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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Alratan said:
The other people we want to encourage to help might also welcome the opportunity to closely examine a series of iterations of advanced elven enchanting being incrementally refined.

Appealing to other people's selfish motivations as well as their more pro-social ones also encourages them to get involved.

If you're the Fey Enchantress or a Lord Magister of an uninvolved College the chance to research elven enchanting as well as the material benefits of having Waystones may well be what encourages you to get involved personally rather than just supporting it more abstractly.
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Sure they might, they will definitely welcome a Waystone they can use from the Waystone Salesman. We should I think avoid the temptation of trying to solve too many problems at once ('human realms to not have access to fancy elf enchanting'), not to mention attempting to read the mind of people we have never met and whose cultural context we do not understand. How much would the Bretonians value new enchantment? I submit that we have no idea.
 
[X] Plan A waystone to build upon
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[X] [RUNE] Wizard
-[X] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Enchanted
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline

[X] Plan Waystones of the future
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[X] [RUNE] Wizard
-[X] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Enchanted
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade)

[X] Plan Waystones of the future (spirit edition)
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
-[X] [RUNE] Wizard
-[X] [STORAGE] [Moderate] Enchanted
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Spirit)

I've included simple waystones that have a very good chance of working our immediately and the improved dual transmission type that's more complex and so presumably less likely to work out.

[ ] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate Fascis
Requires a Wind-based Wizard. Moderately difficult, low cost. Requires a connection to the Waystone network.
Requires the waystone network, this puts an obvious limitation on this choice.

[ ] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
Requires High Magic. Simple, negligible cost.
Requires High Magic. High Magic is stupidly rare and difficult, so while it's a simple cheap job for a high mage it's actually ridiculously complex and expensive. A very harsh bottleneck.
Edit: That said there are actually more high mages willing to work on this than I expected (as many as 20) although we still need waystones in the thousands so I'm still not sure it's a great choice.

[ ] [CAPSTONE] Runic Inductor
Requires a Runesmith. Simple, negligible cost. Will result in more Dhar and less of the other Winds when large amounts of multiple Winds are present.
The only option without awful limitations. There's plenty of runesmiths around to be hired after all when they're apprentice level runes.

Yeah I'm definitely only going for the Runic Inductor here.


[ ] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
Requires a Wind-based Wizard. Moderately difficult, low cost.
A solid option here. Uses something from the elves and is very applicable.

[ ] [FOUNDATION] Clockwork
Required an engineer or clockmaker. Moderately difficult, low cost.
The maintenance requirement here is terrible. Also a clockwork mechanism seems incredibly fragile in comparison to existing waystones.

[ ] [FOUNDATION] Collegiate
Requires a Light Wizard. Simple, low cost.
Another solid choice. The limitation of only light wizards though counteracts the simplicity and with the political issues the Grey Lord option looks better. The issues being that only the light college can make them and the dhar issue. Once again despite being simple the limitation of only light wizards hurts the supply compared to a moderately difficult choice with eight times the applicants especially as both are considered low cost.
All the options for Runes seem quite viable. But since it's just drawing a rune, having a wizard seems solid here. Lots of elves should count as super basic wizards as well so elven masons would be perfect for the job.

I'm the least sure on storage. We need at least some for the leyline transmission but it's a question of what type. I considered cheap material (anything higher value and I think the risk of looters might get too high) but if it's an enchantment then the magic can get refined over time in which case going for a moderately good enchantment to start with and then hoping to make it simpler and cheaper over time seems like the better option here.



Parabola said:
No, Boney has explicitly said we only need a Light Wizard for the Collegiate Foundation, as in someone who can use Hysh. Not a light wizard specifically from the Colleges.
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I know that. It's political because it cuts the other colleges out when we had the option to pick the choice that includes them. Sure we can get elves to make the foundations but the numbers work out fairly similar either way (whether going with Light only or all winds).

As such it makes a lot of sense to just allow everyone. No issue with the Light College having created a dhar interacting magic and no issue from cutting out seven other colleges. The cost is the roughly the same (low), the number of wizards we can get to make it are roughly the same at a guess (the Light's Collegiate method will probably have a little more but we expect it to fairly compatible) so taking the option that doesn't exclude a bunch of wizards seems like a good idea since we can get it.

It's problematic to create an unbalance in the Colleges when there's no need. Yes we can go outside the Empire for plenty of light wizards to make those foundations, but that still means we've given the Light College a special power within the Empire when there wasn't a need. If there's a way to not create an unbalance and it's not problematic to do so then it makes sense to go for it.
 
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Approval voting for near-original designs which include the reverse engineering, since I feel it's critical to get that process started ASAP for best effect. It'll pay off in the long term.

[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
[X] Plan: Repairing The Network First
[X] Plan Near-Original+
 
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[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)
 
[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)

Since spirit leylines are not popular, I will instewd try to remind the thread that part of the point of this project was to steal magical secrets, and reverse engineering does allow us to do this. Plus, we are a follow of Ranald. Sneakily stealing secret is religiously mandated of us, really. :V
 
Is it worth considering the opportunity cost of each component as a way of assessing the various options?

Basically, how much would Mathilde/the Empire/the wider world miss what the people who would be making a component would be doing instead?

For example, if an Eonir high Mage is making a Stone Flower rather than making another item or casting a spell or performing research in ToR Linathel, do we care? As opposed to, if we go with the runic inductor, a runesmith has made one of them rather than a minor runic item for a dwarf warrior in preparation for the Silver Road War.

I think generally we care less about the opportunity cost of the Eonir's time than we do about runesmiths and Collegiate enchanters. With their alliance with Middenland the Eonir seem like they're currently in a pretty good position so have less urgent demands on their time than the Colleges who are always overstretched and the dwaves who are the same plus gearing up for a major campaign.

WorldSlayer said:
I know that. It's political because it cuts the other colleges out when we had the option to pick the choice that includes them. Sure we can get elves to make the foundations but the numbers work out fairly similar either way (where going with Light only or all winds).
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Yeah; arguments based on production numbers are very hard to make because we don't know much about the demographics, or the productivity or level of competition for those demographics' time.

Particularly as most of the time the rate limiting step is likely to be on a single component, making relative production rates of the other components much less relevant.
 
[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)

I don't understand at all why people are so enthusiastic about riverine leylines, but I like the other components. Still, if we're going to have riverine leylines we should look into making waystones without them for deployment in areas without rivers and for deployment in areas where we dump the magic.
 
I really don't think reverse-engineering is worth the cost, guys. I really really don't. Again, can someone explain to me the rationale?

WorldSlayer said:
I know that. It's political because it cuts the other colleges out when we had the option to pick the choice that includes them. Sure we can get elves to make the foundations but the numbers work out fairly similar either way (whether going with Light only or all winds).

As such it makes a lot of sense to just allow everyone. No issue with the Light College having created a dhar interacting magic and no issue from cutting out seven other colleges. The cost is the roughly the same (low), the number of wizards we can get to make it are roughly the same at a guess (the Light's Collegiate method will probably have a little more but we expect it to fairly compatible) so taking the option that doesn't exclude a bunch of wizards seems like a good idea since we can get it.

It's problematic to create an unbalance in the Colleges when there's no need. Yes we can go outside the Empire for plenty of light wizards to make those foundations, but that still means we've given the Light College a special power within the Empire when there wasn't a need. If there's a way to not create an unbalance and it's not problematic to do so then it makes sense to go for it.
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If you're so worried about creating an imbalance politically and favoring one College over the others, I'm not sure why you're voting for Jade leylines.

I don't even mind going for the Grey Lord Foundation, but your argument is sabotaging your position.
 
Honestly it occurs to me that there is an argument to be made that Brettonia should not be brought to Project yet. Most specifically it looks like no matter what we do there is going to be limits to the production, so currently we are likely to split the waystones 4 ways. With Bretonia added to that that split will be 5 ways. So question than becomes that will whatever Bretonnia brings to table increase the production enough to offset that extra split they would take as their share.

I think we might have to design a waystone just to make use Damsel Enchanters in order to ensure they don't drag down the numbers. I am thinking something like my Empire only design would work for them and their enchanters would be useful. But current design would make very little use of them since other parts are more likely to bottleneck.
 
On reverse engineering:

Boney said:
"Meanwhile, Lord Elrithish and I," Hatalath continues, "have reverse-engineered and replicated the original storage mechanisms - though I very much doubt we've recreated the way they were originally made. Even by the standards of that time, this would be a nightmare to have to create in any substantial number." The second schematic covers three and a half scrolls, and you feel a headache brewing before you finish skimming the second. This shows none of the elegance and efficiency of the other schematic, instead being a brute-force piece-by-piece recreation of every individual component of the enchantment, with a great deal of struts and scaffolding to prevent it all from collapsing in on itself before its completion. This might make a starting point for further refining - hopefully a great deal of refining - and perhaps as a basis for theoretical research into Elven enchanting techniques, but unless you stumble upon a few thousand underemployed Archmages its current form is not going to be usable for creating new Waystones in any usable number.
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Emphasis on "a nightmare to have to create in any substantial number" and "a few thousand underemployed Archmages". This is probably mostly fine as a proof of concept, but if we want to mass produce Waystones in a reasonable timeframe we should make an alternative, more easily produced design after this.
 
MrHobbit said:
I don't understand at all why people are so enthusiastic about riverine leylines, but I like the other components. Still, if we're going to have riverine leylines we should look into making waystones without them for deployment in areas without rivers and for deployment in areas where we dump the magic.
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To my mind it's twofold.

Firstly, it really helps with network resilience. If there are a few Waystones with a riverine output added to the network, it means that it can effectively reroute to the river if a blockage happens somewhere down the chain if leylines. This means that less magic will build up at the point of the blockage and everything up the leyline chain of the dual function Waystone will continue to function rather than Dhar backing up the chain.

Secondly, it allows us to leapfrog past large holes in the Waystone network to protect 'islands' of land around a riverine Waystone without having to rebuild long chains of Waystones along leylines to get there.

Ergosum said:
Emphasis on "a nightmare to have to create in any substantial number" and "a few thousand underemployed Archmages". This is probably mostly fine as a proof of concept, but if we want to mass produce Waystones in a reasonable timeframe we should probably make an additional, more easily produced design after this.
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In your quote, that's what the reference to refining the design is to do, to keep the same component but make it much easier to produce.

The component design can be incrementally improved without revising the overall configuration, it seems.
 
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Alratan said:
In your quote, that's what the reference to refining the design is to do, to keep the same component but make it much easier to produce.
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Still, we don't know how much can it be refined and how complicated will it still be. There's a good chance that we just refine it from 'extremely complicated and almost impossible to mass produce' to 'complicated and hard to mass produce', which would still be impractical for any kind of mass deployment. Meanwhile, the other options can be produced in large numbers with at least moderate difficulty right now with almost 100% confidence.
 
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Ergosum said:
Still, we don't know how much can it be refined and how complicated wil it still be. There's a good chance that we just refine it from 'extremely complicated and almost impossible to mass produce' to 'complicated and hard to mass produce', which would still be impractical for any kind of mass deployment. The other options can be produced in large numbers with at least moderate difficulty.
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That's true, but I think we have evidence that it's possible to make the reverse engineered storage enchantment at massive scale, because that's what the Golden Age elves managed. I think one of the premises of the project is that as the original Waystone design was possible to manufacture and install them so widely then those components don't need archmages and Runelords to make, and can be made be significantly less skilled labour.

I think that can give us confidence that it's possible to refine the reverse engineered storage enchantment to something closer to the complexity of the other components.
 
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[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)

I just wanted to meet the river people. Oh well.
 
There is an argument to be made that the Reverse Engineered method could be improved by collaborating with Ulthuan. Eonir archmages will improve upon the method over time, but we could eventually get someone in Ulthuan to help refine it further.

Waystones are a long term fix for an even longer term problem. I am in no rush right now, even with an everchosen coming.
 
Alratan said:
think we have evidence that it's possible to make the reverse engineered storage enchantment at massive scale, because that's what the Golden Age elves managed.
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Managed over how long of a time? We are talking about Elves and Dwarves here. They might have spend anywhere between 50 years to 500 years for all we know to cover Old World. Elves are long lived enough that they wouldn't really care for it and Dwarves would consider that just proper to ensure the job is done right.
 
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