Mounts and Rigging and such?

[barsoomcore]

Blackjaw, a question: Why use the "Mounts" notion? I mean, why have one component called, say, Sail Mount, and then another component for the Sails? Why not just have a Sails component?

I'm trying to get back to this thing and the Mounts and Rigging are confusing me. What's the purpose behind them?

 

[BlackJaw]

The orginal idea was that most of your sails and arrays were so far extended from your vehicle that they didn't take up any more slots as they got larger, all you really needed was the basic mount or rigging and you could use any size sail/etc... larger ships simply have more rigging/more mounts etc. By seperating the mount and the array you could also change arrays (or change sails) by taking one down and putting anohter up. This is important if your vessel goes from one type or area to another (sollar to astral sails if use the astral plane as a sort of hyper-space... etc)

On the other hand it might be simpler or more realistic to make them each a single component that simply takes up the same amount of space in slots (but the AC penalties etc are largers etc) as they get "bigger"

I wrote it one way, but it you think its simplier/etc to make it one object go ahead.

 

[Wyvern]

On the other hand it might be simpler or more realistic to make them each a single component that simply takes up the same amount of space in slots (but the AC penalties etc are largers etc) as they get "bigger"

I wrote it one way, but it you think its simplier/etc to make it one object go ahead.

Personally, I like it the way it is - I think it's one of the most creative ideas you've had. I suppose it would work to do it the other way you describe, but people might be confused about why the larger sails don't use more slots.

Wyvern

 

[barsoomcore]

Well, but don't larger sails require a larger mount? I'm thinking of trying to put the canvas of a schooner onto a yacht -- doesn't work, preceisely because a yacht can't support as much rigging as a schooner.

Or am I missing something?

note: hey, look at us, having a discussion! Been a long time...

 

[BlackJaw]

ok we can look at the sails question on two levels:

1) Why don't larger sails take up more slots?

2) Why do we have rigging seperate from sails?

My thoughts when I came up with this:

1) Well first off all, big ships with sails will spend more in slots on those sails then a tiny space-scooner... but I'll get to that in a moment...
Sails are big. Generaly if a system is big, it uses up lots of component slots. but there is a problem with that. If you look at a picture of an old battleship, its seems to be 40% sails. Component slots are based off HD... so is price. SO if your making a vehicle that uses sails, and lots of them, your paying 40% more and getting 40% more HD in order to still have space for standard components (like weapon, cargo, etc). That makes sails expensive and sturdy?! That didn't sit right with me, so I asked myself what does the HD of a vehicle represent? It's supposed to be the Hull of a vehicle. So do sails sit inside a hull? NO... they extend out from the hull (in a water craft that's up out of the deck, but in an air/space craft that isn't so limited) making it larger and therefore an easier target without really adding to the structure. In fact they do the opposite; a sail-craft is dependant on its sails for its mobility, a vital system in vehicle combat. Its like carrying your vital organs on poles instead of internaly. I decided that instead of making sails take up larger and larger slot sizes, they would all use the same basic size in slots, but as they extend away from the hull they make you an eaiser target without actually increasing your size or hitdice... essentialy the larger they are, the bigger the AC penalty they give you but they still only use up a small amount of space inside the hull. Thus small, medium, and large sails are still the same number of slots in the hull... its just a mast and some ropes that hold up a canvas, foil surface, psychic screen, etc. Regardless of the size of the sail, the rigging components are more or less the same size, and easily interchangible. Example: The Gith Astral Whaler "Droklisk" uses Astral Sails to travel throught the that plane. It's captian, having recently brought in an above average haul decides to upgrade his ship. He can't afford to rework his entire hual or swich to some Psionic engine system, but he can afford larger sails that he can simply raise up on his already existing mast and ropes.

So why did I mention at the start of this post that large ships with sails do use up more space on sails then tiny ones? Because large ships won't get by with just one large sail. They need many sails. Look at a picture of an old battleship, and count the number of cloth squares, the number of masts, crossbeams, etc. Those ships have multiple sails. One component of rigging = 1 sail (be it small, medium, or large) but many vehicles have 3 or more sails, especialy if they are loaded down with guns and armor, or cargo. Your yatch would have 2 or 3 rigging components, while a scooner just 1. A full "ship of the line" might have 10!

2) The reason I seperated the sails from the rigging is that it makes sense that you could change your type of sails. Imagine my Astral Whaler from above. Lets say it sometimes travels to the Prime plane for trade. (throughs some large color pool in the astral plane lets say). In the prime world, its astral sails don't work. So why not let it take down its astral sails and put up wind sails? well that implies sails are seperate from their rigging. So I started writing up many kinds and sizes of sails, but they all used the same rigging. Then I noticed that as I had written them, a small little vehilce could have a large sail. This bothered me till I looked through some books/etc showing pictures of sails and ship designs, and even some solar sail-craft designs. Some, especialy solar sail crafts, have massive sails with tiny ships. I can also recall seeing fantasy art with flying ship that have large arcing sails on small nimble crafts, and I decided that it didn't bother me so much that you could unfurrel large sails on small vehicles. In fact it increased the adaptibility of the vehicle. Take my "ship of the line" example from above (10 sail craft). Of course 10 small sails would have a smaller total AC penalty then 10 large ones... but you'd be slower. You might end up using a combination of the sizes, and as its just altering which sails you have up on the same rigging & mast(s), you could even change your sails depending on what you expect to encounter? Want speed or defense? Its a sort of interchangible anti-armor. It provides speed but makes you easier to hit. Its also a matter of price. When you build/buy your vehilce it might be cheaper to put in 3 rigging and 3 large sails, but latter on if you want more speed, you'd have to buy more rigging (which is changing a component slot, and thus expensive... like changing a car engine. You'd be adding a new mast!), but instead you could buy it to start with having 4 rigging and maybe a combination of medium and small sails, as you can afford it, you latter replace those sails with large sails, making your design more longterm, etc.

Note: this is the same concept I used when writing up other vital systems that are large and stick out of the vehicle: Derrigibles (blimps), and Arrays (like a solar panel array). An array or mount is a single "standardized" compnent, but you can attach and interchange diffrent things to it which drasiticaly alters your AC, speed, etc. Those are components that are vital to the vehicle (so they shouldn't have seperate hit point and AC totals like a gun or sheild system would anymore then there is a seperate AC and hit point total for a person's head), and they are components that stick out of the hull making the vehilce a larger target then the hull itself is.

 

[barsoomcore]

Sails are big. Generaly if a system is big, it uses up lots of component slots.

But that doesn't have to be the case. I agree that sails shouldn't take up as many slots as, say, a cargo hold of the same dimensions.

Thus small, medium, and large sails are still the same number of slots in the hull... its just a mast and some ropes that hold up a canvas, foil surface, psychic screen, etc. Regardless of the size of the sail, the rigging components are more or less the same size, and easily interchangible.

I disagree. Just compare the size of a mast on a ship of the line and a mast on a racing yacht. There's no way you could ever put the massive pole (and all its attendant rigging) of the big mast into the little yacht. The size of the rigging increases as the size of the sail increases.

Example: The Gith Astral Whaler "Droklisk" uses Astral Sails to travel throught the that plane. It's captian, having recently brought in an above average haul decides to upgrade his ship. He can't afford to rework his entire hual or swich to some Psionic engine system, but he can afford larger sails that he can simply raise up on his already existing mast and ropes.

I just can't see it. If he wants larger sails he's going to need largers masts and rigging. These are engineering problems. Increase the surface area of a sail and you increase the stress it places on the mast. The mast needs to be stronger and more securely bound.

I think the better option is to say that sails, while large, don't consume large numbers of slots. They apply a large AC penalty, of course, and perhaps there are variant sails -- you can get more speed for a greater penalty.

One component of rigging = 1 sail (be it small, medium, or large) but many vehicles have 3 or more sails, especialy if they are loaded down with guns and armor, or cargo. Your yatch would have 2 or 3 rigging components, while a scooner just 1. A full "ship of the line" might have 10!

Whoa! A ship of the line would have something on the order of 30-40, I imagine, including studding sails and jibs and stay sails. I don't think we should even try to model anything that complicated.

2) The reason I seperated the sails from the rigging is that it makes sense that you could change your type of sails.

Does this really make sense? Do we think that, say, a solar sail craft could just put some canvas on its mounts and merrily travel the waves? That it is actually built to handle the stresses of a gale at sea? Or conversely, that putting solar sail material on a schooner would let it travel the solar system?

I think we're over-simplifying some things and over-complicating others. Let us try something easier.

For each size of vehicle there is a corresponding sail type, that uses up a certain number of slots. Sails can have a descriptor to indicate that they are wind, or solar, or astral or whatever.

Sails can be modified at "runtime", if you will. Normally a sail provides x speed points and applies a penalty of x to the vessel's AC. The operator of the sails can adjust that as they see fit, so that making the speed x+y makes the AC penalty also x+y. You can therefore increase your speed by piling on more canvas, but make yourself more of a target as you do so. Likewise you can reduce your profile but by doing so you limit your speed. Obviously there would be limits to this, and we'd talked previously about the notion of a "Speed Demon" feat that perhaps could apply here -- a feat that allows a captain to make even more extreme alterations than would be normally possible.

I just can't accept the notion that you can stick larger sails on rigging intended for smaller ones.

Note: this is the same concept I used when writing up other vital systems that are large and stick out of the vehicle: Derrigibles (blimps), and Arrays (like a solar panel array).

Yeah, I thought it worked for Arrays and so left it in the first draft I did. But when I got to sails it just seemed... to not work so well. Haven't gotten to Dirigibles yet, we'll see what I think of that...

 

[Wyvern]

Okay, you make some very good arguments. Here's what I see as the relevant points on both sides:

1) Sails take up proportionately less "hull space" than other components of comparable size.

2) Sails can be furled to reduce your profile, or "topped out" to increase your speed.

3) You can't put large sails on a small mast.

4) Sails of different types are theoretically interchangable. While it wouldn't normally work to put solar sails on a galleon or canvas sails on a spacecraft, that's more an issue of hull design than sail design. In a Spelljammer-like setting, solar sails might work perfectly well on a galleon. Certainly I don't have any trouble imagining an astral skiff switching to canvas sails when it leaves the astral plane.

Taking all these points into consideration, I suggest a compromise. It seems to me that what we need are small, medium and large rigging components (taking up 1, 2 or 3 component slots respectively), and single listings for each type of sail. The differences between the various-sized astral sails are mostly the same as the differences between the various-sized wind sails, so having a separate listing for each type and size is redundant.

Wyvern

 

[BlackJaw]

As I've pointed out before, I tend to make things a bit more complicated then they need be, so if you can streamline it down some, go for it. I would argue that sails should be interchangible becasue the component systems we are designing are extreamly vague as to their type or setting. An solar sail craft in a Sci-fi setting can't switch to canvas and work in the skies/on the water sure, but in a fantasy world where space is eather, and space ships look like normal ships (Spelljammer for example) it does work, and works especialy well with astral ships etc.

Just so long as:
1) you don't need to get a bigger hull (more HD) to make a sail craft
2) you can change sail types if you want (be it as a side note in description, or if the descriptions have a note saying your DM may not allow changing of diffrent types depending on the nature of the setting... at the very least)

I expect you'll have the same problems with derrigibles, although I have no problem seeing a tiny little booth on the bottom of a blimp compared to seeing a good sized one on a the same large blimp. If you end up with a better system for all this I recomend going back and altering arrays to keep it consistent.

OH and one more thing: becareful with how you write up sails... it would suck if you have recalculate a vehilce's movement speed depending on how much wind there is. I once palyed Alternity, and in that game, solar sails provide diffrent amounts of movement points depending on how close to the sun you were... so every time you go closers or farther away, you had to add up the new point tottal, add in any currently active or inactive engines on top of that, and and then cross refrence it with a table depending on you vehicle's size. Kind of annoying. I figured giving sails a set number of movement points at "normal" conditions, and the vehicle goes slower or faster in better or worse wind in a system more like encmbrance (half speed, double speed, or maybe just add +1 space, -3 spaces etc?) rather then forcing recalculations for difrent winds. This is especialy important in a D&D setting where PCs could have access to magic to change their weather on a momment's notice.

 

[barsoomcore]

I would argue that sails should be interchangible becasue the component systems we are designing are extreamly vague as to their type or setting. An solar sail craft in a Sci-fi setting can't switch to canvas and work in the skies/on the water sure, but in a fantasy world where space is eather, and space ships look like normal ships (Spelljammer for example) it does work, and works especialy well with astral ships etc.

Yeah, it's just so cool. And cool ALWAYS beats reasonable in my books. I WANT to do something like that. I really, really, really want to. I will. It's just too cool.

Just so long as:
1) you don't need to get a bigger hull (more HD) to make a sail craft

Check

2) you can change sail types if you want (be it as a side note in description, or if the descriptions have a note saying your DM may not allow changing of diffrent types depending on the nature of the setting... at the very least)

I'll think of something. I promise.

I expect you'll have the same problems with derrigibles, although I have no problem seeing a tiny little booth on the bottom of a blimp compared to seeing a good sized one on a the same large blimp. If you end up with a better system for all this I recomend going back and altering arrays to keep it consistent.

Again, I just don't think dirigibles should take up many slots. I think they should be BIG, and probably change the size category of the vessel they're attached to, but they don't take up many slots.

OH and one more thing: becareful with how you write up sails... it would suck if you have recalculate a vehilce's movement speed depending on how much wind there is.

Yes, good call. Something simple that at least gives a flavour of being at the mercy of the elements, I think is what we want...

It's just like the old days! We're talking and stuff. I'm so happy.