Ship Construction Time
by Marco DalmonteAccording to War Captain's Companion (SJR) the basic time required for new construction is one day per ton in a suitable dock (10 men required to do the work + 1 engineer to supervision them). If no facilities are available, the time is doubled. Now please consider that SJR ton is a measure of volume rather than weight, so it's often less than the tonnage of a Mystaran skyship. However, this problem could be resolved in a simple way: just calculate the volume of the Mystaran vessel and consider it in order to know the needed time (for those of you who have access to WCC it should be a really easy task). The other method is a bit more complex: it takes 10 men to build 1 HP in one day and each 20 people added to this base increase the HP construction by 1. No more than 500 people can work in the construction of a given ship at the same time, and for each 100 people a supervising engineer is needed.
Increase the construction time if no sufficient manpower or adequate structures are present.
Ship Construction Cost
According to War Captain's
Companion, to find the cost of manufacturing the hull multiply the
ship's ton (volume) by the base cost on the Hull Cost table in page
65 of WCC: book 1. Just to make you a few examples:
Bone: 1,000 gp per ton
Ceramic: 2,000 gp
Metal: 3,000 gp
Stone: 4,000 gp
Wood (thick): 1,000 gp
Wood (thin): 500 gp
Note that each material type also determines the ship's AC, just like in CoM.
So, for example, if a ship had 10 tons (size of the cube 30') and was made of metal, the total cost would be 30,000 gp and it would be manufactured in 10 days.
Alternatively you can use my house rules, which say that for each HP of the ship the cost is 300 gp, regardless of its material (simpler although a bit simplistic). This cost doesn't include the cost for manpower: it's only the cost for basic materials.
Obviously, if the builder is in a necessity situation (example: stranded on a small island without any docks available), the cost doesn't apply to the construction: simply double the construction time needed.
For repair costs and time see War Captain's Companion..
Dock Construction Time & Cost
A Dock is "measured" in Hull Points capacity. 200 people are able to build 1 HP (capacity) per day at the cost of 100 gp (manpower cost not included). Each 50 workers added are able to increase the HP of the dock by 1 per day. There is no limit to the number of workers who build the dock. 1 engineer is required each 100 workers.
As you may or may not know, the dock Hull Points determine which kind of ships can effectively dock. However, besides the HP capacity, a dock has also a HP Limit, that's to say the maximum HP a ship can have to be able dock by itself in the harbour. So, while the HP capacity measures the TOTAL HP of ships a dock can harbour, the HP limit is the max number of HP a ship can possess to dock in a given port. Simply assume that the HP limit is determined by the depth of the harbour (DM's call here, but it should never be higher than 1/5 the HP capacity of the dock).
Example: Tenobar has a HP Capacity of 300 HP and a HP Limit of 60, this means that it can "house" a maximum of 5 ships with 60 HP each, or 6 ships with 50 HP, etc. However, a ship with more than 60 HP will never be able to dock in that portage: it must anchor about 500 yards from it and use a smaller ship (a shuttle) to land.
Other Constructions
For any other construction, simply assume that it takes 5 men 1 month of work for each 1,000 gp the construction is worth. Each 5 men added lower the time needed of 1 week. Each 20 people need an engineer to direct the work.
(refer to Expert set if you wanna know the price for some well known constructions).
Hope this helps.
PS: If you want to run a sea-based campaign or are looking for very good rules to simulate a ship-to-ship combat, or if you're interested in navigation through Wildspace, be sure to check out (or better to buy) War Captain's Companion. Even though it's designed for Spelljammer game system (ADD), it's worth buying! It has tons of info on how to build, repair, arm and command ships, as well as information on the use of spells against ships, combat among ships, a guide to ALL SJR ships, a ship's record sheet sample and so on. I do recommend it wholeheartedly! To me it's the best thing for SJR ever published.
PPS: remember that construction
costs and time for ships can also be found in GAZ4 and in Leroy van
Camp's homepage..