Vehicles and Weapons from Fantasy giving me problems

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I remain unconvinced that a wooden hull should deliver a superior impact than a fiberglass one, if and only if the fiberglass one is fitted with an engine.

If impact is supposed to include a toughness factor, it should really be based on DR, not hit points. In any collision, there's a certain amount of energy which needs to be absorbed somewhere, and 'somewhere' is usually the softer object.

Of course, collision damage should also be based mostly on the hit points of the smaller object; a human getting hit by an aircraft carrier moving at 10 mph is not going to be significantly more hurt than one hit by a truck moving at 10 mph (this assumes the human doesn't get caught between the vehicle and a solid object); in either case, it's basically a 10 mph collision with an essentially immovable object.

[tratclif]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

When I did my TL analysis, I noticed this myself. A TL 4 "Pirate ship" is actually SLOWER than a TL 3 Crusader Ship, and looking at the two statlines, I can't think of many reasons to make the jump to the "Pirate Ship."

The main reason would be the Crusader Ship's freeboard, which would be less than 2 meters and maybe less than a meter. It's only practical in the relatively calm Mediterranean, and would sink in a Caribbean storm.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I would expect Pirate Ships would be faster than their prey, as you can't possibly pounce on treasure ships if they simply lower all their sails and outrun you.

I'm betting its errata, and there's some numbers switched between the Galleon and the Pirate ship

As I said earlier in the thread, longer ships are faster than shorter ships. The Pirate Ship is listed as a gaff-and-jib rig while the Galleon is listed as full-rigged, so the Galleon has more area-of-sail proportionally. There are other considerations in sailing ship speed, but it's not immediately obvious that the relative speeds are wrong.

The acceleration for the Pirate Ship does look like it ought to be .3 and not .03, unless the sail area is a lot smaller than I'd expect.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by tratclif

The main reason would be the Crusader Ship's freeboard, which would be less than 2 meters and maybe less than a meter. It's only practical in the relatively calm Mediterranean, and would sink in a Caribbean storm.

But there is nothing in the stats to indicate this. Hence, the stats are so incomplete as to be actively misleading. That's worse than no stats at all.

Originally Posted by tratclif

As I said earlier in the thread, longer ships are faster than shorter ships. The Pirate Ship is listed as a gaff-and-jib rig while the Galleon is listed as full-rigged, so the Galleon has more area-of-sail proportionally. There are other considerations in sailing ship speed, but it's not immediately obvious that the relative speeds are wrong.

The acceleration for the Pirate Ship does look like it ought to be .3 and not .03, unless the sail area is a lot smaller than I'd expect.

The so called 'pirate ship' is:

a) Not a ship. It's a sloop or a cutter.
b) Slower than a typical Fishing boat.
c) Unable to overtake any other vessel, as it is the slowest watercraft described in GURPS.

There might be a vessel which fits these stats somewhere. But it's not a typical Age of Sail pirate vessel, since those needed to be relatively fast and handy.

[tratclif]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Fair enough, but I was under the impression that the sail plan was minimal.

Yes, but the ship is very light weight, so you get a good power/mass ratio.

Originally Posted by Icelander

That's why I feel that giving it stats which make using oars in combat inferior is somewhat strange. I have no trouble with it making better time under sail over long distances, but I feel it's strange that it can't reach higher speed for a minute or two while ramming under oars.

Finding stats for the
Olympias under sail is proving difficult. It's not online that I can see, and my manila folders of yellowing Xeroxes have gone wandering, but if you assume that the sail generates slightly more power than the rowing crew, it would follow that speed under sail would be slightly higher than under oars.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I remain unconvinced that a wooden hull should deliver a superior impact than a fiberglass one, if and only if the fiberglass one is fitted with an engine.

The seperation into powered and unpowered vehicles is wonky and it ignores the fact that many sailing ships are far from Homogenous objects.

I wasn't trying to advocate the existing collision rules, which may or may not be decent but offend my inner physics geek greatly. Just pointing out the whys.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by tratclif

Yes, but the ship is very light weight, so you get a good power/mass ratio.

Finding stats for the
Olympias under sail is proving difficult. It's not online that I can see, and my manila folders of yellowing Xeroxes have gone wandering, but if you assume that the sail generates slightly more power than the rowing crew, it would follow that speed under sail would be slightly higher than under oars.

Perhaps. As I said, I'm not an expert and I've always been under the impression that the sail was there to allow rowers to rest during long voyages, not because it allowed the ship to achieve higher speeds in short bursts than under oars.

[DungeonCrawler]

Originally Posted by Icelander

But there is nothing in the stats to indicate this. Hence, the stats are so incomplete as to be actively misleading. That's worse than no stats at all.




The so called 'pirate ship' is:

a) Not a ship. It's a cutter.
b) Slower than a typical Fishing boat.
c) Unable to overtake any other vessel, as it is the slowest watercraft described in GURPS.

There might be a vessel which fits these stats somewhere. But it's not a typical Age of Sail pirate vessel, since those needed to be relatively fast and handy.

Actually, there were slow, but handy pirate ships used in close waters. They were cheap enough to be afforded by poor locals. The faster, bigger ships they preyed upon were actually slower due to sand bars, reefs, and/or narrow channels. And a fair part of the time, the target ship ran aground trying to escape them, so speed didn't matter except to reach the ship before it sank.

Even then, collecting the flotsam and/or jetsam was profitable to the pirates.

But that is a very different form of piracy than raiding treasure ships on the high seas. There, a fast and sturdy ship--if somewhat lightly armed--was needed to run down it's prey. And a great deal of the time, they were only pirates to the shipping being raided, they were privateers to the government that employed them. Of course, they often had multiple employers, so that got tricky, too.

I've got no estimates on the value of cargo seized, but that may well go to the high seas pirates. However, the sheer number of ships seized goes to pirates who seized anchored ships, grounded ships, or ships in confined waters. Those also tended to be the more ruthless of pirates since they actually lived in the vicinity where they raided.

Then there were river pirates that were generally similar in nature to the shore pirates...at least when they weren't busy being raiders and/or bandits.

[tratclif]

Originally Posted by Icelander

The so called 'pirate ship' is:

a) Not a ship. It's a cutter.
b) Slower than a typical Fishing boat.
c) Unable to overtake any other vessel, as it is the slowest watercraft described in GURPS.

There might be a vessel which fits these stats somewhere. But it's not a typical Age of Sail pirate vessel, since those needed to be relatively fast and handy.

If I recall correctly, Bill Stoddard said that he designed the vehicles under VE for 3rd edition, then converted to 4E with corrections for historical data. If we assume that the acceleration of .03 is an errata, and assume that it's an errata because Bill miscalculated the Aquatic Motive Thrust, and assume I'm remembering algebra correctly, the corrected top speed would be 3*(cube root of 10), or move 6.

Note the three "assumes" in there.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by tratclif

If I recall correctly, Bill Stoddard said that he designed the vehicles under VE for 3rd edition, then converted to 4E with corrections for historical data. If we assume that the acceleration of .03 is an errata, and assume that it's an errata because Bill miscalculated the Aquatic Motive Thrust, and assume I'm remembering algebra correctly, the corrected top speed would be 3*(cube root of 10), or move 6.

Note the three "assumes" in there.

Is this if you assume Acceleration of 0,3? I don't have Vehicles, so I have no idea how this is figured or why an Acceleration of 0,2 yields a top speed of 7 (12 knots) for the dhow and galleon.

Well, if it's right it's immediately better than the Pirate 'ship' making a top speed of Move 3 (5 knots), but there's still the problem of the Armada galleon making 12 knots. Those relative speeds are out of whack.

No historical galleon of that size that I've heard about was that fast. Even the English race-built galleons weren't near that speed.

Didn't anyone like Pulver or Kromm check Stoddard's stats? Those little tables in Fantasy include so many questionable numbers and clear typos or formatting errors that they seem out of place in a GURPS book.

I wouldn't mind if it was just a couple of examples to tide us over until we get a real supplement with ships and low-tech artillery, but Cabaret Chicks on Ice, the TL0-TL4 tech book, has been an awful long time in coming. And since the vast majority of all fantasy worlds are TL2-TL4, that's hurting my gaming and forcing me to vaste valuable time on research that I want to be able to pay authors to do for me.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Didn't anyone like Pulver or Kromm check Stoddard's stats?

'Fraid not. Fantasy was one of those early 4e titles that was planned when we were just finishing up the Basic Set and written while I was spending most of my time on Powers. Contrary to common myth, I wasn't personally checking much 4e content until after I was mostly done with Powers in summer 2005, and I wasn't reviewing every last thing in every last 4e publication until after I finished Martial Arts in autumn 2006. My main line-development duties up to then were (1) create an entirely new edition of the game and (2) write the first and arguably most vital pair of rules expansions. The managing editor was spelling me on line editor duty.

Really, weapons and vehicles stats have to be guesses until suitable rules come out. High-Tech frames TL5-8 gear fairly well. Low-Tech will eventually do the same for TL0-4. Until then, Martial Arts is your best choice for low-tech gear, with an honorable mention to Dungeon Fantasy 1 for wild fantasy gear.