The earliest ship will be made of wood. Earliest warships might be something similar. The metal frames will come along as they advance wet navy design. There will be scant few early warships. They will be hard to build and maintain and of course have the threat of fire being a huge danger. The more ambitious will build some of the warships more like a wet navy warship. Basically they become a arms race unto their own.
Yeah the Ottoman's would be pretty fucked. Anyone with access to mountainous regions which have had volcanic activity in their past will likely have some of the base material.
edited 29th Jul '11 11:39:02 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?Excerpt from a small ship-to-ship action.
"Very well. Armor-piercing shells loaded into the secondary batteries?" Captain Carpenter asked.
"Yessir."
"Load up incendiaries into the aft main gun, and tell them we’ll be firing at point blank as they pass us to port. Bring up altitude to match them as best as possible, I don't want any plunging fire raining down on us."
The firing of secondary batteries opened up at six thousand yards, but neither ship had scored a definite hit on one another with even the main guns. But once the lighter weapons began to up the firing rate, the first definite impact was landed on Cincinnati, glancing off of her bow. A terrific crash was felt throughout the entire ship, but the shell didn’t detonate until it had passed clean through the bow and exiting near the keel, blowing up harmlessly a few hundred yards beneath them. The damage control parties reported back that there was a hole from the deck to the keel, and that the pneumatics for the forward stabilizer leg was a wreck. A dud shell from Antonio Oqueno gouged out some armor plate from Able Turret, but had no other effect. Finally, Antonio Oqueno suffered a hit near her bridge, throwing up a wall of splinters and deck debris into the face of the bridge. Glass windows, triple thick and reinforced, cracked under the impact of splinters, but otherwise had no effect. A small fire burned on the deck and a secondary gun in a pedestal mount was wrecked.
By three thousand yards, the hits were more regular – and more effective – with Antonio Oqueno taking on a slight list to starboard as one of her trim grids lost power, and the forward mast of Cincinnati being ruined by an impact at the base of the mast. It crumpled and collapsed rearward by the force of the hundred mile an hour winds, and the two crow’s mast lookouts were flung clear of the ship to their deaths, despite being secured to the mast by steel safety cables. Another impact on Antonio Oqueno by secondary guns blasted a huge hole in her after smokestack, and the result was a messy black cloud of coal smoke billowing out and obscuring half of the ship under the haze. This was followed by a secondary hit directly on the bridge of Antonio Oqueno, which obliterated it.
Carpenter saw the hit and it took him a few seconds to realize what had happened, and that it could very well happen in turn to him.
"Mr Orlman, take up command in the engineering room. Just in case you hear about the bridge getting eviscerated."
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.I guess you could always copy pasta the good bits, and wait for feedback?
Although if they're of the mindset that nothing good comes out of tvtropes and thus disregard your question simply because of that, chances are you will be better off without their input anyway. If someone is knowledgable about a specific field of study, they'll like sharing that information without getting all big-headed about it. However, if all they can say to you is "ewwww, a tvtropes scumbag, go play with your anime, freak", they probably didn't have much in terms of meanigful input into the discussion.
A knowedgable person will actually read the question, ponder the point and get back with you.
edited 15th Aug '11 12:52:21 PM by pvtnum11
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.After hanging around their fora for a bit. I have decided that they would ignore any interesting story potential and spend too much time bashing then hashing. They take too much of a hard science approach for me to even consider it there.
I want to come back to the idea of ship boarding actions. Ie say you disable one side of a ships guns or catch ship in a state where they are not able to properly engage enemy naval forces. We put forth the idea of a launch of some sort being sent. But considering we would essentially be boarding a sealed up ship possibly with small arms to repel torepedo boat class vessels how would we go about this?
Who watches the watchmen?I would think the launch would be best bet, especially if you can set up some-kind of breaching system, perhaps a charge and some kind of gantry. The launch itself would probably be fairly large not only because of the technological limitations of the technology but to match speed and three dimensional orientation with the assaulted ship. Or insulted as the case might be.
Alternatively you could set up a boom or plank system between the ships but that would be kind of hairy. Probably the best bet would be some kind of combination such as a tethered ship, gantry or articulated bridge.
Also, Air Marines would help.
Based on this ship and info from this page
I have done a tenative write up of a common Aerial War Ship Design. I am unable to draw what I have in mind though.
For a very good idea of what the ships should look like do a google image search for the " Irong Grip Air Ships " sans quotation marks.
Private that thicker mid section we dicsussed early pretty much brings us to ship designs like the ones in Iron Grip. Differences for us though will be a lack of external propellers.
Who watches the watchmen?I haven't read the entire thread, but perhaps this may help you in some ideas, Tuefel?
edited 27th Oct '11 10:32:02 PM by Breakerchase
I managed to save up some "hidden" Iron Grip concept art way back in the day, might be useful to better envision some stuff...
Breaker: Awesome again. :3
Ok the stats I hacked up. I had to attempt a balanced Ass Pull for the stats.
HMAS (His or Hers Majesties Aerial Ship) Sparrow Hawk
Dimensions: Bow to Stern 280 feet, Dorsal To Keel (tallest point of the ship to lowest point of the ship) 45 feet, Dorsal to Keel (Deck to Belly) 33 feet, Maximum Width 57 feet.
Lift: (Instead of displacement there is lift)
- Maximum Lift (Most weight the ship can carry with 1 hours worth of fuel) 10,000 tons
- Useful Load Lift (Maximum Weight with 3 days worth of Fuel: Excludes ammo) 7,000 Tons
- Empty Lift (No weapons mounted, no cargo, no supplies other then 3 days fuel.) 17,000 tons
- Combat Lift 800 Tons (3 Days Fuel, Supplies, and standard Ammo Load for the Ships guns)
- Fuel Loads include both coal and water for running steam turbine generators.
Armament (Loosely based on sea borne ships)
- Primary:Mounted In standard ships turrets One Fore one Aft in Two Barrel per turret configuration 6" 27 Caliber Mk12 Guns Max Elevation 80 Degrees Max Declination 40 Degrees max Rotation at Level 285 Degrees
- Broadside Sponson Mounts 4 Guns Each gun in a single gun mount per Sponson. 8" 26 Caliber Mk 4 Naval Guns
- 12 Single Gun Mounts on a fixed deck mounted turret 2" Anti-Lauch/Anti-Torpedo boat guns 5 Port and Starboard one Fore and One Aft
- 3 Arbalest 12" Lift Engine Aerial Torepedo launchers. 3 Torpedos in magazine per launcher. 1 Launcher Fore, 1 Port, 1 Starboard.
Armour
- Belt(Broadside armour from edge of deck to the edge of belly)6" Belt
- Turret Armour: 8"
- Sponson Armur 8.5"
- Primary Dorsal Conning Tower 12"
- Secondary Conning Tower 8"
- Dorsal Conning Tower 5"
- Deck: Dorsal and Ventral Surface 2"
Fuel Consumption: (No head wind or tail wind)
- 20 tons an Hour Max Speed 69 Knots.
- 14 tons Per Hour Cruising Speed 48 Knots
- 8 Tons Per Hour Minimum flight capable speed 27 Knots
- 4 Tons Per Hour Landing/Stable descent Speed 13 Knots
Power Plants
- 8 Coal Fired Babacok and Wilcox Boiler Steam Turbine Generators.
- 6 Samuel and Sons Warship Lifting and Propulsion Grids 4 centeral 1 Bow 1 Stern
Ballast and Balance System
- Jrorgans Fluid Oil or Waer Pressurized Ballast systems
Common Shells carried are HE Naval Shells, Armour Piercing Naval Shells, White Phosphorus Shells, Illumination flare Shells.
Launches 2 Light weight 10 ton Aerial Launches Common armanent 2 machine gun Sponsons one on each side and one Machine gun in the fore section. Alternate Armament is 1" Light Cannon In nose and two sponson Machine Guns.
Crew 4. One Pilot, One Navigator/Gunner, Two Sponson gunners. Max carry compliment sans crew 12 men plus kit. estimated max speed 86 Knots.
Power Plant is 5 hour batteries charged on ship or at shore stations and Single Lift/Thrust Lifting grid built into frame.
Armour 1" Bow, .5 Inches Port and Starboard, No armour in rear.
Best I can do with some guess work and working with the link I posted earlier.
Who watches the watchmen?Ok finally got this worked out. The difference between a Torpedo and a rocket will be Torpedo's are guided projectiles and Rockets are ballistcally aimed projectiles like with MLRS weapons in WWII.
Early torpedos will be primitive wireless or TOW style weapons. More advanced ones will use more advanced guidance controls ranging from radio guidance, radar guided via ship, or self guided fire and forget models.
Who watches the watchmen?I know that's before titanium, and I'm pretty sure it's before aluminium, too.
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NO^^ Certain steels mainly. Aluminum is present (this came into being shortly before the close the 19th century
) too.
Wait, really? Awesome. Happy to be mistaken. :D
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NOI know you got the torpedo thing hashed out but may i throw my two cents on it?
Why don't you put wings on it? that way your torpedo gets out the tube or what ever with a rocket for thrust, and when the rocket cuts out it fly's or glide's a fixed distance with the wings.
Profile image made by Bulhakov

So is anywhere that doesn't have large pockets of this in relatively easily-accessible locations screwed over, then? I imagine the Ottomans would have a tough time of it; Japan and the US would be golden, though.
Mexican-American War? Whoa, talk about ambitious, much? That sounds like it would be ridiculously hard to keep supplied back then, let alone build with the metal working they had. Wouldn't that also accelerate naval development? It might screw the South over even more in the American Civil War. Or is it really simplistic and not that impressive?
Ah, resupply. I side-stepped that issue. Easy Logistics by virtue of not talking about it is your friend, man. Unless you need it for a plot point.
I am now known as Flyboy.