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[FallacyofUrist]

Well, that's nice. Aside from the fact where it's more expensive than the HC1-E, anyway. A AS-HAC-1-E design might be good later. For now, though, armor piercing rounds. I'll let chief waflen do the honors.

Speaking of which, did you ever do that SI thing?

1 - Whatever Chiefwaffles proposes: FallacyofUrist

[evictedSaint]

After some thought, I will not be modifying the temperature aspect of their Adamantium.

[Andres]

evictedSaint, what will happen if we make our Crystalworks cheap?

[evictedSaint]

I don't know.

[VoidSlayer]

No More Hinges

Revise the breach loader to use a sliding hatch instead of a hinged one.  This can be opened and closed as quickly as the other one but has no thin parts that will break from the pressure.

[Kadzar]

Just for posterity's sake, I'm going to propose we upgrade falcons again, since people didn't believe we had the groundwork put in to make air cavalry, and the more we put it off the greater Moskurg's air superiority advantage grows.

Revision: Giant Mutant Falcons
When the meteor first landed, there was much speculation about what it contained and what it could be used for. Among these wild proposals was the idea that they could create a humongous eagle by feeding it some alien extract. And this gave our researchers an idea.

By using our knowledge of plant magic, and through much trial-and-error, we've been able to devise an extract that can be fed to our falcons to grow them to monstrous size. No where near as large as the giant battle eagle that inspired their creation, and and maybe not even big enough to hold a rider at this point, but they are now stronger, faster, and, most importantly, more than a match for some silly Moskurg wizard armed with a scimitar.

TL, DR: Bigger falcons, possibly able to take a rider but more emphasis put on making them strong enough to take on wizards.

1 - Whatever Chiefwaffles proposes: FallacyofUrist
0? - (Voidslayer) No More Hinges: Voidslayer?
1 - (Kadzar) Giant Mutant Falcons: Kadzar

[Andres]

No More Hinges

Revise the breach loader to use a sliding hatch instead of a hinged one.  This can be opened and closed as quickly as the other one but has no thin parts that will break from the pressure.

((Does this lead to bolt action rifles?

[helmacon]

No More Hinges

Revise the breach loader to use a sliding hatch instead of a hinged one.  This can be opened and closed as quickly as the other one but has no thin parts that will break from the pressure.

Seems a bit too simple. Could we do this for all our cannons at once? Revise everything to be breech loading, with a slide?
We have enough ammunition with our trains running, we just need to increase fire rate now.

[RAM]

After some thought, I will not be modifying the temperature aspect of their Adamantium.

Thankyou for the consideration.

Discarding Sabot rounds
In yet another thrilling display of originality and devestating avoidance of anachronisms, we make a discarding sabot round... We take a heavy material(Going to say lead, but if someone has a better suggestion for time-appropriate and sufficiently abundant. Mercury could work but would be difficult to handle and is not that common, gold is expensive, platinum too) formed into a spike with feathering at the base to keep it from tumbling, stick it into the crystalworks to produce a reinforced lead penetrator, and then, in the field, stick it onto a circuit, juice it with a magem, and it forms a very short-lived crystal casing. The result is, of course, that the crystal is largely irrelevant. The crystal casing unsummons in flight. The crystal in the penetrator shatters as soon as it hits the surface, so it isn't the hardened super-lead projectile the wizards were expecting, but it keeps the lead from deforming prior to striking the target which is enough to focus all of its energy on one point and its scattering is actually beneficial for inflicting damage if it does penetrate.

End result: it throws a very thin, extremely heavy projectile with all the force of a wider projectile, with all of that force concentrated into moving the heavy part, thus allowing you to propel something heavier than you would normally be able to thus making a very effective penetrator.

There, a stupid boring A.P. round wtih enough common sense to be justified(Thin things penetrate more easily) and enough magic to be justified(unsummoning a sabot and pseudo-strengthening lead make up for material and mechanical issues.) for all your dull WWI needs...

Crystal is currently summoned around air, and contains air, I am guessing, so containing lead or mercury or whatever should be viable in a revision as no mention of being unable to crystalise around a solid has been mentioned...

[Chiefwaffles]

RAM, your idea is much more complicated than necessary. That'll be hard to do and it could even be vulnerable to antimagic?
We don't have to make a complex AP round to work.

We can try being a bit ambitious here. I'd be fine voting for this if others are, but at the moment my vote is staying for the AP shell.
Revision: Sliding-Hatch Breech Loading
Building the AS-HAC-1 has given us valuable experience in the realm of breech-loading.

A sliding hatch-door is much more secure than hinges. It's tougher, and has less moving parts. The sliding hatch can easily be opened and closed by the operator and is a lot more tough to firings of the cannon compared to the hinge lock door used in the original AS-HAC-1 design.

Furthermore, we can implement this into every cannon design so far. We have experience with breech-loading and have managed to successfully put it in a design with only minor complications. The desired result is to have the HC1-E and HA1 be breech-loaders. We can afford to be a bit careful with the design and understand that these cannons weren't originally designed for breech-loading, so while they may not be as fast-reloading as the AS-HAC-1, they should still be a lot more quick in their reloading.



Or we can just do something simple that should work.
Revision: AP Shell
The AP shell is simple. It's a culmination of multiple tweaks to the materials used and structure of a shell. No breakthrough was made here - just conclusions (and their implementations) by our Mathemagicians on what material and shapes are best.

We change the structure of our current shell to encounter less resistance on its trajectory - something our Mathemagicians are calling "aerodynamics". In addition to this, we replace the inside of the shell with crystal, and toughen up the steel tip to avoid shattering on contact. The result is straightforward as well - the shell strikes harder thanks to its improved speed, from both aerodynamics and lightness, and the toughened steel tip means the shell doesn't shatter on impact, and more energy is "given" to piercing the armor. The impact site is decreased in size as well to maximize penetrative power.

The AP shell should be able to effectively pierce Moskurg's armor. The shell is meant to come in two sizes: One for the HC1-E, and one for the AS-HAC-1. Though if we can only do one size, the AS-HAC-1 caliber is higher priority. And if we still have time left over, a variant for the HA1 could never hurt.

DESIGNS
2 - AP Shells: FallacyofUrist, Chiefwaffles
0? - (Voidslayer) No More Hinges: Voidslayer?
1 - (Kadzar) Giant Mutant Falcons: Kadzar
0 - Sliding-Hatch Breech Loading:

So apparently our Magegems are just useless. I don't think we've managed to put them in a single design yet. Extraordinarily annoying.

[RAM]

RAM, your idea is much more complicated than necessary. That'll be hard to do and it could even be vulnerable to antimagic?
We don't have to make a complex AP round to work.
...
So apparently our Magegems are just useless. I don't think we've managed to put them in a single design yet. Extraordinarily annoying.

My design has three elements:
Shaped projectile: It is the same shape as an arrow...
Crystal-encased lead: I assume that we have crystal-encased air at present. It is basically increasing the density of crystal to that of lead, by filling the non-crystal component with lead instead of air. Either this is dead-easy as it just means putting a lead arrow on the summoning pedastal at the crystalworks and trimming off the extra. This also renders the parts that get close to the enemy immune to antimagic.
Crystal casing: This is absolutely vulnerable to antimagic. As vulerable, in fact, as our cannons are. If the crystalworks work as advertised then it ought to be easy to make something that slaps a crystal shell around a metal arrow. This is intended to disappear shortly after leaving the gun. If I wanted a complex design, then I would make it automatically dispel at a distance from the thing that summoned the casing. This is just a crystal covering for a shell, one that lasts a very short time, just long enough to load and shoot with a dash extra for margins. I like to think that it would be AAA-compatible. It is basically just a miniature, simple, crystalworks that summons a lock of crystal and then shapes it into a shell around a crystal arrow, or summons it directly into the correct shape. We have umpteen crystal forging spells and even automated crystal summoning. This is very familiar stuff here.

Those three are what is required, and they are all familiar territory. Except for the lead-crystal hybrid which is within the scope of a revision because it is just a lead(or gold or mercury, easy to shape regardless) arrow that is put on a pedastal before a crystal is summoned. This is not a complex revision.

The casing is meant to vanish in flight. It is there to make the projectile bigger when it is being fired. A bigger projectile can receive more force and thus be heavier while retaining the same velocity. Normally this is somewhat reduced by the larger impact area. A discarded sabot allows you to have a longer, heavier bullet than would normaly be possible with such a small projectile. Essencially a small-calibre bullet with the force of a large-calibre gun, which is perfect for armour piercing if all you have is a solid slug.

I do not actualyl see how AP Shell could be successful. I see the following issues:
 Aerodynamic shells: We already did this, sure, we can do it again and get a better result, but we specifically changed the shape of our shells already.
 Adding crystals: This makes the shell lighter, this is the opposite of what you do when you want to penetrate armour with brute force. It might hold its shape a little better, but it might not, high-speed impacts tend to be the thing that crystals are most vulnerable to. Assumingthat it does hold its sturcture you are still stuck with reduced mass and I don't see rigidity doing enough to counter that. If there is enough force for the shell to deform before penetrating then it probably wasn't going to penetrate anyway. It also implies that we know that our shells shatter on impact, which is plausible, we presumably find remains from test-firing, but we don't have any high-speed optics yet...
 Improved speed: doesn't mean harder hit. The impact is a combination of speed and weight, and you cite reduced weight as a significant contributor to the increased speed. The other is aerodynamics which, yes, could be improved, but is not absent and we don't have any wind-tunnels...
 Reducing the impact site: is at odds with aerodynamics. A spike would lose against our current shells and would be poor at recieving the force of the cannon while making it prone to tumbling.
 Manufacturing: is also aproblem. We don't actually have much experience with putting crystals inside of metal. It shouldn't be a problem, just as my lead-crystal shouldn't be a problem, but it could be. The design has its own complexity to it and actually requires more skilled artisanry by my estimation.

As far as I can tell, all you really achieve is to reduce the density at the centre of the shell, which will result in the force being predominately spread out in a curclw around the impact point, as most of the penetration ultimately comes down to throwing as much mass as possible at the smallest area possible.

The simple fact is that despite "smaller impact area = better penetration" larger calibres have better penetration because they can apply more force. You are basically lowering to the square root by increasing the surface area, but taking it to the third power by increasing the length of the shell, for a net massive gain. Discarding sabot wins this game by being as heavy as a large-calibre but as thin as a low-calibre, getting the best of everything, and with mateirals that literally magicallydisappear, we can overcome mot of the hurdles of the technology.

[helmacon]

DESIGNS
2 - AP Shells: FallacyofUrist, Chiefwaffles
0? - (Voidslayer) No More Hinges: Voidslayer?
1 - (Kadzar) Giant Mutant Falcons: Kadzar
0 - Sliding-Hatch Breech Loading: Helmacon

[Chiefwaffles]

snip'd

Shaped projectile - Okay?
Crystal-encased lead - That's an interesting assumption. Crystal-encased lead is pretty much a revision of its own, since it seems like you want to make a hybrid material.
Crystal Casing - The crystalworks doesn't make dispellable-crystal. We'd have to summon crystal casing (and we take a while to summon crystal, by the way) on each shell before it's fired.

Your design is quite frankly just overengineering. You're trying to introduce a new material as well as forcing our magicians to spend massive amounts of time summoning crystal casing onto each shell. You're making an AP shell way too hard in both terms of the actual designing part and in its effectiveness.
Also, you're doing stuff like adding magegems and circuits to your shell. This is extremely overcomplicated.
---
Aerodynamic shells - Just because we changed their shape once doesn't mean we're at the pinnacle of aerodynamics.
Adding crystal - See below. And we aren't stupid. We can examine evidence. Are there bits of the shell scattered about the impact site? Wow, it must have shattered during impact! Is the shell somewhere else? Wow, it must have ricocheted!
Improved Speed - When calculating kinetic energy, velocity is squared but mass is not. Velocity matters much more than mass. Of course, improving speed and mass is the best option, but that's not particularly viable. This is modification of the shell, not a modification of the cannon.
Reducing impact site - No, not really. We can improve aerodynamics and reduce the impact site.
Manufacturing - I really shouldn't even bother with this. "We don't have much experience with doing the thing this revision is meant to introduce!"


I was going to edit this into my last post, but now I'll put it here.

Possible design that we could use the Research Credit for:
Future Design: AS-HAC-2

The AS-HAC-2 is a true autocannon.

The first change is an even smaller caliber size. [Variants of the AP Shell should be made for this size]. The new caliber is barely big enough to be called a "shell" at this point, but is still very sizeable. Despite this change in caliber, the AS-HAC-2 is still bigger than the AS-HAC-1 due to its additions. It can still be carried by one person, but generally we recommend two people for any prolonged carrying of the cannon.

We revisit the HC2, which is normally banned from ever being mentioned in the Academy, in this design. Its steam recycler component provides a very nice starting point and experience here. We use our extensive experience in everything steam and mechanics-related in order to get this one component into a state fit for the AS-HAC-2. We've had so much more experience with frost spells (including in the barrel of the AS-HAC-1, the cheaper frost towers, and more) too, that combined with the fact that most of the groundwork has already been done, this should be very easy to do.
The steam recycler utilizes frost spells to recycle steam into water before it leaves the barrel without compromising the projectile velocity. This means we don't have to constantly add new water. Not having to add in new water every reload should greatly increase our reload times! That, and the AS-HAC-2 won't be dependent on nearby bodies of water anymore!

While if we just scaled down the AS-HAC-1's caliber, we could make it notably smaller, the AS-HAC-2 uses the space and weight gained by scaling down the caliber in order to implement an innovative new system: Self-loading.

The decreased caliber makes the ammo storable in crystal boxes. These ammunition boxes - magazines - are designed to be attached to a part of the AS-HAC-2 where normally the breech-loader would be. Before the recovered steam goes through the steam recycler, it moves past a mechanical switch that toggles the loading mechanism, inserting a new shell from the magazine without human interaction.
The result is amazing - the cannon can fire without a human reloading! It reloads itself! The operator merely needs to attach a new magazine occasionally, and rarely refill it with water.

We're also making some tweaks to the cannon to allow for it to generally pressurize and fire faster. This is a smaller priority and isn't the major, but as this is now the major bottleneck in firing times, improving it is better. We've developed "heat" circuitry to keep the water at a higher "base" temperature, increasing the power of the cannon and the time to pressurize. Which is already very low.

The AS-HAC-2 maintains the swivel mount and crosshair. However, the crosshair has been improved to incorporate very basic predicted ballistic trajectories in it, allowing for the operator to easily estimate where to aim to hit different targets. It also maintains the same mount and firing angles as its predecessor.

The AS-HAC-2 should be an impressive weapon. Equipped with AP shells, it should be devastating. Their airships may be able to survive individual rounds from an AS-HAC-2, but with the sheer rate of fire from an AS-HAC-2 should easily bring their airships down. Against carpets, it's not even a contest - we can fill the sky with lead our rounds; we barely even have to aim. Against infantry, the AS-HAC-2 is awe-inspiring. Its fire rate allows it to effectively annihilate huge groups of infantry all by itself.

TL;DR: A self-loading semi-automatic cannon with a smaller caliber, that uses a fixed version of the steam recycler we tried in the HC2.

Smaller Caliber
We're starting to blur the line between bullets and shells here. The idea is to free up space for the self-loading parts, and to allow for easy ammunition storage to actually let the self-loading aspect work.
Steam Recycler
Should be very easy because we already tried it with the HC2 and have had a ton of experience with frost/steam stuff since then.
The Steam Recycler practically removes the need to add in water in reloads, making the AS-HAC-2 much faster to reload, and making it not rely on nearby water sources/the Restless.
Self-Loading
This is quite difficult, but is the main focus of the design and shouldn't be too hard. We have plenty of experience with steam and now have breech-loading, so this is most certainly not possible. We won't be getting any bonuses for this, but I'm somewhat sure we shouldn't be getting any penalties.
The self-loading aspect allows the AS-HAC-2 to fire at an insane rate. It's not automatic, but is semi-automatic due to the need for the operator/apprentice to cast the PSF.
Heat Circuits
This is a minor and low-priority part of the design, but it should be easy because we have plenty of experience with frost circuits, and plenty of experience with heat. Fireballs. Steam engines. And whatnot.
Heat Circuits mean that the cannon should pressurize faster and that the same spell (PSF) should result in more power. Heat Circuits don't need external power, but also don't turn the water into steam by itself. It just keeps the water's "base" temperature notably higher.
Expense
The AS-HAC-1 is Expensive, and we have the Crystalworks. National Effort is impossible, Very Expensive is unlikely (but possible), Expensive is likely and the goal, and Cheap is unlikely.

The AS-HAC-2 does not obsolete the AS-HAC-1, as the AS-HAC-1 has larger-enough calibers that it can be useful in different situations, even with an AS-HAC-2 firing AP shells.

[Note to self: Include Magegems if we ever revise them to be better.]


Also, Evicted, is the AS-HAC-1 being put on Crystalclads? Considering the weight and expense, it should be a yes, right?

[evictedSaint]

Yes.  It's light enough that you could put one on each ship.  More than that and you'll either begin compromising performance or be required to start pulling crew member or equipment to make weight.

[RAM]

Crystal-encased lead - That's an interesting assumption. Crystal-encased lead is pretty much a revision of its own, since it seems like you want to make a hybrid material.

It is just combiningthe two, in a fashion that is plausible. We have never explained what happens to whatever is in the place that a summoned thing is summoned into. This just places something other than air where the crystal is summoned and has the crystal summoned around it. Normally this would just be heavy crystals, as lead doesn't really do anything to improve crystal other than maybe increase its shock resistance, but in a very very much less weight-efficient way than you would get from just adding more crystal. What it does achieve, however, is making the lead rigid until it impacts, which is pretty much the only thing that matters. Hardness is basically irrelevant in such forces and structure generally loses out to things like blast-waves. This just holds a liead-projectile's form so that it all piles onto a single point instead of behaving like a liquid and spreading out.

And the other aspect of this is, of course: "We don't have much experience with doing the thing this revision is meant to introduce!"

Crystal Casing - The crystalworks doesn't make dispellable-crystal. We'd have to summon crystal casing (and we take a while to summon crystal, by the way) on each shell before it's fired.

Um, no? It is a pretty tiny spell. Smaller than an axe or a full load of caltrops, more temporary than, basically anything. It should be easy for a magem to do this. And we have summoning spells, so that is a non issue. And the crystal works shapes crystal. Now, with all our expertise, this should again be a non-issue to just summon the thing directly, but a crystal-works crystal manipulator should work if necessary. And the duration is a non-issue because we will already have an ammunition handler, and the circuits can presumably be automated if we are to do half the things that you want to, so none of this is any sort of issue. We are already doing all of the things that this proposes, just not in this specific configuration, but we have enough different configurations of these mechanisms that one more should be an afterthought. So once the device is don with it should be an insignificant addition to the existing magical requirements of the cannon. No direct wizard interaction required.

Your design is quite frankly just overengineering. You're trying to introduce a new material as well as forcing our magicians to spend massive amounts of time summoning crystal casing onto each shell. You're making an AP shell way too hard in both terms of the actual designing part and in its effectiveness.
Also, you're doing stuff like adding magegems and circuits to your shell. This is extremely overcomplicated.

The shell has no gems or circuits. There is a separate device that adds a normal-crystal case. No gem or circuit is ever included in the shell itself. And there should be basically no more wizard intervention required for this than a normal cannon. It is just one gem-powered device to place cases around the shell. We have devices to summon crystals in the crystalworks, and we had crystals bound to gems ages ago. Crystal-summon + device is the simplest thing we could do and circuits are exactly a thing that does this now.

There is almost no "new material" aspect asit is just summoning a crystal over lead instead of air. What remains is pretty much the whole difficulty of the revision.
It is just one more type of device, like the horde of devices in the crystalworks, steam engines, cannons, towers, and basically everything now. So yes, wizards may be involved in building these devices, and may be involved in charging them, but not in operating them so it is completely irrelevant.
The design is easy, we just cast a bolt and then summon a couple of crystals. Not a big deal.
The effectiveness is the only viable way to see any effectiveness without magic bullets or explosives. We cannot currently make magic bullets unless you want to try wasps or solidified fireballs or compressed spiderwebs or something... Explosives are right-out because not magic. We could start material sciences from scratch and attempt to imbue fireball into wood or something but basically no. This is large calibre force in small calibre impact, that is by far the best way to make a penetrator given our materials. It is basically the only way to see any effectiveness at all.

Aerodynamic shells - Just because we changed their shape once doesn't mean we're at the pinnacle of aerodynamics.

I was quite clear that this could help, but also that our previous efforts diminished the ability to improve. We may well get something better from this, but not better enough to see a significant improvement, nor even better enough to counteract the smaller calibre.

Adding crystal - See below. And we aren't stupid. We can examine evidence. Are there bits of the shell scattered about the impact site? Wow, it must have shattered during impact! Is the shell somewhere else? Wow, it must have ricocheted!

... there is no reason to believe that the energy is being transferred into the fragmentation of the bullet and thus failing to be transferred into the target. It is not obvious that this is important. But it is plausible that they might notice it and I noted that. A heavier bullet at a smaller impace makes sense. It is why maces have spikes, and lances have points, and axes have blades, and needles go through fabric. That heavy-shots work better than light shots is also obvious, just as it being difficult to launch a heavy shot from a light cannon. This is the obvious extension of trying to launch a small projectile with the force of a large cannon. You make the heavy part small and the rest of it light.

Improved Speed - When calculating kinetic energy, velocity is squared but mass is not. Velocity matters much more than mass. Of course, improving speed and mass is the best option, but that's not particularly viable. This is modification of the shell, not a modification of the cannon.

When imparting velocity everything is rooted... it comes out to no difference at all. It is not about how much force we deploy, that is dependant upon the cannon, what matters is how that force is applied. Yours is a big impactor that makes a dent the same shape as a cannon barrel, mine is a small impactor that makes a much smaller dent. Both have the same mass, unless mine has a much faster exit velocity due to being legitimately lighter because most of the bullet is inconsequencial rather than putting a big low-energy light spot right in the middle. Now, yes, a bit more aerodynamics would lead to a bit less force erosion, but the size of the impact is a much bigger issue. You basically do not have an armour-piercing proposal but instead an accuracy proposal.

Reducing impact site - No, not really. We can improve aerodynamics and reduce the impact site.

Really can't. High-force impact sites are more about everything piling up and trying to get through than an elegant hardened arrow cutting through a soft chain link. If our cannons are weak then you might be right though, but then my arrow-hidden-in-a-normal-shell is even more so. At best your propsal would be adding a needle out the front of the bullet, while my proposal makes the whole bullet into a needle and it doesn't expend most of its energy on a pointlessly huge bullet.

Manufacturing - I really shouldn't even bother with this. "We don't have much experience with doing the thing this revision is meant to introduce!"

Which is pretty much exactly what I said. This reasoning applies to both our proposals. Both are generally easy but have some complications, one is armour-piercing and the other is aerodynamics and likely some sort of hollow-point with the soft crystal centre. Certainly ueful, but not armour piercing.

DESIGNS
0 - (Voidslayer) No More Hinges:
1 - (Kadzar) Giant Mutant Falcons: Kadzar
0 - (RAM)Discarding Sabot rounds:
1 - (Chiefwaffles)Sliding-Hatch Breech Loading: Helmacon
2 - (Chiefwaffles)AP Shells: FallacyofUrist, Chiefwaffles