MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
I have never owned a house that moves, but that is due to lack of finances. I would totally buy one if I could.
Updated Vehicle Handbook in the works
- Thread starter Geir
- Start date
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
There would be two types:
1. Organic, with the lifters embedded
2. Temporary, somehow attached for the move
1. Organic, with the lifters embedded
2. Temporary, somehow attached for the move
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Okay so digging further into it, the way I was handling the finale speed, range and agility results in the cases where secondary or tertiary modes are faster (very niche cases), was inadequate. Fixed now. I forgot how big the LuftHaus was, so its max Speed Band is Idle, Cruise is stopped, so mostly, it's just hovering, though with beamed power you can max it out as long as you have a power link.
But this is why I'm not sure the manuscript (and certainly not the spreadsheet) is ready for Prime Time: edge cases. Need to shake out some more designs and then hand it off for some beta testing.
Another aside: I locked down some privacy settings in Ofice365, well, because Privacy. There's a little box that tells you certain features may not function if you do that, but sure, whatever, don't really want any more tendrils into my system or data leakage to big brother (cousin-in-law, whatever). What they don't tell you is if you click those buttons the F1 (Help) key no longer works, giving you a cryptic "The administrator has disabled this feature" sort of message. Googled, fixed, not fixed, rebooted, fixed now. But Grrr, thanks Microsoft. Coal in your stockings for sure.
But this is why I'm not sure the manuscript (and certainly not the spreadsheet) is ready for Prime Time: edge cases. Need to shake out some more designs and then hand it off for some beta testing.
Another aside: I locked down some privacy settings in Ofice365, well, because Privacy. There's a little box that tells you certain features may not function if you do that, but sure, whatever, don't really want any more tendrils into my system or data leakage to big brother (cousin-in-law, whatever). What they don't tell you is if you click those buttons the F1 (Help) key no longer works, giving you a cryptic "The administrator has disabled this feature" sort of message. Googled, fixed, not fixed, rebooted, fixed now. But Grrr, thanks Microsoft. Coal in your stockings for sure.
J. L. Brown
Emperor Mongoose
So now we are down to just ONE 'Space per dTon'? If you are going to change stuff, you are headed in the wrong direction. I still do not understand what is so terrible, catastrophic, and game-breaking to just assign a consistent 'Spaces per dTon' and let vehicle-designers do one simple elementary-school level division to go from 'Spaces' to 'dTons'.
There is already a huge and arbitrary 'The Rules-writers insist that the Vehicle-Designers do not get to use half the spaces in a dTon' penalty; why the extra, additional 'The Rules-writers insist on imposing another penalty & taking yet more spaces away from the Vehicle-Designer' in the 'Shipping Tonnage' calculations? What is it that is so fundamentally and embarrassingly broken that it is impossible for the rule-writers to simply admit 'the old way was a mistake' and just fix the problem?
If I cannot explain something, that means I don't really understand it. I certainly cannot explain why the insistence on this 'take control away from exactly the people who need it' approach. So, explain it to me like I was a six-year-old -- what 'breaks' irreparably if vehicle spaces are simply set to a constant 'X per dTon', use 110% of X spaces for 'Docking Space'; use 200% of X for a 'Full Hangar'; use 300% of X for a 'Docking Facility', use 1000% of X for a 'Launch Tube' or 'Recovery Deck'? What is it that this 'Shipping Space' stuff is intended to 'fix'? Because I don't see the problem.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Because of the sails. Demount the masts and it goes back to 2:1, but if you ail it into a spacecraft (semi-submerged) hangar, it's not very space efficient.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
How is that any different than if a ship tried to dock with its extendable sensor arrays deployed? Shipping means non-functional. A Sailing Ship isn't a Sailing Ship once you take its masts down. It is a barge and a poorly designed one at that since it is not meant to be a barge. Can you desassemble things to be more space efficient? Sure, but doing so makes them no longer functional. Just like the rule for shipping power plants and such. 25% of the volume, but they require being put together at the destination. How much space can you save shipping a box truck with the box taken off and dissembled? Tons, but then it is not a box truck, it is a flat-bed. Most space of most objects are empty space, so disassembled, they will always take up less space. That same Sailing Ship that you designed above will ship much more efficiently if you just shipped the wood and the parts and assembled it on site.
My idea for how to fix this is simple. List the full size of the item. Make the completely disassembled only require 25% of its normal volume and leave it to the Referee for how much volume is saved if you do a partial deconstruction, such as stepping down the masts on a sailing ship.
How big sails need to be a a sailing ship is a tricky thing to model in an RPG. Basically, sails don't provide thrust, they provide an efficiency percentage of how much of the wind's speed can be harnessed for movement, minus the inefficiency of the ship's hull in whatever medium it is travelling in or on. So, how much space you will save by "stepping down" the masts depends on how big the sails and such were to begin with.
For example, the Third Rate Ship of the Line Conqueror, was 20' tall from the bottom of the keel to the top of the top deck. The masts were 180' tall. Which means that if the masts were taken off, this ship would only take up 10% of its normal volume. This obviously falls outside even the 25% number that I normally use.
I do not envy you your issues with this.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Depends on the shape of the hold, I suppose. And whether you took the yards off or could just twist them sideways (don't know - only been in museum ships and haven't actually seen them operate)
It's not supposed to be exact, and I can make it look worse... but not even in High Guard, where the smallest hundredth or thousands of a ton is sometimes listed, do we actually worry too much about the shape of things. I'm still not sure what, except the name and modifications to armour and hull separate 'Standard' and 'Close', except Close by description seems to have components not as close together as Standard... so... it's closely dispersed???
Well, nobody will be happy (maybe not even me) until we go back to CT shapes... and even then, there would be arguments.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
The fun part is when you turn a sailing ship into a star ship.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
lolz! I totally agree. I mainly use Standard, Streamlined, and Dispersed hull for ship design. The others don't make much sense to Me.
I cannot say that you are wrong, but I can say that you are a good writer and have good attention to detail.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
Sphere, cylinder, and needle also make sense to me. And buffered planetoid.
Actually having grown up on boats I can attest that it’s not the same as a house. Most of these are temporary recreational housing not homes
It takes month or even years to build a Sailing ship of this size even if it was once together and you just disassembled it for shipping. Plus you’d have to add almost a quarter more building material for the building frame. Having grownup on sailing ships and having to move them from place to place on dry land I’d actually agree with Geir.
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Geir
Emperor Mongoose
See this is the fun part... I'm intentionally designing vehicles that are sort of at the margins of what the rules should be able to do, but still useful. That's where the fragility of the design process is going to emerge.
I built the Valhalla airship as a test too (close (~25% to Hindenburg volume)
(Hindenburg -> Zeppelin -> Lead Zeppelin -> Immigrant Song -> Valhalla - that's about a clear as my naming convention logic gets).
I'm going to to build a trireme and a longship as TL1 ships, but I don't think they'll stretch the design rules as much. I'll come up with something 'clever' later today, though.
I built the Valhalla airship as a test too (close (~25% to Hindenburg volume)
(Hindenburg -> Zeppelin -> Lead Zeppelin -> Immigrant Song -> Valhalla - that's about a clear as my naming convention logic gets).
I'm going to to build a trireme and a longship as TL1 ships, but I don't think they'll stretch the design rules as much. I'll come up with something 'clever' later today, though.
That’s a huge warship if I’m reading it right it’s 74 port ship which means a gun crew minimum of 222 I think your short on quarters. Black powder cannons require a gun crew of 3-6 depending on the size and the technology. Your average sailing warship ran between 16-32 guns pre side with 2-4 chasers. The high end was in the 74 gun range but those ships had 3 gun decks and were very unstable ( mostly these were late warships). The bounty for example only had 4 4 pounders per side and 10 swivels. Even the USS Independent which was a very late sailing warship only had 74 guns total but had a crew of 744. She was later reezed (cut down to only one covered gun deck 54 guns) because of windage.
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Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Crew is 614 on this, which is in line with at least wikipedia number ranges. I have it at 464 gunners and loaders. "Bunks" supports two people as written, and I have that for the enlisted, and better quarters for the 10% of NCOs (or warrants, whatever) and officers, plus a captain and admiral quarters. The reality of it, as I understand it is that when not in combat, you actually get to use more of that weapons space for 'quarters' by swinging them aside and sleeping above or around them. Or at least that's the YouTube video...
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Has anyone considered the fuel bladder as an alternative to whatever they use for a blimp?
Or, the fabric over the dirigible's airframe?
Or, the fabric over the dirigible's airframe?
this is very true the term "Son of a Gun" refers to a child born on the gun deck while in port. glade you cleared up the confusion on the crew. how did you take into account the various round types used in black powder navy warfare? did you make Swivels? what about the changes in powder loading and mounting? these vastly effect firing rates.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Nowhere near that depth, just took plausible numbers for 24, 18, and 6 pounders. More detailed gunnery variations would probably need its own book or adventure on some low tech world, or a Traveller:1776 supplement.
I did toss in some maneuver, ramming, and boarding rules for low tech naval warfare, in the back of the book, but they probably need some playtesting.
I can see that though you might want to include Swivel's (a 2- or 4-pound gun connected to the rigging that only used 1 crew member), and the four types of shot Ball (basically using Swivel or musket balls for a shot gun effect), Hot Shot (a heated cannon ball for an incendiary effect), Chain Shot (two or three balls connected by a chain) and standard round but it's up to you. you also might want to include a modifier to the effect that wood sailing ships are very easy to set on fire and burn exceedingly well