why on earth would anyone use a ship that requires tons of people to man the sails (like the galleon, for example, which needs 20 sails crew) when they could, instead, just strap a helm onto a small (we'll say 50 ton, since the galleon can run on a minor helm) asteroid?
the asteroid has almost as good MC (oddly, the galleon is a groundling vessel and yet has better than groundling MC it seems), costs nothing or next to nothing, has more cargo space (by 5 tons), and requires 0 sails crew (it has no sails) i mean sure, you'd have to hollow it out obviously to get any cargo space, and you'd probably want to mount some weapons on it, so it's not totally free... but then again, if you just use a mined out asteroid, which is probably still free, and spend some money on weaponry, you've got a ship which is in many ways superior to the 50,000 gp galleon.
but even more ridiculous would be the smaller groundling ships (which do have MC F). they cost more, can't hold nearly as much cargo, and require more crew... in many cases, they require almost as many crew as the ship can even carry in fact.
i'm just curious if i'm missing something obvious, or if there should be a lot more small asteroids out there flying around in wildspace...
- Ground based empires probably don't have much access to asteroids.
- Asteroids don't have gravity planes, making 'up' a difficult concept.
- Related to that, it makes securing an atmosphere difficult.
- It also makes docking a nightmare.
- Wood is generally a lot less brittle than rough stone, and certainly far far easier to make effective repairs on.
Off hand...
- Ground based empires probably don't have much access to asteroids.
if they have access to helms, they only need time (and not much of that even) to get access to asteroids.
- Asteroids don't have gravity planes, making 'up' a difficult concept.
some asteroids would indeed be considered "spherical" and would have a gravity field like a planet. on the other hand, some would be more like a discworld, and could easily have a usable gravity plane.
- Related to that, it makes securing an atmosphere difficult.
spells that generate mist or fog can create atmospheres readily enough, at least for smaller asteroids.
- It also makes docking a nightmare.
again, this depends on just what shape the asteroid is. i see no reason a reasonably flat asteroid with a flattened bottom couldn't land pm the ground. sure, without modification, you're not gonna get it perfectly level, but that may not be a concern. furthermore, docking in spelljamming communities may not involve landing at all, but rather just pulling up to a pier that sits right on the gravity plane. for docks like those, landing is irrelevant.
- Wood is generally a lot less brittle than rough stone, and certainly far far easier to make effective repairs on.
actually, in SJ wood is just more readily maneuverable than stone, and stone is stronger (has a better AR). as far as repairs, i suppose that's a valid point... unless of course you just grab yourself a new asteroid instead.
Also, cutting a stone ship will generally be more expensive than simply building a ship.
arguably, the 'ship' is already out there, in the form of small asteroids that have been mined out. even if you assume there aren't any such asteroids already out there (i mean, dwarves will just abandon a citadel once it runs out of materials... why not smaller asteroids as well?) i can't imagine it takes that much longer for moderately competent miners to dig out a few tunnels. iirc, most races can go over 20' per week per worker or something like that, according to the complete book of dwarves. so get yourself 5 people, and two weeks will make a brand new 'ship'.
so basically, so far we have the reason that it's hard to repair them.
i mean, i'm not talking about making warships out of these things (heck, it makes sense to spend actual money on a warship, because maneuverability is critical when you are expecting the ship to get into combat regularly). i'm just talking about as a trading ship mainly. but then again, why would anyone use a galleon as a warship, when anyone who is serious about war is gonna pick up a much better hull ASAP? (like a squidship... cheaper, bigger, and better at maneuvering, but still under 50 tons, with a free ram and better AR to boot!)
Unfortunately, when nations, both real and imaginary, produce a navy, production speed and cost are both very real concerns.
Sure, a ground based empire can get an asteroid hull, given *time*. But figure a week cruising time each way, plus another fortnight searching for a suitable rock. I don't want to think how long it'd take to hollow it out. Contrast that with a lumber industry that is already at full strength and ready to go (this is an empire, right?).
Sure, you can get a load of spells to constantly produce atmosphere. But if you have a hull that naturally acts as an atmosphere trap anyway, that's one less thing to go wrong and one less expense to pay in construction. I'm assuming of course wizards in your campaign don't enchant for free.
As for docking, sure you could just go for any old shape and use some kind of docking tube or spacewalk. but that's not an option for ground empires. It also makes any kind of repair dock impractical, unless your repairmen like going in freefall for a bit. Building a gantry for major repairs is essentially impossible too if you can't do a physical landing or internal docking. Anmd having odd gravity planes makes you even easier to hurt with a gravity plane shear attack.
And as your point out, wood is more readily available. That means it's cheaper. When you are building a fleet, cheap is good.
As for mined out asteroids, I'm willing to bet their structural integrity is questionable. Plus navy admirals generally liek to know how good a given ship is. That's why modern RW fleets use standardised classes of ships (at least for smaller units). If you're just grabbing random asteroids that have been mined out, you can't do such standardisation.
Adventurers are probably going to grab teh biggest ship they can find, cost be damned. With their income, it's not an issue. Traders are going to buy the best cost:profit ratio, and will probably even choose smaller/cheaper hulls so there's less risk from losing a ship, and the ship itself won't be a prize for pirates to take. Space navies will choose cheaper (ie non-premium) materials in order to get more bang for the buck. I guess an exception in navies might be the flagship, where teh same money nbo object concepts that apply to adventurers would take place.
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I was almost going to delete the above when I saw your final comment that you were thinking in terms of trading ships.
merchants are going to purposely choose small-medium hulls, they won't be too bothered about optimising it for agility, and they won't be putting too many weapons on it. They are out to maximise profit per journey. Each weapon represents a few tons of cargo not being used for trading. unless the ship is a pure warship, it will probably be outgunned by any pirate too. Which make a great adventure hook, but it's economic suicide for merchants.
A real merchant is going to have optimised traders and optimised warships. Those traders are juicy enough targets for theirr cargo. There's no reason to double that value by making the ship itself valuable enough to be worth stealing (and incidentally increasing the costs if lost). Better to make the trader cheap enough that it's no great loss if it gets destroyed.
The optimised warship runs interference for the merchantship of course.
The above of course changes for independant captains, as they operate more like adventurers than as part of a merchant fleet.
What you've essentially countered with is saying that if time nd money is no object, then stone is a better deal (except for repairs). In that, you may well be right.
Unfortunately, when nations, both real and imaginary, produce a navy, production speed and cost are both very real concerns.
Sure, a ground based empire can get an asteroid hull, given *time*. But figure a week cruising time each way, plus another fortnight searching for a suitable rock. I don't want to think how long it'd take to hollow it out. Contrast that with a lumber industry that is already at full strength and ready to go (this is an empire, right?).
Sure, you can get a load of spells to constantly produce atmosphere. But if you have a hull that naturally acts as an atmosphere trap anyway, that's one less thing to go wrong and one less expense to pay in construction. I'm assuming of course wizards in your campaign don't enchant for free.
As for docking, sure you could just go for any old shape and use some kind of docking tube or spacewalk. but that's not an option for ground empires. It also makes any kind of repair dock impractical, unless your repairmen like going in freefall for a bit. Building a gantry for major repairs is essentially impossible too if you can't do a physical landing or internal docking. Anmd having odd gravity planes makes you even easier to hurt with a gravity plane shear attack.
And as your point out, wood is more readily available. That means it's cheaper. When you are building a fleet, cheap is good.
As for mined out asteroids, I'm willing to bet their structural integrity is questionable. Plus navy admirals generally liek to know how good a given ship is. That's why modern RW fleets use standardised classes of ships (at least for smaller units). If you're just grabbing random asteroids that have been mined out, you can't do such standardisation.
no, you're missing the point. it *isn't* expensive at all to get the asteroid hull. it's 0 (the cost of the asteroid) + the cost of paying a handful of miners for a few weeks... heck, probably only some of them need the skill even. maybe add on some gold for a few cloud type spells, which simply create air and leave it there.
it *isn't* any more time consuming than building a ship. it takes several weeks to build a 50 ton ship. an asteroid roughly 10 yards high, 10 yards wide, and 50 yards long is a 50 ton ship. a single human miner can work 25 cubic feet of 'hard' stone per 8 hour day (if you use soft or very soft, even faster). for the 50 ton ship, you're looking at a total volume for the asteroid of 135,000 cubic feet. however, 10 feet of height is lost in between two decks. presumably a good 5 feet off each side, at the very least, is lost for the sides of the hull, and a similar amount for front and back. so you're looking at a volume of (150 - 10) * (30 - 10) * (30 - 10) = 56,000 cubic feet. that's 2240 man-days (8 hour days, that is). assuming 3 shifts, and say 30 men per shift, you're looking at about 25 days. not that bad, really. paying 90 gp per week for wages, (assuming miners get paid the same as stonemasons, which i kinda doubt... traditionally stonemasons are professionals and would get paid better), that's 3.5 weeks, or 315 gp.
315 gp and 3.5 weeks to turn an asteroid into a suitable ship? not that bad if you ask me. add on a week or so to and from the asteroid, and maybe keep the crews on for another half week to level the side you want to land on, maybe add some other finishing touches, and you're looking at around 6 weeks to produce a 50 ton ship, costing 360 gp, plus the cost of sending a ship out to collect the asteroid, and a few atmosphere-generating spells (which shouldn't cost much, because you're looking at low level stuff). i would guess you're looking at a total of less than 1,000 gp per asteroid ship. of course, this assumes you don't just use large rocks, which are hardly only available in space... last i checked, large rocks can be found on the ground too, so if you figure maybe another week of work to get that instead of sending a ship into space, you've got a cost of 450 gp for the ship, very standardized design, and only 5 weeks to make them.
(actually, could someone check my math there? it's starting to feel weird... 10 yards by 10 yards by 1 yard should be 100 cubic yards, shouldn't it?)
the shape i have presented would be able to land on any reasonably level field (there's nothing to damage, it's just rock!), would be readily replaceable for cheaper than any but the most basic repairs, and can handle landings at docks in space as well, due to a fairly reasonable shape. incidentally, given the ready availability of old replaced hulls my plan would generate, imo it wouldn't be long before at least a minimal space station appears. in fact, considering how desireable a space station should be (more on this later) i would say the stations should be quite common!
heck, i would even go so far as to say that if you were to load these things up with weapons, you could make a decent warship out of them (for defensive purposes only), and they would actually have very consistent capabilities, and not especially odd shapes either.
now then, as for space stations... quite frankly these should be very common. why, you ask? because non-spelljammer methods of propulsion are so much cheaper than helms it isn't even funny. according to the RAW, you can outfit a 100 ton ship with a 10,000 gp nonmagical engine to get SR 1. not exactly impressive, but considering you can make such ships for probably under 11,000 gp + weapons as compared to a whopping 250,000 gp for the major helm and another 100,000 or so for the ship most likely, + weapons... and no spellcaster is required to power it either. for fighters, rudders of propulsion are even cheaper, and give you a fleet that is faster than many attacking fleets and incredibly maneuverable. of course, this fleet has some problems:
1) long range capabilities (ie interplanetary) are virtually nil.
2) you can land on a planet, but you can't get back up from anything large.
solution? build a space station. out of used ship hulls. with your super cheap defense force, and with a couple of regular spelljammers to run supplies and crew back and forth from the planet you could be doing alright.
please, feel free to poke holes in it if you can... i'm considering turning this idea into a group that actually uses this idea (not to mention chicken-powered lifejammers for the extra savings...) so i'd like to have any glaring problems solved before i do that ;)
[edit] just some clarifications.... [/edit]
Oerth to the Grinder (nearest convenient asteroid field) is 2 days each way according to the Greyspace book. I figure on 3 days minimum spent searching for a suitable hull. There's rocks every few miles, but you need one that is of a rather particular size and shape.
One ton of hull is 100 cu yd, or 2700 cu ft. You plan on having 56,000 cu ft worked over. By your figures, one man day (of 8 hours) can work over 25 cu ft of hard stone (more for soft stone). I can't find a rules cite, but it seems reasonable. incidentally, it *will* be hard stone. Soft rock types don't form in space, seeing as how it lacks the appropriate geological processes.
That makes 56k / 25 = 2240 man days. That's 25 days with a crew of 90 men working around the clock in 30-man shifts.
DMG says a craftsman (including stonemasons) gets paid 3sp a day. 90 men x 25 days x 3sp is 675gp. I'd insist on craftsman level skill here. A miner is simply interested in excavating. He isn't interested in long term stability of the mine, or in working the surfaces, or in preventing deep fissures in the rock that might cause potential weak points in a ship hull. Add another 4 days travel, and 3 days search time (I figure you aren't going to find a just right rock instantly). 90 men x (25 + 7) days x 3sp = 864 gp. Note that I have NOT counted the cost of the officers commanding this ship; their salaries will also need paying.
A bit more than your estimate, but still pretty good value.
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The big isssue is that rocks are essentially random. The odds of finding 2 large rocks of 50x10x10 yards are low to infinitesimal. The shape of asteroids is just way too random.
Second big issue is that what we've calculated here is a wholesale price. There aren't any decent rules for lumberjacks in the rulebooks unfortunately, but I'd be willing to bet the wholesale price for a wooden ship calculated in a simialr manner would also be astonisingly low. You just can't compare wholesale and retail prices like this.
Next, non-magical propulsion. The rules state they cost 10k gp (vs 100k gp for a minor helm), have a SR of one, and cannot lift off from any world larger than size "A" (10 miles across), and have no effective interplanetary speed (ok, 17 mph). The above is taken from Concordance of Arcane Space.
That lift-off restriction is the real killer. It effectively means standard non-magical propulsion is useless for landing on any but the smallest of bodies. It's a decent backup in case you strike an anti-magic nebula, but there's no way a ship with just this is going to leave the planetary space of the shipyard, and no way it will land on a planet.
I can't find rules for that rudder of propulsion, so I can't comment on it.
As for space stations, they too are pretty much immobile on an interplanetary scale using non-magical propulsion. At 17 mph, you could get a rock from the Grinder to Oerth orbit in 200,000,000 miles / 17 mph = a little over 32 thousand years.
Even with that space station, your home world will see civilization collapse and recover several times before it arrives at its target.
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Conclusions:
Non-magical propulsion has no useful interplanetary speed *at all*. A 1 day journey with a jammer helm takes 16,000 years without magical propulsion.
The prices for the stone hull are based on calculated wholesale models. It isn't appropriate to compare that to the 'retail' list prices in the various gamebooks. A calculated wholesale price for a wooden hull would also get a ridiculously low price.
Some ideas:
A planet with a field of suitably small asteroids (for ship hulls and as docking stations) could make a fleet of either wooden or stone hulled ships with non-magical engines. If we assume list prices, they can easily produce ships at 2x the rate of ships with magical helms, and defenders almost always have numerical superiority even without such convenient production ratios. Such a world is effectively impossible to invade.
fwiw, I personally feel the price of helms is utterly borken. With pricing as it is, there is a massive incentive for players to go raiding merchant ships, ripping the helm out, and leaving the rest behind.
i wasn't actually suggesting SR1 for the space station (unless it's a very small space station... the nonmagical engine is for ships, not for space stations). the space station gets to the world because you don't bother repairing your ships, you just replace them (which makes me consider the possibilities of making sections that are actually 10 x 10 x 10 yards, and able to be attached together to form ships... )
anyways, having replaced the hull on the ship (read: moved the engine/helm to a new hull), you would then have a leftover hull. these are what you would build your space station out of.
the 25 cubic feet is from the complete book of dwarves, and is for mining. considering the miners are probably not huge fans of large amounts of rock collapsing on them, i would say they are at least somewhat concerned about structural integrity of the mine. but i suppose at least one stonemason per shift would be a good idea to handle certain aspects, and even with nothing but skilled craftsmen you're still getting a crazy cheap bargain... cheaper than for building a wooden ship i would guess, at any rate.
in any event, people would tend to protect their lumber (especially in wildspace, where it isn't as common). many people could care less about you stealing their rocks.
so anyways, the fleet of SR1 ships as a defense is something you can agree with at least then? (the station i would certainly charge more for movement... probably at least 10,000 gp per 100 tons, imo, since the largest ships allowed in the base set is 100 tons)
certainly for offensive purposes a nation would place actual helms of some kind in the ship, since you aren't going to get anywhere with just tactical speed. they would also need such ships for shuttling between the planet and the station, at the very least.
the rudder of propulsion is an item that can be placed on any ship that weighs less than 2 tons iirc (note that this is weight, not spacial tonnage). there are references in published material to attaching it onto a flitter, so at least a 1 ton fighter is possible, provided it's made of a light material (ie, the stone ships idea breaks down at this point... they would need some kind of wooden ship for this probably.) it also cannot take off from anything above size A, but has an SR of 6, grants whatever it's attached to MC A (regardless of base MC, btw...) and doesn't require a spellcaster pilot. oh, and it costs 3,000 gp. i think they were first mentioned in realmspace (used mostly/almost exclusively by Wa... at first, that is), but also show up in the war captain's box, and maybe complete spacefarer... for some reason there is a reference to it being able to travel at spelljamming speeds in the phlogiston "as well". it never explicitly says it can do so in wildspace, and i get the feeling it isn't intended to, but if it can actually travel at spelljamming speeds in wildspace also, it would allow very limited offensive capabilities. (ie basically you could now attack completely undefended targets... i wouldn't recommend attacking anything else) on a side note, i don't think the reference to spelljamming speeds in phlogiston can be found outside of the realmspace book, so that may have been unintentional or something.
and on a side note, i agree completely on one point... helms are too expensive.
why on earth would anyone use a ship that requires tons of people to man the sails (like the galleon, for example, which needs 20 sails crew) when they could, instead, just strap a helm onto a small (we'll say 50 ton, since the galleon can run on a minor helm) asteroid?
I thought the point of groundling ships is that they're used by, well, groundlings. IOW, people who don't have access to anything better.
Wyvern
I thought the point of groundling ships is that they're used by, well, groundlings. IOW, people who don't have access to anything better.
Wyvern
well, they probably don't realise that a 50 spatial ton chunk of rock is better in so many ways. i'm sure if they realised how much cheaper and faster it is to bolt a helm to a big rock, they wouldn't use groundling ships as much. that being said, the galleon does have at least two advantages over the big rock (only one of which is shared with other groundling craft):
1) slightly better MC (galleon only)
2) not especially noticeable to groundling cultures... which can be very important for some ports of call.
and it has a huge drawback as compared to the nonmagical method: one hit from a large weapon and anything piloted by a rudder of propulsion is gone. kaput. no more. (the rudder is also quite vulnerable to flame, which can be a problem if someone fireballs your ship... iirc, it doesn't even get a save... ) furthermore, since you probably can't squeeze much better than maybe thick wood (and i have my doubts about that, even... i would say thin wood if you want a ship large enough to be one spacial ton), it's going to be an easy target (remember, MC does nothing for armor)
on the other hand, i can make a 100 ton battleship with a 10,000 gp propulsion system which is not vulnerable to dispel magic, and which does get a save against fire. (although, personally, i think there should be a cost per ton, much like other options... the flat rate just doesn't work for me). the ship would also be able to tow more (probably a common duty for ships limited to tactical speed), carry more cargo, and support a much more impressive crew complement and much more frightening weapon batteries.
however, in it's very limited case (for small, lightweight ships that don't need to be able to carry a lot and don't need to go interplanetary distances) the rudder of propulsion is indeed a very good choice.
for large, slow, space tugs? definitely nonmagical engine (note: on some ships, better than SR 1 is possible as well... though these should presumably boost the rudder of propulsion too).
for a mobile weapons/troop platform? definitely nonmagical engine.
but otherwise, the rudder does indeed provide excellent interceptors/fighters for a very reasonable price. (it should be noted that they are also hard to find... most are found only in Wa, and it's treason to sell one apparently. that being said, it shouldn't be too hard for mages elsewhere to duplicate it... )
I still maintain that both of those are only really useful as planetary defence monitors.
I guess it is possibel to create a deep space station by flying out big rocks to point X and stitching them together, but why bother? Deep space has no strategic value, and any place that does have strategic value doesn't need a space station. (exception for orbital bases around a planet that uses NM helms/rudders for defence).
It seems to me the only real difference between that rudder and the NM-helm is the rudder has a ton limit of 2 tons, compared to 100 tons for the NM helm. In practical terms, neither can enter the phlogiston. I assume they can survive the phlogiston itself, but the travel time to get there is ludicrous. That the rudder will collapse given any heavy weapons hit seems as much a function of the hull size as the engine itself.
I still maintain that both of those are only really useful as planetary defence monitors.
I guess it is possibel to create a deep space station by flying out big rocks to point X and stitching them together, but why bother? Deep space has no strategic value, and any place that does have strategic value doesn't need a space station. (exception for orbital bases around a planet that uses NM helms/rudders for defence).
once again, that is two normal tons, not two spacial tons. so pretty much thin wood is gonna be just about your only choice, and will get you up to about 1 spacial ton if you are careful with your materials.
and to clarify, you are correct: the rudder doesn't collapse. the ship does.
and deep space stations could potentially have value... as a waypoint, trading station, or even just a place to refresh your air envelope. thus, the simple act of creating a space station in deep space has the potential to give that part of deep space strategic value. also keep in mind that teleportation magic (and similar effects) can work between planets (in 2nd edition anyways... iirc, in SotSM they arbitrarily do not, because they removed crystal shells...). so simply having a place where a mage can teleport to (or someone using other magic) can be an extremely valuable asset to the right organisation or individual. being able to move key personnel around quickly could end up being very important.
that being said, i don't recall ever saying anything about deep space stations before... from the beginning the station was intended to be a location above a planet(oid), allowing ships that cannot travel at spelljamming speeds to dock for repairs and such, and act as a defensive fleet for a nation that cannot afford a large standard spelljamming fleet.
and on a side note, technically there's nothing that says you can't install the standard nonmagical engine on any ship that exists... arguably, you could put one on a 200 ton ship (again, see Wa in realmspace for details), or even a 700 ton ship (dwarven citadel at max size). which, once again, is exactly why i think there should be a cost per ton rather than a flat rate... consider if it were 10,000 gp for a 100 ton ship, that works out to 100 gp per ton. at that point, rudders of propulsion would be more expensive than nonmagical solutions (which imo is how it should be).
of course, if i were in charge of setting prices, i would probably cut all the prices to 1/5 for helms anyways... probably cut the prices on the hulls too, imo (my main issue being with how expensive groundling ships were in the first place... when you start tossing around numbers like 10,000 gp for even the most basic ships, you are basically saying "no one in their right mind would ever own one". there wouldn't *be* any merchants with ships, because it simply wouldn't be worth it at that price imo...
see, imo the problem is that certain things are ludicrously expensive. buildings being one of them.
but, basically, here's my point: at 3 sp per day, we're looking at 1095 sp per year. iirc, it's 10 sp to the gp in second edition (which i am assuming is where you got that figure from? mind you, if it's 3rd, we're still dealing with 1:10 ratio), which means the average skilled worker is making about 110 gp per year... assuming they work 7 days a week that is. minimum 8 years of pay, assuming they spend no money, is not exactly chump change... and that's for a crappy, piece of junk ship with no seaworthiness requirements whatsoever.
if we are to assume that private enterprise on the sea is an actual possibility, i have a hard time believing that the cheapest commercial vessel is 500 gp. i have a hard time believing that a raft, which can be made from driftwood and rope, costs 100 gp. and i have a really hard time believing that any merchant is going to be able to come up with 3,000 gp to buy a basic merchant vessel is ludicrous. and who are these ridiculously expensive ships being sold to, anyways? in a world where someone with 1,000 gp is supposed to be incredibly rich, how many people are going to be able to afford a 3,000 gp ship, let alone a 5, 10, 15, 30, or 50 thousand gp ship? in such a situation, the only ships in the ocean are basically going to be military vessels owned by wealthy nations.
now let's switch to talking about wildspace. the tradesman is not competing with warships for it's purpose. it's a trader. so, you have to ask: who's going to pay for a tradesman, when they don't need the ship to meet any particularly demanding standards? realistically, they should be competing with ships such as my 50 ton rockships above... and assuming you allow the builder to make a very nice profit margin of 1000% you've got a cost of about 9,000 gp for the rockship, which can carry a heck of a lot more, is tougher, and requires fewer crew (read: costs less to operate). clearly, the tradesman is drastically overpriced. furthermore, with costs such as those for the helms + the ship, i see no real way of there being privately owned spelljamming ships, as is. the prices need to come down, imo, not just for the helms, but also for the ships that aren't prime military vessels. for example: i completely agree that someone might pay 50,000 gp for a hammership (assuming, that is, it was fixed to agree with the ship design rules... should have a minimum crew of 7, iirc, and probably a better MC as well... ) because we're talking about a military ship at this point. sure, if a merchant house had one for protection, they'd load it up with trade goods just like the actual tradeships it protects. even moreso i could see spending a lot of money on a vipership (no sails crew required, *and* MC A? sounds like a winner to me!).
i just don't see a galleon being worth 50,000 gp in wildspace, as it stands. the rockship has too many advantages over it as a tradeship. it would need to be either a suitable warship (ie much more maneuverable) or much cheaper before i could call it reasonably priced.
heck, even in a groundling campaign, 50,000 still seems like too much for it. simply put, with the prices listed i just don't see any sort of privately owned ships in the sea. it's too expensive, and it will take generations before you make back your money.
[edit] oh, and the helms are plenty to keep spelljammers uncommon. even at 20,000 gp for a minor helm plus a few thousand gp for a crappy tradeship hull, you're looking at a very large investment. i don't see any need to worry about them becoming common. [/edit]
Now, its your campaign to make em cheap if you like. Im just showing you a logical consequence. use it if you like.
Actually, as you noted, its not just helms that are mispriced. Almost every single item has a bizarre price structure in the rulebooks. You cant do a reasonable workaround liek you arer trying unless you also fix absolutely everything. Either you deliberately suspend disbelief on prices, or you acceprt prices as written. or something. Your campaign really.
For my campaign alot of nations are not aware of spelljamming and those that are aware do so for the following reasons:
One: easier to convert a "groundling" to spelljam then to spend the time and money to make a specialized spelljammer ship.
Two: Groundling ships fit in at a spelljamming ports. An odd looking ship would draw prehaps toooooo much attention.
Three: One of the cloakmaster books mentioned that a Whaleship when going to land at sea was not very sea worthy and the city they visiting required them to land out at sea and sail into port. (Night Druid will be able to list both the book in series and what page it from, as at this time i not able to find my books ... tucked away in storage).
Depends on compaign really ...
For my campaign alot of nations are not aware of spelljamming and those that are aware do so for the following reasons:
One: easier to convert a "groundling" to spelljam then to spend the time and money to make a specialized spelljammer ship.
you're not designing much of anything. just taking a big, rectangular rock, putting rooms in it by tunneling it out, and bolting a helm to it somewhere. and i would have to say it is much easier to build my rockships than it is to build a new galleon, for example... 6 weeks for a 50 ton ship, costing under 1,000 gp, versus having to build a new galleon to replace the one you just sent into space... which will probably take longer, and will almost definitely cost more.
Two: Groundling ships fit in at a spelljamming ports. An odd looking ship would draw prehaps toooooo much attention.
Three: One of the cloakmaster books mentioned that a Whaleship when going to land at sea was not very sea worthy and the city they visiting required them to land out at sea and sail into port. (Night Druid will be able to list both the book in series and what page it from, as at this time i not able to find my books ... tucked away in storage).
actually, many groundling nations require you to land at sea and sail in. and if you're going to trade with groundling nations, then i suppose i could see a need for this. of course, on the other hand... permanent image is not all that expensive either, and will keep most normal folks from noticing anything odd. those who interract with the illusion may see through it, but since they would have to know about spelljamming ships anyways, who cares? and a ship that can fly through air shouldn't have any problems with floating on the water, though this means a helmsman would be needed constantly (works best with helm types that allow multiple helmsman, such as series helms, or ones that require no helmsman at all... furnaces/artifurnaces, pool helms, pump helms, and lifejammers for example...)
Three: One of the cloakmaster books mentioned that a Whaleship when going to land at sea was not very sea worthy and the city they visiting required them to land out at sea and sail into port. (Night Druid will be able to list both the book in series and what page it from, as at this time i not able to find my books ... tucked away in storage).
Near the last quarter of 2nd book, and it was a hammership, btw. And a hammership, overall, fairs poorly in open seas. It has a riverboat design (aka a shallow keel), not a sea boat (a deep keel).
I'll not debate the merits of one design over another here, not my interest, but I have ran a trade campaign in "Spelljammer" before and looked over the price list and worked out the supply and demand angle for wood, foods, fabrics and water pretty well.
First off a stone ship, no matter the cost of the construction crew, will be cheaper than a wooden one. Wood in the Wildspace enviroment will always be pricey as little grows on asteroids and all other sources are planet side. Those who brave planetside and cut the lumber can demand near any price, otherwise you go roofless and shipless. Same goes for food, water and most fabrics (grow cotten or corn on the asteroid, hmmm). Rock is the one thing space has in abundance besides vacuum thus it's dirt cheap: its the wood of Wildspace.
Think the Middle East and the West. In the US a new brick (not cinderblock, real brick) house is a status symbol, as brick is costly and wood very cheap. In the Middle East brick is cheap (they have sand in abundance folks) and wood near nonexistant thus a wood house is a true status symbol. What wood there is (Lebanese cedar ect.) is only available to the wealthy. Ships, by the way, were built and partly owned by a wealthy sponsor due to this and the Captain who commanded it. Sinbad was alway one step ahead of loosing his ship and it's a theme in Sci Fi to this day. Buying a ship always put one into debt for some time.
Also shipping cost is the bulk of the price you pay (hence why you pay more when gas prices rise) and a ship and helm are expensive to keep up and repair. You feed and clothe that crew boys and girls, not just pay 'em, and wizards cost more as they move up in levels. And you pay them when they aren't working too. Thus any wood, much of the food and clothing and any groundling items are like wood and food in the desert: Up to 10X what you pay on the ground in a temperate zone (at least 2x). It's the nature of trade in a resource poor but money rich zone!
Lastly a merchant oriented society as Wildspace would be would have complex finances and thus loans, letters of credit, and banks (in the Rennaissance fashion) so purchasing a ship is a matter of getting a loan, then staying ahead of the payments. Think how often this is used in Sci Fi, and it's used in Sinbad. Due to the costs of building a ship, in Oman the Captain would go into partnership with a Merchant. The Merchant fronted the loan to the captain, the captain commanded the ship, both split the profits until the captain paid off the merchant's loan.
I'm sure all of you see the adventure potential in such arrangements. I'm sure ya'll can see the methods a bank or co-owner can keep track of is investment as well, in case the captain decided to skip out on the payments!
Well that's my rant, make of it what you will. I'm not debating the merits of a stone ship stats wise, just that it's economicly viable and practical.
- Because its kewl.
- Its Fantasy.
- Im the DM and can adjust rules to make my players happy.
- I like Treasure Planet.
- Flying clippers just scream High Fantasy.
- Big rocks look stupid, ie the Argosy used by the Gravs and the Stoneship used by the Xorn.
- Logic and "real" science tends to fly out the window when we are dealing with Flat planets, Stars that are the Thrones of God's and invading Werewolf Navies.
Just to name a few reasons...
But why debate it...its a "dead" campaign setting and if you want big rocks as ships so be it, you dont need any of our approval. Its not like the Wizards of the Coast are gonna say " Gee your so right, thats why we killed SJ, here you go re do it for us."
Really if you got a issue with it change it, its your Campaign......:P
certainly, since no one has really been able to give a logical reason why it wouldn't work, i will most likely use it... once i get around to it... put all my ideas together, and probably come up with an asteroid of some kind where some group uses all or most of them =P
mostly i was just wanting to see if there were any major pitfalls or drawbacks to the plan, and i figured it was best to get more than just my own opinion on it =P
There really cant be any pitfalls and draw backs, your the DM, you can bend reality to make anything possible :D
certainly, since no one has really been able to give a logical reason why it wouldn't work, i will most likely use it... once i get around to it... put all my ideas together, and probably come up with an asteroid of some kind where some group uses all or most of them =P
Logic, LOL.....really has nothing to do with Fantasy.....not when Magic is involved.
I can say I would never use your Idea, it seems it takes away a part of the feeling of Spelljammer.....
But thats my Opinion......:P
There really cant be any pitfalls and draw backs, your the DM, you can bend reality to make anything possible :D
Logic, LOL.....really has nothing to do with Fantasy.....not when Magic is involved.
I can say I would never use your Idea, it seems it takes away a part of the feeling of Spelljammer.....
But thats my Opinion......:P
He was trying to see if there was a logical reason not to use it within the context of the game world.
Personally, if the Dwarves can do it, I don't see why other races couldn't. Sure they would be limited by the power of what you use to move it, but other than that it should be fine.
ok, maybe i'm just missing something, but this has kinda been bothering me for a while.
You have brought in two ideas in this thread. I'm going to try to answer those ideas separately because I agree with the first (using asteroids) but disagree with the second (asteroids are better than groundling ships).
Asteroids in space: Firstly you have brought up the idea of using flying asteroids (or carved out stoneships) in a Spelljammer game. I don't think that is so bad an idea.
However, it is unfair for you to claim that asteroids are free. You might as well claim that diamonds are also free. Suitable asteroids need to be found. You will need to obtain a spelljamming ship, a crew to man the ship and a spare helm. You then need to fly out into the void and hunt down something so small that it will definately not show up on a planetary locator.
When you arrive you might be faced with a posionous atmosphere or an infestation of dangerous space creatures (or something deadly like a murderoid). So you will need to have people with you who can identify threats. If any danger is there you will need to deal with it or write off any supplies you have used and move on to another asteroid.
Your journey to get your asteroid is an expedition and you will be paying out money with no return until you actually use your asteroid for something useful. If you want lots of asteroids then you will need to mount lots of expeditions to get them all.
If you intend to hollow asteroids out to carry cargo then you will also need experts who can do that. You suggest that you can get by with mostly miners and a few expert stonemasons, but don't forget that any weaknesses in your asteroid could form cracks that split it in two during combat or manouvers . Ordinary stonemasons would also not be aware of the stress and strain put onto a spelljamming vessel so you should really have some shiprights in your construction crew.
And as for fitting weapons, to normal or hollowed out asteroids, this obviously means hiring weaponsmiths.
Another problem is that you are essentially building a "one off ship", so you have no idea where the gravity will go until you finish construction. Each asteroid you find is going to be a slightly different shape and have a slightly different mass. A lot of knowlege would be needed to carve out a ship that had useful gravity planes, enough storage space and didn't have structural weakness. In other words you are going to have to try carving asteroids a few different ways until you come up with a reliable design for a "stoneship". You are going to have to invent the "asteroidmason".
As far as I know the only people who already have the skill to do all this are the dwarves. So the cheapest way to get asteroid ships would be to get them to carve them for you. If you don't want to hire dwarves to do this then you will have to repeat all the research and design work they have done over the millenia and that will mean that you make a few failed ships along the way.
I think it is a little bit unfair of you to dismiss the time, money and resorces that would be involved in making a new type of ship (and say it has zero cost). Your idea does have some merits, but you must be willing to look at the downsides of the idea. (People could equally say that groundling ships are free because they are made mostly from trees and they are free.)
Asteroids vs groundling ships: Secondly you have said that you think asteroids are better than groundling ships. I think you have also ignored the strengths of groundling ships when you said this.
Anyone wishing to trade with a planet with large seas would be wise to consider using groundling ships to visit ports on the planet. Ports are more likely to be set up to trade with outsiders than cities far away from the sea. Groundling ships may be poor in space, but spacefaring ships are poor on the sea. All groundling ships are ships that are designed to land on water. Better than that they are also designed to float in the sea, so you can land a couple of miles out and pretend you are from the same planet.
However if you are not trading with worlds then the advantages of groundling ships start to go away. And when visiting places like the Rock of Bral that have gravity planes, the ability to land is totally negated.
In this sort of environment (and only in this sort of environment) your idea starts to look a lot more attractive. But how often do people make journeys that don't involve landing on something?
Asteroids are not designed to land on planets, so if you plonk a helm on one and try flying into an atmosphere, you might find it falling apart under the strain.
So while I do agree that there should be more flying asteroids out there, I don't agree that they are better than groundling ships. I think that the only thing you could do with them is move them from one place to another.
Where astroids might be useful: However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't use your idea. Just bear in mind that it isn't the best solution for wildspace and some group (perhaps pirates) could come along and exploit its weakness. However given sufficient backup from the sort of ships you don't like, I think your idea would have its place in wildspace. But it would be a minor role. A specialist role. You need to find places and situations situations where an asteroid can be some sort of resource and then use helms to bring asteroids to those places.
You mentioned at one point that you could lock several asteroids together and I think that would be a role that would be very attractive to various spacefaring organisations.
Your asteroids could be turned into cosmic building bricks and could be used to build giant cities in space. If you can find yourself a large planet (especially a groundling world) with lots of resources, but no moon then you could build an orbital trading station that collects goods from the surface and sells them on to spacefarers.
I'd personally send out 3 ships to an asteroid field to pick up and escort back an asteroid. Stonemasons could be landed on the rock as well as three helmsmen (enough to keep the rock moving during 3 8-hour shifts). The stonemason team could carve the rock into a useful shape on the way back to the assembly point. You would probably want to carve flat shapes on the blocks and then carve in some sort of joint (like a mortise and tenon joint) that would stop the blocks sliding across each other during or after construction. You might also need to create some sort of support structure to keep the various building blocks tied together (something like gigantic steel nuts and bolts).
Powerful space empires (like the Sun Mages of Clusterspace) would be keen to build large constructions that can perform the same function as groundling castles.
The Church of Ptah would probably want to build a few mile high pyramids if they could afford them.
A stone circle could be build in space. This "Spacehenge" might be attractive to druids.
(If you say "Spacehenge" a Night Druid might appear! ;) )
Actually I've been working for a while on an idea involving druids in space and will probably now try to include some sort of Spacehenge. I don't think I'd have thought about it without this thread, so thanks.
Asteroids would also be useful during war with societies based on large planets as you could drop them onto large cities as weapons of mass destruction. However, this sort of tactic would probably turn into a war that goes on until one or both sides was totally destroyed. I've already thought about using this for the same undeveloped idea. But now I've thought of having a Spacehenge, I might make waring groundlings canabilise space circles to create their weapons.
- Asteroids don't have gravity planes, making 'up' a difficult concept.
- Related to that, it makes securing an atmosphere difficult.
That isn't true. Anything that goes into wildspace secures an air envelope based on its size. The actual shape of the object doesn't matter. And it also doesn't matter if it has a spherical gravity, a gravity plane or several gravity planes.
If you look at the main types of helms a minor helm moves anything up to 50 tons and a major helm moves anything up to 100 tons. The SJCS doesn't make it clear enough that these are tons of displacement - not weight. So a 50 ton ship or a 50 ton asteroid both have an atmosphere of 50 tons of air.
A 50 ton ship would have a standard crew of 50 and the air would stay fresh for 4 months. This means that if the air around the asteroid was fresh when you arrived it would also last for 4 months x 50 people. The air would stay fresh for 200 months if only one person (presumably a helmsman) was on the asteroid. And if you knew that the journey was going to take a lot less that 4 months you could overload the asteroid and get stonemasons to carve stone on the way.
Although, having said that I do think that the dust made from carving out the asteroid would pollute the air and lessen the time that the air would stay fresh. I don't think Jaid has taken pollution into account in her calculations.
- It also makes docking a nightmare.
With a 50 ton asteroid you would probably get small ships to land on you (on whatever part of the asteroid was easiest to land on).
- Wood is generally a lot less brittle than rough stone, and certainly far far easier to make effective repairs on.
Wood works well under a lot of different situations (compression, tension, bending) and stone is a lot less versatile. However, if you put them both under compression the wood would break before the stone.
I would think that if an asteroid was to ram a groundling ship that the asteroid would take a lot less damage. However, I can't see asteroids being any use for anything except brute force. They don't have the grace for hit and run attacks.
A groundling ship would need to avoid being rammed, but if it had a high enough MC to evade the other ship it could repeatedly fire weapons at its sluggish opponant until it eventually starts to break up.
Asteroid fleets would be able to overwealm groundling ships, but that is the sort Scro would use. Once spacefarers saw what was going on they would be able to exploit the weaknesses of the design and use ships with high MCs to pick the asteroids off one at a time.
rockships are not strictly better than spelljamming ships, just groundling ships. rockships are only better than spelljamming ships for certain uses, specifically those where low costs are imperative, and high mobility is not. you don't need to find asteroids if you don't want to, you can just use a large rock from a planet, break apart a planetoid, etc. or set up your shipyard in an asteroid field.
as far as what i haven't dealt with: stonemasons and miners are perfectly experienced at dealing with the complications caused by gravitational forces on the structures they build, i assure you. gravity is, generally speaking, the greatest force these stoneships should ever expect to face.
you don't need a shipwright, because you aren't trying to make a ship per se, you're just building a structure and strapping a helm to it. for similar reasons, you don't need to spend time on ship design. strictly speaking, you could find a rock that is 20 tons, attach a helm to it, and fly it around. you don't need to design it unless you want better than MC F. so long as MC F suits your needs, no design is required.
the cost of getting an asteroid ship rises in direct proportion to the amount of piracy in the system. The amount of piracy in the system is proportional to the cheapness of hulls. It's self-balancing. Stone ships are hard to get because if they were eay, everyone would have them and piracy would be rife.
you know, i had a really long post to answer you bigmac... but then i just realised it would make the thread needlessly longer. i've resolved most of those points already, just go back and look.
Actually Jaid, not only did I actually read the entire thread before I replied to you, I also thougth about it for a couple of days before I answered. I thought you were overlooking the flaws in your idea. In post 23 you said this:
certainly, since no one has really been able to give a logical reason why it wouldn't work, i will most likely use it... once i get around to it... put all my ideas together, and probably come up with an asteroid of some kind where some group uses all or most of them =P
This post was what originally made me say that I thought you were dismissing the disadvantages of asteroid ships (or carved out asteroid ships). You didn't seem to be listening to a lot of people who seemed to be saying stuff that seemed logical enough to me.
Your question was quite a complex one (as I said you threw two ideas into one thread) and I wanted to consider it/them both carefully before I gave you an answer. (In fact if you look at unworked asteroids, mined out asteroids and asteroids vs groundling ships there are actually 3 different ideas here. Two of which I think are interesting and worth further consideration. And one asteroids vs groudling vessels which I don't think works.)
I also double checked a couple of things in my SJ books to make sure I hadn't misremembered them.
I do like this idea (well apart from the bit about us all throwing away groudling ships and becoming stonejammers :P ) - if I didn't like it I woudn't bother helping to look for bugs - but I do think it has a few flaws that need to be addressed. Addressing the flaws doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of them.
For certain very limited purposes, I agree that your idea would work (and I'd like to see it developed for those limited reasons and other similar reasons) but you seem to be implying that asteroids can be used for trading purposes here:
and a ship that can fly through air shouldn't have any problems with floating on the water, though this means a helmsman would be needed constantly (works best with helm types that allow multiple helmsman, such as series helms, or ones that require no helmsman at all... furnaces/artifurnaces, pool helms, pump helms, and lifejammers for example...)
I've always been under the impression that you can't land a ship that is incapable of landing and then make it hover exactly on the water line. It doesn't seem to be in the spirit of this rule:
Only ships capable of landing on water or land can do so and take off safely. Any ship can crash onto a planet or its ocean, but then taking off again is guaranteed to be a problem (see Crashes).
I'm pretty sure that in the Cloakmaster book mentioned higher in this thread, the helm went down as soon as the ship hit the water. I can't find a rule that confirms that is what happens, but it is the way I've always thought that helms work and if that is the case your asteroid would sink to the bottom of the sea as soon as it touched the water's surface.
(However, if someone knows the exact page number of that section, I'd like to re-read it and remind myself of exactly what happened. Someone else forgot what type of ship it was, so I'm sure we might all have a faded memory of this.)
I also think the rule about overlapping gravity would give you big problems if you tried to land:
When two ships come into direct contact (one rams the other or lands on the other), the gravity of the ship with the highest tonnage is dominant and becomes the gravity of both ships.
In space and before landing the gravity on the lower half of your asteroid would either be pulling towards a point in the centre or a plane through the middle of the asteroid. But as soon as it touched the surface this gravity would flip towards the centre of the planet. You claim that basic miners and stonemason's could dig out holes, but I'm afraid you fail to take into account the sudden surge in force on the bottom of your asteroid.
If an asteroid had any weaknesses this would be the point where a big crack could spread out. Real ships that have been poorly designed have been known to crack under sudden forces, so your asteroid hacked out by untrained amatures would be just as vulnerable on the sea.
Even if I'm wrong about ships being able to skim on the water and your ship surved the first time it "bounced off of an ocean, small cracks in the surface might still form. These could spread deeper over time until they created a critical weakness. Only an expert like a shipwright would be aware of these sort of risks and only an expert like a stonemason would know how to look for these flaws in the natural rock. The pool of people who with the skill and knowleged to carve out an asteroid ship would initially be very small.
Rhialto also pointed out that if everyone had asteroid ships, piracy would be rife. So take that to its logical conclusion, make asteroid ships and lots of pirates and then work out what would happen next. Would people go back to groundling ships? Would pirates take over all the astroid ships and become a force controlling an entire sphere? Would people create hybrid fleets containing both asteroid ships and groundling ships?
I personally think that the pirates would find it so easy to pick off the asteoid ships that they would expand in power and become a larger risk to the spacefaring community as a whole. They would wipe out the astroid users, but would in turn get targeted by privateers. After the privateers took over the bases of the astroid ships would probably get passed on to some large government.
You may not want to make this thread needlessly longer, but I'd like to see this worked out so that flying asteroids (in whatever form) can be used whenever they are appropriate.
But I don't want to totally come down on the bad points of this idea without mentioning a couple of new good points:
1) Astroid ships have something no other type of ships have - camoflage. Imagine an asteroid with an unworked surface and the crew hidden on the inside. Fair enough, this ship is going to be no good in a dogfight, but if nobody is on the surface and you turn off the helm you are likely to be ignored by lookouts on passing ships, especially if asteroid ships are very very rare. Lookouts are trained to look for moving ships and if an asteroid ship "plays dead" for a day or so then it won't move against the background of space and passing ships will move on.
The camoflage effect will be even better if an asteroid ship is within an asteroid belt. Even if you see the ship, you are going to have to maintain visual contact at all times to avoid loosing the trail. Imagine an astroid flying around within The Grinder in Greyspace. As long as it avoids approaching other ships it should have time to evade capture.
2) Troop carriers - when mounting a war you need to move troops from A to B. You need every ship you can get your hands on. Properly escorted by more manouverable ships a fleet of 100 ton astroids could be packed out with 100s of goblinoids on the way to attack some nearby elven base.
I haven't read up on the history of Spiral recently, but I could imagine hundreds of unspaceworthy ships, asteroids and anything else that you can strap a helm to crashing next to an elven city and depositing an army of fanatics who do not care that they have no hope of retreat, because they want to "win or die trying".
3) Not all crews need air. One of the flaws raised by someone else was that non-magical engines are too slow to get anywhere before the air runs out. However, creatures like the undead don't have to worry about the air supply and have all the time in the world to get where they are going.
The undead could live within your asteroid ships for millenia waiting for some sort of signal from their masters. Just like my second idea this could be some sort of invasion, but with time on their side the undead could slowly take over asteroids in an asteroid field until an entire asteroid belt becomes a deadly trap that ensnares anyone unlucky enough to approach it.
Or if the Sons of Acererak from Night Druid's MotM (called Monolythe) were running the show, they might take over a large cluster of asteroids and build a fake tomb in the middle of the cluster to lure in passing adventurers. Any spacefarers falling for the bait might pass dozens of secret asteroid ships on their way in to explore the tomb. By the time they land they could be in the middle of an ambush that they have little chance of escaping. Over time the Sons would capture or destroy hundreds of ships, and would gain new helms for their undead astroid fleet. Their dead victims could also be animated as new crew members.
After capturing enough helms the undead navy would be able to move out to infiltrate a new asteroid cluster or belt. Eventually, they might even be able to capture every small asteroid in a crystal sphere. And when that happened they would be a real threat to spacefaring traffic.
If a massive slumbering undead navy suddenly surged into life and rained down on a larger asteroid base, the size of Bral, they might be able to overwelm its defences before they could send word of the new threat. And if the tactic worked once they might be able to take out many important spacefaring bases before they were noticed. After that they could lay seige to the larger planets and pick off anything that came up into space. They would turn the remaining spacefarers into groundlings and would be able to carry on building up their armies until they can start to attack the planets.
And all of this could start with a single undead asteroid ship.
1) not all trading must be done with planets. thus, traders can use these rockships (on further consideration, i do have to agree that the asteroid ships are not so great though... largely, posts i made towards the end were based on rockships that were just carved out from rocks in general. in particular, the main idea i have been considering lately is the ships that are built in separate, identical cubes, then joined together). incidentally, for trading or long distance travel purposes, these rockships would have to be fitted with a helm of course... but still, the savings are quite significant.
2) i was not aware that on touching water, the helm would turn off. seems kinda lame to me... in any event, if you take the ship from a planetary surface, it should be able to handle planetary gravity just fine (this of course requires a helm to launch it into space, but you can just remove the helm, send it back down, and reuse it on each separate ship).
3) the only military application i see (other than people who don't care where they're going and when they get there) is defense, unless equipped with actual helms. the nonmagical power sources are useful, don't get me wrong (consider two nations: one has two hammerships with major helms, the other has a hammership with major helm and 20 100 ton rockship mobile defense platforms. obviously, the second nation can afford to send their hammership out and be amply defended against all but the largest fleets, provided they are defending a small enough area, whereas the first nation probably needs both ships for defense). in the event you outfit them with helms, they could be used for transports, basically however. and would still be cheaper than actual ship hulls with helms. that being said, you've missed the possibility of carrier ships... a 100 ton rockship loaded up with, say, 20 flitters powered by rudders of propulsion, and a few light catapults, could make a fairly formidable carrier.
4) these ships would be best used with space stations. small enough planets (size A) would work fine if the ship has a flat hull, or diskworlds if the ship docks on the edge of the planet, but otherwise the ship is pretty crappy. their uses would include ferrying people around, towing stuff, and so forth. and of course, mobile defense platforms.
5) rockships with no sails are just hands-down better than groundling ships, barring some houserules to make rockships suck more. they have the same MC (F) but don't require crew beyond the helmsman, whereas groundling ships usually require many crew. they have better armor, are substantially cheaper, take less time to make, hold just as much cargo/air for their size, but can generally be made larger (because it's so cheap, comparatively). i'm not saying groundling ships shouldn't exist... i'm just saying rockships would be a step up from them, and once any nation gets into space, they should realise their groundling ships suck and promptly replace them with rocks (and put the groundling ships back into the water where they belong).
now then, one other point... you said you could see the scro using these ships. not I... or at least, probably not the way you are suggesting. i could see these ships in scro fleets, but they wouldn't be scro ships (war is too much of an art form to the scro... they need real ships). i could see the scro using these ships for target practise (moving targets are much better for practise, and these ships are, as noted, a lot cheaper than spelljamming ships... probably even the engine would be designed to be moved between ships).
that being said, i could certainly see how a houserule might be in order to make rockships less maneuverable than groundling ships... heck, as is, you may as well not crew your groundling ship, because the MC can't go below F without being critically hit. but rockships are just too cheap to not be used, imo :P
oh, and one other point... rockships would be terrible pirate vessels. a trader could get some use out of them, because they don't care about mobility... as long as it can spelljam, it's mobile enough. a merchant can just make sure you don't want to come near them, and they'll be fine. (thus, merchant ships would take a small portion of the money saved by not buying a full fledged hull, and invest in a bunch of weaponry). pirate ships, on the other hand, need two things: to be able to chase down merchant ships (requires speed and maneuverability) and to be able to outrun military/privateer ships (which requires it even more). there would not be an awful lot of rockships in use by pirates, other than to defend their base, as the crappy rockship i am suggesting is not suitable for pirate needs in the slightest.
That isn't true. Anything that goes into wildspace secures an air envelope based on its size.
True, but how's an asteroid going to acquire an atmosphere in the first place? (It'd be interesting to apply the question to the Rock of Bral, but that may be a topic for another thread?)
Wyvern
1) not all trading must be done with planets. thus, traders can use these rockships (on further consideration, i do have to agree that the asteroid ships are not so great though... largely, posts i made towards the end were based on rockships that were just carved out from rocks in general. in particular, the main idea i have been considering lately is the ships that are built in separate, identical cubes, then joined together).
Let me make sure I understand -- are you now talking about ships made from worked stone? If so, I don't see the advantage over wooden ships, aside from durability. Your original point was that asteroids are "free" and therefore more people should use them, but as bigmac pointed out, trees are "free" too. It's my impression that wooden houses are and have always been cheaper to build than stone houses; why would ships be any different?
Wyvern
1) not all trading must be done with planets.
True, but the point I was trying to get across was that rockships only work well for travel specifically to and from places where you can approch via a gravity plane.
You wanted to know "why people would use groundling ships in wildspace instead of asteroids" and I was trying to get across the opposite side ("why would people use rockships to land when groundling ships do the job much better?")
thus, traders can use these rockships (on further consideration, i do have to agree that the asteroid ships are not so great though... largely, posts i made towards the end were based on rockships that were just carved out from rocks in general. in particular, the main idea i have been considering lately is the ships that are built in separate, identical cubes, then joined together). incidentally, for trading or long distance travel purposes, these rockships would have to be fitted with a helm of course... but still, the savings are quite significant.
Groundling ships allow a DM to grab any surface ship and throw it (and the PCs on it) up into wildspace. But because the ship isn't native to space it makes sense for it to be outperformed by native spacefaring-ships.
And your idea is great because it is different (at least it would seem weird to a groundling). And in spelljammer, "different" stuff lets you know that you are not in a normal campaign setting.
Actually, I'd like get away from the "what is best" as I think it is a red herring. Both of these ideas can have their place in the Spelljammer campaign setting (although I would make most ships spacefaring ones and still have more groundling ships than stone ones).
I especially like this modular idea you are now talking about. It isn't a raw asteroid, so I don't think your "its free" logic can be applied to it. But what it does have is an interesting ring to it.
Identical cubes could be created by Modrons or a gigantic Gnomish stone carving gadget.
Cubes could be part of a base or part of a ship - or both. The same cubes could be swapped between cubeships and several "cubestations". Loading and unloading would consist of attaching and removing entire cubes.
Crew quarters could be increased or decreased in the same way.
And when ships were not needed they could be integrated entirely into the "cubestation".
Cubeships that were attacked could try dumping a cube from the back of the ship to slow down anyone chasing them. (The cube would force the attacker to slow to tactical speed until they overtook it. They might even stop to see what was in the cube.)
2) i was not aware that on touching water, the helm would turn off. seems kinda lame to me...
As I said, I couldn't find anything to confirm this. I'll have to try to find the section in the Cloakmaster books where the ship shuts down. They might have chosen to shut it down.
in any event, if you take the ship from a planetary surface, it should be able to handle planetary gravity just fine (this of course requires a helm to launch it into space, but you can just remove the helm, send it back down, and reuse it on each separate ship).
Maybe you could reland a stone ship made on a planet, but that wasn't what you said. You originally were talking about unworked asteroids (being better than groundling ships - you didn't specify "but only in wildspace") and then changed your idea to hollowed out or carved out asteroids. Now you are talking about large rocks carved on planets.
I don't mind exploring these variant ideas, but I think some people are getting confused about what you are comparing with what.
I'm not sure that it would be cheap to carve up giant blocks of stone on a planet as I think that ones that are big enough will be fairly rare. You would probably have to find something big like a mountain. However, if you forget the price and think of this from the background/plot angle, I think it is facinating.
You could for example have a groundling group, that live on/in a mountain, decide to relocate their mountain by chopping it up and flying it away bit-by-bit.
Or you could have an asteroid belt that was supposedly once a single planet/moon and create some sort of fanatical organisation dedicated to recovering all the bits and spelljamming them to a single location to "repair" the world.
Do something like that and it doesn't matter how cheap or expensive your method is because it turns into an essential part of the background. Your players won't care if they like your special ship more than a galleon if they "get" the concept that they need the stone cube itself as much as the cargo.
You need to make some fluff that makes these ships as cool as a flying galleon full with space pirates.
3) the only military application i see (other than people who don't care where they're going and when they get there) is defense, unless equipped with actual helms.
In the real life second world war troop gliders and landing craft were pretty clunky compaired to fighter planes and speedboats. I can see situations where your ships could be used the same way as either of these craft.
the nonmagical power sources are useful, don't get me wrong (consider two nations: one has two hammerships with major helms, the other has a hammership with major helm and 20 100 ton rockship mobile defense platforms. obviously, the second nation can afford to send their hammership out and be amply defended against all but the largest fleets, provided they are defending a small enough area, whereas the first nation probably needs both ships for defense). in the event you outfit them with helms, they could be used for transports, basically however. and would still be cheaper than actual ship hulls with helms.
Actually both of those nations are likely to get blown out of the water, because they both don't have enough long range ships to be able to afford to loose one. If I was attacking the fleet with one hammership, I would just wait until that ship was alone and then try to overwealm it. Once it was gone the rest of the chepo ships would not be able to cover a large area. Nobody would be able to go for help.
In an "age of sail"/medieval style enviroment any nation that is unable to defend itself will be attacked by someone who has a more powerful military. In a utopian society you might be able to say that you only need "mercantile" capability, but in a universe where imperialistic nations exist anyone who can't fight back will eventually get picked on by someone who can come up with a strategy to get through their defence.
If you want to be cheap then you could probably make large (50 or 100 ton) wooden rafts a lot cheaper than carved stone ships. And being made from planks they would be a lot easy to repair.
that being said, you've missed the possibility of carrier ships... a 100 ton rockship loaded up with, say, 20 flitters powered by rudders of propulsion, and a few light catapults, could make a fairly formidable carrier.
No I didn't mention that. Its good. Its "different". And if you made a ship that looked a bit like a (hexagonal) pencil you could maximise the deck area and get more flitters onboard. It would be pug-ugly, but would be good for attack.
However, if you wanted to be less ugly, and stay more with the accepted SJ theme, you could carve out a giant "hive-ship" and fill it with wasps!
[snip - I don't disagree with point 4 - this would be the best place to put your ships]
5) rockships with no sails are just hands-down better than groundling ships, barring some houserules to make rockships suck more.
That just isn't true, because you are assuming certain things that give your hull types the advantage. The Titanic was the best ship until it hit an iceberg. The Hindenberg was the best type of airship until it caught fire. The Maginot Line was the perfect defence until the Germans walked around it.
they...are substantially cheaper, take less time to make, hold just as much cargo/air for their size, but can generally be made larger (because it's so cheap, comparatively).
Firstly cargo size isn't necessarily going to be larger because walls are going to have to be thicker. Secondly it is faster to assemble a wooden ship from planks than it is to excavate stone without creating a crack that ruins your ship. If you make a mistake nailing planks onto a ship then you can just rip a few off and carry on, but if your stonemasons crack the end off of your ship it is probably ruined.
So stone-shipwrights will need to be more careful and more highly skilled than wooden shipwrights.
i'm not saying groundling ships shouldn't exist... i'm just saying rockships would be a step up from them, and once any nation gets into space, they should realise their groundling ships suck and promptly replace them with rocks (and put the groundling ships back into the water where they belong).
And I'm not saying that rock ships shouldn't exist. I'm saying that groundlings that go into wildspace would not replace their ships with rocks. They would keep their ships (as second or third rate ships) and then build spacefaring ships (like hammerships or squidships).
Your rockship idea(s) (so far you have given us three variations, but talk them up as a group) are very interesting, but not the "obviously better than anything done before" ideas you seem to think they are. Lets just look at what the ships can be used for instead of talking about groundling ships.
now then, one other point... you said you could see the scro using these ships. not I... or at least, probably not the way you are suggesting.
You're right. They wouldn't be used by the Scro themselves. But they might fill them up with the more expendable goblinoid races (like orcs, goblins or ogre's). The scro would sail in in their prettiest ships.
that being said, i could certainly see how a houserule might be in order to make rockships less maneuverable than groundling ships... heck, as is, you may as well not crew your groundling ship, because the MC can't go below F without being critically hit. but rockships are just too cheap to not be used, imo :P
I probably wouldn't penalise them in space, but I'd be tempted to penalise anything without landing capability that flew into a planetary atmosphere.
oh, and one other point... rockships would be terrible pirate vessels. ... pirate ships, on the other hand, need two things: to be able to chase down merchant ships (requires speed and maneuverability) and to be able to outrun military/privateer ships (which requires it even more).
Don't forget that under standard Spelljammer rules everything in wildspace except landing, take-off and combat happens at "spelljammer speed" and everything in the flow happens at the speed the phlogiston river flows at.
In the Cloakmaster novels there were a couple of times when ships actually exceeded spelljammer speed, but these were seen as very unusual events.
No ship can outrun or catch up another (unless something else is going on). Ships raiting and MC are only important during combat, take-off or landing (i.e. at tactical speed). All they will do is help you avoid being grappled by the enemy, let you spin off in a new random direction and accelerate back up to spelljammer speed before you get caught. Once someone is behind you they should stay behind you.
there would not be an awful lot of rockships in use by pirates, other than to defend their base, as the crappy rockship i am suggesting is not suitable for pirate needs in the slightest.
Pirates tend to steal the ships they use (rather than build or buy them) so would mostly use the ships of the sort of people that they were attacking. And because pirates steal ships they don't need to care about the cost of them. As long as they can continue to steal the ships of the enemy they can continue to upgrade and have ships that will match the privateers.
True, but how's an asteroid going to acquire an atmosphere in the first place?
The asteroid doesn't "acquire" an atmosphere. I think that is real life thinking - you are comparing it to a real asteroid that naturally has no atmosphere. However, in Spelljammer everything with mass and size has an air-envelope.
The asteroid gains its atomosphere the same way that a planet gains its atmosphere. Obviously whoever created the universe (Ptah?) put a bit of air into every air envelope.
The asteroids (and planets) that don't have an atmosphere are the really interesting places, because under SJ rules there seems to be a "conservation of atmosphere". You seem to be able to change it (from fresh to foul, foul to deadly, deadly to foul or foul to fresh) but not actually destroy it.
Gravity extends to the edge of the air envelope, so getting rid of the air envelope might (I'm not sure) change the way that gravity works around something. It might actually be the air envelope that extends the gravity that holds in the air.
(It'd be interesting to apply the question to the Rock of Bral, but that may be a topic for another thread?)
Maybe we should start that thread. It would be interesting to calculate how many people live on Bral and how much fresh-air they use and then calculate how many plants there are on Bral and how much fresh-air they create.
if you go back a few posts, you will observe that i calculated the cost to 'mine' sufficient volume to get 50 tons of ship. using a crew of 90 (working in shifts of 30, and you could overload that number without effecting cost, only time required) miners/stonemasons, it takes about 6 weeks and costs under 1000 gp. assuming you're using human miners, of course... if we're talking more skilled miners, then naturally the work goes faster. this allows for walls of average 1 foot thickness, as i recall (seriously, i don't feel like looking through for the math... but it's there). damaged portions could be incorporated into a station if only lightly damaged, or simply scrapped for use in catapults or something. this is simply much more cheap than building ships out of wood, because you're not building it, you're just mining out the insides. sure, the trees are free, but you have to let that wood dry before it's ready to be used (iirc, you're looking at a couple of years here), then you have to have carpenters attach it all together which costs money in supplies there, etc. there's much more to a wooden ship than just wood, whereas my rockships are just a big rock that's been (mostly) shaped to a rough cube, and hollowed out. wooden houses are cheaper than stone houses because in a stone house, you are paying for the stone to be cut, a building designed, mortar/cement/whatever to hold it together, a roof to be built, etc. if you just hollowed out a cave, it would be much cheaper. my version, you just cut out a big block of wood and tunnel out the insides.
as far as the stats of the ship, they are defined by the ship design rules. a ship has cargo capacity equal to half it's tonnage. thus, a 50 ton rockship costing around 800 gp iirc will have 25 tons of storage (similarly, it must have 50 hull points, barring unusual rules).
the problem with maintaining groundling ships instead of switching to rockships for a groundling nation is simple: they have a limited supply of helms. said limited supply of helms obviously can only go into so many ships. therefore, a groundling ship (which costs a crapload) is best sent to do what it does best (sail on water) while leaving the mechanically superior rockships in space. certainly, however, the nation will ultimately replace the rockships with real spelljamming ships. (or at least, will want real spelljamming ships for anything with a proper helm).
incidentally, the whole point about the defense fleet is that they can protect a stationary target. if 20 ships are not enough to protect the gravity well of the planet, then 2 ships with helms aren't going to do squat either. the nation with 20 ships is still better off. particularly since the ships also equate to building materials for their space stations, which can serve as additional defensive points, and don't even require nonmagical engines. by shuttling large portions of your population into space (if you so desire) you can create an impressively tough fleet... not too many fleets can put together enough to take out a fleet of 20 ships, even if they are crappy ones. this is not a mercantile fleet, it's a fleet of 20 warships, even if they are crappy warships. expanded further, you could compare a nation with enough helm-equipped ships to patrol properly, to one that uses my half-and-half model: say 10 squidships with minor helms (this being a much cheaper way than hammerships with major helms) for one, and 5 squidships with minor helms and about 95 well armed 50 ton rockships (or the same number of slightly less well armed 100 ton rockships) with nonmagical engines. also, the second nation would be able to use the 30 spellcasters that would have been needed to power the 10 squidships, and is not limited in how many defensive ships it can build by the number of available spellcasters.
a similar sized fleet of squidships would cost a great deal more, and would probably not be as effective (note: in this case, the military ships would probably strap on an extra 50 tons, for a total of 100 tons; this is my assumed value of intended maximum for nonmagical engines. that being said, there's nothing saying the 10,000 gp nonmagical engine cannot power a 200, 300, 3000, etc ton ship. i am just playing nice... personally, as i mentioned earlier, i think the nonmagical engine should have a cost per ton, like almost every other ship modification). preferrably, these ships would also include some kind of fighters (flitters would be nice, but not necessary... and probably too expensive... strictly speaking, rafts or small boats could be used, so long as they don't weigh too much for rudders of propulsion, and would still have SR 6, MC A from the rudder which costs only 3000 gp apiece).
if i were designing the full military, i would, however, probably include a few 100 ton rockships (at first, improve hull type later), and equip them with lifejammers instead of major helms (power the lifejammers with chickens. if your DM is nice, you can modify the lifejammer like those leech things and try to find a way to use scavvers or something instead of chickens so you can achieve greater than SR 1).
as far as your statement that rockships don't necessarily suck more than groundling ships, you are neglecting that i am discussing from a rules standpoint. ruleswise, it can be mechanically proven that rockships are better than groundling vessels in all except one or two limited situations. (you have to land on water, or you're trading with certain specific groundling societies)
also, i don't think large quantities of rock are as rare as you think; apart from the possibility of the asteroid belt shipyard, had you ever considered a quarry? sure, there aren't many large rocks sitting on the surface... but in many places, if you dig down a little, there's mile upon mile of rock. it's really not all that uncommon.
now then, on to pirates. you are absolutely right, tactical speed only matters in battle, and same with MC. but here's the thing: with pirate ships, we're talking about being in battle pretty regularly. not just once in a while, but rather this is what the ship does. furthermore, while the ship is very cheap to replace, it is very expensive to repair (barring the use of magic... transmute mud to rock/rock to mud spells could do wonders, wall of stone would be very handy, etc). pirates would not use this ship, because at tactical speeds, where the pirates do their pirating, this ship sucks. massively. the whole point of the trade version of this ship is to make it big (again, probably use lifejammers on a 100 ton rockship, though of course size can be changed easily with cubes), and load it up with weaponry enough to deter attackers. with a trade ship you don't need to be able to chase enemies down, board them, kill them, etc. you just need to be able to keep enemies from doing those things to you. the rockship is perfectly capable of keeping people away, if you load on enough weapons. it is absolutely terrible at chasing people down, which is what pirates do for a living.
to provide an example of what i am talking about, a tractor is a really wonderful tool. farmers can use it for all sorts of purposes. so is a construction vehicle of the kind where you can use all sorts of attachments. construction companies use them all the time, and will certainly tell you they are great vehicles. but that doesn't mean they outperform a nascar racer when you put them on a racetrack. does this mean they are not a good vehicle? of course not. it means they're not a good racer. similarly, the rockship is pretty good for protecting something stationary relative to itself (be that itself, a space station, or even a small planetoid), but it is terrible for taking the fight to the enemy.
as far as getting asteroids to have an atmosphere, you're looking at relatively simple solutions. assuming it doesn't have a foul or deadly atmosphere (in which case you just lob some seeds at it and come back later) you can create atmosphere with some pretty low level spells. most of the fog line of spells can do it handily, in fact.
Maneouverability is the one place where material could be an issue. But again, in a sphere where stone is teh dominant material, that won't matter either, because EVERYONE ELSE is also using stone, so they will all be under the same penalty.
Personally, i feel asteroid ships should perform worse, but since this entire thread is based on a close reading of teh rules, teh rules say asteroid ships won't do at all badly as pirate ships when both the military and their prey (merchants) are also using the same hull materials.
Saying stone is bad material for pirates is like saying Dark Sun bone weapons are useless. In their own milieau, surrounded by people who only use that same technology, the penalty isn't relevant.
About replace/repair: Suppose it is cheap to replace, expensive to repair. Then the pirates can just replace as needed. And if that is true for pirate, it is equally true for the military and merchants, which would put them off sharply.
I disagree with you on the piracy. In terms of long distance speed, everything is equal, and it depends only on whether the helm is magical, not hull material. Material also has no effect on tactical speed. Tactical speed only depends on the caster level of the helmsman, so again teh hull material won't matter.
Maneouverability is the one place where material could be an issue. But again, in a sphere where stone is teh dominant material, that won't matter either, because EVERYONE ELSE is also using stone, so they will all be under the same penalty.
yes, you're absolutely right... but here's the thing: everyone else isn't using stone anymore than everyone else is using lifejammers powered by chickens. this is the cheapest, bottom of the barrel ship. you could expect to see this replacing the groundling ships, but there's no way in hell someone is going to say "forget about this elven armada, let's take that 100 ton rockship instead". similarly, just because the merchant vessels are not likely to blow the money on a major helm (which only helps in tactical speed situations, such as battle, and costs a heck of a lot more), that doesn't mean that everyone is going to just ditch major helms in favor of the much cheaper option.
so, expect to see a lot less galleons, longships, and such ships, but don't expect to see fewer hammerships, squidships, etc, because these ships are actually superior to the rockships. the rockships would replace groundling ships, because groundling ships suck as bad or worse in every category with the exception of landing:water. a nation could get by with only rockships, and indeed a merchant fleet could theoretically get by with only rockships (though they would probably have to sacrifice cargo capacity for a lot of ship weapons, they could typically afford larger ships in the first place), but as soon as you start talking about ships where tactical speed and mobility becomes important (such as, say, combat), you can expect people to stop using rockships. even merchants would be better off using things other than rockships, because with a slow, clumsy ship you need to basically arm it to the teeth to protect yourself from pirates, and that's just not an efficient way to make money (operating under the assumption that adding weapons takes up cargo space, which is never explicitly indicated, but i believe is implied once or twice)
rockships make a poor combat vessel, and the only reason it works for defense is because you can choose what you are defending, plant a bunch of them there, and simply let them overwhelm the enemy with numbers. it isn't that they don't suck on defense, it's more like the kobold principle (who i expect would use ships like this a lot): one kobold sucks. the party wizard could probably kill it with a staff at first level. 2 kobolds are a bit tougher. you'd probably need a level 1 fighter. 3 kobolds are harder still... and so forth, until we come to 20 kobolds, which can probably defeat a typical first level party if they plan it decently, and continuing on we might get to 100 kobolds, which will simply crush the party, possibly before the party even gets to act, even if their only weapon was to throw rocks. the only reason rockships work on defense is because you can have tons of them.
in the 3E spreadheet, neither has any intrinsic advantage in MC. MC only depends on the amount of rigging installed and hull size. This actually makes moe sense than the 2E rules. Why should something made of wood be able to turn faster than something made of stone?
However, another sheet, based off War captain, gives a 2-point difference in MC, but a 3-point difference in AC. otoh, crystal combines the advantages of both.
However, I'd say that MC disadvantage against wood isn't so important. Sure, it means you probably aren't ramming anything. But if your weapons are mounted in turrets, MC becomes irrelevant as long as you are in range at all.
You *say* rockships make poor combat vessels. I had a quick look at the ship design spreadsheet on the /moons/ website. The only difference (besides cost, where stone is more expensive) between wood and stone is... stone has a better armour class.
in the 3E spreadheet, neither has any intrinsic advantage in MC. MC only depends on the amount of rigging installed and hull size. This actually makes moe sense than the 2E rules. Why should something made of wood be able to turn faster than something made of stone?
However, another sheet, based off War captain, gives a 2-point difference in MC, but a 3-point difference in AC. otoh, crystal combines the advantages of both.
However, I'd say that MC disadvantage against wood isn't so important. Sure, it means you probably aren't ramming anything. But if your weapons are mounted in turrets, MC becomes irrelevant as long as you are in range at all.
i was using 2e rules. 3rd doesn't really have any official rules for designing ships iirc.
stone ships are crappy combat ships because AR is a terrible tradeoff for MC. MC is not so much useful if you're just standing there and shooting at each other, but it is tremendously useful for catching up to people (or just not letting them get away), escaping from combat, turning to avoid traps/debris (such as debris placed by jettisons), and so forth. it is also quite important for tight spaces (which makes adventuring and scout ships value it quite highly too).
so, sure, rockships are ok for battles where you don't need to maneuver at all (and incidentally, even with turreted weapons, there's always the 3-dimensional rules, wherein you still have vulnerable parts), and as long as you're just standing there shooting each other, great. but as soon as you have to go into an asteroid belt, or the other side starts deploying debris or mines or similar effects to allow themselves to escape (not to mention the tactic of launching attacks from out of normal range to hit the hex you're parked in), your MC comes into play.
as far as stone having a worse MC, it kinda actually makes sense, in a way. stone would possess greater momentum, if i'm not mistaken, due to it's higher mass. therefore, it would require more to alter the direction of it's momentum then it would take to alter the direction of the momentum of a ship made of wood.
the other reason you would see better hulls used for combat ships (other than strictly defensive or intraplanetary combat ships) is that the difference in cost between a squidship with a minor helm is much more competitive to the cost of a rockship with a minor helm than the squidship hull is to the rockship hull (that is, because you're already talking about throwing in 100,000 gp for the helm anyways, the extra cost for the hull is not as big of a deal in comparison. for every 4 and a bit squidships with helms, you could instead have 5 rockships with helms, if i remember my costs right). plus, when you combine crappy MC with crappy SR, you end up with a ship that is just not going to ever reach the battle other except at a place and time of the enemy's choosing. i don't think i need to emphasise that it's never a good idea to let the enemy choose where and when if you can avoid it.
Yes, in a real physics universe, the greater momentum of stone compared to wood would be an issue. but seeing as how these ships are propelled by magic and not newtonian-physics thrusters, isaac andphysics can go take a short walk off a long pier. :D
Now yes, debris/minefields etc can mess things up for a lower maneouverability ship. But that can NEVER prevent you from choosing where your battles are.
Regardless of MC, all ships have the same strategic speed. Add to that the only things to defend are fixed locations - planets and space stations. Since even tramp freighters have teh same speed as battleships, they aren't targets in terms of strategic mobility. Essentially, no fight need ever be anywhere other than a base of some sort. And as long as fights are only at a base station, MC drops dramatically in terms of relevance.
Remember - movies like deep space fights because they are dramatic and make for better likelihood of even fights, and thus have more room for heroics. But when all shps have teh same strategic speed, deep space fights will be incredibly rare. Realistically, commanders will stack the odds shamelessly in the favour. No commander will attack a fleet in deep space if they have a base station with big guns for support. No merchant will intentionally slow down long enough for a pirate to catch up.
Remember - movies like deep space fights because they are dramatic and make for better likelihood of even fights, and thus have more room for heroics. But when all shps have teh same strategic speed, deep space fights will be incredibly rare. Realistically, commanders will stack the odds shamelessly in the favour. No commander will attack a fleet in deep space if they have a base station with big guns for support. No merchant will intentionally slow down long enough for a pirate to catch up.
this still doesn't negate the importance of tactical speed.
because spelljammer causes ships to drop out of strategic speed when there is sufficient mass nearby, tactical speed determines wether or not you will be able to get back into strategic speed. a faster, more agile ship would have a substantial advantage in being able to chase down or escape from another ship which is determined to catch up to it.
furthermore, there are things floating around in space that can cause you to drop to tactical. again, in these situations, the faster, more agile ship will have the advantage.
and finally, you still haven't addressed long range bombardments;
for example, let's suppose i want to attack your space station. i stop 20 hexes away and start firing such that in four turns my light catapult shots will be going into your station's hex. your station fires back at my hex. because i am in a ship, and have 4 rounds to get out of the way, i am able to be in a different hex than what your station fired at. now, this is a bit of an extreme example (the low mobility 'ship' is in fact an immobile object), so let's try another example:
instead of 20 hexes, let's make it 9 hexes. our ships both have SR 1 (perhaps yours is a defensive rockship only with nonmagical helm), but my ship is an MC A vipership whereas your ship is an MC F 30 ton rockship. for the sake of argument, we'll arm both ships with light catapults. now then, it's going to take an extra round for either of our shots to hit the other ship, which means we each have one round to dodge. i shoot at your hex, and you shoot at my hex. i can move my ship to any of the hexes beside it no problem, thus dodging your shot. your ship can only move forward, and then change the direction it's facing (which is good for the next time i shoot, but useless for dodging my first volley). you face however many shots i fired, and i face... ummm... oh, that's right. none. not one of your shots has even a chance to hit me. why? because i can dodge out of the way before your shots even come close. now imagine if both ships were SR 3. i could move anywhere within a radius of 3 hexes from my position. you would have to fire at each of some ridiculous number of hexes to have even one chance of hitting me. i would have to shoot along something like 6 lines, because the most you can do is move forward, turn one hex side, and move forward (thus putting you slightly to either side of your previous position). i have to spread my shots out over a miniscule fraction of the area that you do. heck, if i load up my ship, i can probably shoot at least once at each hex you can move to, and maybe twice. you, on the other hand, will likely not be able to cover all my possible locations.
maneuver class is important no matter where the fight is. for spelljammer combat, you can drastically improve your chance to survive by having a higher MC, provided you take steps to use it to your advantage.
it's moving sideways to avoid the missiles. therefore, if a ship has MC A, it can turn sideways (no SR cost) and move to the side before a light catapult stone can get to it from 9 hexes away, but an MC F ship would not be so fortunate, because it cannot turn as quickly.
Just how slow do you think those catapults are throwing the rocks?
hey, i don't make the rules, i just twist them to my own purposes...
(and like i said, according to war captain's companion, the rocks travel at SR equal to the range of the catapult from which they were fired. for some freakish reason, in the case of a heavy catapult which would logically be propelling the rocks the fastest, this happens to be SR 3. in the case of the heavy ballista, this happens to be SR 2). (page 13 of the combat book, under "large missile movement")
of course, i also happen to think that heavier weapons should have better range (and thus, better projectile speed), but i haven't seen other people mention that. i also think it's silly to make catapults unable to attack within one hex (maybe not on a ram or something like that, but otherwise) since the only way i can actually imagine the catapult hitting anything is by firing the rock more or less directly at the target (since gravity is only affecting the rock for a relatively small portion of the distance travelled)
on a side note, i have to agree that the projectiles should certainly travel faster. triple their range in SR would be much more reasonable. that makes it about 54 mph per hex of range (so even the slower catapult rocks are travelling at 108 mph or so, while the fastest stock versions are travelling something like 324 mph, while the ultimate supercharged vodoni medium ballista with +3 range enchantment is 594 mph)
the point remains however... the ships with better maneuverability may be firing from further away now, but they still need to target the same number of hexes, so the higher MC still pays off for (much longer now) range bombardment.
on a side note, this makes it a lot less likely that you'll see much close up combat, since maximum range for one round is now 15 hexes for the longest range weapon that deals hull points. it certainly devalues rams like you wouldn't believe.
as far as getting asteroids to have an atmosphere, you're looking at relatively simple solutions. assuming it doesn't have a foul or deadly atmosphere (in which case you just lob some seeds at it and come back later) you can create atmosphere with some pretty low level spells. most of the fog line of spells can do it handily, in fact.
In real life most plants require food as well as somewhere to grow. So you might want to make a balls of mud and manure, push seeds into them and scatter them over asteroids with foul air.
It probably would take a while to work, but if you were thinking of the long view you could afford to do it.
the point remains however... the ships with better maneuverability may be firing from further away now, but they still need to target the same number of hexes, so the higher MC still pays off for (much longer now) range bombardment.
on a side note, this makes it a lot less likely that you'll see much close up combat, since maximum range for one round is now 15 hexes for the longest range weapon that deals hull points. it certainly devalues rams like you wouldn't believe.
Well you did say that your original idea was to have 20 flying rocks (rather than 2 groundling ships). So if you were to go with that idea, your flying rocks could randomly target the area around a highly maneoverable attacking ship making it impossible for it to swerve out of the way of one shot without being hit with another.
As for ramming being devalued, I wonder how a fleet of kamikaze asteroids would do against something like The Rock of Bral.
In real life most plants require food as well as somewhere to grow. So you might want to make a balls of mud and manure, push seeds into them and scatter them over asteroids with foul air.
It probably would take a while to work, but if you were thinking of the long view you could afford to do it.
or a few larger rocks, seeded with infinity vine (and kept in magical darkness), which would be fired at the planetoid from long distance (say a hundred thousand miles, to give the vines time to create an atmosphere). of course, this would require some tricky navigation, but should work (naturally, you would only do this with sufficiently large asteroids as targets, otherwise you end up with a giant ball of infinity vine... which has it's uses, no doubt, but isn't what you wanted)
Well you did say that your original idea was to have 20 flying rocks (rather than 2 groundling ships). So if you were to go with that idea, your flying rocks could randomly target the area around a highly maneoverable attacking ship making it impossible for it to swerve out of the way of one shot without being hit with another.
As for ramming being devalued, I wonder how a fleet of kamikaze asteroids would do against something like The Rock of Bral.
yes. which is why the rockships work decently for defense (because a full-blown 100 ton rockship costs about 12000 gp plus ship weapons, if you give them a nonmagical helm... and incidentally, i did just notice a maximum of 100 tons on nonmagical helms, too, in WCC
), whereas for offense you have to equip the ships with actual helms of some kind, the cost of which generally limits the number of ships you can field quite heavily (not to mention the fact that you need 2-3 spellcasters to run the helm, and those spellcasters could otherwise be used for a lot of oomph in combat). so like i said, good for defense (because numbers are possible), not so good for offense (for 50 ton ships, you would be able to send about 1.5 for every 1 ship with a proper hull, assuming we don't factor in weapons. for 100 ton ships, you would be able to get 1.4 rockships to the regular ship. these prices assume standard cost for wooden hulls of appropriate size, for your reference, and a minor helm for the 50 ton, major helm for the 100 ton. for lifejammers, you're looking at 1.75 rockships to the regular ship, give or take )so sure, militaries will use rockships for defense (provided they have sufficient weapons crew, that is), but i rather doubt they will use rockships for offense. it simply isn't worth the risk of strapping an incredibly expensive helm onto the ship. traders will use rockships for transporting goods, but anyone who expects to face combat a lot (such as pirates, mercenaries, adventuring groups, and privateers, as well as the previously mentioned militaries) wouldn't put a helm into them anytime soon. the helm itself is too big of an investment to not protect by getting a more maneuverable hull.