[PnP] Ships, Yo!

[Burton Choinski]

Scott, anyone?  Looking for people to fool with my shipwright program,  
to see if you can generate reasonable ships with it.  Keep in mind  
that it is primarily a GM tool, to create a set of standard cultural  
ships rather than something for players to use to roll their own  
(unless they actually have Naval architect skill :)

It is primarily complete with regards to ship components and final  
performance, though the build time and costs still need work.  As you  
can see in the copy, it has been "tuned" to the Trireme, which I was  
able to mine the net for all the various stats I needed.  Some things,  
like the weight of rigging and masts is sort of a WAG, but the other  
formulas such as hull speeds and horsepower to speed formulas were  
taken from nautical sites.

Obviously, my formulas output MPH, not knots, so keep that in mind  
when looking at the output speeds.

There are some crufty areas that are still being used/worked.

Users tweak stuff in yellow boxes.  The blue factors should be left  
alone.  The only things that you may want to tweak and experiment are  
the "Block Coefficient" (how much of a "block" is the ship hull, in  
terms of volume) and the "Admirality". The former should be closer to  
one as you get box hulls (like barges), and perhaps a bit of speed  
tweaking to go with it.  Likewise, if you plug in the numbers for a  
historical ship and the speeds seem incorrect, the Admirality will  
need to be adjusted.  It's entirely possible that each "class" of ship  
(Bireme/Trireme, Merchant, Longship, Barge, etc) will need it's own  
values for these three, which experimentation will give us.  Please,  
if you play with this tool, send me any comments (and any data points  
you get).
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On Jan 31, 2008, at 7:29 PM, Scott Adams wrote:

> At 05:42 PM 1/31/08, you wrote:
>> The one major thing that I need to hammer out is a decent way to
>> handle "ship hit points", primarily for ramming, magic spells and
>> monsters, but also for seige gear and ship weapons.
>>
>> I have my shipwright sheet and I'm going to try and play with numbers
>> on that.
>>
>> In your opinion, going with the "Bireme" standard, how many hits
>> should it take to founder a bireme?  Not crack it in half, but take
>> enough damage to have it take on more water than can be removed,
>> eventually turning it into a floating hulk?
>>
>>
>> Last year I found a good Ramming site with some good rules and info  
>> so have the file somewhere.  But I've come up with 3 versions of  
>> hit points.  A Basic hp for the entire ship, hp for each area (ie  
>> side, front, aft, sails, interanl), and a more generic system using  
>> levels of degree.
>
> Sorta like Gamma World uses for its system.  In that like Good is  
> degraded to poor or medium.  I've honestly not decided on the best  
> system yet. But likely will use oen or all (in varying Ref  
> determined ways) for the final rules I come up with (eventually sigh).
>
> Problem is you have to look at it bottom up.  So the smallest canoe  
> might be 1 hp for the whole ship or for each side.  But a bireme or  
> trieme (tri should be top of the line for hit points) should be like  
> say 100 hps with the average ship (ie merchants) being say 50.  If  
> you can consider it in terms of that a range can be defined.  But I  
> will likely assign values based on the construction.  In that the  
> biggest part is clearly the hull.  So I could determine it based on  
> amount of wood (BF) for the hull needed and the quality of the  
> work.  But that may not be a fair system either.  Either way a  
> warship's front will always have 1.5 to 2x min more strength than  
> the sides that's a historical fact.  I think I listed facts on the  
> ram and speeds in one of the files I sent you.  Figuring a 1 ton  
> bronze ram has got to be 200 hps if melted down into a door :)
> Think of a door and upsize it :)  I dunno.  These things I've not  
> been able to iron out myself.
>
> I have rigged up spells to cause damage via degrees and hit points  
> so that'll work out.  But I think a general formula of BF/Hull size/ 
> Design, cratmanship, number of decks, magic protections (seaprate  
> likely), minor details like type of wood, dimensions, displacement  
> and type of caulking are all good factors for some formula.
>
> So could just work up a system Canoe/Rowboat or for that matter a  
> single log is considered a boat (so 1 hp :)).  Work up to the  
> average ships the merchants, freighters, sailing ships, to the  
> warships and beyond to the super fregithers which would have the  
> highest hp.
>
>
>
>
>
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