Quote from: Stephen (Alto);588775Travel 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.

Centralizing power and the development of states would be much easier as well.  Many pre-modern states actually had surprisingly little effective control of large proportions of the territories that they laid claim to.  Basically anywhere more than three days march away over flat land for an army, that wasn't connected by a river or ocean, was effectively uncontrollable.

Last night, I went ahead and prototyped a new hull design for an Airship based on the operational parameters I described in an earlier post;



This is a particular type of ship that is never meant to ground itself...




I'd be interested to know what other kind of hull designs you would like to see... Should I do a traditional Flying Dutchmen style air sailing ship? Maybe a more radical design, with an alien-tech type of appearance? Maybe a skinned ship hull based on an animal or creature?

I still need to do the detail work, adding rails, doors, cargo hatches, accessories on deck, and crew (Mostly Roman style) for this particular hull, since my gameworld is set in the Roman Republic era... That will take a few more days.

I'd be interested to hear what kind of concept shots you would like to see...

Images of the airships used during sieges?

Images of Airship docking locations in or near settlements?

Airships travelling through adverse weather?

What kind of eye-candy would be good to post here to make this a thread of awesome?

Function commands form in most designs, so ask yourself is it meant to land on earth, water, or other, or not meant to land at all. Covering the top deck would seem to be a sensible if slightly boring precaution, maybe netting would do a better job, with rings for the crew to climb through. The rest depends on how the ship is powered, maneuvered, and what are the normal tactics in battle.

So is "aerodynamic" not a consideration for you there, dude?

RPGPundit

You can't tack upwind in an airship.

Quote from: RPGPundit;589470So is "aerodynamic" not a consideration for you there, dude?

RPGPundit

Well, they are aerodynamic sort of. I really should do an animation or video of them in flight, so you could get feel for how they fly and manuever...

That sounds like a good weekend project for the weekend. The safety nets though, very difficult to do the proper physics for the safety nets...

What makes the ships fly? Can it be applied to small ships? If so I'd see real powers building small, armored ships meant to attack and destroy large raiding ships that have to carry food and supplies for a long voyage and are thus larger and heavier than a local area only craft of comparable combat ability.

The idea of a "monitor" that's huge and slow but just hangs around an area to defend it also comes to mind.

It is very hard to imagine a world just like our bronze age except that some people can make ships fly. The power and knowledge would eventually have to filter into other things.

Militarily I'd see them as bombers dropping casks of greek fire or other flammable oils onto targets.

Quote from: red lantern;589574What makes the ships fly? Can it be applied to small ships? If so I'd see real powers building small, armored ships meant to attack and destroy large raiding ships that have to carry food and supplies for a long voyage and are thus larger and heavier than a local area only craft of comparable combat ability.

The idea of a "monitor" that's huge and slow but just hangs around an area to defend it also comes to mind.

It is very hard to imagine a world just like our bronze age except that some people can make ships fly. The power and knowledge would eventually have to filter into other things.

Militarily I'd see them as bombers dropping casks of greek fire or other flammable oils onto targets.

Magic makes them fly... The power for the magic is stored in the crystalline orbs, and controlled by mages that add long term spells, or that cancel spells, to change the performance characteristics, i.e. climb speed, velocity, desecent speed, course changes, et.al.

Small armored ships could use this magic as well. I don't think it would provide a speed or manueverability bonus to use smaller ships. So small vessels would hang, and slowly drift into new directions and courses depending on the mage casting spells to control the onboard crystals.

A small ship would be harder to spot, especially close to the ground, although it would have the capability of gaining altitude very rapidly, should the need occur.

See, I have a different image between "Airship" and "Flying Castle"...

One has real world physics that can be used; the other does not.

When I think "Airship", I think Blimps and Zeppelins. The newest generation uses Helium, so one Fire Arrow later your Airship doesn't end up like the Hindenburg, and have a "favorable" flight ceiling of about 1000ft (300m).

(It can reach 8,500ft (2,600m), but it's not ideal)

Propulsion is a big deal in a real world airship, as is cargo capacity. While you might train a couple of Dire Rats to turn giant hamster wheels that in turn power a propeller, crosswinds are still going to be a big deal. Inclement weather can ground the airship fairly easy.

Of course, you could just do like they do in Eberron; chain an Elemental to a magic furnace, and viola! You have a magic, flying ship (make and model your choice: Longship, Galleon, Cog, etc).

Just better hope a Dispel Magic or Banishment doesn't free the Elemental...

Flying Castles definitely have physics, just get one cranked up to about 20 Knots or so and let it graze the top of a battlement and watch what happens to that collapsing castle curtain wall or tower.

Walls and towers definitely need to be heavily reinforced to withstand castle-sized battering rams...

And that doesn't even go into the heavy rain of boulders/rocks/arrows from above.

Slow? Yes!

Hazardous? Definitely!

Difficult to stop or avoid.

There are automatically more ground-based strongholds constructed in Caverns, Narrow Canyons, and Deep Caves to protect against this type of attack.