Building a ship

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I always thought Mechanic was the skill of repairing things, not constructing things.

I'm coming at this from the angle of a party of adventurers deciding to build themselves a boat rather than as the requirements for a ship-building business. I'm imagining building from a traditional design, not inventing a new design.

So it's looking like Carpentry would be the main skill involved (plus Sewing, etc. for components). Building boats or ships are probably techniques of Carpentry. The repair skill would be either Carpentry or Mechanic (vehicle type).

From that perspective I agree.
Mechanic IMO can be used to build and repair.
Design- Engineer
Build/Repair- Mechanic and most if not all craft skills, depending on the materials or function being worked on.
Use - Operate type skills, boating, shiphandling, etc.

[Gigermann]

My presumption is that the Shipwright designs, and oversees the overall project, employing other laborers as needed by their specialty. Same situation as an Architect. But someone on the team will definitely need to fill the design job, or you'll end up with something not very seaworthy.

Shipwright>Carpenter/etc. = Architect>Mason/etc., for example. LTC3 does list "Building Laborer" as a job—this is probably applicable (Masonry for Architecture, Carpentry for Shipbuilding).

That's just a guess, though

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

The shipwright occupation listed in Low-Tech Companion 3 appears to be a ship designer, since the job roll is against the Engineer skill, and the occupation is compared to the architect occupation, not the building laborer.

Take a close look at Architect - it has both the design (Architecture) and building (Carpentry or Masonry) skills, largely because architects historically worked their way up from skilled laborer. I'd imagine shipwrights are similar, making Engineer (Ships) the design skill and Mechanic (Ships) the build skill.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I always thought Mechanic was the skill of repairing things, not constructing things.

In GURPS, build and repair use the same skill. This seems realistic to me, although I could see allowing someone to only be able to build or only be able to repair as an Optional Specialization.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I'm coming at this from the angle of a party of adventurers deciding to build themselves a boat rather than as the requirements for a ship-building business. I'm imagining building from a traditional design, not inventing a new design.

Machinist (Ship), or Carpentry if it's a simple design. It sounds like you're wanting a sailboat, which is a bit more complex than Carpentry is likely to allow for; Machinist (Ship) probably defaults to Carpentry at around -4 (-3 to go the other way around), so you'll probably need to take some extra time for making the mast and rudder (the rest you can manage with unmodified Carpentry). The sail calls for Sewing. If you're starting from living trees, Professional Skill (Forester) - which defaults to Carpentry-3 - is also needed. That said, allowing Carpentry to work for all cases of Machinist (Ship) probably won't break anything when making a relatively simple vessel like a basic sailboat.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Take a close look at Architect - it has both the design (Architecture) and building (Carpentry or Masonry) skills, largely because architects historically worked their way up from skilled laborer. I'd imagine shipwrights are similar, making Engineer (Ships) the design skill and Mechanic (Ships) the build skill.

Yes, but I'm not quite ready to say this one mixed job description from the third sequel to a supplement that is only analogous to another job description that happens to be related to the question I'm asking shows clearly what the main rules are trying to say. In other words, I'd need something more direct to decide, yep, that's what GURPS is trying to tell me. The main message I'm seeing now is a bit more mixed than that.

In GURPS, build and repair use the same skill.

Quite possibly, but can you substantiate this for me a little better? The Mechanic skill doesn't say anything about building things, only repairing things. If "Mechanic allows building" is a thing that has to be deduced from examples, can you show me examples that make this clearer?

Machinist (Ship), or Carpentry if it's a simple design.

Machinst? The skill of making parts and tools? That doesn't sound right to me. And Machinist doesn't have required specializations. Did you mean Mechanic? You say Machinist multiple times.

It sounds like you're wanting a sailboat,

I'm making up a "useful skills" document, and one likely activity is "We wanna build a boat." So I don't have a specific craft in mind; I just wondered what skills I would say if a player said they wanted to be able to do something like this. Because I hate it when players say they want to do something they don't have skills for, and then complain that I never told them they'd need a skill for that.

[(E)]

I did a reasonable amount of reading about viking longships to work out the economic requirements, one thing to remember is that all the raw materials required may have to be sourced by the group building the ship. This isnt directly related but it may demonstrate the amount of work involved.

The stuff below relates to a longship rather than a generic ship.

Timber
- keel, mast and other purpose felled timber. Locating and moving the trees may require skills.
- hull, lots of tedious work splitting timber. Carpentry.

Tar, charcoal, oils, resins etc
- baking stumps in kilns to get tar.
- gathering resin, animal fat etc.

Rope
- Growing and harvesting Hemp, wool, flax.
- animal skins (hunting and survival related skills)
- bast fiber

Ballasting
- stone working (possibly)


Metal work
- iron and charcoal
- other metals

Sail
Wool and about a person/decade of labour spinning and weaving.
Another batch of oils, waxes and resins.....

There are bound to be a few things I've missed. But there are some good sites around documenting a longship reconstruction project.

[Black Leviathan]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Do you also want Professional Skill (housewright) for the frame of a house?

I think you mean Architecture.

If you have a properly designed schematic carpentry will allow you to build most anything. If you're figuring it out on your own you can probably use carpentry to build a box-thing that will float and be relatively boaty but your ability to design a boat that's aerodynamic, durable, and utilitarian would be defaulting to the Shipright skill. At some point some of those creations are probably not able to be realistically defaulted. Even a Master Carpenter in the Renaissance would struggle to make a Difference Engine or and Automatic Crossbow without some level of Engineering training.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Yes, but I'm not quite ready to say this one mixed job description from the third sequel to a supplement that is only analogous to another job description that happens to be related to the question I'm asking shows clearly what the main rules are trying to say. In other words, I'd need something more direct to decide, yep, that's what GURPS is trying to tell me. The main message I'm seeing now is a bit more mixed than that.

As I mentioned in my first post, LTC3 explicitly states "vehicular carpentry uses Mechanic" (p.46, under Carpenter). Pointing to shipwright was simply in further support of this. It's rather clear that, at least in LTC3 (the only place I'm aware of that has any skills mentioned for shipmaking), Mechanic is meant to be used for making ships.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Quite possibly, but can you substantiate this for me a little better? The Mechanic skill doesn't say anything about building things, only repairing things. If "Mechanic allows building" is a thing that has to be deduced from examples, can you show me examples that make this clearer?

Armoury's the big one, although now that I look at the Skills for Design, Repair and Use sidebar on B190 there's a discrepancy - that and Engineer state the same skill used for design is used to build, yet Armoury states that it is the skill for building and repairing and that Engineer is used for design. I think later GURPS books, like LTC3, go with the idea of build/repair being the same skill rather than design/build, but there's precedent to do it either way. Heck, you could even do it both ways, allowing both Armoury (or Mechanic) and Engineer to be used for building, in addition to their repair (for Armoury/Mechanic) or design (for Engineer) functionality.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Machinst? The skill of making parts and tools? That doesn't sound right to me. And Machinist doesn't have required specializations. Did you mean Mechanic? You say Machinist multiple times.

Apologies, I mixed up the names. Yeah, I meant Mechanic.

[Gigermann]

I just happened to be poking around, and noticed 3e GURPS High-Tech has a sidebar on p.57 covering just this sort of thing.