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Jul. 13th, 2017 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI read some more GURPS rules. They might bot be very thorough - they keep saying see GURPS Vehicles and I don't think there's a 4e of that - but they do have ideas of what bits adventurers really need to know. Sometimes different ideas than me, but still, ideas.
3e Low Tech has more to say about ships than 4e. The 2 and 3 supplements have more, but I have them in ebook and had to wait for the computer to recharge.
Different construction methods in different seas at different times made it possible to go different places with different amounts of weapons and cargo. Most kick arse ship and most useful ship weren't the same thing if you had to get a cargo somewhere. Which I knew from playing Tradewinds. I liked those games. I think I stopped playing them because the server that tells them they aren't pirated went away? I stopped playing games generally though. Not the point.
There was a bit about the Hanseatic League's ships, which were big cargo ships with big sides, so short pirates couldn't get in, and then they put castles at the end so you could shoot down off there, and then pirates didn't want to get too close neither.
Vikings kicked unexpected arse primarily because their ships could cope with epic weather but also go up rivers. Many places were Very Surprised to have unexpected vikings up their rivers. They could also fit a colony is the not-dragon boats, at least one homestead at a time. And they had pretty good reason to be elsewhere because agriculture was a bit tricky at home. So they got the stompy reputation, but they also traded all up the everywhere. Vikings are pretty awesome.
China was the first to invent nearly everything. Steam changed everything, but before that, China had you beat. I think this is because of rice being really good to eat? Also bamboo is useful. Bonus natural resources meant feeding more people whose job is doing the thinking. But they had spectacular ships. Admiral Zeng He and his Bao Chuan, treasure ships? Spectacular huge things, twice as big as anyone. To the point that wiki says there's an argue if they even existed or if there's a translation error on the units or whatever, but come on, is way more fun if the local equivalent of an aircraft carrier just rolled up to visit, as only one part of an exploring fleet. Nine masts, four decks, at least five hundred passengers. Must have been like something out of a dream. And he had bunches of them! And littler ships. A couple hundred of them! Tell you what, the new neighbours introduce themselves like that, I wouldn't be keen to annoy. And how much of the map he covered is well impressive. Story like that... well you'd apparently have plausibility problems, but it would be grand.
I love facts. They keep leading to more facts and then I know more things. Feels like eating good stuff.
Modern ships are super impressive too. I found one design for an 'ecoliner' container ship with sails, to save energy. It was supposed to be ready by 2013 but all the references I found have it as a future thing so I don't reckon that happened. Big container ships are difficult to get your head around though. One ship, 21,413 twenty foot long standard size containers. And we need many such ships to keep the world turning. Scale is mind boggling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ships
Humans made all that. Little humans, working together.
Do you think spaceships will measure their cargo capacity in twenty foot equivalent units? Standardised containers persist into orbit, and beyond?
I can't imagine moving twenty one thousand TEUs of anything, let alone between planets. Who would need/want so much Stuff? And whatever kind of stuff would they just not get locally?
Historically, biologicals, often processed. Tea and spices obviously, but textiles start out as plant or animal fibres before all that skilled processing. It's plenty reasonable to have such things belong to the ecosystem of only one planet.
Other than that, you have to wonder. Data? Depends on the stardrive.
Movies might not move as well as you'd think, even without a language barrier. I mean there's cultural differences that don't travel real well. And if the starship travel was specifically to bring them, the transport costs would be astronomical.
Obviously.
You'd only want your biggest stars working on that sort of scale.
...
ANYway
Timeships and universe hoppers would have different constraints. Like, the cultural goods would look weird, though you could probably sell news of the multiverse as sci fi, well edited. Hiistorians would be big into data collection - if you can combine time travel with life signs detectors then I would pay significant money for accurate population counts at regular intervals, just for my own curiousity. And surveys that could figure accurately the numbers in different social divisions, like figuring out ratios of noble to free to slave? That would be data of the shiniest sort. ... more story focused versions of history could be researched too, but there's only so much documentary you could get out of actual real life, without the people knowing you're there. Even reality tv is heightened. It'd all be a bit academic. And you'd get plenty enough argues and axes to grind to fund a bunch of time travel, but still. Academic funding, not like tea clippers or container fleets.
Ooh, historical textiles though. And heritage breeds. And an entire reversal of the current mass extinction event...
Comparing social studies stuff between closely related universes would be goldmine, but it's hard enough to get politicians to pay attention to how other countries have already done things, getting traction for elseworlds data would be... significantly tricky.
Time travel bugs me because mass stops existing for a few centuries and then comes back in coherent form. That seems like really ambitious physics.
Multiverse being close enough for recogniseable comparisons but different enough to be worth the study would also be astronomically unlikely.
Shipping raw materials is always popular, but with time travel you couldn't risk the paradox of using the same mine twice, or wrecking the timeline from knock on effects of having dug things up already. Across the multiverse you'd either have people there already using it or something like the Long Earth ready to draw away all the adventurous people. Colonisation of actual empty places.
... soooo, I started out with 'sailing ships are pretty cool' and ended up at 'but why would you need to trade across multiple universes anyway'
which I swear is a perfectly logical sequence
if you're working on the stories I have been.
The biggies you'd want to 'verse hop for would be ideas.
New patents, entire different tech development trees, and maybe magic, if the kind of energy magic uses is still available on other earths.
If you combine Banestorm and oz flow and mana rules you get a kind of winds of magic thing, where anywhere a spell driven shop can go, magic can work, just not necessarily evenly or well.
Magic is basically a whole technological development tree based on a form of energy which this universe thinks is rubbish.
But if there is a way to poke a hole in the universe so extra energy flows in, that would do Stuff to the physics, because energy is energy and it all adds up.
... accidental global warming via magic stealing bits of other Earth was actually a Diana Wynne Jones plot. Huh.
... there are no new ideas.
I seem to be buzzing of ideas this morning, but there's more reading to be done, so I shall go do it.
3e Low Tech has more to say about ships than 4e. The 2 and 3 supplements have more, but I have them in ebook and had to wait for the computer to recharge.
Different construction methods in different seas at different times made it possible to go different places with different amounts of weapons and cargo. Most kick arse ship and most useful ship weren't the same thing if you had to get a cargo somewhere. Which I knew from playing Tradewinds. I liked those games. I think I stopped playing them because the server that tells them they aren't pirated went away? I stopped playing games generally though. Not the point.
There was a bit about the Hanseatic League's ships, which were big cargo ships with big sides, so short pirates couldn't get in, and then they put castles at the end so you could shoot down off there, and then pirates didn't want to get too close neither.
Vikings kicked unexpected arse primarily because their ships could cope with epic weather but also go up rivers. Many places were Very Surprised to have unexpected vikings up their rivers. They could also fit a colony is the not-dragon boats, at least one homestead at a time. And they had pretty good reason to be elsewhere because agriculture was a bit tricky at home. So they got the stompy reputation, but they also traded all up the everywhere. Vikings are pretty awesome.
China was the first to invent nearly everything. Steam changed everything, but before that, China had you beat. I think this is because of rice being really good to eat? Also bamboo is useful. Bonus natural resources meant feeding more people whose job is doing the thinking. But they had spectacular ships. Admiral Zeng He and his Bao Chuan, treasure ships? Spectacular huge things, twice as big as anyone. To the point that wiki says there's an argue if they even existed or if there's a translation error on the units or whatever, but come on, is way more fun if the local equivalent of an aircraft carrier just rolled up to visit, as only one part of an exploring fleet. Nine masts, four decks, at least five hundred passengers. Must have been like something out of a dream. And he had bunches of them! And littler ships. A couple hundred of them! Tell you what, the new neighbours introduce themselves like that, I wouldn't be keen to annoy. And how much of the map he covered is well impressive. Story like that... well you'd apparently have plausibility problems, but it would be grand.
I love facts. They keep leading to more facts and then I know more things. Feels like eating good stuff.
Modern ships are super impressive too. I found one design for an 'ecoliner' container ship with sails, to save energy. It was supposed to be ready by 2013 but all the references I found have it as a future thing so I don't reckon that happened. Big container ships are difficult to get your head around though. One ship, 21,413 twenty foot long standard size containers. And we need many such ships to keep the world turning. Scale is mind boggling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ships
Humans made all that. Little humans, working together.
Do you think spaceships will measure their cargo capacity in twenty foot equivalent units? Standardised containers persist into orbit, and beyond?
I can't imagine moving twenty one thousand TEUs of anything, let alone between planets. Who would need/want so much Stuff? And whatever kind of stuff would they just not get locally?
Historically, biologicals, often processed. Tea and spices obviously, but textiles start out as plant or animal fibres before all that skilled processing. It's plenty reasonable to have such things belong to the ecosystem of only one planet.
Other than that, you have to wonder. Data? Depends on the stardrive.
Movies might not move as well as you'd think, even without a language barrier. I mean there's cultural differences that don't travel real well. And if the starship travel was specifically to bring them, the transport costs would be astronomical.
Obviously.
You'd only want your biggest stars working on that sort of scale.
...
ANYway
Timeships and universe hoppers would have different constraints. Like, the cultural goods would look weird, though you could probably sell news of the multiverse as sci fi, well edited. Hiistorians would be big into data collection - if you can combine time travel with life signs detectors then I would pay significant money for accurate population counts at regular intervals, just for my own curiousity. And surveys that could figure accurately the numbers in different social divisions, like figuring out ratios of noble to free to slave? That would be data of the shiniest sort. ... more story focused versions of history could be researched too, but there's only so much documentary you could get out of actual real life, without the people knowing you're there. Even reality tv is heightened. It'd all be a bit academic. And you'd get plenty enough argues and axes to grind to fund a bunch of time travel, but still. Academic funding, not like tea clippers or container fleets.
Ooh, historical textiles though. And heritage breeds. And an entire reversal of the current mass extinction event...
Comparing social studies stuff between closely related universes would be goldmine, but it's hard enough to get politicians to pay attention to how other countries have already done things, getting traction for elseworlds data would be... significantly tricky.
Time travel bugs me because mass stops existing for a few centuries and then comes back in coherent form. That seems like really ambitious physics.
Multiverse being close enough for recogniseable comparisons but different enough to be worth the study would also be astronomically unlikely.
Shipping raw materials is always popular, but with time travel you couldn't risk the paradox of using the same mine twice, or wrecking the timeline from knock on effects of having dug things up already. Across the multiverse you'd either have people there already using it or something like the Long Earth ready to draw away all the adventurous people. Colonisation of actual empty places.
... soooo, I started out with 'sailing ships are pretty cool' and ended up at 'but why would you need to trade across multiple universes anyway'
which I swear is a perfectly logical sequence
if you're working on the stories I have been.
The biggies you'd want to 'verse hop for would be ideas.
New patents, entire different tech development trees, and maybe magic, if the kind of energy magic uses is still available on other earths.
If you combine Banestorm and oz flow and mana rules you get a kind of winds of magic thing, where anywhere a spell driven shop can go, magic can work, just not necessarily evenly or well.
Magic is basically a whole technological development tree based on a form of energy which this universe thinks is rubbish.
But if there is a way to poke a hole in the universe so extra energy flows in, that would do Stuff to the physics, because energy is energy and it all adds up.
... accidental global warming via magic stealing bits of other Earth was actually a Diana Wynne Jones plot. Huh.
... there are no new ideas.
I seem to be buzzing of ideas this morning, but there's more reading to be done, so I shall go do it.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-13 12:11 pm (UTC)Which, even though I haven't read the book, gave me a vastly low opinion of the characters (won't judge the writer without having read the book). I think the plot was for some time traveler to break the rules, find out the truth, and then spend three books on the run and fighting the System.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-13 09:26 pm (UTC)also if they time travel mine stuff they might paradox the rise of technology in the first place, since a lot of it was about figuring out how to mine the slightly more difficult bit now the easy one ran out.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-13 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-13 07:34 pm (UTC)For space travel: Dirt and water would both be useful, to be certain of having the right minerals/microflora etc. for human-friendly colonies. Aside from the issue of creating living conditions when you can't be certain there are "trees" that will produce wood or paper, nor mine-able metal available in the first few years, nor rocks/sand/etc. that can make bricks we can use, any amount of biomass for compost and alcohol purposes would be useful.
On-earth colonies could always rely on the fact that there were edible foods and useful building materials where they were going, and that some of the local plants or animals would have materials that would make clothing. They could be sure that at least some of the plants and animals brought from home would be able to live in the new environment.
Intersteller travel doesn't come with that assurance. And while a colony ship might expect to do some terraforming, anything to make those first few years (decades?) easier is useful; if the storage capacity exists, being able to turn a few acres into Earthish Homestead would be great.
Also, any amount of shipping/storage space could be filled with prefab building materials and/or terraforming tech. But mostly, I'd expect that if there's a case of, "we have X cubic meters of available space, and no weight limitation," filling the containers with mud would be useful when they arrived.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-13 09:24 pm (UTC)... and now I'm remembering that there's an actual problem of running out of sand, and thinking that could happen with topsoil...
... and then they'd have to re terraform earth...
topspil is wonderfully complex though, the right kind of dirt takes far longer to make than it would to ship.
new alternatives to landfill, send it to colony worlds and see if they like it...