I suppose it depends on if you allow for lucky madmen or highly skilled craftsmen(who may also be fairly lucky).
Some craftsman could accidentally forge some bronze with unusually high durability, they can't do it every time, but they could do it just enough times for your ship before some factor they don't account for at that TL stops being favorable. If every component was of 'very fine' quality or better, it would be expensive but there is enough room for improvement that 'lucky accidents' could make a major contribution. Modern materials science is mostly about process control to make sure that something that could possibly have happened in the past happens almost every time. I suspect that any number of 'magic weapons' were just such happy accidents. Something went just right with the process and so it is effectively the same as a standard or fine item several TLs later. Also, a mad-man who rolls a die every day to decide what to do(or examine fish-guts if you prefer), could accidentally follow the trade winds, miss all the storms and randomly choose a path that is optimal for the trip. I would not want to bet on one of these happening on demand, and certainly not both at once, but it is theoretically possible. Let the players have several levels of Luck, or a few levels of Super Luck, and see if hey can make it at TL1 or below... On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > Volker replied to me: >> Post TL 1, I wouldn't see this as a 'hard' technology challenge as much as >> a knowledge one. The equipment and skills to build oceangoing ships ois >> around from the great Bronze Age civilisations onwards. > > Certain 'soft' factors are still TL-dependent, like Navigation. I > see no real difference between finding better ways to cast bronze > and finding better ways to navigate -- both uplift the area TL. > >> IN terms of >> seaworthiness, a Polynesian outrigger canow would already answer your >> purpose, >> though of course it wouldn't carry the crew or payload you'd need. > > * VXi8 calls it TL3 ... guess they were advanced in one area. > > * Would it really be able to brave the Capes? > >> A large metchant hull as was used in the Mediterranean or in China from >> the early iron age onwards should be good enough for an ocean crossing, >> provided it is managed correctly. The main problem will be outfitting it and >> developing the skill set needed for repairs en route. Square sails aren't too >> much of a problem - they allow you to tack to a degree, and if you can do >> trade wind sailing, you can go with the prevailing winds almost all the >> time.. > > * Preserving food and water will be a challenge. > > * TL1 ships don't tack all that well. Even with generally good and > predictable winds, that will increase the duration of the voyage. > >> That is really going to be your biggest problem IMO. People have >> understood monspoon sailing soince the iron age at least (last confident >> dating I've >> read was fourth century BC, but I am not confident in the confidence of >> these historians). > > Trade winds restrict the direction and timing of the voyage. The > idea was to take one ship all the way, no overland trips e.g. in > Panama. Once you're in the south Atlantic, you can start to go > east all the way around, but getting there could be tricky, and > it isn't exactly a nice part of the world, either. > >> Before that time, nobody built big, deep-hulled oceangoing >> ships because people did not see the need. The basioc technology to make >> them was there, but nobody would have quite understood the challenges >> involved or the requirements of a vessel to meet them. Building this would be >> something like a diadochoi or pharaonic Apollo project. > > Below you mention a step-by-step approach. What I had in > mind was the culmination of several improving designs. > >> Nobody had experience >> with maintaining a vessel under way because people used to go ashore for >> any repair. > > What can you do underway anyway, when it comes to hull > repair? > >> Nobody understood high seas navigation because you used leadlines >> and landmarks. > > I thought that would be a real problem. > >> Nobody had any understanding of the weather or prevailing >> winds and currents, so as far as they knew, you could get stuck in eternal >> calm or ripped to pieces by monster storms. > > The starting point was a rough idea of the shape of the > continents. To get that knowledge without alien or divine > intervention, somebody must have survived each individual > portion of the trip before. The idea was to write a ship > which can do all parts in sequence. > >> You can't build a shiop to >> be prepared for all of this, so chances are the resuzlting design wpould >> be a poor compromise and probably doomed to kill its crew by starvation or >> thirst somewhere in a nice, blue stretch of sea under a friendly trade wind >> taking them in the wrong direction. > > So the first ship might carry extra food instead of trade goods. > >> If you have a good way of disseminating an understanding of trade wind >> sailing and the skills to run a ship away from shore (management of spares >> and >> supplies, improvised repairs, discipline and navigation), > > Management of supplies includes both preservation and rationing. > For setting rations, take the normal duration of the leg and a > Murphy factor, higher on early voyages and lower later on. > > Repair underway will be tricky. A carpentry workshop can only > do so much. Would a convoy be useful, or will it just get > scattered anyway? > > Discipline depends on the percentage of PCs in the crew :-) > >> you could get it >> going in a year or two, though you'd probably want to start with easier >> projects like going around Africa, to India, to China, or across the Atlantic >> first (trying to go around Africa west-to-east has a better than even >> chance of ending up in the Americas, actually). All the tools you need can be >> made by moderately capable Bronze-age craftsmen. Neolithic if you're a >> high-risk kind of person. But the knowledge gap is tremendous. > > Those steps will take years of sailing time alone, like the > Portugese going around Africa inch by inch. > >> > Rough numbers could be 20,000 cf and 100 tons with a pair >> > of masts under 100'. Call it 10 mph with good winds, more >> > likely 5 mph on the long haul. Ten tons of food are 1,667 >> > man-days, so the endurance could be 100 days if the food >> > (and water!) does not spoil. >> >> That's not that hard to ensure, especially i you can get some simple but >> extremely useful technologies such as coopered casks, salt-glazed pottery, >> bean sprout making and/or distilled liquors disseminated. I'd make the masts >> smaller to reduce crew requirements and danger of damage to rigging. > > Low-Tech (3E) doesn't mention cooperage, and CI has no TL for > it. High-Tech (4E) doesn't go into details on lower TLs. > >> If this is an Uplift project, you might want to introduce things like >> simple pulleys, integral reefs, flat sail profiles, and the extensive use of >> winches. You can reduce crew requirements quite a bit that way, and it can >> all be built with Bronze Age tools if you know how. > > The idea was no uplift, just working with the TLs as written. > > And Johannes wrote: >> Depending on the background, navigation instruments could be replaced by >> augury and luck for the first voyage and afterwards you can try to follow >> the travellogs of the first journey for repeated attempts. > > No magic ... > >> In such a >> scenario it would even be possible to sail around the globe, without >> realizing that the planet is spherical. You can have long "circles" also >> on discs and old maps were often bad enough, that around the globe might >> be mistaken for a "circle" on a disc. > > That delusion will cripple navigation attempts. > >> A lot will depend on the geography of the gameworld. There are layouts >> that make it entirely impossible (the americas stretching from icecap to >> icecap in not such a stretch, it just needs a little rearranging of >> landmasses), while you also could make layouts that very much favour it. > > Baseline Earth, for starters. > > I hadn't really considered an un-uplifted TL1, and the comments > don't encourage me, but I'll try TL2. > _______________________________________________ > GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> > http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l > -- The man that holds fast to his bitterness will eventually be consumed by it, but if you let it go, your arms will be free to seize the glory that is life. -Terwin _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
