How to spend several tonnes of gold?

[Flyndaran]

Flying ship? Why not zoid.... I mean Spaceship 1 and 7 weird tech?

[PseudoFenton]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Flying ship? Why not zoid.... I mean Spaceship 1 and 7 weird tech?

I don't have those books, I generally don't play sci-fi/space games so haven't needed them. Also my assumption would be that a spaceship would be made of metal, fast, quite manoeuvrable and with a large carrying capacity - traits I don't necessarily want unless I want to allow them to suddenly besiege castles from the air in relative safety!

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by PseudoFenton

I don't have those books, I generally don't play sci-fi/space games so haven't needed them. Also my assumption would be that a spaceship would be made of metal, fast, quite manoeuvrable and with a large carrying capacity - traits I don't necessarily want unless I want to allow them to suddenly besiege castles from the air in relative safety!

SS7 adds normal wood for structure and with nautical lines the speed isn't so incredible. Also there are lifting gasbags.
But if you don't have the books, you don't have them.

[William]

Street math on the pricing: a Viking longship would be about 50 feet long and 8 feet wide. Your call whether the magic is $20 or $33 per point, but Flying Carpet on 400 square feet could carry 5 tons and at $33 would cost $2.64mil for the enchantment, plus the cost of the ship itself. It would take thirty enchanter mages working 8-hour days a year to produce. Multiply that times 1.5 to allow for a rounded hull and you have about $4mil, capacity of 7.5 tons and you need 45 enchanters to get it done in a year.

Drake's Golden Hind, a larger galleon of a later age, was 102 by 22 at the deck. Now you're up to $23.3mil, 42 tons of capacity and 253 enchanters, plus construction of the base ship. Of course, if you have 253 enchanters available to work on a flying boat enchantment is probably at the $20 rate rather than $33.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by PseudoFenton

Also, just how big *is* a boat/ship? I can't find any useful measurements which I could use to calculate costs for the Flying Carpet spell.

Icelander posted lots of ships in this forum, for example:

Galleon, medium (130’)
TL: 4
ST/HP: 295†
Hnd/SR: -3/5
HT: 12c
Move: 0.07/4.5
Ewt: 200t
Lwt: 490t
Load: 390t
SM: +8
Occ: 45+70
DR: 30/15
Range: -
Cost: $390K
Locations: 3M, O, 2S
Draft: 9’

or

Caravelão redonda (78‘)
TL: 4
ST/HP: 156†
Hnd/SR: -3/4
HT: 12c
Move: 0.2/6
EWt: 30t
LWt: 80t
Load: 50t
SM: +8
Occ: 14
DR: 12/6
Range: -
Cost: $60K
Locations: 2M, O, S
Draft: 10‘

[SCAR]

The TL4^ Star Galleon in SS7 (which can also fly into space), with a wooden (and magical wood) hull has a cost of under $6M, and an air speed of 200mph.

Even if you don't have SS7, or use that specific ship, it gives you a baseline for costs.

Really you can charge what you want for the item, up to as much as they're willing to pay.

You could let them find such an item being offered for sale, then drop a 'mission' in distant lands on short notice, and then bring in another party interested in buying the ship, and they will have to out bid the opposition!

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by PseudoFenton

Also, just how big *is* a boat/ship? I can't find any useful measurements which I could use to calculate costs for the Flying Carpet spell. Picture a classic pirate ship for what I have in mind in terms of scale, I want something big enough so that it looks as though it should have a crew and has lots of room to be customised and expanded on.

The most famous pirate ship, The Queen Anne's Revenge was apparently about 100X24 feet. It may weighed over 350 tons and could carry 200 tons of cargo.

This link should be helpful.

[Jovus]

Looking at it from the point of view of your problem, rather than, "What would the Flying Dutchman actually look like?" I recommend you require the hull to be made of this gold for enchanting purposes. After all, they wouldn't normally be able to do this, but because of the purity and provenance of the metal, it will take the proper long-term enchantments. (After all, other flying craft are either a) the work of individual prodigies, or b) really small by comparison.)

Going this direction immediately presents a few neat consequences.

• The gold is mostly used up in construction and purchasing of the ship
• The ship itself is easy to damage - gold is soft - but also easy to repair - gold is soft
• You manage to maintain and heighten the paranoia that should come from having a large wondrous magical artifact
• Yar! Yon pirate ship be havin' sails o' cloth o' gold!
• This is a way to give the players most of the gold while disabling them from using it, so it solves both the problem of deluging the gameworld and the problem of being a renenging GM

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Jovus

I recommend you require the hull to be made of this gold for enchanting purposes. After all, they wouldn't normally be able to do this, but because of the purity and provenance of the metal, it will take the proper long-term enchantments.

Also, gold is the sun metal, the sun flies across the sky, therefore gold can fly across the sky. QED.

Although, now that I think about it, the sun god union may not take too kindly to scabs.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

But it's not THAT much money, and if the economy can/does handle uber-luxuries or their magical equivalent, there very well might be some (multi) million-dollar items they can commission or invest in.

Yes. A ton of gold, at an exchange rate of 12 masses of silver to 1 of gold, is 400 talents. Lots of tiny states like the Athenian Empire had a revenue in the hundreds of talents, and could spend that much in a few months on a big building project or naval expedition. When you allow for the price of gold halving for a few years, its not going to break the economy even if they spend it all in one year.

(Edit: Its also less than the 85,000 marks, or 56,000 pounds, which a coalition of French nobles promised to pay Venice to transport the Fourth Crusade).