Re: New ships ideas...

I suppose I wanted to restart the 'groundlings with Spelljamming' thread
again, but I wanted a discussion about it with some new perspectives.

Obviously, if a ship isn't going to be more than a day from replentishing
its air, perhaps only leaving the atmosphere to get to the other side
of the planet it can have a _much_ larger crew.  A ship that expects
a 2-3 month journey between replentishing the air will have a much
greater ship mass/crew ratio.

Now I'll call a ship which has a ship mass/crew ratio sufficient to have
good air on 2-3 month voyages a WildSpace ship, and one whose crew/lift
weight of helm ratio is maximized a groundling ship.

If you give the Wild Space shipwright only a slight edge in materials
and magic, but give the Wild Space crews all the proficiencies
necessary to operate a ship well, what would happen when you put
equal tonnage of Wild Space fleet vs groundling fleet?

It wouldn't be a match. The speed and manuverabilty of the spelljamming
fleet would allow them to make high speed passes at the other fleet.
They could literally come out of nowhere to strike. Only if the
groundling fleet had air support would they have a chance. In fact, a
smart commander would sacrifice ships and crew to bring down at least
one of the enemy SJ ships so they could get the technology.

You must also remember that the defending fleet has unlimited resources.
They can manufacture more ships, more quickly, than a fleet that has to
travel 2-3 months. They also, if they organize, have access to thousands
of mages worldwide that they could use in the assault. What would happen
to the SJ fleet if 16 fireballs and 24 lightning bolts came from each of
the ships in the groundling fleet? Admittedly this wouldn't happen
during the first battle, but what ruler is going to let that kind of
attack suceed more than once?

I would imagine that any ruler worth his upumm....salt...would hire a
mage to research the strange ships, perhaps even offering a reward for
knowledge of these strange vessels. Remember again, it says in the rules
that groundling mages know of the existence of Spelljamming cultures and
technology, it's just not  important to them.

I think I'll stop now, this could go on and on...

Jimmy
http://swampfox.fmarion.edu/web/students/jamccall/