What are the military/socioeconomic implications for a world that looks kind of like ours circa 10 AD, except with the addition of occasional flying ships? Assume that these ships are similar in size to ships used in the period, and that they're not very common (if a family owns a flying ship, it's likely to be the center/generator of that family's wealth, which will be considerable). Also assume that they can't fly very high (maybe 200ft?) and that large mountains are geographic barriers against them.

What innovations would arise in that context?

Quote from: jswa;588033What innovations would arise in that context?

It depends on how fast they move. Flying ships make logistics of all sorts easier, you can ferry troops (for example), without having to march them. The faster the ship is, the more disruptive it is.

Borders become less relevant, and less defensible, as a ship can leapfrog the border and land soldiers far inland.

If troops can be carried, and can disembark under fire, airborne assaults become possible. Castles and strongpoints will want to focus on "anti-air" weapons, or airships of their own.

More considerations: what drives the ship? Weather? Fantasy "jet engines"? Being pulled by carts on the ground (turning it into a flying barge)?

The more specific you make your design, the more detailed the limits, the easier it is to project what differences it could make.

After a few painful experiences flying ships were made unable to go higher than around 500m in my games, or about as high as the top of the Empire State building.

While air coverage didn't prove decisive in say Vietnam, it did in Iraq 1 and 2 and of course the end of WW2. In a fantasy campaign where you have a lot of set piece battles, stone castles, sieges and slow moving forces or supply lines, a single flying ship that can soar a couple of kilometers up and drop boulders uncontested is a devastating advantage, as much as nukes are today.

Whole cities might be sacked by one such ship.

Its a slightly different story if there are other flying ships or squadrons of hippogriff riders or what have you, but still anyone without such an advantage will lose automatically, and wars will be decided purely by who has the superior air force, everything else falls by the wayside.

Locking maximum altitude to half a kilometer (for the best ships, many wouldn't be able to go so high) keeps them barely within range of the finest archers with specialised bows, or maritime or fortification siege weapons.

Technically that's probably out of range for most direct-fire siege weapons, but the development of flying ships will lead to both very high defence towers and things like triple winch dragon sinew dwarf-forged ballistae in short order, so I'd be happy enough with a slight touch of handwavium in that regard.

Likewise exploration, the maximum range also needs to be curtailed to stop flying ship owners conquering the unsuspecting world in short order. Trade alone opens a whole can of worms, it was an attempt to reach the far east without having to sail around the African continent or battle through Islamic empires that led to the discovery of the Americas, not to mention the effects on societies of mingling/trading with other societies.

Depends on ship speed, ship mobility, ship operational longevity, ship life support capacity, ship docking restrictions, ship operational domain, domain hazards, etc.

Just like any form of transportation it'll naturally leave an imprint. But its imprint is more dependent upon capacity and context than we care to admit. Cars kick ass on roads and hard pan; they suck in roadless jungles. Jets are awesome in ignoring most terrain, except for flying through high altitude mountains ranges and tight canyons -- and they still gotta refuel and land somewhere (and they're no good underwater, too).

Context, context, context.

Does your world have frightful downdraft air shears? Halleluia Mountains? Mega flocks of large high altitude animals? Does the craft need landing strips to dock? Does the craft carry so little food as to make long range flight pointless? Is its operational domain hazardous to operator life, restraining it to automated supply logistics? etc.

This is one of those areas where designing from a micro seed idea on up to organic development of macro repercussions would be the better method, I feel.

Building on what the previous posters said, if mountain ranges are impassable (perhaps except through certain passes and gaps), then those will become the political borders.  

An important question is whether these ships can hover/anchor or not.  In other words, can they do vertical takeoff and/or landing?  If so, their versatility is dramatically increased.  If not, infrastructure (airports) becomes critical.

People are also likely to have very different viewpoints about the world as a result of aerial travel.  Once you get high enough, you can see the curvature of the Earth and know with certainty that A) it isn't flat and B) yes, there are interesting things over that next hill.

Innovations in navigation and timekeeping are likely to come about through necessity, perhaps akin to the Antikythera Mechanism, Archimedes' inventions, or those in the Kitab al-Hiyal.

Military implications are bunkers. If you can't defend against them, hunker down underground and force them to come in and get you on your home turf. I think the economic implications would be minimal tbh. If one ship is a rarity, then overground caravans would still be the norm and you can probably move just as much stuff in that caravan as the ship - the only thing that changes is that it might speed things up a bit.

Given those two factors, i suspect the best use of these ships would actually be as 'sky pirates' raiding those overland caravans.

Wider implications.
Who builds flying ships? maintains them?
Are they a relic of a past civilisation powered by science/magic or still exant?
If they are stiff exant and being produced why just ships? why not smaller or larger craft, or personal fying machines?

How are they powered? Is there a geographic scaricty to the distribution of the reesources?


I would say if there were ancient relics then they have no real impact on anything. A decent army with none would focus it's resources on destroying them.

If it was a current technological thing then you would get the same anti gravity wood/material/engine in a host of things and the technolgy woudl become more common.
If it was a current magical art then an elite of magicans that controlled access would emerge and become quite ploitical quite quickly.


In terms of tactics I can see military bases bieng constructed underground with tall mushroom shaped towers like smoke stacks. The underground stuff would be safe from attack and the mushroom shaped towers provide a platform to shoot down on the airships as they pass by. I can see the breeding of flying mounts becoming very important and parachutes would be common.

I would ask how is this airship controlled, guided, powered?

If by sails, please keep in mind that tacking for sailboats or ships worked by the interaction of the water's resistance and the force delivered by the sails.  An airship will not have that interaction, so that method will simply leave it  the mercy of the winds and hence will not have a lot implications martial, social or economic.

How high they can go could be a big factor.

If they can fly across open plains they can greatly ease travel, but if they're limited in height than they can't easily go over mountain ranges.

I was playing around with the idea a while ago of a setting in which a continent was divided largely in two by a Himalaya like mountain range in which the scarcity of navigable passover points made for many opportunities for piracy.  (And the pirates could easily hide amongst the crags.)

This sort of set up would also make mountains quite valuable militarily, control the passes and you control the trade.

Quote from: Dog Quixote;588525How high they can go could be a big factor.

If they can fly across open plains they can greatly ease travel, but if they're limited in height than they can't easily go over mountain ranges.

The question then arises as to how high over what, are we talking sea level or whatever is below them at the time. If its just sea level there are whole areas which would otherwise be called "low inland hills" they might not be able to traverse, so maybe its better to reckon it from the terrain beneath them.

This leads to some entertaining maneuvers, like when a ship cruising at its maximum altitude suddenly goes over a cliff far below, or tries to "scale" a mountain. Flying close to the roof could be a bumpy ride at the best of times.

The mode of propulsion and maneuvering is important, as are size and capacity considerations. The largest third century BC ships were almost 130m long, comfortably housing over seven thousand men plus cargo. That's one mother of a lot of boulders to drop on a rock run over a formation, fleet, or castle. Speaking of which incidentally, flying castles are a world of hurt.

Prior to the end of the nineteenth century, the only ways to really substantially affect an entire ship were by ramming or fire. The main thrust of combat was to destroy the crew in one form or another. Broadsides rarely blew a ship to pieces, and ballistae or catapults likewise had very little chance of sending a ship to the bottom.

So if the mode of propulsion is like a spelljamming helm for example, more or less independent of the crew, you're left with ramming, fire, and boarding as the only methods of stopping an enemy vessel, since ballistae and arrows aren't going slow her down much. This makes the job of ground based defenders much more difficult, maybe they could use harpoons of some sort? If the crew play a vital role in speed or maneuverability, the traditional methods should work.

I guess you could just drop a few score boulders on them too.

Assuming real world atmosphere, then even if the height limit is over the nearest patch of earth you're still going to have issues with mountains, due to low levels of atmosphere and extreme cold, (assuming you don't have some way of generating warmer air bubbles).  Air currents could possibly be a major issue as well, depending on the method of propulsion.

Thanks folks! Getting these responses helps me narrow down my brainstorming. I'll post later with some clarifying details Thanks again!

Travel and trade would have much longer ranges, assuming that the ship has a comparable speed to its water using counterparts. Even without being able to cross a mountain, there are large stretches of land which people didn't travel often (or at all) during the time period. The ability to speed up the travel and bypass many of the hazards would increase cultural collision. This would leade to more wars, but also to a greater development of culture.

Hmmm... a favorite subject of mine!



I have never capped the height airships can travel, although if they go high enough, they will run out of air to travel in.

The airships in my worlds are powered by magic crystals. They are not particularly fast however can be enhanced with spells or bound elementals to travel faster than slow.

They can carry cargo, troops, siege weapons, over any mountains or obstacles and make defending strongholds and fortresses much more difficult.

They provide a good view for passengers to see the lands around them, and also help the passengers avoid many of the hazards (and monsters) on the ground.

The players that own an airship are an exalted few. They have to source new crystals from time-to-time, and keep mages employed to service the crystals. They need to employ good guards to protect their airship as it's a valuable form of transport.

Generally they can make enough money trading goods and carrying trade goods to pay for all of this, but they must spend at least half of their time traveling to new cities and towns to source new opportunities for income.

I think I need to do up a few new airship models... this one is over a decade old...

Well, travel and trade would have longer ranges, but they'd also be prioritized differently dependent upon the expense and carry capacity of the craft.

Sorta like how ocean shipping for bulk freight mail and air mail have different costs. Class system would likely get involved: 1st class flight, coach long distance flight, "puddle jumper" commuter flights, ocean liner cruise ship, merchant marine & steerage, local ferries... There's lots to think about.