase, even if the armour is mostly useless anyway. Revise armour to be mobile. If we can't make anything else work, use rivets and ball-bearings(and obviously large overhanging sheaths to protect the open areas) for the simple joins and ball-and-socket joints(With the massive flared sockets to leave room enough to bend without cutting off the limb.) for the omnidirectional stuff. Assuming that we can't go from a metal box to gothic plate in one revision...

[OceanSoul]

Make our armor mobile, though try to preserve a good amount of the protection. Maybe some associations with the Princess's kingdom's smiths might help us?

[Roboson]

I mean conjuring magical armor is going to be umpteen times more difficult than making real armor. We knew going into this that it wasn't likely we'd get a great set of armor without revisions, but it's going a bit far to call it garbage. Especially since we get our metal bonus on it.  Last time we tried to make something with magic (something as simple as a pointy stick) it took an entire design phase (like this one did) and those simple pointy sticks only lasted an hour and couldn't be used as arrows, lances, or anything at all. We couldn't even throw them. Nothing works on the first try, and arguing  that we should use a more difficult and convoluted way of achieving the same result doesn't make much sense. We'd never get to the point where we could cover our entire army with magically conjured armor because we'd never have enough wizards to do so, and even if we did, then we couldn't cast any spells. What's the point of having wizards who can shoot giant fireballs if we use them to make fake armor (which will have all the same issues as real armor) but also disappears halfway through the battle? We rolled poorly on one of the rolls, it happens. That doesn't make the alternatives any better.

[RAM]

That is why we learn to make permanent conjurations. And seriously, do you know how difficult it is to make armour? Magic can just poof the whole thing up to a premade template. Getting all the details right would take a lot of work, but once the design was perfected I can't imagine that it would be a fraction as difficult to magic up a set as it is to smith the thing out conventionally.

[Roboson]

That is why we learn to make permanent conjurations. And seriously, do you know how difficult it is to make armour? Magic can just poof the whole thing up to a premade template. Getting all the details right would take a lot of work, but once the design was perfected I can't imagine that it would be a fraction as difficult to magic up a set as it is to smith the thing out conventionally.

I'm perfectly aware of how difficult it is to make armor. But, even if we get magic armor possible to poof out in perfect form (which would likely take at least two design phases and tons of revisions) and make it permanent (probably at least another design phase and a revision or two), and make it easy enough so we can give it to all our soldiers (which is at least two more revisions) then we would still have to use one of our casting slots to equip our soldiers with it, which means we'd have less spells to use against the enemy.

[RAM]

It would likely take that many productions, but it would not be all that we get with those productions, we would gain permanence, along with a permanent item that is useful on its own merits, like a simple sword or spear. We would need a revision to get that to actually work right, but that is what all revisions do... We would need a revision to upgrade our materials, but we already need to use that to get our lance spell working. And it would not use up a spell slot, that is the whole point of making it permanent. Use magic to make something that persists after the magic goes away. I would tend to do this by making a separate category of mages that dedicate themselves to permanent magical creations. It costs us some magicians in the short-term but long-term provides a huge boost to equipment. An apprentice could reasonably provide for a whole squad instead of the current situation where they can barely provide solid support to an individual. Once we have our improved-material temporary spears for throwing and charge defence plus our permanent stronger + lighter + larger swords we can move onto permanent stronger+lighter+bountiful plated chain which will take maybe a couple of revisions and be better than gothic plate due to materials and more plentiful than chain because of production methods.

So yes, it takes a little while to get that technology, but you are getting things to use from each step your increase your technology by. Those fireball traps require at least two designs, but we got the fireball spell from the first one so it is not like it was just a wasted design to get there.

[10ebbor10]

Revise platemail to be more mobile

[Iituem]

Plate Mail:  [1!]  Er, wow.  It turns out when you give a job to the apprentices they don't believe in anything but 'all or nothing'.  You were out fighting/drinking/trying to console your weeping king over Princess Sophia's rejection, so you let the apprentices handle this one.  They decided that the problem was that there was too much metal in your design.  You came back to find your design and only prototypes ruined by idiots with hacksaws.  After months of work, you have gotten back to square one and learned a thing or two about armour nesting and hinge design.  Unfortunately, you haven't been able to incorporate these innovations because you've been too busy putting out fires.

Oof.  Zero on Design, 1 on revision.  Bad rolls this turn all around.

[10ebbor10]

I don't assume we'd get a bonus on that revision roll, because it's a very simple thing we spend a lot of resources on, and we have a ton of metal?

I mean, we got a bonus for revisioning our minor fireball, so I don't see why we wouldn't get a bonus, which is even easier.

[10ebbor10]

Anyway, let's hope we don't get murdered too badly by the Moskurgians.

They got their expense credit, and probably a design and revision as well, while got nothing.

[Iituem]

You actually got the bonus because you deliberately weakened the spell to make the cost reduction easier.  But you rolled two natural 1s in a row, and I penalised the Moskurgers for that back on turn 1 (they rolled four 1s and turn 1 was a bust for them) so it's only fair.