The Quick Questions About World Building Thread

There's that, too. A sheep's gestation is about 159 days — 5 months. A cow comes in at gestates in about 284 days — roughly 9.33 months. A horse's is 336 days — about 11 months. Camels go 400 days — 1 year and one month. A rhino is 480 days — 14 months. And an Elephant takes 624 days — 20, nearly 21 months.

The dragons are intelligent, but I wasn't thinking of them as farmers. More like the fly down and hunt stuff and then fly away kind of eaters.

Would an animal the size of a T Rex (how I envisioned the majority of them, size-wise) be able to live on a diet of sheep or cows? Especially flying creatures who would use a lot of energy while in flight. And there are communities of dragons in this story.

There are Western dragons and Eastern dragons. Since the Eastern dragons use magic a lot, maybe they could live partly on magic as sustenance. But that still leaves the Western dragons.

There are also humans, who coexist (mostly) peacefully with the dragons, so the dragons could possibly buy food from human farmers.

Sure, large predators can live on relatively small prey animals, as long as the prey animals are also relatively easy to find and kill. That's why I suggested critters that have a strong herding tendency — lots of chances at a member of the herd and if the prey animal also has a strong herd-reforming instinct, even if the attack scatters the herd, it will come back together.

Part of the problem, really, is that sustaining enough animals for these dragons to eat would be exceptionally resource-intensive.

Dragonriders of Pern pointed this out, if I'm not mistaken. I only read a few of those stories for school, but...

In any case, you'd need the land area of whole US States just to sustain a dozen or so dragons, with a small-medium human population in between.

Not really. Sheep average between 150 and 200 pounds per animal — and that's for ewes — rams are heavier. Cows average 1500+ pounds per animal. Unless the dragons require tons of meat every day, it wouldn't be at all difficult to sustain a sizeable population.

edited 26th Jan '12 10:23:27 PM by Madrugada

You might be able to breed elephants to breed faster. Or perhaps breed cows to be bigger.

Aurochs, musk oxen...

Average human weighs 70kg and eats 1kg per day ~ 6 times body weight per year. Tiny animals like mice eat 5 x body weight per week or day whatever. A huge animal like a dragon eats 1 x body weight per year; less because it is cold blooded; even less if it eats magic.

10 ton Dragon eats 10 elephants per year or 200 cows or 1,000 sheep. He has a huge hoarde, if he don't want trouble, he buys his food from human farmers. If he don't want trouble, he will be exposition guy rather than villain.

Hm, this dragon discussion looks like it could get a thread of its own.

Anyway, can anybody say anything on reptilian dietary habits? Like, you know, whether a dragon could catch a Large Animal once in a week or longer and spend the rest of its time in its cave digesting it and resting?

(edit: kind of addressed here)

edited 10th Feb '12 10:09:54 AM by lordGacek

The only reason snakes do that is because they're cold-blooded. I don't think a cold-blooded creature is capable of enough exertion to fly, let alone breathing fire. It's safe to say that dragons have to be more complex than big reptiles.

...you know what, I just realised that once, long ago, there was a time when a dragon could be a cold-blooded reptile, breathe fire, and eat handwaves, and the fandom still wouldn't throw a tantrum over it.

Just how big are these dragons anyway? The answer to that question is going to say a lot about the kind of food it eats, I mean there's going to be a big difference in food volume requirements between a 15 foot dragon, a 25 foot one and a 40 foot one.

Would it be possible to move all the posts related to my question to a different thread or would a new thread have to be made without them (or a link to where the discussion starts on this thread)?

I've been toying with the idea of dragons being in a world with a high level of background magic (think Discworld) and absorb some that magic as part of their diet.

Well, most western dragons (westies (sing. westy)) are about the size (and mass I guess) of a T Rex. Wyverns are about 1/3 the size (and whatever mass that would be) of regular westies. Eastern dragons (Easties (sing. easty)) and aquatic westies are similar in mass but spread out over a serpentine body.

edited 13th Feb '12 6:36:36 PM by Grenedle

I don't know that we can move existing posts into new threads, or that it's worth the effort. I think you could just start a new thread and go with it.

Sorry, we can't move individual posts. Go ahead and make a new thread for your questions. If you want to put in links to where they are in this thread, first right-click on the timestamp of them, which will open a new tab with that post as the first post on the page, then copy and paste the url of that tab into the new thread.

Ok, here is the link for more discussion. As it says in the new thread, I've decided to expand the discussion to more about dragons.

Huh. First non-dragon post in a while

Anyways, quick, hopefully simple question; would being encased in a frictionless field improve the cutting ability of a bladed weapon? I'm currently assuming yes, although I'm not sure how much- wondering if it would push it into pseudo-Absurdly Sharp Blade territory, or if I'm completely wrong and it wouldn't make any significant difference.

No it wouldn't. It would, however, make it virtually impossible to grip the sword.

... yeah, that part's not particularly relevant. The frictionless field is being generated by the people who are using the weapons, so both they and the weapons are inside the field. Non-issue.

I'm basing the thought on my own experiences chopping wood, mostly- if the axe blade was frictionless, it seems to me that less of the force of the swings would be lost to friction between the blade and the wood, so individual cuts would go quite a bit deeper with the same amount of force (and it would be a lot easier to pull the bloody thing loose to begin the next swing >.<). Again, I could be wrong, but I would like to hear at least some kind of explanation as to why rather than just 'you're wrong'.

Still won't work much better, most armour is a single sheet, so friction doesn't really, play a role, you still have to cut the armour and force it apart, which is a totally different issue than say, trying to insert a knife between chinks in a suit of armour (where lack of friction would help).

edited 6th Mar '12 12:45:41 PM by MattII

Wait, wouldn't frictionless-ness help with the 'forcing armour apart' bit? Maybe I phrased my question poorly- a frictionless blade wouldn't help with the initial cut, got that, but I'm pretty sure it would help (at least some) by reducing the amount of force needed to continue forcing the blade through whatever you're trying to bisect. By taking friction out of the equation, the forces acting against your swing are lessened.

No, it wouldn't help with 'forcing the armour apart' (unless you were thrusting) because to do that you have to bent the metal at the cut, and frictionlessness is not the same as strength. On top of that, you're still trying to cut the metal (or whatever your armour is made of) at the ends of the initial cut, which frictionlessness isn't going to help either.

It will help big-time against un-/lightly-armoured opponents though.

I seem to be having this problem a lot today. Just not coming across clearly :/

Simple example. Take a hypothetical axe and whack a hypothetical suit of armour with the it. Then try to pull it back out. It's gonna stick like a bugger, and that force of friction was acting against it on the way in, too. At least, that's my understanding of things.

No, that force is only part of the reason stopping it, the other two parts are the edge of the blade trying to cut deeper into the metal, and the body of the head trying to spread the metal on either side of the cut, neither of which has anything to do with friction.

edited 6th Mar '12 4:50:36 PM by MattII

Right, and with friction removed, that force won't be stopping it, reducing the effort needed to stick it in in the first place by that amount. You'll still need to apply force to cut the metal and whatnot, but friction won't be a factor, therefore you won't need as much force if your axe was not frictionless.