Yet another attempt at a design for the Crystalclad! If anyone has suggestions/criticism, just leeeemme know. This was primarily written because I was extremely bored today. I'm definitely not putting way too much effort into this.
Future 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 extreme majority of Crystalclads will be holding HC1-Es for closer-combat, but a few will be delegated artillery ships using HA1s to support the rest.
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. While crystal is still rather light, the increased size of the ship and armament makes the ship noticeable heavier than the Fog-O-War. While it doesn't share the same problem of sitting extremely low in the water thanks to its size, it has to use two steam engines in order to maintain the same pace.
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;DR
Large
The 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 Hull
The 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 (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.
Armament
3x HC1-E/1x HA1 OR 2x HC1-E. I'm fine with both, but by myself I'd shoot for 3x HC1-E. This gives most of the Crystalclads three times the firepower of a Fog-O-War, and gives us the ability to field our HA1s in a couple of ships at sea. Even if we just do 2x HC1-E, I'm completely fine as I understand why people may think 3x HC1-Es/1x HA1 is ambitious. 2x HC1-Es means twice the firepower. HC1-Es are Expensive and two of them should still be fine, but the more serious 3x HC1-Es/1x HA1 would probably not bode well for expense if we fail the Crystal-Nickel Circuitry revision.
Two Steam Engines
Instead of one. This means the Crystalclad should be as fast (if not faster??) as the Fog-O-War. Extraordinarily simple task - just add another steam engine. With their semi-recent Expense buff, steam engines aren't particularly expensive as adding one to a ship doesn't affect its cost. With a successful Crystal-Nickel circuitry revision, this could have next to no impact on expense.
Magegem Battery
This 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.
Expense
Worst case scenario, we get Very Expensive. (Thanks to Crystalworks). I'm optimistic about getting just Expensive, but even at Very Expensive it's a huge bonus to our fleet. Though if we somehow fail again at cheaper circuitry this revision, I'm sure it'll be Very Expensive thanks to the cannons/artillery and steam engines.
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.
Also,
Evicted, what does crystal look like anyways? I've imagined it as a kind of slightly-translucent and extremely-slightly shimmering cyan-ish material. This is clearly a super important question and is critical for any crystal-based design.
And idea for future design: Aether Anchor. Generate magical energy without a mage present. Not in the near future, since in my opinion we already seriously pushed the edges of non-combat designs recently with the Crystalworks + Magegems. But at some point it could be nice to have our magitech not rely on living batteries apprentices.
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Topic: Wands Race - [Arstotzka] {COMPLETED} (Read 376976 times)