Airship Weapons

Discussion on the Earthdawn game line, errata, and feedback not related to playing or GMing.
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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Tattered Rags » Tue Mar 01, 2016 10:11 am


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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Telarus_KSC » Tue Mar 01, 2016 11:24 am


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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Telarus_KSC » Wed Mar 02, 2016 10:31 am

Hmm. Ok! I see some great ideas in there, but you've had to come up with your own terms and such. I kinda want to retain as much of the feel of the 1st edition language as possible. Let's finish the review of the 1st edition material and we can start brainstorming on 4E mechanics :twisted:
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A note on the Elemental Air Spear Throwers: The trolls have only recently developed ship-to-ship weapons. Previously, they would rely on close flybys to deliver Boarding parties via Great Leap. The fiction portion of the book notes that these are hollow tubes mounted on the bow or alongside the hull, out of the way of the oars. They fire shards of elemental wood, earth or crystal (sometimes tipped with iron, living crystal, or True Earth) by a cocked hammer mechanism hitting a kernel of Air in the base chamber. The large spears can get some really high damage step and, "the most powerful of these spears can crack or even split the stone hulls of the Theran ships. Spear-throwers aimed at crews can be loaded with clusters of smaller spears to create a scattershop effect. The Swiftwind moot developed the Spear Throwers and makes the most use of them, followed by the Stoneclaws, Iron Mongers, and the Thundersky moots." We can see from this description that the devs really developed the troll cultures in separate ways, with some using ballista, some spear-throwers, some catapults - each with their own specialty ammunition.

Still researching those maintenance rules today.
Last edited by Telarus_KSC on Wed Mar 02, 2016 6:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Tattered Rags » Wed Mar 02, 2016 3:16 pm


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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Tattered Rags » Sat Mar 05, 2016 7:49 pm


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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Telarus_KSC » Sun Mar 06, 2016 9:09 pm


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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Mataxes » Sun Mar 06, 2016 10:52 pm

I'm curious... if we take the repair cost for the various ship attribute values, what does that do in terms of a ship's "cost"?

Looking at the stats for a "Crystal Raider Drakkar" from Crystal Raiders:

Speed 10 @ 200sp per = 2000sp
Maneuver 10 @ 300sp per = 3000sp
Firepower 13 @ 300sp per = 3900sp

(I'm using just the damage value for firepower because I think it better represents how much weaponry the ship has. Using both values increases the cost even more.)

Hull is a bit stranger as there are multiple values, and the rules aren't really clear of which of them apply. Also, the cost changes depending on how much damage has been done, and part of that is based on the ship's original cost (which, as far as I know, isn't actually detailed anywhere).

So let's assume that Armor and Ramming (but not cargo) factor into repair costs and go with the middle value (800sp per point).

Armor 12 @ 800sp per = 9600sp
Ramming 20 @ 800sp per = 16000sp.

This gives us a total figure of:

2,000 + 3,000 + 3,900 + 9,600 + 16,000 = 34,500 silver

And that's for one of the smaller airships. The merchant galley stats give us:

2,000 + 2,700 + 4,800 + 12,000 + 20,000 = 41,500 silver

Those figures... actually aren't as out of whack as I feared they might be. That's just cost based on game stats and doesn't factor in crew salary, maintenance costs, or anything else like that.

Given demand and rarity (there are only a few places that can build them, after all), it would make sense that the "purchase price" would be +50% (or more) of those values.

I ran a couple of games that wrapped around Circle 8 (after starting from scratch) and I was never really stingy with money, but I don't think my groups could have afforded an airship, even a small one, without seriously affecting their cash flow.
Josh Harrison --
Troubadour and Magic Theorist
Line Developer: Earthdawn

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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Tattered Rags » Sun Mar 06, 2016 11:21 pm


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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Tattered Rags » Mon Mar 07, 2016 4:19 pm


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Re: Airship Weapons

Postby Telarus_KSC » Wed Mar 16, 2016 11:30 am

Been very busy, but this has been in the back of my head and we have some really good seed ideas here in this thread. I'll try to post some more later today. This thread has gotten a huge number of hits since I started examining these rules (hi there 8-) ), so I'd like some feedback on one specific point.

The burning question is Firepower. Do we want to HAVE to roll separate Attack Tests for each Firecannon/ship-weapon fired during an Assault action? Do we want individual Damage tests for individual ship weapons? These are very separate questions.

Right now I fall towards individual Damage tests per weapon that hits (thus scaling ship Heath appropriately). I also do not really like the idea of rolling a separate Attack Test for each weapon, especially if you already have to roll something to succeed in the Assault maneuver.

Ok, I want to get feedback before going further.


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