Tall ships or small ships
Jul. 13th, 2017 02:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSometimes my brain works in mysterious ways.
I woke up from a really detailed dream about reading a tumblr humour blog where the writer started liveblogging the demolition going on in their neighbourhood and then heard crashing from downstairs and then found weird goo like toothpaste run all over their downstairs and took photos of it and put them on tumblr and went back upstairs to phone their landlord while everyone responding was all THAT'S BOOM STUFF, FLY YOU FOOL and then... nothing. Since 2016.
Except a detailed photo forensic analysis on the last post of if this could somehow be a practical joke.
... I wanted to go check if they were okay but there's the tiny problem of it being a dream so obviously you cannot check. But that was some really detailed creeping horror right there. With a butt ugly tumblr theme.
And before that there was a dream where everything that used the letter C could not exist, but Captain Cold got around it by being Leonard Snart. We had to have an adventure to find the right names for everyone and everything to find the people who could even vaguely hope to figure out what was going on. Saving the world via thesaurus, I'd be awesome. ... I'd also be Be, because all my other names involve the letter C.
There was also a bit where we complained that cockblocking has a c in it dammit how are they even doing this.
... tenaming of things, porn edition, would logically ensue.
So after those really obscure and meta nightmares
I woke up with an immediate and important need
To figure out what ship the Waverider would be, if it was a wooden sailing ship of some sort.
See to do that AU you have to figure out stuff like the absolute size of the Waverider, the relative size of the Waverider compared to the rest of the timeship fleet, the relative age of timeships and if they vary by as much as a tech level or not, how many cabins the Waverider has and how many shared spaces and of what kind, how much cargo you can fit in there, and then which elements are essential for translation to an AU.
So if you go with the Waverider being relatively old and small, and for evidence we've only got that Hunter likes old and the flagship Acheron kind of spanked it but Waverider had it beat on manueverability, well you've got the Acheron as the height of the Age of Sail and the Waverider as some kind of much repaired ... I don't know, probably not viking, but I know basically nothing about ships so I get stumped around then. But. At least your grandma's ship, possibly your great grandma's.
Also the timeships seem to be built for fighting, ish, but the Waverider less so than whatever Chronos was flying.
So do you translate it as basically a trader trying to protect itself?
And then there's how you'd build them in GURPS. And obviously you could use the rules from Spaceships but I don't think they've got a Time Drive. But I think it's a specific sort of Hyperdrive, because they jump in and out of the River of Time and have to navigate that river to get anywhere or anywhen. That's basically hyperspace, a parallel dimension with differing laws of physics. Settings you need to know for that are how quickly you can get in and out, do you need specific geography or conditions to get in or out, how finely can you steer, how long it takes to get anywhere in there, can you see or be seen either within hyperspace or across into the regular physics world, and if people can do stuff to you while you're there. We've observed all that. "What happens if the hyperdrive fails" is especially fun, because crashing out of Time's River can land you in unstable timelines that could/should never come to pass, probably, at least according to Rip. Not that he's a truthful man. But as a handwave for fun plots it is excellent.
Also translating it to a wooden sailing ship that rides the Banestorm could keep those settings the same, and just make it movement through the multiverse, instead of time, or space.
... trivial differences, obviously...
But you'd get a lot of the same flavour for the actual travel bits, just a completely different story to need them.
So, GURPS Space and Spaceships to figure out the Waverider, and then Low Tech, companions 2 and 3, and maybe some translations from 3e Swashbuckler or Age of Napoleon.
... oooooor, stat Waverider as Gideon's physical form. End up with a points cost instead of a dollar one. And then change the tech level and see what else changes. Probably less, that way. But you'd need to make all magical instead of ultratech.
But I'd need to learn many things about wooden vehicles to even start.
Which is kind of fun, once I know enough to know what I don't know, which is not really today.
I woke up from a really detailed dream about reading a tumblr humour blog where the writer started liveblogging the demolition going on in their neighbourhood and then heard crashing from downstairs and then found weird goo like toothpaste run all over their downstairs and took photos of it and put them on tumblr and went back upstairs to phone their landlord while everyone responding was all THAT'S BOOM STUFF, FLY YOU FOOL and then... nothing. Since 2016.
Except a detailed photo forensic analysis on the last post of if this could somehow be a practical joke.
... I wanted to go check if they were okay but there's the tiny problem of it being a dream so obviously you cannot check. But that was some really detailed creeping horror right there. With a butt ugly tumblr theme.
And before that there was a dream where everything that used the letter C could not exist, but Captain Cold got around it by being Leonard Snart. We had to have an adventure to find the right names for everyone and everything to find the people who could even vaguely hope to figure out what was going on. Saving the world via thesaurus, I'd be awesome. ... I'd also be Be, because all my other names involve the letter C.
There was also a bit where we complained that cockblocking has a c in it dammit how are they even doing this.
... tenaming of things, porn edition, would logically ensue.
So after those really obscure and meta nightmares
I woke up with an immediate and important need
To figure out what ship the Waverider would be, if it was a wooden sailing ship of some sort.
See to do that AU you have to figure out stuff like the absolute size of the Waverider, the relative size of the Waverider compared to the rest of the timeship fleet, the relative age of timeships and if they vary by as much as a tech level or not, how many cabins the Waverider has and how many shared spaces and of what kind, how much cargo you can fit in there, and then which elements are essential for translation to an AU.
So if you go with the Waverider being relatively old and small, and for evidence we've only got that Hunter likes old and the flagship Acheron kind of spanked it but Waverider had it beat on manueverability, well you've got the Acheron as the height of the Age of Sail and the Waverider as some kind of much repaired ... I don't know, probably not viking, but I know basically nothing about ships so I get stumped around then. But. At least your grandma's ship, possibly your great grandma's.
Also the timeships seem to be built for fighting, ish, but the Waverider less so than whatever Chronos was flying.
So do you translate it as basically a trader trying to protect itself?
And then there's how you'd build them in GURPS. And obviously you could use the rules from Spaceships but I don't think they've got a Time Drive. But I think it's a specific sort of Hyperdrive, because they jump in and out of the River of Time and have to navigate that river to get anywhere or anywhen. That's basically hyperspace, a parallel dimension with differing laws of physics. Settings you need to know for that are how quickly you can get in and out, do you need specific geography or conditions to get in or out, how finely can you steer, how long it takes to get anywhere in there, can you see or be seen either within hyperspace or across into the regular physics world, and if people can do stuff to you while you're there. We've observed all that. "What happens if the hyperdrive fails" is especially fun, because crashing out of Time's River can land you in unstable timelines that could/should never come to pass, probably, at least according to Rip. Not that he's a truthful man. But as a handwave for fun plots it is excellent.
Also translating it to a wooden sailing ship that rides the Banestorm could keep those settings the same, and just make it movement through the multiverse, instead of time, or space.
... trivial differences, obviously...
But you'd get a lot of the same flavour for the actual travel bits, just a completely different story to need them.
So, GURPS Space and Spaceships to figure out the Waverider, and then Low Tech, companions 2 and 3, and maybe some translations from 3e Swashbuckler or Age of Napoleon.
... oooooor, stat Waverider as Gideon's physical form. End up with a points cost instead of a dollar one. And then change the tech level and see what else changes. Probably less, that way. But you'd need to make all magical instead of ultratech.
But I'd need to learn many things about wooden vehicles to even start.
Which is kind of fun, once I know enough to know what I don't know, which is not really today.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-13 07:31 am (UTC)The taller the masts, the more sail she can carry, so the faster the ship.
Taller masts require a deeper keel, otherwise she will turn over.
A deeper keel requires deeper water, so a tall ship cannot navigate close to land or up rivers.
Taller masts also require higher sides, so tall ships cannot also have oars.
Any sailing ship without oars is entirely reliant on wind, so in light winds a smaller oared ship has the advantage.
A narrow, low hull shape is faster. But such a ship cannot cope with heavy seas. There is very little space for cargo. This shape was used for fast craft that stayed close to the coast - Viking ships, smuggling ships.
A rounder, taller hull shape is slower. But such a ship can cope with heavier seas so she can go out into the big oceans. There is also more space for cargo. This shape was used for the big ocean-going merchant ships and war ships.
Canon mean heavy weights above the waterline, so the ship has to be even deeper and specially shaped to carry them without turning over. (The Mary Rose got this wrong, which is why she sank.)
Any sailing ship has to make a decision about how to arrange the sails: square rigged, fore-and-aft or mixed.
Square rigged means the sail is rectangular and runs across the mast, like a viking ship. This is fastest when the wind comes from behind or close to behind. A square rigged ship cannot sail well when the wind comes from the side.
Fore-and-aft means the sails are triangular and run down the length of the ship, like a yacht. This is fastest when the wind comes from the side. A fore-and-aft rigged ship cannot sail well when the wind comes from directly behind.
Mixed rig is some sails square rigged, some sails fore-and-aft. This requires the ship to be big, probably with more than one mast. It will never be as fast as a ship of the same size with just one rig in the ideal conditions for that rig, but it can sail in most conditions. The tall ships of the age of sail all had a mixed rig - they were basically square rigged but with a range of fore and aft sails.
The ultimate development of big ocean going ships was the tea clipper - designed for fast but long distance merchant voyages. Research the Cutty Sark for the best example of a clipper. If you need a big warship, research HMS Victory. If you need a smaller warship, you want a frigate - research HMS Surprise.
For your smaller vessel it depends how small you wish to go. the fastest, smallest vessels were called cutters. The next size up is a brig or sloop.