SCIRA Amendment Act 3448

[Malliki]

RECOGNIZING that magical military units are silly,

AFFIRMING that, even though the SCIRA system is fantasy, a degree of basic realism is desired and needed,

BE IT RESOLVED that magical military units shall not be recognized in the SCIRA system anymore. Anyone that has purchased such units shall receive a full refund.

[Andreas the Wise]

Honourable Mr Praetor.

While I object to the whole bill in principal, I take particular offence at the wording of the first statement, and slightly less but still considerable defence at the wording of the second statement. The Duke proposing this, by his own admission, has not previously fought in recwars. Much less, then, has he had any chance to observe NCM (or even SCM or MCM) in action to be able to make any sort of accurate judgement on the silliness or lack thereof. The first statement is the sort of thing I would expect from certain Aura-orientated people and am most disappointed to see it here in the Landsraad of Shireroth.

Mr Praetor, the NCM system has been designed to make magical units quite even in strength with non-magical units. Actually, personally I'm of the opinion the above statement is a lie. SCM was designed to make magical units even in strength with non-magical units. SCM, its successor, makes magical units considerably weaker than non-magical units, in my opinion. While in private I may boast of the ability of magical forces, as is my wont, as a Lord of Magic, I can officially say without fear of contradiction that magical units only have any sort of significant advantage over non-magical units when the possessor of the non-magical units has not even taken the simplest precautions to defend zirself against magic. Even then, the things a magical force can do with impunity are largely restricted to things like the teleportation of small objects, or maintenance of small shields. A magical force would be most unsuitable to, for example, take down a Cruiser, unless said force included a Kraken or Leviathen, both of which are costed acordingly. Many Tokian commanders take a small magical force to back up their large conventional force, and can verify that they are thereby able to defend against virtually all magical attacks with a reasonable degree of success. The times when they can't are generally those when magic users have spent a considerable amount of time devising a new magical strategy, and who can penalise commanders for devising new strategies?

I could quote the numerous historical examples of Shireroth utilising magic in the past, but I won't draw this post on any longer than is necessary. I would merely like it to be noted that the NCM system has been designed precisely to place realistic (and, some would say, considerable) restraints upon the use of magic. This not a situation where a magical unit
can say "I teleport all your army into a volcano, you lose." Magic is regulated by strict, practically scientific laws, and even the most powerful mage, costed, as a single person, as much as a battleship, would only be able to launch a powerful magical attack, the equivalent of a flurry of missiles, every two to three days, and in the intervening time would be devoid of most magical power. Can a battleship claim as much?

Finally, I would like to tell the honourable member for Brookshire that if he feels it necessary to restrict people's ability to use magic, this is a matter best handled at the Ducal level, rather than forcing his views upon the whole of Shireroth. While it would take time, it is quite possible (for a fee, obviously) that his realm could be equipped in such a way that NCM magic, the ONLY type of magic legal in SCIRA, would be impossible to function within it, though he would have to be aware that by doing so one Duke and one Dux Emiritus, at the least, would be unable to set foot within Brookshire. [For those interested, I am discussing the possibility of filling all of Brookshire on the Astral plane with Astral Earth - as if the area is filled with a solid on the Astral plane, magic cannot enter it. To cover a whole Duchy would take a lot of time (sorry, magic's not that powerful) but it could certainly be done, and should, I hope, fix the Duke's problems]. Though such a defence would not be impregnable if the Duke sufficiently angered a magical denizen, it would take at least as long as it took to defend the realm to remove the defences [.... magical theory tangent. I'll have to check this with Bayen. Things stay on the Astral plane, so it wouldn't just be able to remove the earth like you created it. You'd either have to Shift it to the Material plane (and that would take about 60 times as long as it took to put there), or you'd have to Morph it, and then you could only condense it so hard before you wouldn't be able to condense it further, unless you were willing to sacrifice your rank, which would slow you down] ... ok, it would take significantly longer to remove the defences as it took to put them up, and in that time, the mages could easily be shot at by conventional units and wouldn't even be able to run very far because they wouldn't have removed the defences much and can't enter areas that are defended [read: Filled with Astral Earth].

In short, Kildare will oppose this bill.

EDIT: Sorry, I was over confident in the ability of my own mages. I didn't realise how weak Bayen had made us. It would take 100 mages of rank 6 (a cost of at least 21600 erb) 1.96 years to completely cover 1 pixel (there are 123917694 m2 per pixel) to a depth of 150 m (50 m below ground and 100 above). Of course, once it's done, it'd take far, far longer to undo
EDIT 2: That's not to say it can't be done. The above is a purely conventional demonstration, and I use magic anything but conventionally. I've a few methods up my sleeve which would shorten the time considerably, especially with the fact you can bring in magic items from outside SCIRA. But I haven't calculated them yet and it would still take time.

[Malliki]

I find magic to be silly. I wrote that in the bill. I don't see what all the hooo-haaa is about. If you are opposed to the bill, vote against it. I really don't see the need for the rant.

[Andreas the Wise]

The rant is to systematically show why the bill is wrong and why other Dukes should vote against it. And on the vague hope you might actually look at this properly instead of dismissing it out of hand, and thereby retract the bill.

[Kaiser Agni I]

I support the spirit of this bill. Maybe not the wording, but I do not personally support such Fantastic elements of the core government.

[Gman Russell]

I side with Andreas.

Using magic in a war is at least as silly as saying gods exist that rule over certain elements of society (Cedrism anyone? Or Christianity, Islam, Bhuddism, Hinduism, paganism, etc. etc). If there is a god, then there must be magic of some sort or he wouldn't be a god.

[Kaiser Agni I]

Yes... but in the past magic was always subtle and used sparingly. Sure someone might have a magically sword, but they never threw fireballs or any of that stuff.

[Gman Russell]

If we throw out magic, there goes the sword of vengeance, and Cedrism, and everything fun about being able to fight however you want. It's just one more cold, mechanical step towards a pure simulation, and I am not going to let that happen to Shireroth. If someone wants to fight a machine gun with a lightning bolt, let him, what's the harm in that?

Shireroth is for FUN! If someone finds it fun to hurl fireballs and use magical shields, let him.

[Andreas the Wise]

If I may remind the Kaiser and concerned Dukes - NCM *is* relatively subtle. Magical troops are darn expensive. Gone are the days when I could polp 10 dragons and a thousand mages in an orbat. You can see for my almost 7000 point orbat I have a total of 11 magical troops. 2 are assasains against other magical troops. One is decent (me) and the eight melangians are the magical equivalent of basic infantry, but costing 175 each. It's hardly an overwhelming threat.

Second to consider - magic will be as popular or underused as the population desire. Personally, I dislike modern military. I can't understand a lot of it beyond a very rudimentary level, it's thoroughly violent, and it doesn't interest me. I'll continue to try and avoid using those military units as long as I can. I expect a lot of people will not understand magic much and as a consequence, not buy much. I'd actually be slightly surprised if, beyond the Tokians, there were other orbats with more than one or two magical units in them. The fact that a Duke and Kaiser feels so strongly about this suggests that there may be other citizens who won't bother buying magical units. Hardly overtaking Shireroth. But for those who like magic, and for those who'd like to use a magical unit or two, this provides the option to do something different than a normal recwar. This provides the opportunity to do something interesting. And using magic, or gods, or demons, is so Shirithian.

And for those who want to avoid it, I checked with Bayen and can offer de-magicification of your region for 1 erb per pixel, a trifling sum, I'm sure you'll admit.

If it helps, after much trial and error, we in Nov/Tok came to the conclusion that most magical "people" (ie the characters representing the commander) are about as strong as, say, a final fantasy hero - they can take on a couple infantry at once no trouble, but they'd have huge problems against a large army. Mages rank 8 and below are considerably weaker than that. They're not that powerful.

Finally, magical units does provide the potential for the legitimate uses of magic swords and the like. I don't know if I overemphasised the limits of NCM in my earlier post. NCM is designed to allow a lot of creativity, but to contain it from "My awesome spell destroys your whole army". Tell me an item, and there's a very good chance I can work out a way to make it for you. And then your non-magical forces can use it. Ask our own MoMA how useful it is to be able to add a little magic to modern military units to create really exciting futurisitic tech ... or so the CAA tells me, anyway.

If some oppose magic, fine. Let them render their region impossible to magic in. But don't take it away from all of Shireroth forever.

[Kaiser Agni I]

I just prefer more subtle magic then mages and the like. The Gods hardly come into play at all in recwars, and things like the Sword of Vengeance don't really have an systemic powers in recwars.

Honestly, I prefer more medieval unit types in recwars, and have always kinda considered recwars in Shireroth to be more of the level of that caliber.

[Gman Russell]

It's still magic, even if you cant use it in SCIRA.

[Kaiser Agni I]

I think you are completely missing my point. I'm for subtle magic. Not grossly obvious magic, the abuse of reality that is inherent to most people concept of magic. (and technically the gods aren't magically...)

[Andreas the Wise]

Subtle magic is also quite possible via NCM.

[Kaiser Agni I]

The thing is though, that's all I'm okey with. I don't approve of vulgar magic...

[Ari Rahikkala]

Straylight NAY (3). Still not hot on SCIRA, but... despite everything, I do like the idea of battlemages . I do wish NCM magic was more... magical, but I understand that it has to be strictly rules-based and limited for the purpose of fairness...

[Andreas the Wise]

We voting then? (guess my ammendment that makes the Praetor start votes hasn't passed yet).

Brookshire - 8
Elwynn - 2
Kildare - 8
Yardistan - 1
Straylight - 3

Kildare NAY (8)
And thanks Ari. If/when you buy mages, talk to Bayen or I and tell us what you'd like to do, and we'd be more than happy to help you do it.

[Malliki]

Brookshire Yea (8)

[Gman Russell]

Yardistan NAY (1)

[Nathan of Natopia]

this fails 8-13