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Crystalwatcher's Magical Girl Quest!

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If that's referring to yourself, @justinkal, I have to say you are a Lusus Naturae. No offense intended.;)

Also, the Elvis Empire trivia is very welcome... Gotta say they and Humanity as one society may or may not work out wondrously... Or break apart on grounds of Elven-borne rapid innovation proliferation giving unceasing mental whiplash to human innovators and population.

Also, can't help but think that "introduce massive changes to industry 7 times in last 10 years" is exorbitantly expensive. How do they find any ways to finance it?
 
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Faraway-R said:
If that's referring to yourself, @justinkal, I have to say you are a Lusus Naturae. No offense intended.;)
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I can only just barely do it, and only for part of my elbow. Its basically a matter of stretching my shoulder in a way that becomes painful after a few seconds so that my elbow can move just close enough to my mouth that the tip of my tongue can reach it.

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The place that starts feeling a little pain is where the back of the neck meets the shoulder.
 
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Faraway-R said:
Also, can't help but think that "introduce massive changes to industry 7 times in last 10 years" is exorbitantly expensive. How do they find any ways to finance it?
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Part of it is just the fact that most systems they create are designed to be easy to update. Institutional systems just don't fossilize for elves the way they do for humans, because the way elf learning works if they did it would stagnate progress and innovation even more then it already is for most of the LDC.

The other part of it is just that the elven economy is fairly robust in isolation.
 
LostDeviljho said:
Now, if we could convince your government to sell us some of their old battleships they have lying around and convert those...
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Unlikely in the extreme to happen just because of metal fatigue and corrosion, though it would undoubtedly be amusing to see. Though I suppose the Counter Force could revive the Iowa-class if they really felt the need to. Which I rather doubt they will just because of cost-effectiveness concerns. Battleships are expensive and no longer offer significant advantages over lighter vessels and/or carriers.
 
Decim said:
Unlikely in the extreme to happen just because of metal fatigue and corrosion, though it would undoubtedly be amusing to see. Though I suppose the Counter Force could revive the Iowa-class if they really felt the need to. Which I rather doubt they will just because of cost-effectiveness concerns. Battleships are expensive and no longer offer significant advantages over lighter vessels and/or carriers.
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Elves: So what you're saying is you're not using them and there's no reason to not give us the hulls and the blueprints to make more? Because that's what we're hearing.
 
LostDeviljho said:
Because it's not actually air superiority. Being able to float up in the air and rain death with impunity would be great, but it doesn't actually do that because most of the things we fight on a regular basis have better fliers. A Hell Beast is too maneuverable for the heavier ranged weapons like ballistae to track and hit properly, and too durable for lighter weapons to counter. The only things that have the right balance of speed and stopping power are spells, and we were just talking about how elves don't really do spellcasting like that. The flying battleships mostly just end up being a big distraction that doesn't do all that much.

Now, if we could convince your government to sell us some of their old battleships they have lying around and convert those...
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How would old battleships help? If anything I'd say they would be a hindrance since you'd have to try and convert them to a role they were never designed for. For example all the guns on a battleship fire up. So unless you fly it upside down attacking anything below you is quite challenging.

To me the issue with Elf Airships seems to be a lack of anti-air weapons. While stuff like the Phalanx CIWS would be the most effective given what we know of the Elfs they'd probably be far better off with mechanically simpler WWII era anti-air technology like the 40mm Bofors and 20m Oerlikons. Maybe throw in some 5" cannons since they can pull double duty as anti-air and as ground attack weapons.
 
UberJJK said:
How would old battleships help? If anything I'd say they would be a hindrance since you'd have to try and convert them to a role they were never designed for. For example all the guns on a battleship fire up. So unless you fly it upside down attacking anything below you is quite challenging.

To me the issue with Elf Airships seems to be a lack of anti-air weapons. While stuff like the Phalanx CIWS would be the most effective given what we know of the Elfs they'd probably be far better off with mechanically simpler WWII era anti-air technology like the 40mm Bofors and 20m Oerlikons. Maybe throw in some 5" cannons since they can pull double duty as anti-air and as ground attack weapons.
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Didn't the old battleships have anti-air weapons? along with big guns that can do the whole "rain death" thing really well?
 
LostDeviljho said:
Didn't the old battleships have anti-air weapons? along with big guns that can do the whole "rain death" thing really well?
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I think the issue is that old earth ships are built with weaponry on the upper portions of the ship, thus leaving the lower portions of the ship vulnerable to strikes. Yeah those heavy cannons are going to be great for distance bombardment and slugfests, but those AA defenses can only defend a given portion of the ship.

That said my response to that line of thinking is going full SBY so...
 
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LostDeviljho said:
Didn't the old battleships have anti-air weapons? along with big guns that can do the whole "rain death" thing really well?
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They used to yes. But unsurprisingly all the old ships that survive have had their weapons demilitarized (IE: broken) so we'd need to supply new weapons anyway. So my point is if we were supplying them with brand new weapons why not just mount them on properly designed airships rather then old relics that would require massive redesigns, to the point I'd question it being the same ships.

Seriously just swapping out Ballista for Bofors and lighter weapons for Oerlikons would be cheaper, easier, faster, and more effective. You'd probably have to look at how the added mass and bulk effects the design but that is a vastly easier problem to solve.
 
UberJJK said:
They used to yes. But unsurprisingly all the old ships that survive have had their weapons demilitarized (IE: broken) so we'd need to supply new weapons anyway. So my point is if we were supplying them with brand new weapons why not just mount them on properly designed airships rather then old relics that would require massive redesigns, to the point I'd question it being the same ships.

Seriously just swapping out Ballista for Bofors and lighter weapons for Oerlikons would be cheaper, easier, faster, and more effective. You'd probably have to look at how the added mass and bulk effects the design but that is a vastly easier problem to solve.
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You raise an excellent point.
 
So, human weapons on elven airships is gonna be a thing then?

On a side note, checked the White Soul again... Got a question to clarify her ability: Is Scream for Me a simple immunity for White Soul, or is it something more?
Her "Scream for Me" ability may be even more powerful than I thought. It is an Overwhelming Presence-alike effect that states weapons and spells of lower level cannot be utilized.

This is not "immune to spells and weapons", this is, taken at face value, the following:

ANYONE who sees her and has no spells or weapons of higher level literally CANNOT use them, on her or ANYTHING ELSE.

That is ridiculously powerful, she can walk into a battlefield and shut down just about every other combatant just by being pants-shittingly terrifying.
 
LostDeviljho said:
Elves: So what you're saying is you're not using them and there's no reason to not give us the hulls and the blueprints to make more? Because that's what we're hearing.
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Well, all 10 remaining battleships in the world are already in use as museum ships. Moreover, all of them have had extensive modifications to be easier to access for visitors. Things like demilitarization like UberJJK mentioned, plus the removal of armor in places that compromise the ship's protection, elimination of a lot of chemicals and lubricants necessary for the ship's machinery to operate, and removal of a lot of equipment to keep other ships operational when spares went out of production while the Iowa-class was still in service in the 80s.

Also, metal fatigue and corrosion is not a joke in the least with regards to the remaining battleships. USS Texas, for example, has had its hull and armor belt worn down so much that it's estimated that no more than a couple inches of the belt remains of the original 12" that was mounted. It's also so badly rusted that there are significant ongoing problems with new holes popping up in the hull.

These ships are no longer in good enough shape for combat. Reactivating them would take a truly Herculean effort for questionable gains as the institutional experience that went into their construction no longer exists. It would be easier and cheaper to build brand new battleships than refurbish the old ones.

As for the plans, sure, why not. They're probably somewhere in an old U.S. archive somewhere. If you can find them, we'd be happy to make copies of everything for you.
 
Decim said:
Well, all 10 remaining battleships in the world are already in use as museum ships. Moreover, all of them have had extensive modifications to be easier to access for visitors. Things like demilitarization like UberJJK mentioned, plus the removal of armor in places that compromise the ship's protection, elimination of a lot of chemicals and lubricants necessary for the ship's machinery to operate, and removal of a lot of equipment to keep other ships operational when spares went out of production while the Iowa-class was still in service in the 80s.

Also, metal fatigue and corrosion is not a joke in the least with regards to the remaining battleships. USS Texas, for example, has had its hull and armor belt worn down so much that it's estimated that no more than a couple inches of the belt remains of the original 12" that was mounted. It's also so badly rusted that there are significant ongoing problems with new holes popping up in the hull.

These ships are no longer in good enough shape for combat. Reactivating them would take a truly Herculean effort for questionable gains.
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Counterpoint, unless I've been awake for way too long restoration magic is a known quantity. Sure it doesn't help with armor, chemicals and missing machinery but that stuff is easy to make or substitute if you have the blueprints.
 
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Cmd. Frost said:
Counterpoint, unless I've been awake for way too long restoration magic is a known quantity.
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which runs into the issue of them being built very wrong to be airships. Sure the big guns can arc to hit targets below them, but they would have zero AA against anything that came at them from below. you'd have to not only restore them, but put more guns on the bottom, which would not be trival.

i'm not saying it's impossible, but it might be easier to just retrofit existing airship designs.
 
I think the reason the Elves want the battleships isn't so much to make them fly as much as they want them to study and reverse-engineer so they can learn how humans design their ships and what they can apply to their designs. Sure, we humans could just design new flying battleships for them, but they want to learn how to do it by themselves.
 
Highwind said:
I think the reason the Elves want the battleships isn't so much to make them fly as much as they want them to study and reverse-engineer so they can learn how humans design their ships and what they can apply to their designs. Sure, we humans could just design new flying battleships for them, but they want to learn how to do it by themselves.
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Give them an aircraft carrier design instead :V
 
Or, you know, they used "battleship" as a general term for "armed, military-tier ship" rather then actually referring to a specific type of ship like we do. :V
 
justinkal said:
I can only just barely do it, and only for part of my elbow. Its basically a matter of stretching my shoulder in a way that becomes painful after a few seconds so that my elbow can move just close enough to my mouth that the tip of my tongue can reach it.

Edit:
The place that starts feeling a little pain is where the back of the neck meets the shoulder.
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Humanlogic.txt
Tell people they can't lick theor elbows and somebody promptly starts to injure themselves trying. ;P
 
Highwind said:
And they suceeded too. Sasuga humanity. :V
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Thats the point yes. Humans have a...defective personal survival instinct with regards to high reward risk taking compared to the other races(because they're Gaia's adaptive weapon), which means they bootstrap fast and furiously, and if 10% get maimed or killed trying, 89% achieve nothing, and 1% find out how to win it...its a win for Gaia.

She Has Reserves.
 
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